Home Ad Exchange News The United States Digital Service Faces Uncertainty; Snapchat Partners With Oracle Data Cloud

The United States Digital Service Faces Uncertainty; Snapchat Partners With Oracle Data Cloud

SHARE:

murkywatersHere’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Politicizing Innovation

President Obama’s United States Digital Service (USDS) is, like many others, uncertain about what a Donald Trump presidency might mean for its organization. While Obama nurtured USDS and acutely understood the importance of technology and innovation, Trump hasn’t made it clear whether he’ll continue to support USDS with government money. In interviews with Backchannel, USDS members expressed “an existential dread that Donald Trump would either pull the plug on one of the great achievements of the last eight years,” or “order the best and brightest to work on projects that violated their moral codes.” Read it.

Snapping Up Data

Do snaps drive sales? Snapchat’s looking to find out and is following in Facebook’s footsteps. A partnership with Oracle Data Cloud will let marketers match and target audiences based on loyalty or credit card data. The Wall Street Journal’s Mike Shields points out that this marks the first time Snapchat has greenlighted targeting based on third-party data, and builds on its debut of an audience match program last fall. More.

The Publisher Agency

Publishers are pushing further into consultative selling. Bustle, a site geared to millennial women, launched a research arm called Bustle Trends Group to produce white papers and custom projects for brands. Bustle CRO Jason Wagenheim acknowledged that the goal is to sell more ads, but the Trends Group will operate like a research firm disconnected from ad sales. This model seems to pit publishers against legacy research companies, but that’s not really an issue, according to Atlantic Media Strategies, The Atlantic’s consulting arm. “We’re what someone might consider a consulting firm and an agency,” said President Jean Ellen Cowgill. Digiday has more.

Slow Boat To Streaming Audience

AT&T’s streaming service, DirecTV Now, peaks at around 35,000 simultaneous viewers, according to Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn. Rayburn confirmed the number with AT&T’s third-party video suppliers, and some back of the napkin math pegs DirecTV Now subscribers at around 100,000 overall (including those who are just testing the service). Technical and service issues may have added friction to AT&T’s growth plans. Read Rayburn’s blog post.

But Wait, There’s More!

You’re Hired!

Must Read

Closeup image bag of money and judge gavel. Lawsuit, auction, bribe and penalty concept.

The LG Ads Legal Saga Continues With A Fresh Suit, This Time Against Kroll

Alphonso co-founder Lampros Kalampoukas is suing Kroll for allegedly undervaluing the company by nearly $100 million to aid LG Electronics in a shareholder dispute.

Comic: Metric Meditations

The Startup Trying To Automate The Ad Platform Reconciliation And Refund Mess

The ad tech startup Vaudit, founded last year by Mike Hahn, aims to automate the process of campaign reconciliation atop major ad platforms.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

The Trade Desk Lays Out Its Case To Beat Walled Gardens. Does Wall Street Buy It?

The Trade Desk continued its shaky 2025 earnings schedule when it reported Q2 results on Thursday.

Magnite Targets CTV, SMBs And Google's SSP Market Share

The SSP is betting on the DOJ’s antitrust remedies, plus closer relationships with agencies, DSPs and mid-sized advertisers, to help it eat some of Google’s lunch.

Zillow Pilots Containerized RTB, As It Rethinks The Equation Of Quality And Cost

Zillow is the pilot brand advertiser to test a new programmatic buying strategy known as containerized RTB. The strategy embeds the DSP or ad-buying platform intelligence, in this case the startup Chalice Custom Algorithms, within the SSP, which is Index Exchange.