Ad Exchange News

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Au Revoir, Pre-Roll Accenture Interactive is getting into programmatic video – but not in the pre-roll way. In Cannes on Thursday, the agency division of Accenture launched a new ad unit that will programmatically overlay product placements on streaming video content. That could look like, for […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Trust Funding Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will drop tech vendors that run applications for the company on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leading web hosting and data storage service, thereby prodding them to use Microsoft’s Azure instead. “It shouldn’t be a big surprise that there are cases […]

Yahoo’s new parent, Oath, will have to make do without one of the acquired company’s key ad platform executives. BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti is exiting the video demand-side platform and exchange he founded in 2006, according to a source with knowledge of the company. Yahoo bought BrightRoll for $640 million in 2014. An unconfirmed number […]

Amazon’s Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) is the new kid on the block. But like with most of its endeavors, Amazon is readying itself to disrupt the existing paradigm. With TAM, Amazon is angling to take market share away from client-side header bidding wrapper Prebid and Google’s year-old exchange bidding product, which just entered open beta. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Amazon’s Magic Wardrobe Amazon is ramping up the retail fashion arm of its Prime business in a big way. Subscribers will be able to order from three to 15 articles of clothing, try them on, send items back and only pay for ones they keep. It’s […]

Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, Snapchat: It’s enough to make a publisher’s head spin. With so many third-party distribution points, publishers need to be in constant test-and-learn mode. Yet too many fall into a trap of leaning too heavily on platforms – or not enough. When it comes to succeeding with platform distribution, half the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Google’s Gauntlet In the wake of recent terror attacks in London, Google is pledging to continue its crackdown on extremist content through a combination of technology and human intervention. On Sunday, Google said it will dedicate more resources toward identifying YouTube videos that include inflammatory religious […]

Greetings! As you may have seen in today’s press release, AdExchanger is excited to announce that we have been acquired by Access Intelligence, a B2B media and information company. Since I founded AdExchanger in 2008 (Whoa! Almost 10 years ago), AdExchanger has been laser-focused on serving our diverse community of marketers, agencies, media, technologists and anyone else who […]

There’s no more US presidential election or splashy Summer Olympics to prop up ad spend, but there is still growth to be found – especially on the mobile front. Although the growth rate in total ad spend has slowed, global mobile advertising is on pace to reach $110 billion this year, surpassing the $100 billion mark […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Etymology An oral history of how the term “header bidding” was cemented in the market underscores the absurdity of ad tech jargon – but also its necessity. When AdExchanger first covered the topic two years ago, terms like “pre-bidding,” “tagless” and “advanced bidding” were being used […]

Ad tech talent is packing up and moving on. Longtime ad tech insiders – many who started before the dot-com boom – see their peers moving to other industries or fleeing for safety into the arms of the duopoly. When Ari Paparo, founder and CEO of Beeswax, tweeted, “The best people are leaving the business […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Crystal Ballin’ Global ad spend will hit $563 billion this year, according to a Dentsu Aegis Network forecast. Digital ad spend, expected to grow roughly 15% this year to $191 billion, will drive the overall growth. TV advertising, on the other hand, will grow 0.5%. And […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Our Better Angels Facebook’s and Google’s seemingly indomitable position in ad tech is chasing VCs out of the category. Crunchbase data shows ad tech VC deals diminishing since 2014 and some “once-bright categories might be has-beens,” Jason Rowley writes at TechCrunch. “The moat just keeps growing […]

Amazon on Monday quietly launched a self-serve platform called Advertiser Audiences, which lets advertisers upload their audience lists and CRM information, enabling tactics like audience matching and lookalike modeling. Advertiser Audiences is similar to solutions Facebook and Google released earlier, though Amazon’s tool has some key differences. The biggest strength, said Wunderman North America Chief […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. I Wish I Could Quit YouTube So much for the boycott. Most of the advertisers that paused their YouTube spend due to brand safety concerns have now paused their moral outrage and are back on the platform, according to Axios. Read more. Google exec Allan Thygesen […]

Microsoft is beta testing a feature on its Bing search engine called Custom Audiences. It is designed to improve targeting by letting advertisers upload first-party files like CRM, purchase history and subscription data. If advertisers want to participate in the beta test, which has been underway for several months, advertisers must upload their data via […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. A Score To Settle ComScore dug into the media consumption habits of 870 households that consist of true cord-cutters – people who dropped a subscription for cable or satellite TV – as well as for a larger set of households with both linear and OTT subscriptions. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Worth A Thousand Words As digital media gets more visual, image-based content has been endowed with new data and targeting features. Packaged-food brand Ripple Foods partnered with image recognition vendor GumGum to target ads against photos on a site. “People are used to scrolling and consuming […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. There Can Be Only One (Portal) Yahoo’s shareholders approved its sale to Verizon for $4.48 billion on Thursday, clearing the way for the deal to close on June 13. More. No surprise: Jobs will be lost in the process. Oath, the combined AOL-Yahoo entity under parent […]

Google’s exchange bidding product entered open beta on Thursday. Publishers will be able to test how Google’s solution fares against their header bidding setups. But here’s a tip from publishers already using exchange bidding: Use both. Each connection has its own pros and cons, they told AdExchanger. For the time being, it’s better to test […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Spotify walks a fine line with its ad experience. Ads should be relevant and not too frequent, but just annoying enough to motivate users of its free version to convert to paid. “You do see drop-offs in the first several days to the first […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Back To Basics “We as an industry have poisoned programmatic,” Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn told attendees of the Mumbrella360 conference on Tuesday. “We told clients … there was all these people with hands on keyboards that were doing bidding and going after inventory when […]

Private equity firm Vector Capital has rebranded Experian’s cross-channel marketing business as Cheetah Digital. Vector acquired a majority stake in the marketing technology in April, with Experian retaining 25% control. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because the stack now known as Cheetah Digital includes the first-gen email marketing platform CheetahMail – which has been […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Siri’s Lament When Apple shipped Siri on iPhones in 2011, it became the first company with any meaningful AI product adoption. “Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI,” reports The Washington Post. “AI programming demands a level of data […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Well Placed Snapchat snapped up the mobile location analytics startup Placed, which has an opt-in panel of smartphone users who allow it to track their location in return for small cash payments. “Still working independently, Placed’s goal continues to be the adoption of a common yardstick […]

Apple is rolling out products to cut down on autoplay video and retargeting. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose on Thursday, Apple said it’s planning two features in the next version of Safari, dubbed High Sierra, that will cut down on ads that stalk you around the internet and videos that play uninvited. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Pay Attention NBC News is rolling out two ad units developed in-house to better meet viewability standards. Mach is a custom display unit and Better is a unit that scrolls through images as the user moves down the page. Both surpass the IAB’s standard of one […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Neil Glass, SVP of data strategy at IDG. You’ve heard it before: “Slow and steady wins the race.” The moral to Aesop’s famous fable is also a mantra that publishers should adopt when it comes to both short-term and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Gate Crashers It happened: Snapchat’s self-serve function has opened the floodgates to garish DR ads, Digiday reports. Think Lowermybills.com. Control over creative production is a common concession for platforms seeking scale, and it’s also necessary for Snap if it wants revenue growth on the scale of […]