Artificial Intelligence

What’s the rationale behind AppLovin’s bid to merge with Unity (kicking ironSource to the curb in the process)? Adam Foroughi, AppLovin’s CEO, got into the details on the company’s Q2 earnings call.

Meta has released new products available within Meta Advantage, its newly consolidated suite of automated advertising tools, and the global rollout of Advantage+ shopping campaigns, which was in beta since earlier this year, with additional features to support Advantage+ app campaigns.

The release of Google’s Imagen tool has certainly made news feeds more entertaining in recent months. Who doesn’t want to see pictures of a raccoon dressed as an astronaut or a corgi cycling through Times Square? But while Google’s new text-to-image generator is a really interesting development that illustrates the potential of AI, this type of technology can’t replace human creatives in the advertising industry, writes Graham Wilkinson, chief innovation officer at Kinesso and Matterkind Global.

Roy Armale, VMLY&R’s global chief innovation officer, believes in tackling technology with human behavior in mind – and being careful not to let the convenience of technology alter our perception of what it means to be human.

Google released a batch of new monetization, targeting and measurement features for AdMob on Thursday, with a focus on (what else?) data privacy. “Everybody is thinking about how they can evolve in this new world,” David Mitby, Google’s senior director of product management for app ads, told AdExchanger.

Last year, Levi’s launched an in-house machine-learning bootcamp to help employees who don’t have a formal data science background learn about AI and develop new digital skills. More than 450 people applied for just 60 spots in the program. Roughly two-thirds of the first class were women, says Katia Walsh, head of AI at Levi’s.

Patients are wielding their power as consumers, and the healthcare industry needs to adapt to address their needs and expectations. Artificial intelligence might just be the key for healthcare marketers to unlock the new patient economy, says Stefanos Kapetanakis, GVP, Data and Technology, at Publicis Health Media. 

As ecommerce continues to boom, AI technology promises to revolutionize nearly every aspect of a retailer’s operations. Yet, the human aspect of tastemaking has never had more influence, says Catherine Leung, managing executive director, head of activation, Hearts & Science.

The Weather Company is a large publisher with lots of first-party data and, with investments from IBM Watson Advertising, it’s using AI technology to mitigate bias in advertising. The goal is to use both to monetize quality content above short-term gains in ad revenue, says CEO Sheri Bachstein.

Former physicist Melinda Han Williams used to spend her time studying “electronic transport in nanostructured graphene devices.” These days, as chief data scientist at Dstillery, she’s creating identifier-free solutions to transport us past the end of third-party cookies.

AppLovin is in the process of fully integrating MAX and MoPub, which AppLovin bought from Twitter in October for around $1 billion. Since the acquisition, the number of apps monetizing with MAX, AppLovin’s in-app bidding software is up by more than 60%,, according to CEO Adam Foroughi.

Marketers often rely on a combination of assumptions and incorrect, faulty data that perpetuates stereotypes. Former WarnerMedia executive Larry Adams experienced this firsthand and founded LVA, an “anti-racist” agency that uses proprietary technology to measure the level of inclusion in content.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mind Your Own IABeeswax Ad Age dinged the IAB for Meta’s prime placement during the trade group’s Annual Leadership Meeting this week. Three small businesses with the Internet for Growth, an IAB-backed advocacy group, all cited Facebook and Instagram advertising during their presentations. “I […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Ali Manning, co-founder and COO of Chalice Custom Algorithms. In the future, the best, most successful brands will be the ones that can predict the future. And there’s no reason […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Melinda Han Williams, Chief Data Scientist, Dstillery.  Google’s announcement that its “data-driven attribution” – that its machine-learning-driven attribution modeling will be the default attribution method in Google Ads – took […]

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

Erik Huberman, CEO and founder of marketing consultancy Hawke Media, has some pretty strong – if not outright harsh – words for most media agencies out there: “They’re full of [expletive].” Before founding the Los Angeles-based company in 2014, Huberman launched and sold two commerce companies – Swag of the Month and Ellie – and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Killed The TV Star Comcast’s and Google’s earnings calls last week mark two converging trends in brand advertising and the decline of linear TV. NBC is haggling with advertisers of the Olympics because ratings are down – 42% down – at the halfway […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is by Sarah Rose, SVP International Digital Operations, Data & Platform Ops at IPG’s Kinesso. Artificial intelligence is a heavy and complex topic with tons of deep ethical complications, confusing applications and unknown […]

Direct-to-consumer advertisers pumping tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars into their Facebook ads each month know the power of a good creative message. The best ad creatives drive ROAS (return on ad spend) that can be orders of magnitude higher than a failed message. But how can busy, short-staffed marketing departments test new creative […]

Ad-Lib.io, a company founded by a group of former Google execs in 2017 and which offers creative workflow tools, has clinched an additional $6 million in Series A financing. The latest round brings its total funding to $12 million in less than two years and will be used to accelerate the growth of the London-based […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Taking A Hit The ongoing pandemic is still throwing IPG for a loop as the holdco rethinks its structure for the year ahead. IPG reported net sales of $8 billion in 2020, a 6.5% decrease compared with the previous year, The Wall Street Journal […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. The rapid shift to streaming TV last year significantly disrupted the advertising industry, and was nothing short of transformational amidst the pandemic, social unrest and a divisive presidential election. But despite its vast potential as an emerging advertising platform for brands and marketers, streaming ad […]

Industry Preview is a special, limited-run audio series featuring interviews with key leaders in marketing, media and technology who share their predictions and key priorities for 2021. This podcast is sponsored by IBM Watson Advertising.  Brands have long been sold the vision that artificial intelligence will one day supercharge their marketing plans, but results have been […]

Industry Preview is a special, limited-run audio series, featuring interviews with key leaders in marketing, media and technology who share their predictions and key priorities for 2021.  This podcast is sponsored by IBM Watson Advertising. The term “artificial intelligence” gets tossed around to loosely describe everything from dynamic creative optimization and automated media planning to […]

Ever since MeritDirect partnered with private equity firm Mountaingate Capital in 2019, it’s aggressively expanded its data and service offerings in the B2B space. In November, the Rye Brooke, NY-based company purchased 180byTwo – terms were undisclosed – marking its second acquisition deal this year; it bought Compass Marketing Solutions in January. “Putting these companies […]

IBM has been banging the drum for years about the role artificial intelligence can play to support everything from cancer treatment to retail personalization. More recently, though, IBM has started to prioritize practical advertising applications of its cognitive computing system, Watson. Last month, IBM brought its AI to ad tech through partnerships with Xandr, Magnite, […]

This SSP is going IPO. PubMatic is gearing up for a proposed $75 million initial public offering after filing an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The company, founded in 2006, is one of the ad tech old guard and planning to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global […]

Google is revamping Google Analytics for a world in which privacy plays center stage and identifiers are exiting stage left. The new version of Google Analytics, released on Wednesday, was in beta for more than a year, and will now be the default experience for all users. The updated product includes privacy controls to help […]

When COVID-19 hit, the Google Ads team changed its product road map to meet evolving needs, particularly those of small businesses. And now some of those products are starting to hit the market, including a new trend discovery tool and new buying objectives. “We took a step back and asked ourselves how we could change […]