Allison Schiff is the managing editor of AdExchanger, where she covers mobile, Facebook (sorry, Meta), measurement, privacy and the app economy. Allison received her M.A. in journalism from the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland (her favorite place), and a B.A. in history and English from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Although it’s too early to predict how the antitrust lawsuits filed against Google and Facebook late last year will play out, one immediate outcome is more awareness of how digital advertising functions. “Many of the topics we’ve been so obsessed with in the ad tech industry are no longer just being talked about within the […]
Unity Technologies raised more than $1.3 billion during its IPO in September at a $13.6 billion valuation, proof positive that the gaming industry isn’t playing around. Roughly 750,000 creators, mainly game developers, use the Unity platform to build their apps, and Unity’s game engine powers game titles played on billions of devices around the world, […]
2020 brought an identity crisis to the online advertising industry. The year started with Google answering the until-then theoretical question of what might happen to third-party cookies at some unknown point in the distant future. In July, Apple made a similar move with the announcement that its proprietary mobile device ID, the IDFA, would soon […]
You didn’t think 2020 would end without at least one more Unified ID 2.0 announcement, did you? IRIS.TV, a video data platform with its own contextual video marketplace, is joining the Unified ID 2.0 initiative, the company said on Wednesday. UID 2.0 is an open source identifier based on email addresses that’s part of the […]
When Reader’s Digest Association rebranded to Trusted Media Brands in 2014, a reporter commented to CEO and president Bonnie Kintzer at the time that “it’s not a sexy name.” “And I said, ‘Thank you, we’re not a sexy company,” Kintzer jokes in this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. The rebrand, though, helped kickstart an era […]
The brand client has become the agency CEO. In mid-December, former Electronic Arts marketer Belinda Smith was appointed as CEO of the Americas at media agency m/SIX, a joint venture backed by The&Partnership and GroupM, and also one of EA’s external agency partners. That’s how Smith met the crew at m/Six, where she’ll now oversee […]
Retail media networks are having a moment, because they’re positioned to add relevance in a cookieless world, says Luke Kigel, VP of Walgreens integrated media and head of the Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG). Walgreens put a bow on its retail media network, dubbed WAG, in early December. But the launch is part of a larger […]
For a company generating tens of billions of dollars in advertising revenue, Facebook’s attribution offerings are highly reliant on cookies and pixels. This can lead to inaccurate reports that sometimes underreport conversions. Thinkster, for example, an AI-based math tutoring app, typically spends between 90% and 95% of its ad budget on Facebook. But Facebook’s attribution […]
Everything that General Mills does online is designed to drive purchases, says Jeff Austin, senior mar tech manager at the CPG giant, and that includes the more than 300 brand websites that General Mills maintains across 42 countries in 26 different languages. Its consumer-facing sites fall into two main buckets. Core brands, including Betty Crocker […]
Google’s legal team just got even busier. On Thursday, less than 24 hours after Google was hit with an antitrust lawsuit digging into its ad tech business, a bipartisan coalition of 38 states and territories served up yet another suit, this one focused on alleged antitrust violations related to Google’s alleged monopoly over the search […]
The multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google that dropped on Wednesday evening is so squarely focused on ad tech that the term “header bidding” shows up more than 110 times. The suit details alleged anticompetitive sins related to the way in which Google runs its multibillion-dollar online advertising business, including the claim that Google colluded with […]
The Washington Post said Wednesday that it will adopt the Unified ID 2.0 framework – the first publisher to do so after a string of ad tech companies have tossed their hats into the ring over the past few months. The Post will allow advertisers to transact using the ID on its own site and will […]
Facebook’s got its claws out, calling Apple’s move to require an opt-in for the IDFA “an attack on personalized advertising” that will harm small businesses, creators and kittens. Well, not kittens, necessarily. It’s just that it’s a little hard not to be facetious when a multibillion-dollar company that just got hit with twin antitrust lawsuits […]
It’s getting cozy over in Unified ID 2.0 Land. SSP OpenX said on Tuesday it plans to adopt the open source ID, the initial development of which was spearheaded by The Trade Desk. Unified ID 2.0 proposes using hashed and encrypted email as the basis for identity and as a replacement for third-party cookies. Specifically, […]
Third-party cookies are going away, mobile ad IDs will soon be harder to come by – and the advertising ecosystem is responding with a flurry of deterministic identifiers of its own. LiveRamp has an ID, Nielsen’s got one, the industry is starting to coalesce around Unified ID 2.0 and, on Wednesday, Neustar launched Fabrick ID. Fabrick […]
Vox Media is close to making more money from first-party audience targeting than from third-party targeting mechanisms. This year, Vox expects that the majority of its audience line items will be rooted in first party, said AJ Frucci, VP of Concert and programmatic at Vox Media. Last year, third-party targeting made up the vast majority, […]
“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 Allison Schiff, senior editor at AdExchanger. It’s part of a series of perspectives from AdExchanger’s editorial team. “Are you ready to order?” The waiter notices my confusion. “Oh, yeah, we don’t […]
Neustar has a call to action for members of the W3C’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group: Don’t forget about measurement. In early December, Neustar added a proposal to the Privacy Sandbox with the aim of triggering a conversation about how privacy-safe measurement could be done on Chrome without third-party cookies. The proposal is named after […]
Google is planning to give people the ability to limit the number of personalized alcohol and gambling ads they see. The feature, teased on Thursday, layers in additional controls within ad settings for sensitive ad topics. The controls will roll out on YouTube in the United States by the end of this year, and across […]
Well, the other shoe dropped. Actually two shoes. On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission and, separately, 48 attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James and including AGs from the District of Columbia and Guam, sued Facebook for the same thing: alleged illegal monopolization of the social networking market. (Read the FTC’s full suit here […]
DTC subscriptions may seem like one of the first candidates to get cut from the monthly bill as consumers become more cost conscious during the pandemic. It’s hard to justify having the latest fashions sent directly to your door now that the conference room table is the kitchen table. And do you really need that […]
“On TV & Video” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. After this exclusive first look for subscribers, the story by AdExchanger’s Allison Schiff will be published in full on AdExchanger.com. Jukin Media trawls the social universe for the most shareable video content from everyday people that it can […]
Too bad there isn’t a Black Friday deal on Facebook inventory – because it’s getting pricey. Following a massive 38% spike in CPMs on Facebook between September and the week before the election, prices dipped back to more normal levels during the first week in November before climbing back up again, according to digital agency […]
The first half of 2020 was pretty lean. This year is on track to be the slowest since 2015 in terms of deal activity, according to LUMA Partners. But set the table and get out the gravy boat, because strategic M&A started to pick back up in Q3 and the momentum has continued into the […]
The more the merrier. App attribution company AppsFlyer has a late breaking addition to its $210 million investment round, which closed in January: Salesforce Ventures. Although Salesforce is only taking a small percentage of AppsFlyer as part of the round extension – less than 1% of the company, according to AppsFlyer CEO and co-founder Oren […]
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, […]
Guess telcos really aren’t that into ad tech after all. On Thursday, Norwegian telco Telenor sold cross-device company Tapad to Experian in a transaction advised by LUMA Partners. Experian is acquiring 100% of Tapad for a cash consideration of roughly $280 million. Not too shabby for an ad tech company getting sold in 2020. Tapad’s […]
Snap is embracing direct response advertising with both arms. It’s been launching performance-focused ad products for Snapchat at a regular clip over the past couple of years, and on Thursday it added a few key new features to its app ads toolkit. Performance advertisers on Snapchat can now optimize for installs directly from Lenses, implement […]
Nielsen is developing an identity resolution solution to help advertisers measure audiences across platforms after third-party cookies and other mainstay identifiers go ta-ta. “We’ve been working aggressively on our cross-platform journey for the last couple of years,” said Mainak Mazumdar, Nielsen’s chief data officer. “But we accelerated this when we started to see what was […]
It’s supply-side platform week for Unified ID 2.0. On Tuesday, PubMatic signed onto the initiative, one day after Magnite and Index Exchange signaled their support for the open source project. The goal of Unified ID 2.0 is to create a standard identifier for the ad industry using hashed emails as a replacement for third-party cookies. […]
