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.
Former Fox executive Joe Marchese is getting ready to kick the tires on some ad tech assets for his new company, Attention Capital. But first, he needs a few media brands in his portfolio. On Monday, Attention made its first acquisition, throwing in with Lupa Systems, James Murdoch’s private investment firm, for a controlling stake […]
Kroger is spending more on connected TV and it’s just a “natural evolution,” says Kendra Clune, associate media director at the grocery retailer. “Ratings are dwindling on traditional television, and where are those viewers going?” she said. “We saw that our buys were skewing older and older, and we knew we needed to capture more […]
Pinterest had a great second quarter – which is also only its second quarter as a public company – but don’t expect the sort of numbers you see from Google, Facebook or even Snapchat. “When will we be as mature as Google and Facebook? I think it’s a long road ahead,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann told investors […]
Lawmakers are crusading against big tech in bill after bill, and none seemingly more so than Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. At age 39, Hawley is the youngest senator in Congress, and he’s the author of numerous bills that aim to loosen large technology platforms’ grip on power. The most recent bill, called the Social Media […]
Google added a slew of new solutions, ad formats and targeting options to its automated app ad platform and to AdMob, the company said on Wednesday. And there’s a theme: Automation and machine learning are becoming increasingly central to Google’s vision for app advertising. Advertisers can use automation to be more efficient with their user […]
Device sales overall are still on the decline at Apple, but services revenue is starting to grow like gangbusters. Apple generated $11.45 billion in revenue from services during its fiscal third quarter, which ended in June, the company told investors on Tuesday. That’s a 13% year-over-year increase. Services accounted for 21% of Apple’s overall revenue, which […]
Bad news, disco fans: Advertisers will soon no longer be able to target people on Facebook based on their love of ABBA’s 1977 hit “Take a Chance on Me.” That’s just one of several thousand infrequently used targeting options Facebook is getting rid of in an effort to declutter its ad system, the company said […]
Creative automation is proving to be just the ticket as StubHub earmarks more of its marketing budget for video. Historically, StubHub has spent a lot of money successfully on lower-funnel tactics, such as paid search and retargeting, to encourage ticket sales. But there’s a lot more to performance than simply pointing in the direction of […]
Facebook is getting poked by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, but that doesn’t mean it’s facing two separate antitrust probes in the United States. “It would be unprecedented, not to mention duplicative, for the DOJ and the FTC to be investigating the same company for essentially the same conduct,” said […]
The Department of Justice gave final approval Friday to T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger with Sprint. The third and fourth largest carriers in the United States will soon be one. But there are some caveats that come with the DOJ’s approval, including requiring both companies to divest some spectrum and certain prepaid wireless assets to Dish […]
Twitter is super focused on direct response advertising, the company told investors Friday on its second quarter earnings call. To that end, it’s in the process of deprecating legacy formats, including carousel ads, and investing in more DR-focused ad offerings, such as its mobile app promotion (MAP) product. Twitter plans to also retire other formats […]
Facebook’s stock dipped slightly on Wednesday morning after the Federal Trade Commission formally announced its $5 billion dollar fine over privacy violations. But by the time Facebook reported its second quarter earnings after the bell, the stock had recovered and then some. Facebook is up 3.2% after beating expectations and raking in the ad revenue. […]
TikTok isn’t developed enough yet to be a fully-fledged contender for ad dollars, but it’s growing like #area51, and advertisers have finally noticed the short-form video app. Roughly 60% of the app’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the US are between 16 and 24, according to a TikTok pitch deck circulated to US ad […]
Turns out people really like those Snapchat baby face and gender swap filters. The app’s daily active users hit 203 million in Q2, up 8% year over year, and revenue was far better than expected at $388 million, a 48% increase from this time last year, according to the company’s Q2 earnings disclosure. This is […]
Slow-loading ads are still a perennial problem for publishers. Wise Publishing, a Toronto-based publisher of personal finance content with around 5 million monthly unique visitors, acquires a significant portion of its traffic through paid channels. But if an ad loads slowly and a visitor leaves, so does that monetization opportunity. “Dealing with latency is incredibly […]
Ascential, the company that owns the Cannes Lions festival and MediaLink, just bought a slice of the ad tech ecosystem with a 35% stake in marketing analytics company Jumpshot. The investment, worth $60.8 million, values Jumpshot at nearly $173 million. What does the parent company of ad land’s favorite international get together want with a […]
When private equity firm Blackstone announced its plan this week to acquire video-focused mobile ad network Vungle, multiple sources pegged the deal at $750 million – a remarkably large price tag for a company that only raised a little over $25 million. The question is, why so high? Mobile gaming is massive For one, Vungle has […]
Holding your breath on ads coming to Netflix? Time to let it out. There will be no advertising on Netflix anytime soon if ever, the company said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday in advance of its second quarter earnings call. “We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our […]
There aren’t a lot of companies that can take a multibillion-dollar fine from the Federal Trade Commission in stride – and fewer still whose stock actually rises on the news. But that’s Facebook for you, whose stock went up 1.8% at the close of trading last week after reports that the FTC is planning a $5 […]
The TDB company that was formed when IBM sold the bulk of its Watson Marketing portfolio to private equity firm Centerbridge in April finally has a name: Acoustic. Acoustic is starting out with a large stable of clients – around 3,500 – inherited from IBM, and a headcount of 1,100. It’s also hiring, with a particular focus […]
It’s hard enough to develop features that work well for one app or site – let alone more than 100. But that’s the task at hand for Kara Chiles, senior director of product development at USA Today Network, a national news service that shares content and resources between USA Today and Gannett-owned local properties across the […]
Firefox is starting to block third-party tracking by default, which will throw a wrench into the business model of any company that relies on cookies. But that doesn’t mean Firefox doesn’t care about how this change affects the bottom line – especially its own. Beyond the normal usability testing done before rolling out a new […]
You are what you watch. On Tuesday, smart TV data company TVadSync, which uses visual automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to track viewing behavior, released a planning and analytics tool that creates clusters of viewers based on the TV and video content they consume. “If you move beyond demographics and genre, you can make people’s […]
Any sign of bad traffic, and mobile game developer Glu flips the kill switch at the ad network and the publisher levels, said John Parides, Glu’s senior director of user acquisition. “This is something you need to be constantly monitoring,” said Parides, who’s been with Glu for almost five years, during which click spam became […]
After more than a year on ice, Facebook is bringing back reach estimates in Custom Audiences. Facebook suspended the metric, which advertisers would use to preview reach estimates for lists uploaded to Custom Audiences, in March 2018 when academic researchers from Northeastern University discovered a vulnerability. The exploit could have allowed someone to infer attributes […]
Streamers don’t browse – at least not on streaming services. Although the majority of households either own a smart TV and/or have a subscription-video-on-demand service (SVOD), most people (58%) still gravitate back to traditional TV channels when they’re not sure what they want to watch, according to Nielsen’s total audience report for Q1, released Monday. […]
Ashlen Cherry, Epsilon’s chief privacy officer, would bet on federal privacy legislation happening – just not before the end of the year. “This can be a bipartisan issue, and there’s an appetite for it on the hill,” said Cherry, who joined Epsilon last October after almost a decade as the global privacy program manager at […]
France’s data protection regulator is going public with its action plan – and targeted online advertising is to be a “priority topic.” The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) shared its 2019-2020 agenda in response to appeals from the public, privacy advocates and online marketing professionals looking for guidance on how to comply […]
ALC may be one of the biggest first-party data companies you’ve never heard of – but that’s about to change. Founded in 1978 as the American List Counsel, ALC started life as a provider of data services to direct marketers, which back then primarily meant developing customized consumer data files to support postal campaigns. But […]
Privacy protection isn’t a tick-the-box exercise, and so policymakers need to think outside the box. At the Federal Trade Commission’s annual PrivacyCon event in Washington, DC, on Thursday, the agency invited nearly 20 privacy researchers and academics from around the world to dig into the nitty gritty on consumer privacy, data collection, security and the […]
