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.
Salesforce and Adobe have lately rushed into the customer data platform category. But independent CDPs aren’t standing still. Amperity, a machine learning-focused CDP, lately updated its platform with new AI capabilities that can combine disparate consumer data into unified profiles, said Chris Jones, SVP of product management, who joined Amperity from Microsoft last year. Additionally, […]
Mobile programmatic is in the seventh-inning stretch: It’s come a long way, but there’s still a lot of work to do, says Rick Welch, head of programmatic advertising at Flipboard. In the three years since Welch joined the mobile news aggregation app from Condé Nast in late 2016, more open exchange-oriented players have hit the […]
A bipartisan bill proposed Monday by Sens. Mark Warner, D-VA, and Josh Hawley, R-MO, aims to make big tech companies – Facebook, Google, Amazon, et al. – tell users how much their data is worth. The Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight and Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act – another commendable acronym – would require […]
McDonald’s is starting to throw a few ideas on the grill after spending around $300 million to acquire personalization and decision logic tech startup Dynamic Yield in March. Dynamic Yield’s technology has been integrated into the drive-thru experience at roughly 700 McDonald’s restaurants in North America so far with plans to roll out more and […]
Smaato has a new CEO. The mobile supply-side platform told employees Friday morning that Ragnar Kruse and Petra Vorsteher are exiting the company they co-founded 15 years ago. Arndt Groth, who joined Smaato as president in 2017, will succeed Kruse, who had served as CEO since Smaato’s inception. Kruse and Vorsteher are handing over the […]
Uber is suing five ad networks for squandering tens of millions of dollars on low-quality or fraudulent ads – and it’s naming names. The suit, filed in early June in a San Francisco court, calls out Hydrane SAS, BidMotion, Taptica, YouAppi and AdAction Interactive for purchasing “nonexistent, nonviewable or fraudulent advertising.” Users who did see the […]
On paper, the OpenAP consortium makes perfect sense: TV networks banded together to stave off growing competition from the walled gardens. In reality, it’s a bit more complicated. Although OpenAP still counts three powerhouse publishers among its ranks – Viacom, NBCU and Fox – a founding member, WarnerMedia, left the group in April to compete […]
If you’re a data-management platform (DMP) and your name isn’t Salesforce or Adobe, it’s starting to get pretty chilly out there. Oracle’s BlueKai DMP is a strong third, while Neustar and Lotame continue to chug along – but Salesforce and Adobe undoubtedly lead the pack, at least when it comes to how advertisers think about […]
Large marketers are constantly running scores of experiments on their media investments. That can make optimization tricky, said Sadie Daryan, eBay’s global head of display and app marketing. And so eBay has been playing around with a tool from marketing intelligence startup Admetrics, released Tuesday, that uses AI to automatically run thousands of concurrent tests […]
Global digital ad spend may be starting to slow, but it’s still growing like gangbusters compared with the rest of the market. IPG-owned Magna Global predicts in its latest spending forecast, released Monday, that digital ad sales will increase by 14% this year and represent more than half (51%) of total global ad sales ($304 […]
If you’re a marketing cloud, you’ve suddenly got customer data platform fever. On Monday, Adobe rolled out the beta version of its CDP, housed within the Adobe Experience Platform. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Salesforce will host its Connections conference in Chicago this week, where it’s planning to share more details about its CDP, while Oracle […]
Pinterest really wants people to shop on its platform. The newly public company revamped its marketing partner program on Monday and added a new partner category for third-party tech providers that facilitate shopping experiences. But the rebrand of Pinterest’s Marketing Developer Partners program to a global Pinterest Partners program is more than a cosmetic change. […]
Everyone wants to capitalize on the customer data platform craze – even B2B players like Dun & Bradstreet. The commercial database provider announced its plan Thursday to acquire Lattice Engines, a lead gen software and predictive email marketing platform for sales orgs that entered the CDP category a few years ago along with scores of other […]
Instagram has a lot going for it right now: Millions of active advertisers, an opportunity to capitalize on commerce, impression growth, a love affair with DTC brands, the continued breakneck growth of Stories … and the fact that a lot of people still don’t necessarily associate it with Facebook. The Facebook connection has been both […]
Over-the-top may be the new hotness, but sellers need to prove it before advertisers will really start to bite. On Thursday, Samsung’s advanced TV division, Samsung Ads, said that it’s partnering with Oracle Data Cloud’s Moat to measure viewability and the invalid traffic (IVT) rates for ad delivery on over-the-top inventory across Samsung Smart TV […]
Adjust raised $227 million in funding – and there’s no need to adjust your screen on the amount. The monster round, announced Wednesday, brings the Berlin-based mobile measurement company’s total funding to $250 million. It was led by new investors Eurazeo Growth, Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners and Sofina, and existing investor Highland Europe. Previously, […]
The US Department of Justice is reportedly preparing an antitrust investigation into Google. But that doesn’t mean Google is headed for a breakup and, at least for now, there are way more questions than answers. Which parts of Google’s sprawling business will the DOJ look into? Will it delve beyond Google’s search practices, which have […]
Apple dropped a mini bombshell Monday at its Worldwide Developer Conference: a privacy-safe logon button for apps. Positioned as “the fast and easy way to sign in without all the tracking” according to SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi, “Sign in with Apple” is a developer-initiated alternative to the single sign-ons offered by the likes […]
When Snap first acquired Placed in 2017, it teased the prospect of proving to buyers how Snap Ads translate into store visits and real-world results. Yet over the next two years, before Snap sold Placed to Foursquare last week, Snap never highlighted the Placed technology in its pitch to media buyers; Placed was never integrated […]
A crop of amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act have been sent to the state Senate for a vote. The bills, which aim to modify and clarify the regulation, were first approved in waves by the California Assembly throughout the month of May. The ones that receive the Senate’s eventual blessing will then head […]
Apple’s high-profile assault on third-party tracking continues. Starting with iOS 13 in the fall, users will be able to log in to apps and services using Apple Face ID without sharing other personal information. The new “Sign in with Apple” button, an unconcealed jab at Google and Facebook, is a way to sign in “without […]
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is the only traditional media that’s still showing growth, but some advertisers are holding back, because the process of buying billboards and transit ads is like wrangling cats. To try and get more advertisers on board, AdQuick, a startup backed by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is creating an online marketplace for buying […]
Placed has found a new home. Foursquare is buying the location-based measurement company from Snap. Separately, it raised $150 million in fresh funding courtesy of The Raine Group, some of which is going to fund the acquisition. The rest is earmarked for R&D. The deal, announced early Friday morning, comes less than two years after […]
Mark Zuckerberg has four top priorities for Facebook in the year ahead – but stepping down as chairman of the board ain’t one of them. At Facebook’s annual stockholders meeting on Thursday, numerous resolutions to create a check on Zuckerberg’s power – he simultaneously serves as chair of the board and CEO – were vetoed, as expected. Although […]
Firefly is moving fast. On Thursday, the San Francisco-based startup, which places digital ad displays on the top of private rideshare vehicles and taxis and then splits the revenue with drivers, announced its expansion into New York City, the acquisition of digital ad company Strong Outdoor and $30 million in Series A funding. The round, […]
On the surface, LinkedIn’s plan to acquire cross-device data company Drawbridge may seem like a head scratcher. What does a B2B social network want with a probabilistic cross-device vendor? The deal creates potential for LinkedIn’s marketing products that go beyond Drawbridge’s existing technology assets. If LinkedIn wanted access to an identity graph, it could have […]
While good-acting companies knock themselves out trying to comply with data protection and privacy laws, and regulators debate the minutiae of cookie consent policies, bad actors simply couldn’t care less. The front door may be locked, but the basement windows are wide open. Unauthorized data harvesting from mobile apps has continued nearly unabated in the […]
Facebook is bringing playable ads, an interactive format that lets users demo a mini version of an app before downloading it, to Audience Network starting Wednesday. It’s available within rewarded video and interstitial placements. In the coming weeks, Facebook is also planning to expand access to its rewarded video unit to all publishers across the […]
LinkedIn is buying Drawbridge. The acquisition was announced quietly on Tuesday via a mere mention buried in a blog post, and the deal price was undisclosed. The deal is expected to close by the end of June. Drawbridge CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan and CTO Devin Guan are coming aboard, although LinkedIn declined to share which other […]
France’s data protection authority is giving publishers until the spring of 2020 to design and deploy GDPR-compliant cookie consent notices. Until then, scroll consent – aka, soft or tacit consent – will be acceptable. At a meeting in late April, representatives from the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés told French industry trade organizations […]
