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.
National Football League players train during the offseason – and so does the NFL’s marketing team. From January through July, Aaron Jones, the NFL’s director for club and international marketing, is busily stress-testing his marketing stack and experimenting with new tools to prepare for August and September, when it’s all about activation. “Then, it’s like Black […]
Allison Lowrie is at home with data-driven marketing tactics. As CMO of ANGI Homeservices, the IAC-owned parent of Angi (formerly Angie’s List), HomeAdvisor and Handy, Lowrie is helping the company infuse a performance mindset into how it approaches offline channels. HomeAdvisor, which connects homeowners with home improvement professionals online, advertised during the Super Bowl for […]
Apple entered the streaming and original content space with a flourish at a special upfront-like event in Cupertino on Monday. But while Oprah was there, advertising was not. The company’s long-rumored and now-real on-demand video subscription service, dubbed Apple TV Plus, will feature original programming and be 100% ad free. A second service, called Apple […]
If a customer data platform (CDP) is a “fad,” then it’s a lasting one – because Salesforce is launching one. The details are a little sketchy right now. Salesforce isn’t officially announcing its CDP until June at its Connections conference in Chicago, there isn’t a tangible product yet and Salesforce demurred to say exactly when […]
Automation is coming to the upfronts, slowly but surely. What’s been the holdup? Healthy skepticism and reticence to change, more than anything else, according to Jay Prasad, chief strategy and business officer at VideoAmp. The video ad startup has recently partnered with a slate of programmers and OTT distributors, including A&E Networks, AMC Networks, Tubi […]
NBC Universal and Sky, both owned by Comcast, announced this week that they’re combining inventory and targeting tools. The hope is to help global advertisers expand their reach to international markets across TV and digital. Audience Studio, NBCU’s data-driven media offering, is merging with Sky’s ad tech offering, AdSmart. The combined entity will be called […]
LinkedIn is rolling out lookalike audiences following a beta testing period that began late last year, the company said Wednesday. Advertisers could already create matched audiences – basically, LinkedIn’s answer to custom audiences – built from a list of target contacts or accounts. The addition of lookalike audiences is a good look for a platform […]
Oracle Marketing Cloud is taking on a very customer data platform-like complexion these days. On Tuesday, OMC unveiled a slew of feature updates designed to grease the wheels between its marketing products and “bring data and intelligence together with orchestration in real time,” said Shashi Seth, SVP of Oracle Marketing Cloud. Responsys, Oracle’s email marketing […]
Jason Lapp, a longtime WPP and Kantar executive, is taking over as CEO of Kiip. Last Friday, a grand jury indicted Brian Wong, the company’s founder and now former CEO, on charges of felony sexual assault related to an encounter during the SXSW festival in 2016. An arrest warrant was filed in January. Wong has […]
Looking for AddThis audience data in the EU? You won’t find it. Oracle Data Cloud has quietly pulled the plug on that business line. Although Oracle declined to say exactly when it began shutting down AddThis, the process started at some point in the last number of months. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, unconsented […]
How much ad revenue does Facebook lose out on when its platforms go on the fritz? More than you probably make in a year … or 50. On Thursday and Friday, Facebook experienced what was reportedly the longest partial global outage in the company’s history. For around 14 hours, some users had trouble accessing or […]
Jim Wilson is a big believer in the blockchain. As president of Premion, the over-the-top ad buying platform of local TV broadcaster TEGNA, he helped ink a deal with blockchain startup MadHive in early March to cut off the potential for ad fraud in the OTT space. He also sits on the board of the […]
Machine learning is becoming central to user acquisition and app advertising at Google. On Wednesday, Google introduced five game developer-focused ads products, four of which are powered by some form of machine learning. The first new release, called pre-registration ads, for example, allows developers to reach Android users across the Play store, YouTube, search and […]
Mark Zuckerberg penned a lengthy post last week laying out Facebook’s vision for a “privacy-focused” future – but it’s not going to change Facebook’s business model. Although Zuckerberg expends a lot of ink on the importance of data security and protecting messaging with end-to-end encryption, he doesn’t mention the interest and user-related data that powers Facebook’s […]
There are only around 2.5 million weddings in the United States every year – yet more than 30 million people are planning a wedding on Pinterest at any given time. “That means there’s a lot of planning being done long before a wedding ever happens,” said Jon Kaplan, who joined Pinterest in 2016 as global head […]
Big Tech can’t catch a break in DC … actually, scratch that. If Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is elected to the White House in 2020, she’s got a plan to break up Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. And her proposal specifically targets Google’s ad platform business. On Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate laid out how her […]
While most luxury brands take themselves quite seriously, Gucci likes to have a little fun, especially with its marketing. “We’re a brand that puts great emphasis on joy and optimism,” said Robert Triefus, EVP and CMO at Gucci for more than a decade. “We’ve put creativity at the center of everything we do since we […]
College-age consumers shouldn’t be too hard for advertisers to find, since many are, not surprisingly, on college campuses. But most college newspapers don’t have a systematic way to sell their inventory. Student-run outlets generally have reps to pound the pavement, visiting small businesses – their bread and butter – one by one to drum up ad […]
Branded content is a priority for Instagram in 2019 – but measurement is seriously lacking. “That’s one of the things I wish you guys would work on,” said Edlynne Laryea, director for global Neutrogena digital transformation and sustainability, speaking at an Instagram media event Tuesday. Although Instagram claims that 68% of its users choose to interact […]
On Monday, Pinterest introed a tool to help retailers automatically ingest their online product catalogs as pins, including up-to-date pricing and stock info. Advertisers can then take the additional step to promote their product pins as targeted shopping ads, which are now available via self-serve after a prolonged beta that started last year. Similar functionality […]
As the specter of California’s Consumer Privacy Act looms over the tech world, many industry giants and trade groups have assumed a new role as collective cheerleader for broad federal privacy legislation. It wasn’t all that long ago that tech companies balked at the idea, but many have changed their tune. That has some Democrats […]
It’s out with the old and in with the new at Nielsen. Revenue for Nielsen’s Watch segment decreased 3.5% to $881 million in Q4, while Buy segment revenue declined 8.4% to $777 million. But freshly minted CEO David Kenny has a plan. Kenny, who joined Nielsen from IBM Watson in November 2018, wants to bring Nielsen’s […]
Facebook wants that upfront money. On Tuesday, Facebook said it will start letting TV buyers purchase inventory in specific programs hosted on Watch. This offering, called Showcase, resembles an upfront buy, as the inventory will be priced against Nielsen-validated demos and sold in advance at fixed prices. This content includes programs like “Sorry For Your […]
How can a brand take advantage of the 5G revolution today? Actually, that’s a trick question. The next evolution of wireless technology after 4G LTE, 5G-enabled devices won’t be available until at least 2020, despite limited test deployments in large cities and a fair amount of boasting from the big telecom companies. But what will […]
Walmart, Nike, Amazon, Dell, Honda, Lowe’s – all brand advertisers you can trust, until a bad actor steals their ad creative to use as a vehicle for spreading malware. The problem grows during periods of higher traffic, like the holidays, said Maggie Louie, CEO and founder of DEVCON, a cybersecurity startup focused on fraud detection. […]
Connected TV: Intuit is getting into it. But the financial software company is not giving up on television’s biggest tentpoles. “We’re doing the blocking and tackling of strong reach and awareness building, but we’re mixing it with more experiential and digital,” said Lauren Stafford Webb, Intuit’s VP of brand marketing. A balance between traditional and […]
Meredith’s overall Q2 ad revenue grew like gangbusters, but digital ad revenue performance was draggy – and will likely be the same next quarter, the company told investors Monday. Advertising-related revenue nearly doubled year over year to $488.9 million – a 111% increase – and digital represents more than $400 million of Meredith’s revenue for its national media […]
Facebook CFO David Wehner recently told investors that even if the economy falters, Facebook’s ability to measure advertising returns is its saving grace. Will the same hold true for small- to mid-sized marketers? AdExchanger called on several analysts and senior marketers to get their take. On the whole, they agreed SMBs will continue to buy […]
A data orchestration strategy isn’t the sort of thing you can just pull out of a hat – a fact that sports cap and apparel brand Lids knows firsthand. “For a long time, that was one of our biggest challenges as an omnichannel retailer: We had no centralized place for all of our customer information,” said […]
Nielsen and Comscore take a lot of heat for moving too slowly and failing to provide the sort of cross-channel measurement buyers and sellers say they crave. But cut ’em some slack, said Beth Rockwood, SVP of portfolio research at Turner. “Both Nielsen and Comscore have made good advances in the last year and they’re […]
