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.
Facebook has been going full tilt since March to convince advertisers and consumers alike that it’s a safe platform on which to spend money and time. On Wednesday, for example, Facebook said it’s further reducing the distribution of low-quality, spammy ads within its auction. Advertisers with multiple low-quality ads – those that contain sensational language, for […]
Mobile ad network InMobi will acquire Pinsight Media, Sprint’s mobile advertising and insights unit, the companies said on Wednesday. A team of roughly 100 people will join InMobi from Pinsight and remain based in Kansas City, Mo., where Sprint has its headquarters. The all-stock deal isn’t a typical acquisition. The idea is for InMobi to […]
If there’s one thing that frustrates Oliver Maletz, Volkswagen AG’s head of international communications and media planning, it’s paying for nonviewable ads. His complaint is a perennial one. Advertisers have been banging the viewability drum for years, but it remains a major pet peeve. “Marketers should not have to pay for an ad that a […]
What do an international pop group, the creator of “American Idol,” Cirque du Soleil and actor Clive Owen have in common? SAP. “Marketers in the B2B space have to realize one very simple and fundamental thing: We are all human beings,” said Alicia Tillman, SAP’s chief marketing officer. “We as B2B marketers need to speak […]
The CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer, has a motto: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Which is why TV had to prove itself before earning a spot on the travel review site’s media plan. Until 2013, TripAdvisor spent most of its budget on digital, mainly because of its measurability. There’s a lack of “direct, […]
With $2.3 billion in cash on the books thanks to IPG’s acquisition of Acxiom Marketing Solutions in July, the newly constituted LiveRamp is ready to start bankrolling its road map in a serious way. “We didn’t have the technology muscle before and we weren’t investing in R&D,” said Scott Howe, who went from CEO and […]
Facebook’s Marketing Partner (FMP) program is getting a bit of a facelift with the addition of new badge categories and tools to help with measurement and creative. Hundreds of tech companies, agencies and consultants jammed into the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Wednesday to get the skinny at Facebook’s sixth global marketing partner […]
The first rule of ad fraud: If it can be spoofed, it will be spoofed. Bad actors are pretending to be legit, demand-side platforms to try and fool partners and blend in with real ad calls as a way to purvey malware and litter the web with forced redirects. “They weasel their way onto the […]
There is life after a GDPR enforcement warning. Location data ad tech startup Teemo, one of the first companies admonished under the General Data Protection Regulation for gathering and processing data without informed consent, was given the all clear on Thursday. Teemo, headquartered in Paris, received an ultimatum from France’s data protection authority, the Commission […]
The third-party cookie isn’t crumbling so much as imploding. In a Friday email to advertisers and publishers, Facebook said that on Oct. 24 it will start offering a first-party cookie option for the Facebook tracking pixel so that businesses can keep targeting their ads and measuring their campaigns without relying on third-party cookies. Facebook confirmed […]
How many seals, accreditations, badges, consortiums, committees and standards can one industry support before it collapses under the weight of its own good intentions? The ad industry seems hell-bent on finding out. “There may be too many badges and seals out there,” Mike Zaneis observed on a panel during Advertising Week in New York City. […]
Facebook has been aggressively pushing its non-core apps to make money, a decision that caused friction between the mothership and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram, all of whom have recently left the building. So, where does that leave Messenger – a homegrown app with over 1.3 billion users that, thankfully for Facebook, has no […]
Without a way to calculate ad revenue per user, optimization is just an educated guessing game. “I wouldn’t call it a complete blind spot, but the process is definitely not as efficient as it could be,” said Jeff Gurian, VP of marketing and ad monetization at Kongregate, a mobile and PC game publisher acquired from […]
Facebook may have to roll out a “sorry” button. In the meantime, there’s Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global head of marketing solutions. After revelations last week about questionable data-sharing practices capped off by a large data breach, Everson was invited to kick off Advertising Week in New York City on Monday and address Facebook’s most recent […]
Jay Seideman will present on programmatic best practices at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. AT&T’s new advertising and analytics unit, Xandr, is capturing the headlines and Amazon is on its way to making the duopoly a trio – but don’t count out Oath. The Verizon-owned digital media company is avidly […]
After a quarter-century in marketing roles at P&G – including seven as CMO – you learn a thing or two about how to grow a brand. Jim Stengel started at P&G in 1983 as a brand assistant on Duncan Hines, moving his way up the ranks to marketing chief by 2001. He handed the reins to Marc […]
Organic use of Facebook Stories is on the rise, and now Facebook is making the case to advertisers. On Wednesday, Facebook announced that Stories has 300 million DAUs across its core app and Messenger combined. Facebook Stories ads, which appear between organic Stories as either six seconds of photos or 15 seconds of video, are […]
Virtual reality still has much runway to travel before it lands a permanent spot on the media plan. It’s niche. But for brands like Cathay Pacific, VR content is just the ticket to engage consumers in a new and unexpected way, said Robecta Ma, VP of marketing for the Americas at the Hong Kong–based airline. […]
AdColony laid off roughly 10% of its US workforce late last week amid struggles to gain a foothold in the app-install space. Headcount now stands somewhere around 350. The cuts were across sales, IT, finance and product, including the chief product officer position. AdColony confirmed the layoffs, but not the exact number. The beleaguered mobile […]
Augmented reality is about to hit its stride thanks to large media platforms, which are leading the way. Snap was early, but over the past 12 to 18 months, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and others have all made big bets on AR by either investing in companies or creating (some might argue copying) […]
For the last year, the founders of Tapfwd have been pivoting their business from a mobile data marketplace to a matchmaking platform for marketers. On Wednesday, the new company, which is called Wove, raised its $9 million Series A led by August Capital. The transition from Tapfwd to Wove is more natural that it might […]
Loyalty has never been a problem for Harry & David, an 84-year-old company that sells and delivers premium foods and gift baskets. When December rolls around, most of its customers don’t need to be reminded that it’s time to order their holiday-themed gourmet treats. The challenge is getting people to engage with the 1-800-Flowers-owned brand […]
What’s a good, succinct way to describe the current US system of data security and privacy regulation? “It’s a mess,” said Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a series of hearings from mid-September through November to help it rethink its approach to […]
Far from Silicon Valley, in a lecture hall at George Washington University Law School on an overcast day in Washington, DC, the clouds are gathering for big tech. On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission held the first in a series of public hearings running from now through November focused on a wide range of consumer […]
There’s always fanfare when Apple releases its new iPhones every September, as the company is expected to do at its annual hardware event in Cupertino on Wednesday. But away from the pomp of its hardware launch, Apple has been working behind the scenes to boost its growing software and services business – one that market […]
As of Monday, all advertisers on Facebook will be able to see a full list of contextual placements where their ads might appear before a campaign starts and where they actually ran after a campaign ends. Facebook has been testing this capability for more than a year. As of last autumn, advertisers were already able […]
For the last four years, mobile measurement company TUNE has been “fighting with one hand tied behind its back,” said Alex Austin, CEO and co-founder of California-based deep-linking outfit Branch. In 2014, TUNE lost its Facebook marketing partner badge for allegedly retaining user data for too long. “But we’re giving TUNE both its arms back […]
Oath is attempting to deliver on its promise of becoming an alternative to the duopoly. But a question remains as to how compelling its proposition will be to buyers without the full complement of Verizon data at its disposal. On Monday, the Verizon-owned company unveiled the long-awaited fruits of a year’s worth of hard labor: […]
The robots are taking over user acquisition on Facebook and Google, and that’s (mostly) a good thing. Whenever one of the large platforms automates an aspect of UA, it means more time for focusing on strategy and creative rather than drudgery, said Jess Hasenplaugh, head of UA at Berlin-based mobile game studio Wooga. “I’m happy […]
The in-app header bidding space is gathering momentum – but not fast enough for AppLovin. The mobile ad network has acquired MAX, a startup that came out of beta just over four months ago with a solution that helps app publishers get a fair shake on the open exchange, the company announced Wednesday. “There are […]
