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.
Tapping into international markets, particularly the US, is lucrative but far from easy for a mid-size game developer from Indonesia, especially one trying to replicate a viral hit. Jakarta-based game studio Alegrium saw immediate success with a series of trivia apps that have collectively racked up tens of millions of downloads since the first title, […]
Trying to convince brands to advertise in games used to feel like talking into the wind. But sentiment is starting to change in favor of games, said Alexandre Tan, VP of advertising and brand partnerships at French mobile game studio Gameloft, where he runs a division that functions like a media agency. Gameloft Advertising Solutions […]
Acxiom had a solid quarter – although it would have been a bit more solid if it still had its Facebook relationship. On Thursday, the company reported earnings for its fiscal quarter ending June 30, with total revenue clocking in at $227 million, up 7% year over year. If Partner Categories, Facebook’s now-retired feature for third-party […]
Dynamic Yield’s latest financing round is about one thing: growth. The company, which provides personalization software for ecommerce brands and publishers, raised $32 million in Series D cash on Wednesday, led by Viola Growth with participation from Union Tech Ventures. The round brings its total funding to $77 million since 2013. Dynamic Yield, whose clients […]
Disney missed its earnings expectations on Tuesday by a smidgen, causing its stock to dip about 1% in after-hours trading. But you can’t keep a good mouse down. Analysts expected $1.95 per share on revenue of $15.4 billion in the fiscal third quarter. Instead, Disney posted $1.87 per share on $15.2 billion in revenue – not […]
Bonjour, GDPR enforcement. Google and Facebook may have bullseyes on their backs in Europe, but it’s two mid-sized French startups that received the first warning shots from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – and that shouldn’t be surprising. “GDPR is not just there for the big guys,” said Ronan Tigner, an associate at Morrison […]
As Johnson & Johnson’s senior manager for shopper marketing, Kris Cevasco spends most of her day figuring out how to get people to buy more stuff from grocery stores. But ensuring that her efforts result in a mutually beneficial arrangement is a lot harder than it sounds. Retailers are looking for ways to bring in […]
Trump’s trade war is a game of high-stakes chicken that could hit advertising investment – but it’s not clear how. Escalating tariffs will affect different industries differently, but if the cost of manufacturing goods rises, CFOs are likely to shave whatever looks like a cost center. Marketing often fits that bill. On the flip side, […]
Crimson Hexagon is back in business on Facebook and Instagram – mostly. The social analytics platform, which uses AI to analyze public data across social networks, said Friday that most of its customers have had their access restored to both Facebook and Instagram data since the end of last week. The process was far swifter for […]
Google is going full-court press on universal app campaigns (UAC) through a partnership with Unity Technologies, a company that makes development tools for game creators. Starting Thursday, Unity’s more than 10 million developers have access to advertiser demand from AdMob via a direct integration. It’s the first partnership of this nature between Google and a […]
Search and ye shall find Apple search ads in six new markets. Starting Wednesday, developers in France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Spain and Japan will be able to run Search Ads Advanced in the Apple Store. The product has been available in the US since 2016, and in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada […]
Adam Heimlich, the newly minted SVP of media at MDC digital agency GALE Partners, enjoys telling it like it is. “Traditional agencies blew it in digital and there’s a big market gap there – a lot of money at stake,” said Heimlich, who left Horizon Media in June after nearly five years at the agency, where […]
Facebook’s stock took an unprecedented beating last week after the company raised concerns about its future growth – but the show must go on, and it’s gotta be measured. On Tuesday, Facebook said it’s making a bunch of modifications to the way it measures video in the news feed, with the goal of giving advertisers a […]
Another day, another Facebook blunder, mishap or scandal – or so it’s felt since the Cambridge Analytica storyline started to unfurl in mid-March. But the nonstop headlines and incremental news hits make it easy to lose historical perspective. (As a colleague recently noted with surprise, “Wait, the Cambridge Analytica news only came out five months […]
That moment when you realize Wall Street will never give you a break, even if you beat on revenue and report profits. #MAUproblems. Twitter’s stock tanked more than 16% in pre-market trading Friday morning based on lackluster user growth in Q2, despite reporting a 24% overall revenue uptick and a third sequential quarter of profitability. […]
Even Facebook isn’t impervious to the downstream effects of repeated scandals, macro privacy trends and the law of large numbers. With Cambridge Analytica, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and flatlining use in North America, which is Facebook’s most lucrative market, the buck had to stop, or at least stall, sometime. It did so on Wednesday […]
Facebook’s monster growth narrative is set to stall in the coming quarters, due in part to its recent privacy and data policy changes. Shares plunged more than 20 percentage points in after-hours trading Wednesday when Facebook reported a $120 million whiff on its revenue goals – the company’s first miss since 2015 – and warned investors that […]
It’s safe to say the ad industry has a thing for trade orgs. On Wednesday, a new one – the Brand Safety Institute (BSI) – opened its doors with the mission of helping advertisers, agencies and publishers get smart about managing brand safety issues. The group was co-founded by Neal Thurman, who was also recently appointed director […]
Getting in bed with Facebook sometimes means waking up alone – and without your wallet. Social analytics platform Crimson Hexagon is experiencing an unpleasant prolonged morning after following a report late last week accusing the company of tapping into public user data for government contracts in possible violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Facebook suspended Crimson […]
There’s still no magic pill that ties advertising to outcomes. Take Lyft, which can connect metrics to spend in display and search, but has trouble measuring across channels. But because it has difficulty uniting data around brand marketing, referral programs or brand ambassador outreach, its marketing strategy is largely built around user acquisition (UA), said […]
OTT audiences are increasing in volume and engagement, but the channel must still overcome issues related to content discovery, measurement and fill rates. At A&E Networks, OTT’s share of audience is up 150% compared with decreases in engagement across desktop and mobile. At Bloomberg, 30% of its OTT audiences watch for 30 minutes or more […]
Google was hit with a $5.1 billion fine by the European Union on Wednesday for antitrust practices around the Android mobile operating system – a move that underscores Europe’s willingness to issue steep financial penalties for bad behavior. And there’s another bludgeon in the EU’s cache that Google – and the advertising world in general […]
Less than two years after Vector Capital sealed its $122 million deal to acquire Sizmek, the private equity firm is already looking to divest. Multiple sources with direct knowledge told AdExchanger that Vector has been shopping Sizmek, possibly as early as April, and just a year and a half after the deal closed. Vector denied […]
It seems everyone wants a piece of AppLovin. Private equity firm KKR bought a $400 million minority stake in the app marketing and discovery platform on Tuesday, lifting AppLovin’s valuation to around $2 billion from $1.4 billion just eight months ago. Bank of America Merrill Lynch advised AppLovin on the investment, adding a new wrinkle […]
Hold the phone, it ain’t over yet. One month after losing its case to block AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner, the Justice Department filed an appeal Thursday. In a statement, AT&T’s general counsel, David McAtee, sounded a bit baffled. “The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based and well-reasoned,” he stated. […]
Intel has a product to sell, but it’s not a retailer. And that’s where campaign management gets tricky. The chip manufacturer has long partnered with retailers and ecommerce sites like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon to sell laptops and desktop computers with Intel processors inside. Intel, which doesn’t sell consumer-facing hardware on its own […]
Machine Zone’s (MZ) experiment with homegrown ad tech is over. The gaming company shuttered Cognant, an internal demand-side platform created in 2016 to help MZ’s media buying team plan, create, buy, optimize and measure marketing campaigns. MZ laid off the entire Cognant team in June, as well as around half of its in-house media buyers, […]
Facebook is augmenting the news feed. The company has been testing AR ads for the past couple of months with a limited number of brands, it announced at an event for advertisers and agencies in New York City on Tuesday. The plan is to release the format more generally in the lead-up to the holiday […]
“You can never go home again” doesn’t apply to the home screen. Most smartphone users – 98%, according to mobile attribution provider TUNE – have reinstalled an app that they previously deleted. Forty percent of users delete and reinstall apps on a regular basis. But most app marketers don’t differentiate between first-time downloads and re-downloads, mainly because […]
Jordan Cohen’s resume has a clear theme: data-driven marketing. In April, Cohen joined Ladders, a job board for positions that pay $100,000 or more. But before going brand-side, he spent most of his career in the performance space, with recent stints at email content marketing platform Movable Ink and performance marketing company Fluent. Cohen plans […]
