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’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 […]
Facebook’s scale – 1.45 billion daily active users at last count – has been its armor through a no-good, very bad year of repeated privacy failures, questions of Russian election interference and other controversies. But scale needs to be maintained. Although only a handful of advertisers pulled spend in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica, that wouldn’t […]
Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club went from upstarts to behemoths, shaking up the century-old razor category in just a few short years. But there’s still more market share to shave off the top. What about women’s razors? That’s the question that Billie, a razor subscription service for women founded last year, is aiming to answer. […]
The sweeping California privacy law, AB 375, that was rushed onto Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his 11th-hour signature last week won’t go into effect until 2020. The new law gives consumers a host of new rights, including the ability to compel companies to share what data has been collected about them, the right to […]
Header bidding-like tech is starting to pick up steam on mobile, but it’s still mostly SDK-based, which brings added latency along with the revenue bump. On Thursday, mobile monetization platform PubNative released a hybrid server-side/client-side header bidding tool to help publishers bring in more dough without messing up the UX. Dubbed HyBid, the solution allows […]
Canned audiences are as stale as cigarette smoke in an old casino. That’s why MGM Resorts International is looking for alternatives to what Kelly Smith, MGM’s SVP and chief digital officer, calls “black-box syndicated segments.” In its quest for custom audience activation, MGM is kicking the tires on a new self-serve data marketplace offering from […]
Travel publishers often miss the boat on attribution. Although their content is an integral part of the trip-planning process at the top of the funnel, there’s no easy way to credit its role in an eventual hotel booking. Fathom, a site that publishes curated destination guides and first-person travel accounts, knew it was leaving money […]
Mammoth Media, a media and entertainment network aimed at teens and millennials, wants to do for apps what Viacom did for TV. “Viacom has Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central – program options and content based on demographics,” said Peter Szabo, Mammoth’s CRO and head of partnerships. “We’re taking the same approach with different monetization, and instead […]
As Apple cuts down on lock screen clutter, app marketers should take notice. In the wake of Apple’s latest do-not-disturb feature updates, which give users more control over their notifications, developers need to be judicious about how pushy they get with push notifications. Once users disable push or banish notifications from the lock screen, they […]
Mark Jenkins spent his first two weeks as the new senior director of marketing at Roy Rogers Restaurants, manning the drive-thru window, making gravy, frying chicken and prepping salads. “As a marketing guy, I need to really understand the ops platforms inside the restaurant, the experience and the way things are built,” said Jenkins, who […]
Ad campaigns unfurl across screens, and that’s the way they should be measured. Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) released a cross-screen measurement tool on Wednesday that links incremental offline sales for an ad campaign to total views across channels, including linear TV, mobile and desktop video, over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV. NCS, which provides purchase-based targeting […]
In Bruce Falck’s office, there’s a piece of paper tacked to the wall with a list of important reminders: GDPR, MRC, transparency, measurement. But rather than focusing on “external factors,” the GM of Twitter’s revenue product and his growing team are “getting back to basics.” Twitter has spent the last two years striking content partnerships, […]
It’s been a weird four months for Aleksandr Kogan. The 33-year-old went from an obscure research psychologist at Cambridge University to one of the villains at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Kogan, who testified Tuesday before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, apologized for his role in the controversy, but disputes that the data provided […]
Anheuser-Busch InBev isn’t crying in its beer over the sorry state of transparency in the supply chain – it’s taking action with a mobile campaign built on the blockchain. It may sound like a stunt, but this is a serious experiment, said Andy Chang, AB InBev’s global head of media and content. “There are a […]
The global ad market is set to grow even faster than forecasted. Why? It’s the duopoly, folks. In a report released Monday, IPG-owned Magna Global significantly revised its global ad market growth projection from 5.2% to 6.4%, which translates to $551 billion in global ad spend. In Q1, Google and Facebook’s collective ad revenue increased […]
Spotify and TGI Fridays are hooking up with Foursquare as a preferred measurement partner. Solid measurement is what seals the deal with marketers, said Brian Berner, head of US sales at Spotify. “Many of our [brand] partners have a brick-and-mortar presence, so we’ve seen increased demand for measurement that showcases how our ad platform connects […]
The bid has dropped. Comcast on Wednesday again attempted to outmaneuver Mickey and acquire most of 21st Century Fox’s assets with a $65 billion cash offer, putting Disney’s deal in jeopardy. Disney offered Fox a $52.4 billion all-stock deal in December. Comcast wants to disrupt the deal and follow in AT&T’s footsteps: a content distributor […]
