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 is going to stop allowing third-party data providers from offering targeting directly on its platform. The move is a direct reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In the past, advertisers could use a feature called partner categories to supplement the targeting they do on Facebook with data from brokers, such as recent purchases or […]
During the 2016 US presidential election, news publishers experienced an uptick in engagement. The Trump era has kept that engine going. Politico is no exception, where traffic is up more than 30% year over year. That’s one of the reasons why Politico overhauled its website on Tuesday, showing more stories above the fold and optimizing […]
Business Insider’s parent company, Insider Inc., launched its first-ever ad campaign on Wednesday to make sure its ad partners know what the heck it is. The campaign, created with help from Publicis-owned agency Digitas, includes a new corporate website and a media push targeting agencies with display and video ads across trade pubs, Facebook and […]
All eyes have been on Google as May 25 draws near. That’s the day the General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect in Europe, where Google has a target on its back. Google laid out its GDPR prep plan Thursday in a letter to partners after months of playing its cards close to the vest. […]
#WheresZuck? Posting a mea culpa on Facebook after nearly five days of conspicuous silence. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which broke over the weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to explain what happened and to outline fixes. He promised Facebook would investigate all apps that had “access to large amounts […]
The Cambridge Analytica debacle demonstrated that Facebook has no systematic way of knowing what happens to data once it leaves the platform. What happened wasn’t a data breach – but that isn’t what matters. “Partners are bound by agreements that say they’re not supposed to share the data out, but there’s no way to regulate it, […]
Facebook is running out of eyes to blacken in the wake of revelations over the weekend that Trump-affiliated data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested information from 50 million Facebook accounts without permission. But as long as ads continue to perform on Facebook, the scandals won’t lead advertisers to pull back their spend. “We may see individuals […]
The in-app waterfall is drying up. On Monday, Oath released a new version of Super Auction, its replacement technology for the ad network mediation role that mobile networks have traditionally fulfilled. Previously, ONE by AOL would host an auction for AOL’s own demand through its software development kit and send the top bid to the […]
Elgin Thompson, managing director of Digital Capital Advisors, will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO conference on April 10-11 at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. The passion of Wall Street’s 2013-era love affair with ad tech may have cooled, but investment banker Elgin Thompson expects the industry will produce some noteworthy exits yet. “I […]
Google is testing header bidding – again. But this time it’s for in-app demand. On Thursday, Google announced the kickoff of a beta test to blow up the waterfall mediation model within its mobile ad network, AdMob, and replace it with a unified auction. “Think of it as [Google’s] Exchange Bidding, but for networks,” said Sissie […]
Reddit is banking on native mobile ads to generate advertiser karma. Starting March 19, advertisers will be able to buy native promoted posts in Reddit’s official iOS app, with Android inventory to follow within the next few weeks, the company said Wednesday. The only visual difference between in-feed native posts and organic posts created by […]
For mar tech companies, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) preparation starts by acknowledging that they handle personal data. Many will insist it’s all de-identified and anonymized, said Omer Tene, VP and chief knowledge officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. “But drill a bit deeper and you’ll find that while they might not have […]
When the International Business Times and its parent Newsweek Media Group were accused in February of buying bots to help win a major ad buy from the Consumer Financial Protection Board, they had a helping hand from PopAds. PopAds, which specializes in pop-unders and didn’t respond to requests for comment, also resells traffic, performs unauthorized […]
Uber has the pedal to the metal when it comes to paid social automation. The ride-sharing app embeds performance marketing and paid social teams in every region where it does business. Four channel managers on each team make sure campaigns meet their objectives. On Facebook and Instagram, where Uber spends a significant portion of its […]
Brevity is the soul of content – and advertising – at Axios. The tech, news and politics site, founded by former Politico execs a little over a year ago, was built on the premise that people are bombarded by info and find it nearly impossible to keep up. “Less than 5% of people who click on a […]
Third-party cookies get stale. On Tuesday, ad tech startup Rockerbox launched a solution after a five-month beta to help advertisers freshen up their prospecting data based on a user’s last 60 minutes of browsing activity. A marketing platform centered on recency gets advertisers closer to the moment of intent, said Rockerbox CEO and co-founder Ron […]
This is the second in a series of deep dives from AdExchanger on mobile fraud and mobile data quality, including guides to fraud tactics and threat vectors and practical solutions from advertisers in the growth and user acquisition trenches. Read the first story (“2018 Will Be A Year Of Reckoning For Mobile App-Install Fraud”) and […]
Placed, the Snap-owned location data company, is giving away its analytics tool for free. Starting Thursday, brands and media planners can use a public version of its insights service to view foot traffic trends for around 2,000 businesses in the US. Placed pulls the aggregated data from its audience of around 300 million monthly active […]
AdWords, search, display, the Play Store, YouTube, AdMob, the Google Display Network… App advertisers used to have to run six or more campaigns at once with Google to try and achieve a single objective. But, as of November, there’s been only one way to promote apps across all Google properties: Universal App Campaigns. Google first […]
Did Facebook’s algorithm force the Clinton campaign to pay more for ads than the Trump outfit during the 2016 US presidential election? That’s fake news, said Facebook, which provided a rare public statement on the dynamics of its ads auction on Tuesday after claims of discriminatory pricing. Senior Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth disclosed on Twitter […]
With additional reporting by Alison Weissbrot. Sizable brands and top-tier publishers can use their clout to pressure media platforms into sharing more measurement data – but what are advertisers actually getting? Just enough to keep them spending, said Chris Kane, founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media. “Walled gardens will do the minimum acceptable thing so […]
Product-related content is an editorial anchor at GQ, Condé Nast’s men’s lifestyle pub. People who read about brands on GQ’s site spend twice as much time with its content overall – around 14 minutes – and are nearly 10% more likely to return, according to research commissioned from Skimlinks and Parse.ly. That level of engagement validates Condé’s […]
Facebook is doing some early spring cleaning in Ads Manager, the tool advertisers use to create, manage and track campaigns. Starting Thursday, it will begin labeling whether metrics are estimated and start marking metrics that are still being tested. The goal is to give advertisers more insight into how metrics are calculated. Knowing when metrics […]
Tapad launched a product on Tuesday that lets telcos stitch their first-party data to Tapad’s device graph – which Tapad will then activate through partners, including Facebook and The Trade Desk. The company is calling this service a Customer Data Platform (CDP), which is the buzzword du jour, though the vendor said it’s been working […]
Data is helpful in the fight against fraud, but it’s not enough, said Martzel de Domingo, who leads user acquisition at French gaming giant Ubisoft, whose titles include “Assassin’s Creed” and “South Park: Phone Destroyer.” Fraudsters know how to hide behind the numbers. “Some people might not look to see what’s happening after an install,” […]
Ericsson remains keen on ad tech. On Wednesday, the Swedish networking and telecom company announced its acquisition of Placecast, a combo data management and demand-side platform (DSP) for location data. Placecast is now part of Emodo, Ericsson’s programmatic mobile ad platform that helps telcos monetize their subscriber data. Emodo is housed within a newly created […]
Deep-link startup Branch earned its Facebook mobile marketing partner (MMP) stripes on Wednesday and launched an attribution tool for paid media called Universal Ads. Branch is the first MMP added to Facebook’s marketing partner program since around 2013. When the company launched in 2014, it focused on deep-linking across owned-and-operated content – for example, tracking clicks […]
There’s no love for annoying ads on Chrome this Valentine’s Day. Google will release a new version of its browser on Thursday with a built-in ad blocker. Here’s how it works. Chrome will now block all ads on sites that don’t adhere to the ad quality standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads, an […]
Paris-based app retargeting platform Adikteev – think Criteo for apps – snagged $12 million in Series B on Tuesday. The company plans to spend it on research and development and on expanding its 100-person headcount with around 40 new engineer hires over the next month. The round, which brings Adikteev’s total funding to $14.2 million since it […]
There’s no point eating up engineering resources to build technology that can be provided out of the box, Lomit Patel, VP of growth at IMVU, said at the Mobile Growth Summit in San Francisco last week. Although most mobile growth marketers would rather build than buy, nearly every app relies on a constellation of third-party […]
