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.
Cross-device provider Tapad is offloading its media business with Brand Networks, a social marketing tech firm that serves large retail brands and enterprise clients. The deal, announced Tuesday, is structured like a partnership rather than an acquisition, said Tapad CEO Sigvart Voss Eriksen. Tapad’s managed media and creative teams will join Brand Networks to help […]
The Federal Trade Commission will soon be populated by a completely fresh crop of appointees with no holdovers from the previous administration. It’s an irregular situation. But what it means for advertisers and for the commission’s future direction is still unclear. President Trump finally sent his nominations for four commissioners out of five to the […]
This is the first 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 second story (“Mobile Data Has A Quality Control Problem“) and the third (“Anatomy Of […]
TGI Fridays has a growing appetite for artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization. AI tech is a strategic investment area for the casual dining restaurant chain this year, said James Washington, TGIF’s product manager for digital platforms. Top-of-the-agenda use cases include improving the dining experience and enhancing the brand’s cross-channel messaging strategy, both of which hinge […]
Twitter is a company that always seems on the verge of flight. The potential is there, but the question remains: Will the platform ever be able to fulfill it? Instability in Twitter’s C-suite doesn’t help. On Tuesday, COO Anthony Noto – second in command to Jack Dorsey – became the most recent top Twitter exec to fly […]
When Facebook updates Ads Manager or tests a new ad placement, agencies – and even their account reps – are sometimes the last to know. In some cases, new features are enabled by default without any overt communication from Facebook, which can be “par for the course,” said Anita Walsh, director of social strategy at Horizon […]
The cookie is under pressure. On Tuesday, Amsterdam-based cross-device vendor Screen6 released a tool that CEO David de Jong says can add cookies to cross-device graphs in real time before they have a chance to decay. Device fragmentation, Apple’s recent moves to prevent third-party tracking in iOS 11 and environments where there are no cookies, […]
The paid ads folks at mattress brand Purple and online watch retailer MVMT spend their days obsessing about measurement – and stressing over data silos. Budgets are lean, and they’re under pressure to tie spend to success. A six-person team at Purple manages paid advertising across more than 15 channels. But combining, analyzing, comparing and activating […]
Should brands be wary of the net neutrality rollback? Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly aimed to put their minds at ease at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview in New York on Wednesday. The FCC, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, voted along party lines to repeal net neutrality in mid-December. The worry is that without rules to disallow […]
IPG purges its media plans of any ad tech companies that fail to provide value. “We’ve been talking to all of the ad tech companies we work with to make sure we’re optimizing for the effectiveness of media – and, frankly, if they can’t do that, we look for providers that can,” Michael Roth, chairman and […]
In-app header bidding is coming to MoPub. On Tuesday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange started testing an advanced bidding solution to replace the app ads waterfall with a unified auction. Roughly a dozen publishers are testing the solution. The closed alpha test does not have a set end date. Until now, advertisers could buy MoPub […]
Product and marketing go hand in hand at OkCupid. There’s a dotted line between user engagement, platform tweaks and the deployment of marketing dollars to reach specific types of users, mainly on social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Snap, said OkCupid CMO Melissa Hobley. “Our product truth is that we create experiences based on depth, […]
Mark Zuckerberg expects people to spend less time in the news feed once Facebook throttles the organic reach of publisher content. That change will lead to less inventory at higher prices, said James Douglas, SVP and executive director of social media at IPG-owned Society Agency. After Facebook announced plans Thursday to deprioritize public content from […]
When a company as large as SAP doubles down on digital, the executive org chart must change. For the last six months, the enterprise software company has had two primary CMOs: one who is responsible for brand and media and another who focuses on demand generation, life cycle marketing and bottom-line revenue. But they work […]
Online retailers are losing revenue right under their noses thanks to a devious form of ad injection only visible to infected site visitors. “I didn’t even know we had a problem,” said Jason LeBoeuf, director of ecommerce at athletics footwear brand Asics. The Asics website was the victim of customer-journey hijacking, a sneaky practice by […]
Mobile ad network and Indian unicorn InMobi paid $90 million for mobile video monetization platform AerServ in a bid to build a header bidding solution for apps. The deal, announced Wednesday, will bring together their respective programmatic exchanges to create “fair auction dynamics for in the in-app space,” said Abhay Singhal, InMobi’s CRO and co-founder. […]
The independent measurement space was once Nielsen’s to lose – and now it’s taking pains to make sure that doesn’t happen. Nielsen is in a delicate position. Although its long-established panel-based business is primarily what pays the bills, TV ratings aren’t the future. The company’s success depends on moving away from classic TV ratings, while […]
Forrester principal analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17-18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. If marketers and publishers don’t know how many third-party tags lurk on their sites, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect in May, will change that. “A client will tell […]
Two years ago, lift tests weren’t something OLX Group even talked about. Today, lift tests, which measure the incrementality of a marketing channel or advertising tactic, are in heavy rotation at the Argentinian web company, which owns and operates 17 classified apps and sites around the world, including Craigslist competitor Letgo in the US. Performance […]
With Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to take effect in a few short months, smart publishers are leaving nothing to chance. Everyone in the supply chain could be held accountable if they aren’t compliant by May 25, and stakeholders at every level are in a frenzy to renegotiate contracts that protect themselves in […]
Searching and not being able to find the perfect GIF to embed within a chat is the definition of a first-world problem. But it’s a real pain point, and something Emogi, which uses predictive technology to suggest contextually relevant emoji, stickers and GIFs within conversations, is able to solve for brands that want to get […]
Brand safety and transparency were top-of-the-agenda items for advertisers in 2017. But if this was the year of faux pas, mea culpas and the start of a move toward better controls, 2018 will be about buckling down. “The billions of ad dollars pulled off platforms in 2017 was a clarion wake-up call,” said Bill Marino, […]
As advertising spend ramps up during Q4, bad actors respond in kind. Attracted by increased ad budget, fraudsters hide their chicanery within the burst of year-end marketing activity. And shorter campaign flights during the holidays mean advertisers don’t have time to check for weird patterns or increased bot activity. “If you’re running a campaign over […]
AdColony’s Q4 revenue is expected to drop 5-10% more than it did last quarter and CEO Will Kassoy is out, effective immediately. The news caps off a “disappointing” year for AdColony, according to a release late Thursday from parent company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software, which rebranded to Otello on Monday). Kassoy, who joined Otello/Opera […]
Is enabling age targeting for online recruitment ads a form of discrimination? Facebook, called out by ProPublica and The New York Times on Wednesday for the practice, says no. “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason,” Rob Goldman, Facebook’s VP of ads, responded in a blog […]
The May deadline to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is swiftly approaching, and ad tech and security startups are forming a new industry: privacy tech. Companies like PageFair, Evidon, Prifender, Tealium and Segment hope to capitalize with GDPR compliance solutions for brands, publishers and even other ad tech vendors. The International Association […]
Mobile programmatic pricing is about to have its hockey stick moment, set to grow more than 45% by 2019, according to a projection released by programmatic agency Goodway Group on Tuesday. Mobile prices will increase incrementally, just under 4% month over month throughout the coming year, including for mobile display and mobile video ads served […]
Net neutrality is dead. But not without some high drama. In a 3–2 party-line vote Thursday, the Republican-majority Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the Obama-era regs, which prohibit internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking, throttling or prioritizing content or from favoring their own media with better data or bandwidth. Moments before […]
When ads show up next to questionable content, consumers are far from impressed. Sixty-four percent of adult consumers say a brand’s reputation is at risk if its media appears next to hateful or derogatory content, according to research released Wednesday by Omnicom media agency Hearts & Science, which surveyed roughly 1,500 consumers ages 22-45 across […]
Wine brand Josh Cellars doesn’t have a taste for traditional media. “We made a choice to stay away from broadcast TV and cable, at least for now,” said Renato Reyes, CMO of Josh Cellars’ parent company, Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits, whose portfolio also includes more household names. Deutsch is the US distributor of Yellow […]
