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 gearing up to grab automotive advertising budget with dynamic and lead ads for auto brands, both released on Thursday. Dynamic ads for auto, like Facebook’s other dynamic ad products for ecommerce and travel, allow advertisers –auto manufacturers and car dealerships, in this case – to retarget auto intenders and create lookalike audiences for […]
Breaking into the China market requires feet on the ground painstakingly building direct relationships with local players, a fair amount of intestinal fortitude and patience. It also helps having a Chinese parent. Mobile ad exchange Smaato is capitalizing on its affiliation with Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communications Group, the Beijing-based offline marketing service provider that acquired […]
Programmatic platform Choozle picked up $6 million in Series B funding Tuesday, and it’s got growth on the brain. “We’re buying time to become a bigger player in the mid-market,” said Choozle CEO and co-founder Andrew Fischer, who sees recent ad tech consolidation and the lack of investment in early-stage companies as an opportunity. Choozle, […]
AdColony will lay off more than 20% of its workforce and exit the mediation and ad-serving game in a bid to focus its business on programmatic. The mobile video ad company said Monday that it will shutter most of AdMarvel, the mobile ad tech company it acquired in 2010. The ad exchange portion of AdMarvel […]
AI-driven marketing automation platform Artsai came out of a two-year-long stealth period on Thursday with plans to help brands cut down on marketing vendor fragmentation hell. Client Pandora has been using Artsai to help its ad partners with dynamic creative optimization and to gather and apply campaign performance data and insights across touch points. Pandora […]
Ericsson is taking the wraps off its DMP for telcos. On Thursday, the Swedish networking giant announced the global launch of Emodo, a mobile ad platform that lets carriers monetize their subscriber data programmatically. The release of Emodo follows Ericsson’s surprising intention to enter the ad tech space, which it announced in March at Mobile […]
Leanplum is leaning into machine learning and mobile marketing automation with $47 million in Series D funding, announced Wednesday. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with pinch-hitting from existing investors, including Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Shasta Ventures, and brings the company’s total funding to just over $93 million since […]
Messenger hopes to insinuate itself deeper within the customer journey. On Tuesday, Facebook released a closed beta test of a customer chat plugin as part of Messenger 2.2 that allows businesses to continue a single conversation thread across multiple channels, including Messenger and an advertiser’s own mobile and desktop sites. Businesses that integrate the customer […]
Do ads for STD self-testing kits count as sexual content? If medical and recreational marijuana use is legal in California, why can’t a cannabis advertiser geotarget Californians over the age of 21 on the large social platforms? These are the gray areas that certain categories of advertisers have to navigate on a daily basis, and […]
When Snap acquired location-based data company Placed over the summer, agencies got excited about the prospect of intermingling the data sets – but that won’t be happening anytime soon. Placed will not share any advertiser or partner data with Snap, Placed CEO and founder David Shim told AdExchanger. “Keeping the data set separate is important if […]
A stark juxtaposition: At the same time Facebook’s general counsel was getting grilled by members of Congress in Washington, DC, on Wednesday about how the platform was abused by Russian election meddlers, Facebook beat revenue expectations for the third quarter. Ad revenue was up 49% YoY, from $6.8 billion to just over $10 billion. Mobile […]
The tech titans have testified about Russian election meddling. And after two days and multiple hours of questioning by members of Congress aimed at top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s clear that Russian operatives continue to spread propaganda and sow social discontent using social media platforms and that said […]
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a looming reality set to take effect on May 25, 2018 – and the digital advertising industry is just starting to get woke. But misconceptions about the regulation are pervasive. And despite the substantial amount of work that companies need to do in order to prepare for and […]
Facebook and Twitter both took steps last week to provide more transparent paid political advertising on their platforms. But although political ads will be clearly labeled and users will be able to access more information on who purchased the ads and how much the buyer is spending on electioneering, it’s primarily up to the advertisers […]
Sometimes, it can feel to B2B marketers like programmatic technology just wasn’t built for them – but the B2B guys are starting to successfully retrofit programmatic to meet their particular needs. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for example, and its agency Digitas wanted to use programmatic to power the brand’s account-based marketing strategy and reach key decision-makers within […]
After a string of lackluster quarters, Twitter seems poised for a rebound and potential profitability, with early plans to launch RTB buying capabilities on its platform – but it’s still slow going. Although the company beat revenue expectations for the third quarter Thursday with $590 million, that number was down 4% year over year from […]
Dynamic creative optimization has thus far largely overpromised and underdelivered. Now Facebook is tossing its hat in the ring. Can it succeed where others have floundered? On Wednesday, Facebook introduced two tools to help advertisers tailor creative assets on the fly: one that automatically throws together multiple ad variants based on the basic components of […]
Publishers still struggle to make enough video content and inventory. Text-to-video platform Wibbitz, which announced its $20 million Series C on Tuesday, aims to help them meet that need with technology that automates creation. The round, led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments with participation from The Weather Channel TV network, the Associated Press, existing investor […]
Responsible data collection is possible – and it’s good for businesses and consumers alike, says Will Carty, the Network Advertising Initiative’s newly appointed VP of public policy. “The benefit to businesses is not in conflict with the benefit to consumers – in fact, they’re actually completely aligned,” said Carty, who joined the industry group after five years […]
If lawmakers have anything to do with it, political ads on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other online platforms may soon be subject to the same disclosure requirements as traditional political advertising. Senators introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to do just that, prompted by revelations of Russian meddling before and during the 2016 US presidential […]
Like any good media planner, fraudsters are attuned to time of year, seasonality, demographics, ad formats and trends in consumer behavior. With football season and the MLB playoffs in full swing, they seem to have turned their attention to pro sports sites. “We see a lot of sophisticated invalid traffic targeting premium sites,” said Amit […]
Most brands don’t want to be the first thing someone thinks of when they get a stress headache or feel pain after exercise – but Tylenol does. As part of a recent campaign to promote the relaunch of its Rapid Release Gels sub-brand after a 2009 recall, Tylenol wanted to be top-of-mind with potential customers in […]
Although the industry is settling on a few practical uses for beacons, primarily as a helpmate for attribution, they’re just one marketing data point among many – a tactic. “Beacons are only one piece of the equation, a component of a larger effort,” said Chris Cunningham, CRO of proximity and location data aggregator Unacast. “There are […]
However you pronounce the “G” in “GIF,” the looping video file format is developing into a legitimate touchpoint along the customer journey. For NBC, which recently revived its popular comedy series “Will & Grace” in September after more than 10 years off the air, GIFs are “a way in,” said Jared Goldsmith, VP of marketing […]
TruSignal is striking out on its own with $5 million in Series A funding and a plan: to help demand-side platforms and data providers use offline data to build people-based lookalike audiences for online targeting. On Thursday, TruSignal completed its spin-off from sister company eBureau, an offline data and predictive analytics platform which itself was […]
Paid search influences offline conversions, but there’s been no good way to measure that impact. That’s because paid search, a market expected to top $36 billion this year, according to eMarketer, has been primarily used as a direct response channel, said David Shim, CEO and founder of Placed. The Snap-owned location data company released an […]
Google is the latest walled garden to be sucked down the Russian rabbit hole. The Washington Post reported Monday that Google has uncovered evidence of ads linked to Russia that were used to spread propaganda via YouTube, Gmail, Google Search and its DoubleClick ad network. Google’s revelations follow similar disclosures by Facebook and Twitter, which […]
The changes that Facebook is making in response to its ongoing Russia-linked ads predicament will impact every advertiser on the platform, not just political advertisers. For one, Facebook’s effort to introduce more transparency into political advertising could start bubbling up information that brands can use as competitive intel to track trends and make suppositions about […]
Marketers are open to spending on location data, but they lack the proof to show that their efforts are working. “It’s a dilemma,” said Kevin McGinnis, CEO of Pinsight Media, a Sprint-owned mobile analytics company with access to anonymized first-party mobile carrier data from Sprint subscribers. That’s why Pinsight, which helps its advertiser clients gather […]
Publishers are on the cusp of only needing one software development kit (SDK) to measure in-app viewability. On Wednesday, the IAB Tech Lab kicked off a limited beta to test an open-measurement SDK that would enable publishers to work with multiple viewability vendors without requiring multiple SDK integrations. The test will run for roughly two […]
