Allison Schiff is the editor-in-chief 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 said Monday it will add 1,000 employees to its global ads review teams over the next year to put the kibosh on foreign state-sponsored ads. The company will examine not just the content of the ad, but also the context in which it was bought and the targeting parameters used. Facebook’s ads review system […]
The redesigned App Store in iOS 11 creates a challenging environment for mid-tail and long-tail app developers. Apple’s primary goal with the redesign, which came along with the release of its new operating system in September, is to “make discovering apps and games easier than ever before,” the company said. The revamped App Store store […]
Poncho wants to “own the bed.” The weather app aims to start engaging with its core user base of millennials the moment they wake up. Around 90% of people 18-30 use smartphones as alarm clocks, according to Cisco, making the lock screen the first thing they see when they crack an eye. But there’s a […]
Retargeting is largely associated with product ads that stalk users across the internet. But Facebook sees retargeting as a tactic that can open the door to ongoing engagement within Messenger. Ted Helwick, the Facebook product manager leading monetization efforts on Messenger, told AdExchanger that “the KPI advertisers tell us they care about most right now […]
Most marketers don’t trust the data they’re using and they have no simple way to assess its quality. Of the 80% of advertisers that use audience insights, only 33% say they “completely trust them,” according to a study released Wednesday by research firm Advertiser Perceptions, which surveyed roughly 200 advertisers. Just one-third of advertisers fully […]
Tencent doesn’t like it when WeChat is called a walled garden, even though it has all the markings. “This is a form of walled garden in the same way you have Facebook or Google,” said Jon Mansell, VP of marketplace innovation at Magna Global, during a panel hosted by Tencent at Advertising Week on Monday. […]
Google is opening up more intent data for targeting on YouTube and expanding its Custom Affinity Audiences offering. Beyond reaching people based on their searches on YouTube, advertisers will now be able to create segments and target video ads using data derived from Google Maps and apps. “The ultimate goal is to reach any person […]
Data buyers and sellers have communication issues. “Transacting data across industries and use cases is actually a quite difficult process,” said Nick Jordan, CEO and founder of data startup Narrative I/O, which released a feature called Discover on its platform Monday that aims to help publishers get their data in front of interested buyers. Narrative […]
DoubleTree takes a cookie-first approach to marketing – the kind you can eat. But when it comes to data collection, the Hilton-owned hotel chain, known for handing out warm chocolate chip cookies to guests as they’re checking in, is interested in deeper data than just demographics and browsing history. “It doesn’t matter to me whether […]
Starting Thursday, Facebook will let advertisers retarget based on what people do in the real world. “Reporting on the impact of ads is great, but other companies provide something similar,” said Gabriel Francis, global product marketing lead for the offline sales group at Facebook. “We’re letting people actually do something with those reports.” Google’s offline […]
Chinese tourists spent $35 billion dollars in the US in 2016. WeChat parent company Tencent rolled out a suite of advertising tools on Thursday to help US brands reach that spendthrift audience both in China and abroad. The scale of Tencent’s audience is staggering. WeChat alone has 963 million monthly active users, nearly three times […]
Facebook updated its targeting policies on Wednesday in the wake of the racist and anti-Semitic ad targeting scandal, first reported by ProPublica. COO Sheryl Sandberg clarified Facebook’s position in a post and laid out its three-pronged approach to running a tighter ship. Following the exposé and attendant public backlash, Facebook disabled the self-reported targeting fields […]
The Body Shop is tapping into mobile wallet as more than just a way to pay. The cosmetics and skin care retailer will use mobile wallet to raise awareness and generate engagement for a campaign launched Wednesday as part of an effort to lobby the United Nations against product testing on animals. The brand hopes […]
The latest fire at Facebook has been lit by Russia, which allegedly bought ads to destabilize the US, and the fallout might force Facebook to change the way it does business. “If Facebook really wants to respond to the public outcry, it’s going to have to leave money on the table,” said David Carroll, a […]
Mindshare Chief Data Officer Rolf Olsen and Oleg Korenfeld, EVP of ad tech and platforms at Spark Foundry, will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on Oct. 25-26 in a presentation titled “Data Accuracy and the DMP.” Partnering with a data management platform doesn’t count as a data strategy, said Rolf Olsen, […]
Personalization is a top agenda item for most brands, but data management technology still leaves something to be desired. Machine learning could provide the answer, said Kabir Shahani, CEO and co-founder of Amperity, a Seattle-based startup that came out of stealth on Thursday. Since raising $9 million in Series A in February, Amperity has been […]
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, acknowledged that some marketers are “feeling uneasy” about viewability, online ad metrics and brand safety. She outlined updates meant to address that discomfort. First, Facebook intends to give advertisers more control over where their ads are running by tightening guidelines on the […]
Marketers, forget virtual reality (VR) for now. VR and augmented reality (AR) often get lumped together, but AR is the consumer-facing technology that’s taking center stage. At a special event on Tuesday, Apple unveiled an assortment of new hardware and software, including iPhone 8, souped-up Apple TV, the next generation of Apple Watch and a […]
Teen apparel brand Hollister is drumming up engagement with game-based ad units that are holding players’ attention for nearly a minute at a time, on average. That’s 30 to 45 seconds longer than the average TV ad, said Vincent Obermeier, president and co-founder of TreSensa, an app monetization platform that helps develop and distribute interactive […]
The rollups continue. Fluent, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cogint (formerly IDI), is combining with BlueFocus International, itself the wholly owned subsidiary of a publicly traded Chinese public relations services company, to create a new entity, name TBD. The deal, announced Thursday, is being shepherded by investment bank Petsky Prunier and will blend performance marketing […]
More than half of bookings at Motel 6 happen on the same day as arrival. That means most of the budget hotel chain’s customers are on the road when they make their decision to stay the night, so the booking experience has to be as frictionless as possible, said Jeff Thomas, director of ecommerce and […]
The accuracy of Facebook’s reporting is under the microscope again courtesy of Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser and an Australian trade pub called AdNews. In a note to investors on Tuesday, Wieser called attention to Facebook’s claims that it reaches more people than exist within certain age groups, based on US Census data. Wieser was tipped […]
Location-based apps are getting an unexpected reprieve from Apple’s blue bar mandate, an overlay at the top of the phone screen designed to tell users how and when apps are using their location data. In the fifth beta of iOS 11 (the mobile operating system is set to ship Sept. 13), Apple reversed course on […]
MoPub is getting very cozy with its viewability vendors. On Thursday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange released the latest version of its SDK, bundled with viewability support from Integral Ad Science and Moat. MoPub’s SDK is integrated with just shy of 50,000 apps. As the buy side bangs the drum on independent verification and uniform […]
Where a person goes can be used as a solid signal of intent, but that signal gets stronger and more predictive when location is combined with shopper marketing data. Although the insights aren’t always intuitive, they’re always useful, said Kim Riedell, a Digilant vet and SVP of Advantage Media, the media-buying arm of Advantage Solutions, […]
Buffalo Wild Wings is leveraging interactive mobile video to extend its TV advertising efforts – and give consumers a chance to play with their food. The casual dining and sports bar chain worked with mobile video ad company AdColony to develop a game-like video ad experience featuring “Foodoo,” a voodoo doll with carrots for its […]
The MRC kicked off the second phase of its three-part Facebook audit at the beginning of August: an assessment of the quality of Facebook and Instagram viewability metrics as reported by viewability partners like Moat, Integral Ad Science, comScore and DoubleVerify. Specifically, the MRC is examining if Facebook’s API accurately transmits what’s happening on Facebook […]
DoubleVerify said Wednesday that private equity firm Providence Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. AdExchanger reported in July that DoubleVerify was exploring a sale that would have valued the company in the $350 million range. The exact size of the Providence stake was not disclosed in the deal announcement, but The […]
Every vendor in the supply chain takes its cut before a CPM goes to work, and that includes a fee for brand safety protection. It’s a small price to pay, said John Montgomery, global EVP of brand safety at GroupM, running somewhere between two and 10 cents per thousand impressions for brand safety protection when […]
Facebook is giving advertisers a bit more control over how they buy in-stream video ads within the news feed, through Audience Network and on Watch, its newly launched video tab. In the past, advertisers that wanted to purchase in-stream placements delivered into ad breaks were required to run them in the news feed. Starting Thursday, […]
