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.
Apple is rolling out products to cut down on autoplay video and retargeting. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose on Thursday, Apple said it’s planning two features in the next version of Safari, dubbed High Sierra, that will cut down on ads that stalk you around the internet and videos that play uninvited. […]
Developers like Lucktastic, a F2P sweepstakes app, play a seemingly never-ending game of balancing quality vs. scale when acquiring users. Increasingly, they’re turning to mobile video and playable ads to find users who stick around after the install. “In a category like ours, you need scale to succeed, but we also really have to care […]
Investors are putting Facebook’s feet to the fire about fake news. At the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting on Thursday, investors questioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg about how Facebook is combatting the spread of false news on its platform. Advertisers have become increasingly sensitive to brand safety issues since the YouTube/Google Display Network debacle kicked off in […]
Kiip is giving SDK-averse apps another option to test its demand. On Thursday, the mobile rewards ad network rolled out the ability to use JavaScript tags as a lighter-weight way to serve campaigns into a publisher’s app. Early test partners include music discovery app SoundHound and The Meet Group, which operates a suite of social […]
Bottled water brand Essentia Water is getting its feet wet with digital marketing. “Our number-one goal is to bring our brand messaging to life across digital platforms, regardless of the channel,” said Zola Kane, Essentia Water’s senior director of digital marketing. Essentia, purveyor of what it calls ionized alkaline water, launched an integrated brand campaign […]
Sam’s Club doesn’t take a wholesaler’s approach to mobile re-engagement. “We’re always thinking about how to segment and target our users,” said Drew Frost, senior product marketing manager at the Walmart-owned, members-only retail club. “Our main focus is on finding and engaging what we call our higher-value users.” For Sam’s Club, high value is derived […]
New York-based coffee lovers probably want to receive targeted push notifications with discounts on lattes at their favorite Brooklyn coffee house – but not if they’re traveling in Chicago that day. It’s hard to get that level of granularity right, which is why a lot of brands aren’t taking advantage of context, location, weather and other […]
Marketers aren’t all that wound up about Facebook’s recurring ad metric errors. Bugs happen, said Alok Gupta, data science manager at Airbnb, speaking at a measurement event hosted by Facebook on Wednesday. “You’re never going to build a perfect system immediately or ever,” Gupta said. “As long as the bugs or problems are identified quickly, […]
Businesses spend around $40 billion a year on digital content marketing, and Demandbase, which announced a $65 million financing round on Thursday, is looking to cut itself a slice of the pie. Led by existing investor Sageview Capital with participation by a smorgasbord of others, including Adobe Systems, Altos Ventures and Sigma Partners, the financing […]
Wait, there’s good news in the fight against ad fraud? The global monetary impact of ad fraud is expected to go down this year, the amount of mobile fraud happening in the ecosystem is much lower than feared and programmatic can be just as safe as direct-sold if buyers implement the right security measures. The […]
Disused phone booths in New York could soon go programmatic. Nine-year MediaMath vet Ari Buchalter is stepping in as CEO of Alphabet-backed smart cities startup Intersection, best known for its interactive LinkNYC kiosks replacing neglected phone booths with Wi-Fi hotspots across New York City – and he’s bringing his data-driven sensibilities with him. “When people talk […]
Creating Facebook ads manually was wearing thin for TechStyle, the parent company of members-only fashion ecommerce sites ShoeDazzle, JustFab, FabKids and Fabletics. When a brand spends nearly $90 million a year on digital marketing, automation is the key to sanity. “Elegant, hard-working, effective advertising at scale is exciting – but the idea of doing that manually […]
Net neutrality is not long for this world. In a 2-1 party-line vote Thursday, the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal Title II, the regulatory framework used by the former regime to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers. The proposed rule, part of the FCC’s effort at “restoring internet freedom,” will be subject […]
Bots are to web traffic what broken turnstiles are to amusement parks – they make it impossible to get an accurate read on how many people are coming through the door, and that messes with optimization. But at least in the case of a physical location, the visitors are human. On Thursday, bot detection company Distil […]
Mobile-first? Passé, says Google. The future is being driven by artificial intelligence. “Mobile made us reimagine every product we were working on,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Wednesday at Google’s I/O developer conference in Mountain View, Calif. “Similarly, in an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products and applying machine learning and AI to […]
First-party audience data is an app publisher’s most precious asset. Which is why, as developers and brands dip their toe further into mobile programmatic, private marketplaces are their safety mechanism. On Wednesday, MobFox took the wraps off a PMP for mobile audiences, where app publishers can make their data and inventory available programmatically and select […]
For years, Intel’s five-note jingle was one of the most recognizable sounds on TV and helped build solid brand awareness for its consumer-facing PC business. But a jingle isn’t going to encourage network administrators at a telco to embrace Intel’s open architecture or get senior decision-makers to consider Intel’s hybrid cloud platform. “In the past, […]
When the largest advertiser in the world wants to take you to prom, but you’re not allowed to tell anyone – that was the situation facing AudienceScience. Although AudienceScience provided the technology backbone for Procter & Gamble’s internal trading desk, Hawkeye, for the past seven years, P&G explicitly acknowledged its alliance with the ad tech platform […]
Hallmark is greeting programmatic with open arms. The 102-year-old card company moved all of its media buying to programmatic in 2015, and it’s “one of the best things we’ve done,” said Lindsey Roy, Hallmark’s VP of greeting marketing, speaking at the Mobile Marketing Association Leadership Forum in New York City on Wednesday. Programmatic allows Hallmark […]
Facebook’s making it harder for fly-by-night publishers to monetize low-value websites. On Wednesday, Facebook said it’s starting to use artificial intelligence to lay down the law on links that shunt users to websites with too many ads, as well as ads of a “disruptive, malicious and shocking” nature. Frowned-upon ad types include excessively disruptive units […]
Agencies want to take advantage of location data, but roadblocks still stand in the way. For Mobext, the mobile arm of Havas Media Group, fragmentation and quality-control issues top the list. “A lot of companies have hopped on the bandwagon in the location space, and that’s created a lot of clutter in the offerings available […]
Pearle Vision was having an identity crisis. Over the years, the eyewear chain cycled through around a dozen different positionings, from wholesome and family-friendly to early 2000s-era ads featuring a naughty librarian. “What happened was what happens to many brands as the marketplace changes – there is this urge to change with it,” said Pearle Vision […]
Whisper, an app that lets its anonymous users post what’s on their mind, is still going strong after five years – even after other secret-sharing social apps like Yik Yak have closed shop. One reason for its longevity is that it is making money through programmatic advertising. Demand partners include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, OpenX […]
When it comes to location-based based data, targeting is the low-hanging fruit. The ripe opportunities center on using location to enhance behavioral profiles and connect online ad exposure with real-world activities. Easier said than done, however. Advertisers and agencies are interested, but the technology is still developing and there’s a fair amount of BS flying […]
Facebook is still growing. The company reported on Wednesday that monthly active users are now 1.9 billion, up 17% year-over year – roughly one-fourth of the world’s population – while daily active usage saw an 18% YoY uptick to 1.3 billion. Mobile revenue, as always, is the majority of overall revenue at 85%, up from […]
When a public company is having performance issues, it needs an excuse. For Twitter, TellApart is shaping up to be that boogeyman. After barely a mention of TellApart on its earnings calls for several quarters, last week Twitter CFO and COO Anthony Noto implied that the remarketing platform will hurt revenue through the rest of […]
Twitter’s first-ever NewFronts pitch to advertisers: We’re like TV for millennials. But do people really want to tune in to Twitter to watch long-form live-streaming content? Bloomberg, which announced an expanded live-streaming deal with Twitter on Monday, is betting on the fact that consumers are ready. “When we see millions of people go to Twitter […]
Destination marketers get tripped up on attribution. A tourism board, like the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau (PMVB), for example, spans four counties across northeastern Pennsylvania and represents a consortium of hotels, restaurants and activity providers, which makes it difficult to gather real-time metrics on visitation. “Someone might click on an ad and visit our website, […]
Facebook is lusting after lucrative online travel ad dollars. And on Thursday, Facebook launched its next assault on the travel industry – encroaching further on Google’s turf – with the global rollout of Dynamic Ads for flights. The release will allow airlines and flight advertisers to retarget users across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network with ads tied […]
Ajit Pai is waging war against net neutrality. On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai laid out his plan for dismantling net neutrality regulations with a proposal to reverse Title II. Title II is the regulatory framework the previous FCC, led by former Chairman and Democrat Tom Wheeler, used to reclassify broadband providers as common […]
