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.
Snapchat is settling into ad tech, and so are its partners. Video production and editing startup VidMob, one of five Creative API partners that Snapchat announced in late January, launched a self-serve platform on Thursday that lets advertisers and publishers create, manage and buy Snap Ads within a single interface. The platform combines Snapchat’s recently released […]
Some tech providers are looking to phone numbers as the cookie killer – but privacy and user reticence are potential roadblocks. Digits, however, are a tantalizingly sticky bridge between online and offline, said Guy Weismantel, EVP and CMO of call analytics company Marchex. “It’s extremely hard to prove ROI when someone goes offline and you lose […]
Are some marketers approaching cross-device backward? Tom Laband, CEO and co-founder of mobile data marketplace adsquare, thinks so. “We see many advertisers start with cookie-derived data and bridge that to mobile IDs using cross-device vendors – and to me, that doesn’t make sense,” Laband said Thursday at a company event in New York City. Device IDs, […]
As the demand for digital video increases, publishers like Bonnier Corp. are turning to automation to beef up their inventory. With more than 35 special-interest titles, including Field & Stream, Popular Science and Outdoor Life, Bonnier’s editors spend a lot of time on video creation. Even so, “when it comes to a lot of our […]
Ghostery has decided not to have its cake and eat it too. On Wednesday, the company announced that it’s been acquired in an all-cash deal by Cliqz, a German privacy-focused browser that plans to use the ad-tracker tool to help expand its user base. The companies did not disclose a deal price. Hubert Burda Media, […]
The ad tech ecosystem keeps Jessica Rich up at night. “The current models just aren’t working,” said Rich, who until recently sat on the front lines of advertising regulation and enforcement as director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Rich resigned her post last week after a 26-year career at the commission […]
User retention, good user experience and monetization can coexist, they just require a deft touch. But for devs that monetize mainly through ads, there’s an inherent tension between their retention and re-engagement efforts and the bottom line. They make the bulk of their money through a means that could easily turn off the users they’re […]
Fraud follows the money, but it also picks the low-hanging fruit. Although Methbot was a fairly sophisticated operation, fraudsters are generally lazy, said Augustine Fou, a cybersecurity expert and independent ad fraud researcher. “The general principle is that bots are not going to work harder than they need to,” Fou said. “If they can get […]
Facebook will be audited by the Media Rating Council. (Pause for dramatic effect.) The company said Friday in a blog post that it plans to commit to an independent audit by the MRC in order to verify the accuracy of the measurement it delivers to its ad partners. Facebook had reportedly started talking to the […]
There’s a new top cop on the advertising regulation beat. Attorney Thomas Pahl will fill Jessica Rich’s shoes as acting director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Acting FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen named Pahl to his new post on Wednesday, the day after it was announced Rich would be stepping down. Pahl […]
Ad revenue was down year over year for Donald Trump’s favorite communication channel. Twitter’s ad revenue for Q4 slumped to $638 million from $641 million in 2015, although ad revenue was up from $616 million in the third quarter. A year-on-year ad revenue loss is a major problem, considering mobile advertising revenue comprises 89% of […]
Marriott International isn’t joking around when it says that mobile it its sweet spot. The hotel chain’s app is responsible for around $1.7 billion in annual gross bookings. But the app – a revamped version hit the App Store on Tuesday – is more than just a booking tool, said George Corbin, Marriott International’s SVP of […]
The Association of National Advertisers voted “transparency” as 2016’s marketing word of the year. Although this year is still young, “crap” is shaping up to be 2017’s word. “The reason why so much of digital marketing doesn’t work is because it’s basically crap optimized on crap,” Rishad Tobaccowala, strategy and growth officer at Publicis, said […]
The sea change at the Federal Trade Commission continues. On Tuesday, Jessica Rich, the FTC’s director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, exited the commission after 26 years of service. Rich led the bureau since 2013, when she was appointed by then-FTC Chair Edith Ramirez. The announcement comes on the heels of Ramirez’s planned departure […]
BBDO isn’t known as a data-driven shop. But the Omnicom-owned creative agency is working hard to change that perception. There’s a certain “muscle memory” among clients who view their creative agency as separate from their digital agency or the people they work with on measurement, said BBDO vet Crystal Rix, who was promoted to chief strategy […]
Whereas Facebook seems to have outgrown its app developer platform, Parse, Twitter more likely shut down its dev toolkit Fabric in a bid to slim down and focus on its future survival. In January, Twitter sold Fabric to Google and Facebook officially pulled its support of Parse one year after announcing its intention to do […]
Andrew Bruckner, VP of equity research at RBC Capital Markets, will share the Wall Street POV on programmatic at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. There’s room in the digital advertising ecosystem for more than just the duopoly. “I do see an opportunity outside of Facebook and Google,” said Andrew Bruckner, VP of […]
If James Byrne, CMO of mixed martial arts fight promoter Alliance MMA, wants to see whether a campaign is working, all he has to do is walk through the front door of the sporting arena. “When you’re talking about something like consumer packaged goods, the end consumer of a can of Pringles or a box […]
As mobile eats the world, Facebook is making a meal out of mobile advertising. The company reported Wednesday that roughly 84% of its full year 2016 revenue of more than $26 billion was thanks to mobile ads. Facebook also saw strong gains this quarter in average revenue per user in the US and Canada, which […]
Facebook is activating marketing-mix modeling across Instagram, Audience Network and Facebook proper. On Tuesday, Facebook rolled out a portal that lets advertisers pull campaign data for cross-channel measurement. Only aggregated data will be available across ad formats – reach and volume of impressions by week and geographic area. But it represents another chink in the garden […]
Most marketers know they need data management platforms and a growing number have either already implemented one or plan to do so soon. Yet marketers in some industries, such as manufacturing and education, are seriously lagging in DMP adoption, according to a survey released Tuesday by market research firm The Relevancy Group. Forty-one percent of […]
Brooklyn-based health and wellness publisher Mindbodygreen is bringing on BuzzFeed exec Tessa Gould as COO to put more juice behind the content and commerce model. Gould, who started Monday, is the former head of commerce and VP of ad innovation at BuzzFeed, where she helped spur around $75 million in ecommerce transactions through BuzzFeed content […]
As app downloads slow down due to a maturing ecosystem (dropping 20% among the top 15 US pubs, according to a mid-2016 Nomura/SensorTower report), developers are turning to a new success metric: Usage. “Usage is the new currency for the app economy, not downloads, because downloads just tell you that first part of the story,” […]
Maureen Ohlhausen is taking the reins as acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Ohlhausen has been vocal about the need for less regulation and fewer restrictions around data collection, which dovetails with the digital ad industry’s point of view on the matter. Ohlhausen, who’s been been with the FTC since 1997 and has served […]
Chinese advertisers want viewability standards – but the country’s unique media landscape offers unusual challenges. “There is definitely a growing concern among advertisers here about wasted media budget and the transparency of their media buying,” said Martin Zhang, CEO and founder of Shanghai-based verification firm Adbug. Zhang is also chair of a Mobile Marketing Association China […]
The Federal Trade Commission’s cross-device report has few practical recommendations on what consumers can do to navigate the tangled web of cross-device privacy controls – or the lack thereof. Although the staff report, issued Monday, is a notable public statement on the space, it cleaves to the commission’s historical party line on tracking. [Read the full […]
In acquiring Adelphic for an undisclosed price, Viant hopes to create a “people-based DSP” that combines media execution with deterministic data from parent company Time Inc. But don’t think of what Time Inc. is building as a mini walled garden, said Viant CEO and co-founder Tim Vanderhook. “Everyone wants the scale that Facebook and Google […]
At long last, AOL is really starting to make use of its 2015 Millennial Media acquisition. On Tuesday, Verizon-owned AOL rolled out self-serve functionality for its mobile supply-side platform, One by AOL: Mobile. It’s basically AOL’s answer to Google’s AdMob or Twitter’s MoPub. AOL beta tested the capability for several months before launch with several partners, […]
As of Monday, the Federal Communications Commission has a new chairman: Republican Ajit Pai. Pai replaces Democrat Tom Wheeler, who stepped down on Jan. 20, inauguration day. The newly appointed chairman is far from supportive of most of his predecessor’s policies, including the recently passed broadband privacy regs and net neutrality. Pai famously stated in […]
Is Time Inc. trying to take on Google and Facebook? The publisher announced Monday that it’s acquiring cross-device and mobile ad platform Adelphic to build what it’s calling a “people-based DSP.” Time Inc. has certainly been on a tech tear. The Adelphic deal, slated to close during Q1, comes just shy of a year after Time […]
