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.
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 […]
Toyota is putting video behind the wheel. On Monday, Toyota, working with VaynerMedia, launched an online video-centric ad campaign to promote its 2017 Toyota 86 sports car to millennials – a generation more associated with Uber than car culture. But millennials are still buying cars. People ages 21 to 38 bought around 4 million vehicles in […]
The point of advertising is to provide value to consumers, but by its nature “advertising doesn’t do that,” said Gary Vaynerchuk, a serial entrepreneur and founder of VaynerMedia. Vaynerchuk’s observation, shared Wednesday at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event, highlights the cognitive dissonance experienced by many ad tech practitioners, whose job security depends on metrics rather than […]
Make no mistake about it: Accenture Interactive is here to eat the agency’s lunch. “Our clients asked us to get in this business,” said Glen Hartman, Accenture Interactive managing director for North America, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Wednesday. Clients are starting to look for “nontraditional service providers” that can tie multiple threads together. That […]
The Chinese ad tech acquisition drumbeat continues. On Wednesday, Shanghai-based private equity firm Innotech bought data aggregator and discrepancy management company Ad-Juster. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but industry sources told AdExchanger the sale was well within the eight-figure range. Even at the potential high end, that doesn’t touch the astonishing deal prices […]
[pullquote][/pullquote]Zeotap is banking on 2017 being the year that telcos make their impact on the advertising world. The mobile data platform and telco data onboarder revealed its $12.7 million Series B (12 million euros) on Tuesday, bringing its total funding to $20 million. Zeotap, whose clients include a number of the top carriers in India, […]
Brad Smallwood, VP of marketing science at Facebook, will take the stage Jan. 19 to talk all things measurement at Industry Preview in New York City. Facebook is at a crossroads in the way it relates to the media, thinks about monetization and measures ads. Right before Advertising Week, Facebook admitted to what became a […]
The agenda at this year’s PrivacyCon read like the Federal Trade Commission’s to-do list. Nearly 20 researchers from around the country converged on Washington, DC, Friday to dig into the privacy implications of the Internet of Things and big data, mobile privacy, consumer privacy expectations, online behavioral advertising, information security, the dangers of cross-app tracking […]
Facebook is trying to reset its relationship status with publishers from frenemy to friend. “That is an area we can do better in,” acknowledged Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of publisher solutions. As for exactly how Facebook will build stronger ties with publishers, Boland only said, “We’re listening to our partners.” On Wednesday, Facebook unveiled its […]
Age is one of digital advertising’s most basic demographic targeting parameters – but most of the age data available across mobile exchanges is unreliable, according to mobile data company Pinsight Media. In a report released Wednesday, Pinsight, a wholly owned independent subsidiary of Sprint, found that 72% of ad requests on exchanges do not include age […]
Facebook updated Dynamic Ads on Tuesday, allowing advertisers to target potential customers based on their interests and intent rather than just the specific products they’ve browsed. “We observe demographics and patterns of activity that indicate a person is really interested in a product category or a specific product and then we extrapolate from that information […]
Mobile moments – and music – are having their moment. GroupM predicts that music streaming activity linked to “moods and moments” is a targeting opportunity worth around $220 million in new ad revenue. Advertisers are starting to take advantage. Wendy’s, for example, recently hooked up with Spotify as a launch partner on the latter’s Branded Moments product. […]
When it comes to cross-device tracking, privacy policies are not up to snuff – and the Federal Trade Commission is digging in. In a paper penned by the FTC Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTech for short), it was revealed that the majority of Alexa’s 100 most popular websites have policies that reserve the right […]
Brian Andersen, a partner at LUMA Partners, will read the tea leaves on marketing clouds and omnichannel marketing at Industry Preview on January 18 in New York City. Remember when everyone kept predicting the seminal year of mobile, year after year, until the question became moot because mobile was everywhere? The same thing is happening […]
Kids are accustomed to lying about their age. Most don’t bother with getting their parents’ permission to use Facebook, Kik, Whisper, Snapchat, Instagram et al. And that makes the data resulting from their usage quite murky, said Jenny Mirken, CEO and founder of Jet.me, a chat app and social network developed with the preteen set […]
Advertising trade groups are seizing the political moment in a bid to dismantle the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed broadband consumer privacy laws. With the commission on the cusp of a Republican majority – Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he’ll step down on inauguration day – the writing could be on the wall for the FCC’s […]
The transparency train is making its next stop in Latin America. On Tuesday, a company called Exiber came out of stealth with a raison d’être centered on what it calls “uncomplicated and transparent programmatic marketing.” Based in Miami, Brazil and Mexico, Exiber bills itself as a data-driven agency for LatAm and US multicultural customers looking for […]
Augmented reality is more than just Pokémon – but it’s got a long way to go before it’s really mainstream. “Pokemon GO created more awareness of augmented reality,” said Rachel Pasqua, North America practice lead of connected life at MEC Global. “But people in our little corner of the business have been aware of AR for […]
On Tuesday, White Ops exposed a sophisticated browser-based botnet called Methbot that was reportedly stealing somewhere between $3 million and $5 million of US-based video ad spend a day. The story developed quickly after that. Some large, well-known exchanges have come out to say they’ve had little or no exposure to Methbot. And a few […]
Grabr is an ecommerce app for the stuff you can’t usually find online. “You can think about us as the Airbnb for international shopping and delivery,” said Daria Rebenok, CEO of Grabr, a peer-to-peer marketplace that aims to help travelers make a little extra cash by acting as couriers for difficult-to-obtain items from anywhere in […]
A few years ago, when Twitch CRO Jonathan Simpson-Bint would walk into meetings with agencies and advertisers, they’d cock a dubious eyebrow. “That many people engage on Twitch? You’ve got to be kidding.’ That was the reaction,” said Simpson-Bint, who’s been with Twitch since 2011, three years before Amazon acquired the social gaming and live […]
One of Piera Gelardi’s personal mottos: “Friction creates sparks.” As executive creative director and co-founder of Refinery29, Gelardi is constantly working to balance quality with quantity and achieve scale while staying true to Refinery29’s roots as a “mission-driven publisher for millennial women.” “There was a point when I was scared to grow because I thought […]
Turn is settling with the Federal Trade Commission for its part in the Verizon zombie cookie debacle. It’s been nearly two years since it was first revealed that the demand-side platform was using Verizon’s unique identifier header (UIDH) for tracking purposes even if a user had opted out of being tracked. On Tuesday, the FTC […]
Meet Methbot, the Russian hacking operation that’s costing advertisers between $3 million and $5 million a day. At the very least, that’s a little over $1 billion a year – a hefty chunk of the ad industry’s estimated $7.2 billion annual ad fraud problem. White Ops first uncovered the browser-based botnet in September 2015, when it […]
When Maneesha Mithal first joined the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in 1999 – eight years before the first iPhone came out – the big issues of the day were how to regulate ecommerce and handle spam. The threat vectors have changed. The FTC’s top three priorities in 2017 will be Internet of Things […]
As expected, Tom Wheeler will leave his post as FCC chairman on inauguration day and his legacy looks shaky. Likely on the chopping block in a Republican-majority FCC are the commission’s recently ratified ISP privacy rules and a reclassification of broadband providers as common carriers, seen by many as an encroachment on the Federal Trade […]
Advertisers get a little antsy when they see headlines like “More Facebook Measurement Problems!” – but the sky didn’t fall when Facebook began what’s turned into an ongoing measurement mea culpa. “I don’t have a single client that doubts the social and economic performance and importance of Facebook and all of their platforms,” said Rob Norman, […]
