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.
Convenience store chain QuickChek is placing location at the center of its digital strategy. It wants to prove that digital spend leads to foot traffic, said Eric Rush, digital marketing manager at QuickChek, which operates 140 retail locations across New Jersey and New York state. QuickChek only started to seriously invest in digital channels roughly […]
The No. 1 reason consumers shop online is because it’s convenient, yet online commerce still represents less than 10% of overall sales. “Why isn’t this number higher? It should be higher,” said Ken Cassar, VP and principal analyst at Slice Intelligence, at a New York City event hosted by Rakuten Marketing on Tuesday. According to […]
All the notice in the world doesn’t mean anything if the consumer doesn’t see it. It’s not yet apparent what the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed privacy regulations will look like in practice. Internet service providers (ISPs) could potentially phone in their compliance to the newly imposed strictures with an updated user agreement or cleverly […]
Casino gaming and hotel giant Caesars Entertainment is ramping up its people-based marketing efforts, and it’s tapping Acxiom-owned data onboarder LiveRamp for identity resolution. “There are a lot of data partners out there for first-party data, for second-party data, for third-party data,” said Dwight Pirtle, internet marketing manager at Caesars. “But we’re looking to identify […]
LatAm is a region on the rise. Nine out of 10 people with an internet connection in Latin America also own a smartphone, per a report released Monday. And people who own a smartphone spend more than 37 hours a week connected to the internet and only a little more than seven hours a week […]
Before taking advantage of their first-party data, brands first must figure out what the heck they’ve actually got. “People don’t really appreciate the assets they’ve accumulated over the course of years,” said Acxiom vet Josh Herman, who now leads tech development for CRM, ad tech and analytics platforms at Kimberly-Clark Corp. He spoke at AdExchanger’s […]
The top trending post about ad tech on the Ad Ops subreddit page asks the pertinent question: “Is it safe to assume 95%-plus of ad tech companies are full of shit?” The responses aren’t pretty. “This is the sentiment that our industry has – this post got a 93% upvote,” Jayne Pimentel, Reddit’s revenue and ad […]
With swirling acquisition rumors sidelined for the moment, Twitter announced during its Q3 earnings call Thursday that it’s cutting 9% of its workforce, ending the quarter with 3,910 employees. The restructure, which is being made with an eye on eventual profitability, will mostly affect its sales, partnerships and marketing teams. Product and development and R&D […]
Singtel-owned Amobee is shuttering its supply-side platform and giving walking papers to a little less than 5% of its workforce. Headcount as of 2014 stood at roughly 600, according to CEO Mark Strecker in a previous interview with AdExchanger. The mobile ad firm reached out to its third-party demand-side partners this week – Amobee works with […]
LaMusica knows its largely millennial audience likes to snack. “It’s very hard to get their attention,” said Jesus Lara, EVP of digital media at Spanish Broadcasting System, one of the largest Spanish-language radio broadcasters in the United States and owner of LaMusica, a free streaming music app aimed at Hispanic millennials. “Our strategy is to […]
Chances are you haven’t heard of Hylink Digital Solutions. But it’s the largest independent agency in China, has been around for 22 years, employs 2,200 and just opened its first US office in Santa Monica in late September. Think of Hylink as a sort of hybrid between Merkle, Hill Holliday and Wieden+Kennedy. “Hylink isn’t really a […]
Cross-device recognition is often the difference between a sale and a fail for Land of Nod, a national retailer of high-end, trendy children’s furniture, bedding and toys. “The question I always ask my team is, ‘Would we really want to show a bunk bed to a new mom?’” said Joe Orlando, Land of Nod’s marketing […]
Accenture Interactive exec Matt Gay’s 14-year-old son has a strict policy – he doesn’t look at ads, period. “He will actively avoid watching content if it’s got ads,” said Gay, a senior director and digital advertising lead at Accenture. But that’s not because Gay’s son hates advertising, per se. He just doesn’t have time to waste […]
LeEco, the Chinese electronics company that shelled out $2 billion for smart TV manufacturer Vizio in July, held a splashy event Wednesday in San Francisco to mark its entry into the US, where it could one day give Apple a run for its money. Beyond making a selection of its smart devices available in the […]
Drivers and passengers buy about $225 billion a year in consumables at gas station convenience stores. That’s a lot of candy bars and potato chips. But targeting that on-the-go audience with specific offers and connecting sales to specific ads is far from convenient for marketers and retail operators, which comprise a highly fragmented landscape of […]
Apps are looking for marketing cloud-like capabilities. But they’re not going, or can’t afford, to spend the kind of money marketers have historically dropped on a traditional marketing cloud integration. Leanplum, which on Tuesday announced its $29 million Series C led by Canaan Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Shasta Ventures, is positioning itself […]
There’s no point in being a me-too solution. That notion is what prompted ConvertMedia to evolve itself from a display network to a supply-side platform focused on outstream video about two years ago. It was also a main driver behind ConvertMedia’s decision to sell to content rec engine Taboola this summer. Once the ink was […]
Youssef Squali will speak at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Conference in New York on October 27. All eyes are on The Trade Desk as a much hoped-for bellwether of the revivification of ad tech IPOs. There’s a lot of goodwill coming from all directions, even from competitors. A rising tide will raise all ships. That’s the […]
MParticle is in growth mode. The mobile data platform, which helps collect and connect mobile data across platforms, has added $17.5 million in new funding, just nine months after its $15 million Series A in January. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, a new investor, with participation from existing investor Social Capital, bringing […]
People-based marketing is the natural evolution of data onboarding, according to LiveRamp, the data onboarder owned by Acxiom. On Wednesday, LiveRamp launched IdentityLink, which aims to resolve a single identity across different online and offline touch points. It’s an extension of what LiveRamp already does, said CEO Travis May. LiveRamp’s bread and butter has always been […]
In a bid to capitalize on digital ad growth in China, AdRoll has recruited a new adviser with lots of experience in the country and is developing a go-to-market strategy. Peter Cheng is Tencent’s former GM for ad platforms and products, as well as the former COO of AdChina (which sold to Alibaba in January […]
Virtual reality may have a way to go before it hits mass scale, but it’s just had a big week. Last Tuesday, Google unveiled Daydream View, its lightweight, low-cost answer to Oculus Rift, and announced its Daydream View-compatible Pixel smartphone. And on Thursday, Facebook followed with its own series of announcements at the Oculus Connect […]
App distribution platform ironSource launched a solution Tuesday to give mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers an alternative to pre-installed apps – sometimes called “bloatware” by consumers. Dubbed Aura, the platform aims to revamp the onboarding process for users when they buy a new Android or Windows phone by presenting recommended content to […]
Segmentation for retargeting is often a very manual process that relies heavily on what someone’s done in the past. App marketing platform Jampp wants to help advertisers craft predictive segments that anticipate what someone will likely do in the future. Jampp’s predictive segments technology, which exited beta on Thursday, uses machine learning to analyze around […]
Cheetah Mobile’s been on the prowl for ad tech since 2015, when it paid $58 million for French mobile performance marketing company MobPartner. The MobPartner acquisition is the cornerstone of Cheetah’s plan to transform itself from utility app publisher into a mobile ad vendor with global chops. Cheetah’s vision became clearer when it took the […]
The on-demand economy gets flack for being a bubble – after massages, meal, tasks and taxis, what’s left to be Uberized? – but on-demand laundry startup Cleanly isn’t concerned. “Our feeling is that if you create a good product, then your marketing will fit in with the value you’re trying to provide,” said Tom Harari, CEO and […]
Private ad tech companies are going public, public ad tech companies are coming off the market, private equity is getting acquisitive – and it’s all part of the natural order and an overdue market correction. Time to put a fork in the now timeworn “ad tech is dead” narrative. “We’ve always been bullish on this space […]
At Allstate, the experience comes before the advertising. “You need to create value before you can market against that value – you can’t go out of sequence,” said Allstate CMO Sanjay Gupta. That’s especially true on mobile, which now accounts for 30-40% of Allstate’s online traffic. Allstate is responding to consumer behavior in kind with a […]
There’s nothing sexier than measurement. Well, that’s not true. But it was certainly a hot topic during Advertising Week. Google made cross-device announcements, Nielsen waxed poetic about the future of measurement, Facebook got reprimanded by the industry for mistakenly exaggerating its average view times for video and Tapad rolled out a new time-based metric. The […]
Facebook is being raked over the coals about measurement at Advertising Week in New York City. For the last two years, Facebook was only counting videos that were seen for three seconds or more, resulting in exaggerated reported average view times. The heat was so great that Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP for global marketing solutions, […]
