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.
The Federal Trade Commission is watching smart TVs. An FTC workshop on Wednesday in Washington, DC, laid out consumer privacy concerns around smart-TV tracking and sought to clarify how the ad industry is using the data that’s being collected. “Consumers expect some level of data collection when they use their computer,” said Jessica Rich, director […]
Facebook’s app-install ads got a little face-lift Thursday with the launch of dynamic ads for mobile app installs. The ads, available through the Facebook Audience Network, let advertisers target users with dynamic app-install ads based on their recent product browsing history. Facebook first started testing the ads last summer along with an app event optimization […]
Glu Mobile wants users who will stick around for the long term. “In the past, a game company could put out a game every month, just throw stuff out there and see what stuck,” said Glu CRO Chris Akhavan. “But now, consumers only have so many apps they actually use regularly, and we’re all fighting […]
Traditional video metrics aren’t really cutting it for advertisers, especially on mobile. Moat is making the attempt with its Video Score metric released in late November. Predicated on the notion that not every viewable impression is created equal, the metric aims to help properly measure digital video exposures across platforms by looking at how much […]
Beacons started out as a solution in search of a problem. And now some beacon providers are companies in search of a home. On Monday, mobile ad platform The Mobile Majority acquired geolocation beacon company Gimbal, a spinoff of Qualcomm. In June, location data company Verve Mobile bought beacon provider Roximity almost exactly one year […]
Attribution isn’t perfect. Far from it. But perfection isn’t what the industry should be aiming for. “If you wait for the end state, you won’t have a business for 10 years and by that time the world will have moved on,” said Pravin Chandiramani, Simulmedia’s SVP of data strategy, speaking at a measurement and attribution […]
With mobile marketing automation sizzling and VC cash flowing, Apsalar is looking to capitalize. On Wednesday, the mobile attribution platform added an audience distribution layer to its stack, effectively enabling its clients to combine the data with the doing. “We’re finding that CMOs want to have everything in one place, not a bunch of point solutions,” […]
Reddit spent most of 2015 in a state of turmoil – executive shuffles and users in revolt over policy changes amid concerted and ongoing efforts to cut down on trolling and unsavory content. Reddit’s reputation: not necessarily the most brand-safe environment. That instability led to the return of Steve Huffman as CEO of Reddit last […]
Ad networks catch a lot of flak as conduits of bad traffic from shady publishers. “It is true that some bad players intentionally sell fraudulent traffic and that other players are just turning a blind eye,” said Asaf Greiner, CEO and founder of fraud detection company Protected Media. “But there are also others working very […]
AppNexus has banned right-wing publisher Breitbart from selling on its exchange for violating its policy on hate speech – an order endorsed by CEO Brian O’Kelley, and depending on who you ask, also instigated by him. The ban was first reported by Bloomberg. According to an internal source, at some point last week O’Kelley demanded that his ad quality team […]
App publishers expect their inventory to fetch a pretty penny during the holiday season as marketers furiously funnel their remaining budget into hardcore user-acquisition efforts. “There’s an enormous amount of volatility during Q4, more than anything because of a desire to get up the charts,” said James Peng, head of mobile and social acquisition at […]
When Atlas served ads, the industry shrugged. On Friday, Facebook made the inevitable official by retiring the ad-serving component of Atlas, thereby making it primarily a people-based measurement pixel. The ad-serving capability will be phased out over the next couple of months so as not to be disruptive to users. Facebook’s ad stack looks quite […]
LiveRamp will drop $140 million to finance its people-based marketing dreams. On Thursday, the Acxiom-owned onboarding company announced its intention to acquire two companies: Arbor, a marketplace for people-based data, and Circulate, which helps app developers monetize their first-party data in a privacy-friendly way. LiveRamp declined to say how much it paid for each company. […]
Snapchat is credited with jumpstarting the vertical video trend earlier this year, but now the format is really starting to hit its stride. That’s out of necessity, said Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder of mobile ad platform MediaBrix, which on Thursday rolled out a new version of its SDK that supports vertically shot in-app video […]
The Verizon/AOL vision is starting to take shape, and it looks a whole lot like Facebook Custom Audiences. But there’s a FCC-shaped question mark looming over the endeavor. The Federal Communications Commission passed sweeping online privacy regulations in October that will require internet service providers to obtain an affirmative opt-in consent before using a customer’s […]
Mindbodygreen is making a credible run at the content-and-commerce model. The health and wellness publisher, which sees around 10 million unique visitors a month, eschews traditional advertising in favor of a combination of content and commerce, “with community in the middle,” said CEO and founder Jason Wachob. Mindbodygreen has 5,000 contributors, some of whom are […]
Weather data is hot right now. Location-based mobile ad network xAd has acquired WeatherBug, the companies said Tuesday. WeatherBug operates a live weather website and app with more than 20 million unique users, as well as a network of more than 10,000 private automated weather stations across the country. It’s a page out of IBM’s […]
Drawbridge is letting brands get their hands dirty with cross-device data. On Monday, the cross-device company launched self-serve functionality that lets ad buyers see how their buying choices affect what sort of identity graph they get on the other side. The goal is to give advertisers more control so “they can really see how this […]
Some publishers are raking in the traffic courtesy of Apple News, but not everyone on the buy side is impressed. “I want to be able to upload my own audience, match it to theirs and know what’s running where so I can customize the ad,” said Angelina Eng, VP of media platforms and operations at […]
Mobile web notifications are blurring the line between apps and the mobile browser. For publishers without apps, mobile web push is a way to interact with people in an app-like fashion. And publishers with an app can use web push to communicate with users even if they haven’t downloaded it. According to numbers released by […]
Lyft’s marketing strategy is a bit like a wheel, with spokes radiating from a central hub. Lyft’s San Francisco headquarters is still its nerve center, but about a year and a half ago Lyft started ramping up its regional marketing efforts with the hire of former Foursquare exec Evan Cohen as head of East Coast […]
Audio is still an uncluttered medium where a brand like General Electric can stretch its creative muscles. “We look at audio like a total white space,” said Alexa Christon, GE’s head of media innovation. That’s why GE is re-upping its investment in audio with “LifeAfter,” the soon-to-be-released second season of GE Podcast Theater, a modern […]
In ad tech, even standards need standards. On Monday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab unveiled a compliance program for vendors to prove they’re adhering to the alphabet soup of ad delivery industry standards. Over the years, the IAB has developed a protocol for ad delivery: VAST for video ad serving; VPAID to allow video ads […]
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 […]
