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 difference between UGC (user-generated content) and regular brand-generated content, no matter how clever, poignant or seemingly genuine, is the difference between a friend’s recommendation and an ad for a restaurant. Who would you trust more? According to Crowdtap, UGC is 35% more memorable – and 50% more trusted – than other forms of media. Dave Scott, […]
It’s nice to present a customer who has previously demonstrated a love for, say, ice cream with a coupon for a discounted cone. But it’s nicer if that offer comes on a hot day in proximity to an ice cream shop and if the payment is taken care of through a seamless integration with one’s […]
It’s been about three years since Zipcar left its digital ad agency in the rearview mirror, and the brand hasn’t looked back. The car-sharing company shifted all of its online ad buying to programmatic channels, turning to Accordant Media, whose stack includes a demand-side platform, an audience-buying platform, analytics, cross-channel attribution and a dynamic creative […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is going to help the ad industry check IDs at the door. On Thursday, the fraud-fighting coalition announced the launch of a verification program designed to enable legit companies to demonstrate that they are, in fact, legit. Agencies, advertisers, ad platforms and publishers will be able to apply to the TAG […]
If a turnaround story is going to fly, it’s got to take off at some point. But Prashant Fuloria, Yahoo’s SVP of advertising products, is preaching patience. “The reality is that this is a multiyear transformation, and our long-term trajectory will not be defined by a single quarter,” Fuloria said. Speaking of quarters, the results […]
Twitter’s stock took a tumble after trading closed on Tuesday. The reason, as ever? Stalled monthly active users (MAUs). Total MAU growth in Q3 grew a scant 11% year over year to 320 million, an increase of just 4 million users over last quarter. Wall Street was not impressed. Analysts had been expecting at least […]
Millennials are experts at ignoring what they don’t care about – regardless of ad blockers. “Millennials don’t necessarily follow the rules of marketing,” said Kathryn Minshew, CEO and founder of millennial-centric career and job site The Muse, speaking at eMarketer’s Attention event in New York City on Tuesday. “They don’t look where you want them to […]
Hear that? It’s the sound of political advertisers starting to open their wallets wide. Around $1 billion is expected to be spent on digital media during the 2016 presidential election, according to Borrell Associates, and Pandora is looking to attract some of those dollars with the release of souped-up political targeting segments. The music discovery […]
Analytics on Sina Weibo used to be fairly rudimentary – number of friends, number of followers, basic engagement metrics and the like. “The previous version wasn’t that good,” admitted Bryan Cheng, VP of commercial products and platforms at Weibo, commonly described as a sort of Twitter/Facebook mashup. “The point is to provide more actionable data.” […]
App developer Guy Tal isn’t interested in cold calls from mobile service providers he isn’t familiar with who want him to test their software development kit (SDK). “I get approached by companies through email and at conferences all the time and, to be honest, I really can’t be bothered,” said Tal, CEO and founder […]
If ad tech is a dinner party, someone forgot to invite the creative – or, at least, that’s what it can often feels like to the marketers and agencies tasked with creative production and testing. “I’ve been on the agency side and now I’m on the marketing side, and through both of those lenses I’ve […]
The same rules in life apply to beacon advertising programs: Don’t be annoying or people are going to leave the party. “You’d just delete the app if you got seven push notifications in one place,” said Rachel Pasqua, practice lead for mobile and emerging technology at MEC Global, North America. “We’re speaking as an agent […]
Yahoo is entering into a search pact with Google that will allow it to power its Internet search and ad services with some non-Microsoft juice. According to Yahoo, the agreement with Google provides Yahoo with “additional flexibility to choose among suppliers of search results and ads.” Google’s offering will complement the services already provided by […]
The Been Choice saga seems to be coming to an unexpected conclusion – Apple is going to allow the in-app ad blocker to block in-app ads after all, including in Apple News. Just not in Facebook, Pinterest, Yahoo, Yahoo Finance, Google or any other apps that requires end to encryption, a process that prevents third parties […]
Mobile agency Fetch is in serious growth mode. It’s been just shy of a year since Fetch became part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, which reportedly shelled out around $48 million in November 2014 to buy the London-based agency. Although Fetch still maintains its global headquarters in London, CEO and co-founder James Connelly said that […]
Which is better – deterministic data or probabilistic data? It’s a trick question because the answer is “both.” Even Google – whose first-party cross-device logged in user base likely trumps anything anyone other than Facebook could muster deterministically – uses a combination of logged-in user data and statistical matching. With privacy in mind, Google’s recently […]
When the head bean-counter at Brand X walks into the CMO’s office and wants proof that TV spending works, the CMO needs a better answer than “My gut tells me it does.” “Ask anyone in charge of a TV budget, and they’ll tell you that they intuitively know it works,” said David Staas, president of […]
Luxury auto intenders are multitaskers. It’s a behavior that comes in handy for the marketers at Jaguar Land Rover when it comes to maximizing its TV budget. “We still have a big investment in TV, so we’re always looking for ways to extend the reach of that investment in a smart way,” said Kim Kyaw, Jaguar […]
David Yoon is having an interesting week. It started out on Oct. 6 when Apple’s App Store gave its blessing to Been Choice, the ad-blocking app he developed along with his co-founder and CTO Sang Shin. The mini–media frenzy that ensued was immediate because Been Choice said it could do something that other content blockers […]
GameSpot readers know what they like – and they know what they don’t like. Owned and operated by CBS Interactive, the video game news and reviews site caters to the mainstream console gamer aged 18 to 40. And they’re an opinionated, assorted bunch. “On the surface level, that might seem like a homogenous audience – simply […]
Putting the “A” in MAU or DAU is about a lot more than enabling users to rack up a bunch of points – it’s about giving those monthly or daily users a reason to be active in the first place. “Customer loyalty is at the heart of everything we do,” said Karah Sutton, marketing and […]
Nitin Bhutani gets pitched by eager ad tech vendors daily in his role as VP of marketing at LendingTree.com. “We’re inundated with proposals from companies soliciting business,” said Bhutani, who came to LendingTree in 2011 after nearly a decade in various exec roles at HSBC, including VP of Internet marketing. But as a brand that […]
Twitter and Square have more in common than Jack Dorsey as CEO – both platforms have a marked interest in small and medium-sized businesses. While Twitter maintains a suite of Promoted Products aimed at small business owners, including Quick Promote, a tool that allows brands to amplify tweets directly from the Twitter analytics dashboard, Square’s entire […]
In the oft-cited litany of “right message, right person, right time,” the creative is often given short shrift. “Programmatic gives advertisers the ability to target infinite segments, but if they’re delivering generic messages to a targeted audience, they’re simply wasting their ad spend,” said Victor Wong, CEO of creative management platform PaperG, which announced $5 […]
Forrester senior analyst Susan Bidel will appear Oct. 29 at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference, an event dedicated to the advancement of programmatic media and marketing. The ad industry’s collective hand wringing over ad blocking reached a fever pitch in September during Advertising Week in New York City. In reality, however, it’s far from a block […]
Jack’s wearing a lot of hats. After several months of will they/won’t they, Twitter announced Monday morning that Jack Dorsey will go from interim chief exec – shoes he’d been filling since Dick Costolo stepped down in June – to permanent CEO of the company. He’ll also continue on as CEO of Square, the mobile payments startup […]
If native advertising is a message designed to mimic the form and function of its environment, then there’s almost nothing out there as native as a podcast. As in the early days of radio, hosts often read and personalize an advertiser’s message so that it “feels inclusive, like part of the program,” said Matt Turck, […]
The New York Times has a solution to the bot fraud problem: “Buy quality.” So declared Michael Zimbalist, SVP of advertising products and R&D at the Times, speaking at OpenX’s session about trust in the supply chain at Advertising Week in New York City. “You get what you pay for,” Zimbalist said bluntly. “We need to collapse […]
Nielsen’s having a tough week. On Tuesday, comScore and Rentrak, two of Nielsen’s top competitors, announced their intention to merge into a single measurement monolith. And on Thursday, business channel CNBC, a division of NBCUniversal, will officially kick Nielsen to the curb, turning instead to research firm Cogent Reports for its audience measurement. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal […]
If ad blocking is war, long-tail publishers will likely be its earliest casualties. “Ad blocking is a threat to the whole industry, but it has an especially high impact for the small publishers who make up so much of the rich fabric that is the digital experience,” said Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising […]
