AdExchanger Guest Columnist
Articles By AdExchanger
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingAI Media Is Already Here. Here's What Marketers Need to Know
Should businesses start advertising on AI media platforms? Yes. But it depends on how consumers in your category are already using AI and how quickly your organization can respond.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhy Programmatic Quality Control Needs To Focus On The Bid Request, Not Domains
If a buyer wants real control, “domain rationalization” alone will never be enough. Buyers need “bid rationalization,” shaping the supply at the bid-request level so they see fewer, better, more outcome-relevant opportunities.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingOptimization Isn’t A Growth Strategy: The Leadership Decisions Hidden Behind Marketing Metrics
Many organizations are encountering a paradox: Performance appears strong, while durable growth remains elusive. How should performance be evaluated when the strongest signals no longer align cleanly with growth?
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OPINION: On TV & VideoWhy Ads.txt Needs To Evolve For Connected TV
Complexity hasn’t made the CTV supply chain difficult to trust. This is a transparency problem and, more specifically, an ads.txt problem.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingBeyond Automation: How AI Is Rewiring Control In The Ad Tech Stack
The advertising industry is full of noise about AI making buy-side and sell-side processes more efficient. That framing is convenient, but it misses a broader point, writes Snowflake’s Dennis Buchheim.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingThe Privacy ‘Zealots’ Were Right: Ad Tech’s Infrastructure Was Always A Risk
The US government wants to use digital ad infrastructure for the exact type of surveillance the industry’s critics have long warned about. We should have seen this coming.
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OPINION: On TV & VideoWhy Amazon Is Gaining Ground In CTV And The Trade Desk Is Losing Its Lead
The divergence between the DSPs reveals shifting buy-side priorities. Advertisers have grown wary of how The Trade Desk earns margin, where its algorithm steers inventory and how these strategies compete with buyer goals.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhy Binary Audience Decisions Aren’t Fit For The Agentic Era
Yes/no binary logic was the right tool for programmatic. But autonomous AI agents can evaluate 10 million impressions per second, combining data from hundreds of sources, and human-defined targeting logic can no longer keep pace.
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OPINION: The Sell SiderNo Traffic, No Moat: How AI Breaks The Economics Of Destination Publishing
The future of publishing won’t be defined by where content lives, but by how it’s created, licensed, distributed and valued, writes David Kohl.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhy Retail Media’s Next Phase Depends On Full-Funnel Measurement
The future of retail media depends on a shift away from siloed in-store and online metrics to a full-funnel approach that reflects how customers actually shop.
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OPINION: On TV & VideoLocal Media Needs Consolidation To Compete, But An Outdated Legal Standard Stands In The Way
A 2004 statute prevents owning enough TV stations to reach 39% of households. But without the scale afforded to other digital content companies, local TV is at a competitive disadvantage.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhy Smart Marketers Look Beyond The Leading Platforms To Deliver Outcomes
Brands allocating a sizable chunk of their marketing budgets outside of Google and Meta achieve the best customer acquisition costs, proving that diversification is a performance strategy.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhen Conversation Becomes Inventory: How OpenAI Could Reshape Digital Advertising
For brands, this opens a new lever beyond impressions. For publishers, this is a business problem, as their first-party data and on-site inventory could become less valuable for targeting.
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OPINION: On TV & VideoCleaning Up CTV Supply: A Publisher’s Guide To Reducing Ad Fraud
When it comes to managing fraud, there are four steps CTV publishers should take to remove bad actors from the supply chain.
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OPINION: On TV & VideoWhy 'Performance CTV' Is A Misnomer: TV Works Best As A Full-Funnel Channel
“Performance CTV” oversimplifies how television actually drives value, and the focus on performance all but guarantees that campaign results will be misinterpreted.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingThe Fastest Path To Agentic AI In Advertising Isn’t Reinvention. It’s Using Existing Standards
Ripping out battle-tested infrastructure and starting from scratch – as some emerging agentic protocols propose – is the slowest and most painful path to advertising’s agentic future.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhat Meta’s Andromeda Update Actually Changes – And What It Doesn’t
The brands seeing the greatest lift from Andromeda have adjusted not by outsourcing judgment to the algorithm but by refining their creative strategy. Here are three best practices to keep in mind.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingThe AdCP Hype Problem: Why Standardized AI Workflows Don’t Equal Better Media Outcomes
Advertising’s “agentic” future is a compelling vision, but one that relies on capabilities that do not exist yet. AdCP may one day make buying easier, but it will not make buying better by itself.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingPrivacy Enforcement Crossed A Line In 2025 – And There’s No Going Back
For most of the last decade, privacy compliance lived in a gray zone. Companies could point to a cookie banner, update a policy and reasonably believe they were doing enough. Not anymore.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingGoodbye, Outcomes Era? Nah. In 2026, It’s Picking Up Steam
argue the Outcomes Era is already fading, writes Joe Zappa. But the evidence suggests the opposite. The Outcomes Era isn’t receding; it’s accelerating.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingAd Tech Doesn’t Just Have A Transparency Problem. It Has A Courage Problem
Bold, accountable leaders who publicly embrace conflict and challenge industry fraud are essential to spark innovation in digital advertising and ad tech, writes Alessandro De Zanche.
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OPINION: The Sell SiderMedia In 2026: From Managed Decline To Ruthless Independence
The era of “managed decline” is over; the era of existential clarity has begun. Publishers are no longer guessing what the post-platform world looks like. We are living in it.
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OPINION: The Sell SiderThe Open Internet Can Still Win If Buyers and Sellers Unite Around Radical Transparency
Unauthorized ID stuffing, rampant reselling and misaligned signals inflict incredible damage on the programmatic ecosystem. If publishers want to compete with the walled gardens, we must raise our standards.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhen The Last Click Disappears: How AI Shopping Breaks Attribution And Rejuvenates Brand-Building
AI shopping agents are breaking the traditional attribution loop. Marketers must ensure that AI is aware of their brand and track how that awareness influences ecommerce outcomes.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingHow To Tell If An AI Vendor Will Still Matter In Two Years
Almost everything in AI feels big. But are you looking at the next Gangnam Style or the birth of a new industry? Here’s how to assess whether an AI vendor is likely to matter in two years.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingAI Is Bringing MFA To Social Media. Here’s How Advertisers Can Avoid It
For years, MFA was a mostly web-based problem. Now, generative AI has supercharged the made-for-advertising model, and it’s infecting social media feeds and vertical video platforms.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingBroadsign’s Big Move Isn’t The Endgame. It’s The Opening Gambit
Broadsign may actually be building a platform that will make an attractive acquisition target down the road. And one of the major cross-platform Big Tech players feels like the most likely buyer.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
CTV Is Less Transparent Than YouTube. That Should Alarm Everyone
CTV spending is flattening, performance is plateauing and buyers are hesitant to push budgets further. The reason is not complicated. When buyers cannot see what they are buying, they cannot commit their spend with conviction.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingSelf-Driving Advertising Is A Myth: Why Automation Can’t Replace Creative Judgment
Generative AI is the new ad land obsession: a shiny promise of a fully autonomous world of self-driving advertising. But behind the hype lies the costly delusion that automation can replace judgment and more content somehow means better marketing. We’ve entered the age of machine-made abundance, where content can be generated faster than it can […]
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingWhy Weakening CIPA Would Hand Big Tech A Free Pass On Data Abuse
With privacy under unprecedented attack by data brokers and social media, it is the wrong time to weaken CIPA’s private right of action protections, as has been proposed in California Senate Bill 690.