AdExchanger Guest Columnist
Articles By AdExchanger
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
When 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 & Video
Cleaning 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 & Video
Why '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 Thinking
The 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 Thinking
What 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 Thinking
The 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 Thinking
Privacy 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 Thinking
Goodbye, 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 Thinking
Ad 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 Sider
Media 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 Sider
The 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 Thinking
When 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 Thinking
How 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 Thinking
AI 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 Thinking
Broadsign’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 Thinking
Self-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 Thinking
Why 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.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
The Truth About AI In Marketing Measurement: What Works, What Doesn’t And What It Costs You
When it comes to complex techniques like media mix modeling, the field is awash with false promises about the benefits that AI can offer.
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OPINION: On TV & Video
The Illusion Of Complexity: How CTV’s Power Brokers Keep Publishers In The Dark
Confusion in CTV isn’t a natural byproduct of a maturing market; it’s an outcome of how distributors protect their pricing power.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
AI Slop Is The New MFA, And We All Need To Fight It
The real challenge is drawing a clear line between the AI-generated content that adds value and the kind that erodes trust and leads to significantly lower ad effectiveness.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
Why Meta’s Exit From MRC Audits Should Be A Wake-Up Call For Marketers
Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
Why Your First AdCP Project Is Probably Going To Fail
It won’t fail because the protocol is bad; it will fail because you’ve been sold a simplistic dream – a “universal API” for ad tech – and that’s what you’re budgeting for.
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OPINION: The Sell Sider
Why The Future Of Publisher Monetization Depends On Transparency, Not Volume
Our industry has done a terrible job rewarding publishers for monetization choices that align their supply to quality and outcomes vs. short-term yield bumps. But is it overly optimistic to think The Trade Desk’s recent moves prove that’s changing?
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
AdCP And The Math Of Agentic AI: Building For Today's Economics, Not Tomorrow's Dreams
Understanding where AI agents make financial sense today is the difference between building a sustainable competitive advantage and burning through your margins in pursuit of buzzwords.
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OPINION: The Sell Sider
A Market Built On Mistrust: Why Disputes Like The Transaction ID Debacle Keep Rocking Ad Tech
To get to the heart of the TID debate, you have to understand the definition of a healthy marketplace and how our tendency to limit transparency for the other side of the supply chain is holding us back.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
Personalization Isn’t Everything: The Case For Marketing That Brings People Together
As the pendulum swings hard toward 1:1 personalization, a critical question emerges: Just because we can personalize every interaction, does it mean we should?
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OPINION: The Sell Sider
What The Google Trial Is Missing: Data, Not Auctions, Will Decide The Fate Of The Open Web
The fate of the open web will be decided on who controls the data that drives monetization and the AI that determines distribution. Google controls both, and proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly do not address this imbalance.
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OPINION: The Sell Sider
Stop Debating And Start Acting: A Unified Front Against AI Is Publishers’ Only Hope
Publishers must coalesce to gain a credible bargaining position and stop the bleeding caused by AI search. From there, we must put the processes in place to actually operate a licensing mechanism.
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OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
Search Without Clicks: Rethinking Brand SEO In An AI-Fragmented Journey
ChatGPT and others continued the fragmentation of the search journey, which today hops between platforms and intents. The funnel no longer exists. Here’s how to pivot your brand’s SEO/GEO strategy.