Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
-
The Trade Desk Welcomes OpenTTD, The Partner Integration Portal To Rule Them All
The Trade Desk has OpenPath, OpenAds, OpenSincera and, as of today, a new platform portal called OpenTTD.
-
The Trade Desk Faces Headwinds As Investors Reconsider The Thesis Of Objective Indie Ad Tech
The Trade Desk, once a Wall Street darling, now faces the challenge of rebuilding goodwill across the investor community and the ad tech industry.
-
Infillion Strikes Again, This Time Buying The Retail Purchase Data Company Catalina
Infillion, an ad tech business built on M&A, is back with another acquisition. This time it’s Catalina, a century-old market research and shopper marketing company with roots in physical cash register machines.
-
Walmart’s Ad Revenue Totaled $6.4 Billion In 2025 As The Ecommerce Flywheel Started To Spin
“Fully a third of our profit in the most recent quarter was related to advertising and membership income,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told investors on Thursday.
-
Big CPG Brands Are Quick To Cut Ad Spend Amid A Tough US Market
Companies like P&G, PepsiCo and Colgate-Palmolive are cutting marketing spend as the easiest and quickest way to protect profitability.
-
Hasbro And Animaj Form A New YouTube Ad Sales House For Kids And Family Content
The kids companies Hasbro and Animaj have formed a co-venture for selling their ads on YouTube and streaming media.
-
AppLovin Takes On Haters And Doubters As It Lays Out Its Ecommerce Ad Ambitions
AppLovin’s profits and revenue are skyrocketing—but investors aren’t buying the story, sending shares tumbling 20%.
-
Criteo Says It's Bullish On The Future, But The Market’s All Bears
Criteo has an optimistic pitch for future growth, but Wall Street doesn’t see the money yet from LLMs, commerce agents and social shopping.
-
Wizard Commerce Launches An AI Shopping Agent To Make Magic of Ecommerce Madness
What people need is an independent agent that peers across retailer and is entirely focused on ecommerce services. At least that’s the conclusion driving Wizard Commerce, a personal shopping agent that emerged from beta on Wednesday.
-
LiveRamp’s Q4 Earnings Defy Wall Street’s SaaS Skeptics
An emerging consensus among Wall Street investors, based on the earnings reports of companies like Meta and Alphabet, is that subscription software is on the way out. LiveRamp, which reported its Q4 earnings on Thursday, is staring straight down the barrel of this conventional wisdom.
-
Alphabet Can Outgrow Everything Else, But Can It Outgrow Ads?
Describing Google’s revenue growth has become a problem, it so vastly outpaces the human capacity to understand large numbers and percentage growth rates. The company earned more than $113 billion in Q4 2025, and more than $400 billion in the past year.
-
The IAB Formalizes Its Measurement Initiatives Under Its New ‘Project Eidos’
The IAB unveiled its Project Eidos on Monday, a new program uniting its numerous measurement initiatives under one banner.
-
Microsoft To Stop Caching Prebid Video Files, Leaving Publishers With A Major Ad Serving Problem
Most publishers have no idea that a major part of their video ad delivery will stop working on April 30, shortly after Microsoft shuts down the Xandr DSP.
-
Hershey’s Undergoes A Brand Update As It Rethinks Paid, Earned And Owned Media
This Wednesday marks the beginning of Hershey’s first major brand marketing campaign since 2018
-
Getting Lost In The Protocols At NRF’s Big Show 2026
Retail’s Big Show, the annual NRF event in New York City, was big on agentic commerce, unsurprisingly, as well as influencer and creator marketing, which was an eye-opener.
-
New Startup Pinch AI Tackles The Growing Problem Of Ecommerce Return Scams
Fraud is eating into retail profits. A new startup called Pinch AI just launched with $5 million in funding to fight back.
-
CPG Data Seller SPINS Moves Into Media With MikMak Acquisition
On Wednesday, retail and CPG data company SPINS added a new piece with its acquisition of MikMak, a click-to-buy ad tech and analytics startup that helps optimize their commerce media.
-
How Valvoline Shifted Marketing Gears When It Became A Pure-Play Retail Brand
Believe it or not, car oil change service company Valvoline is in the midst of a fascinating retail marketing transformation.
-
2025: The Year Google Lost In Court And Won Anyway
From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.
-
Why 2025 Marked The End Of The Data Clean Room Era
A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.
-
Lionsgate Enters The Ads Biz With An Exclusive Ad Server
The film and TV studio Lionsgate has chosen Comcast’s FreeWheel as its exclusive ad server to help manage and sell the growing volume of ad inventory Lionsgate creates with new FAST channels.
-
A Co-Founder Of DraftKings Wants To Help Creators Monetize Content
One of the DraftKings founders now leads HardScope, parent of FaZe Clan, aiming to bring FaZe’s content and distribution magic to creators beyond gaming.
-
Albertsons Launches New Off-Site Click-to-Cart Tech
The grocery chain Albertson’s is trying to reduce the time and number of clicks it takes to add an item to an online shopping cart. It’s new click-to-cart product should help.
-
Why Cookware Brand Hexclad Produces All Of Its Own Content
An important part of developing the in-house creative group at HexClad is to prove the return on investment, according to Head of Content Matt Duckor.
-
Why The Amazon Native AquaSonic Landed A Walmart Deal – And Never Was A Social Brand
People tend to think of digital-native product brands as a single bucket. But there’s a huge difference between companies that are social natives, for instance, rather than an Amazon-based brand.
-
Shopify Launches A Product Network That Will Natively Integrate Items From Across Merchants
Shopify launched its latest advertising business line on Wednesday, called the Shopify Product Network.
-
Criteo Lays Out Its AI Ambitions And How It Might Make Money From LLMs
Criteo recently debuted new AI tech and pilot programs to a group of reporters – including a backend shopper data partnership with an unnamed LLM.
-
Google Ad Buyers Are (Still) Being Duped By Sophisticated Account Takeover Scams
Agency buyers are facing a new wave of Google account hijackings that steal funds and lock out admins for weeks or even months.
-
How America’s Biggest Retailers Are Rethinking Their Businesses And Their Stores
America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.
-
Broadsign Acquires Place Exchange As The DOOH Category Hits Its Stride
On Tuesday, digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad tech startup Place Exchange was acquired by Broadsign, another out-of-home SSP.