Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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For Political Campaigns, TV Gets The Glory, But Digital Does The Heavy Lifting
Political campaigns and causes trust their media dollars to strategists who share their ideological vision. Despite that seemingly immutable fact, commercial tech is opening up more opportunity by assuming the role of vertical partner to political vendors as a side-long way to access new budgets. For the past year, Rentrak – recently merged with comScore […]
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On Black Friday And Cyber Monday, Ecommerce Aims To Prove Its Worth
With turkeys almost in the oven, retailers and ecommerce companies are hoping the investments they’ve made all year long in audience segmentation, mobile tech and cross-channel measurement will pay off in the make-or-break holiday season. Ecommerce in particular is looking to benefit from the maturation of ongoing retail and ecommerce trends – such as offline […]
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The Planets Are Aligning For Mobile Shopping This Holiday Season
Marketers are known for demanding ROI and previous results before they embrace new strategies, but they’re going all-in on the assumption that mobile will be a far more prosperous channel this year than in previous holiday seasons. Industry analysts like eMarketer project a strong holiday for retailers, with mobile commerce expected to grow 32.2% over […]
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Political Ad Dollars Are Calling, But For Some It's A Siren Song
In 2012, President Obama’s campaign spent about $112 million on digital media, which was divided among many media companies and some ad platforms. According to Nate Lubin, who was the campaign’s digital director and earlier this year left his position as director of digital strategy at the White House, “We got pitched by I don’t […]
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Acceptable Ads Initiative Must Overcome Logistical Hurdles Before Getting Off The Ground
Following Adblock Plus’ (ABP) peace talk with numerous ad industry executives last week, the company revealed Thursday morning the first steps toward establishing an independent committee to oversee its Acceptable Ads initiative – which whitelists publishers that abide by ABP’s conditions. Those first steps are more goals than reality at the moment and reflect the […]
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Programmatic Is Full Steam Ahead As Tech Leaders Move Up The WPP Ranks
Judging from last week’s news, it’s tempting to say GroupM has got the programmatic religion. But that might be selling the holding company short. WPP Group’s media-buying arm, which controls $106 billion in global ad spending, last week promoted Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser to a big new job running its North America business. His elevation […]
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Publishers And Marketers Are Anteing Up – And Networks Are Folding
Pubs and brands have complained about programmatic inventory on open exchanges for years, but a renewed focus on inventory quality is gaining traction. AppNexus has long positioned itself as the platform for ad networks, but it reversed its policy in recent weeks by removing ad networks that don’t provide direct publisher or seller relationships. Shortly […]
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Fueled By Mobile And User Growth, Facebook’s Q3 Earnings Beat Expectations
Facebook continues to see hand-over-fist growth in its ad revenue and user base, according to Wednesday’s third-quarter earnings report, which pegged overall advertising revenue at $4.3 billion. That’s a 45% gain over Q3 2014, and 57% higher when currency fluctuations are factored in. Facebook’s user growth continues to accelerate. Since the platform’s first-ever billion-user day […]
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Can The Carson Campaign Ride Facebook To The Republican Nomination?
Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has been surging in the polls, by a strict reading the only current rival to Donald Trump. Carson has approached the election from a fundamentally different perspective, said Ken Dawson, president of Eleventy Marketing Group, which received more than $400,000 from the Carson campaign for “web services” in the […]
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MarketShare And Other Vendors Unite Against Walled Gardens
Want to track across devices? Then you’re going to have to enter the walled gardens of Google and Facebook. But the open ecosystem is working hard – and working together – to catch up. It’s in this spirit that MarketShare launched Monday a “Consortium for Cross-Device Measurement,” which for now includes Drawbridge, Crosswise, Tapad and […]