Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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The Rise Of 'TikTokalytics' Startups
Call it the rise of TikTokalytics. A group of young attribution and analytics startups, the newest wielding particular talent on TikTok, have inherited the Earth from multi-touch attribution (MTA) companies.
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Forget Web3. Tide Is Excited About … Dry Cleaner Franchising
For CPG brands, valuable business lines and data access can come from unlikely sources. One such example is the Tide laundromat franchise business. Selling laundry detergent and opening laundromat franchise locations may not seem like a cutting-edge marketing tactic … but it’s arguably more exciting than anything happening in the metaverse right now.
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PODCAST: The Big StoryThe Big Story: Stormy Forecasts For Ad Tech And The Economy
There’s a storm brewing and wildfires are raging. We’re not talking about hurricane season or climate change, though, but rather the fallout for ad tech from the macroeconomic downturn and privacy lawsuits, including the FTC’s recent complaint against Kochava which challenges the programmatic data-selling model writ large.
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OPINION: Data-Driven ThinkingRetail Media Needs A Reality Check
Commerce and retail media suddenly became an incredible tailwind for online advertising. But anyone banking on retail media networks to power programmatic growth for years to come needs a reality check, writes AdExchanger Senior Editor James Hercher.
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Pinterest Wants To Be A Performance Channel
Bill Watkins, a 9-year Pinterest veteran in sales who was named CRO this year, says the company is focusing on three main pillars: its creator ecosystem, facilitating shopping and ad-based monetization.
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Late Ad Payments Creep Back Up, But It’s Not The 2020 Crisis All Over Again
The programmatic payment gap is a well-known issue. In the latest OAREX half-year payment report released this week, late payments are back on the rise, although to a lesser degree than in 2020.
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The CPG And Retail Relationship Status: It’s Complicated
In the past few weeks, a litany of the biggest US food, beverage and consumer goods brands, among them many of the world’s biggest advertisers, disclosed tepid quarterly revenue and lower year-over-year sales, which were more than offset by price increases so the overall revenue was up. And their investors are anxious to see durable profits and stronger relationships with retailers at a time when brand-to-retail relationships have become more complicated.
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Just Say No To Calling Yourself Crypto And Other Lessons From The Inc. 5000 List
The 2022 Inc. 5000 list was published on Tuesday, and although its purpose is mostly for marketing (companies pay for inclusion, after all), it is a useful benchmark for tracking the startup ecosystem.
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Walmart’s Advertising Revenue Is Small But Soaring
Advertising may be just a fraction of Walmart’s overall revenue – but it’s a nerve center for growth. One might wonder why advertising and other businesses that appear marginal to Walmart’s current revenue makeup, such as third-party online marketplace sellers and subscription memberships, are front and center for the company right now.
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Umami Offers A New Flavor Of Non-Google Analytics
If you’re a site analytics tools and your name isn’t “Google” or “Adobe,” there hasn’t been much room to grow. Launching a startup to compete against Google’s army of engineers was considered impossible. But that’s starting to change, in part because of an upcoming forced migration to GA4, a new version of Google Analytics, and also because of privacy pressures on GA in Europe.
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Vizio’s Bet On Advertising And Data Is Paying Off At Last
Vizio has walked a tricky tightrope since launching its advertising business in late 2019. But after a tough first year on the market, with Vizio down by more than half over the past 12 months, the company is seeing the improvement it needs from the platform side of its house.
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Losing Faith In Walled Gardens, Brands Test New Analytics
Attribution and analytics are an absolute dumpster fire right now, as governments around the world, not to Apple and Google, are tightening their data privacy rules. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And that’s certainly the case with analytics.
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Why The Trade Desk Celebrated When Microsoft Won Netflix’s Ad Business
The Trade Desk has been hammering the same messages about tailwinds in quarterly earnings calls the past couple years: hyping the CTV business first and foremost, along with the retail media segment and a dash of Google-bashing for good measure. The company’s investor call on Tuesday adhered to the trend.
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Criteo Expects Sanction For Undisclosed GDPR Violation
France’s data protection regulator, the CNIL, just hit Criteo with some not-so-très-bien news. The CNIL is planning to recommend a fine of $65 million against Criteo for alleged GDPR violations, the company announced in an SEC filing on Friday. The filing is very thin on detail. For example, it’s not even clear what practice or […]
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Criteo Sees A Bump – In Profit, Not Revenue – And Stands Out In A Weakened Ad Tech Field
In the face of a potential global recession on top of a horrendous year for ad tech stocks, companies have to find comfort in the small victories. Wednesday was one such victory for Criteo, despite a few troubling trends.
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Unilever Brand Liquid I.V. Takes Its First Steps Into TV, OTT, OOH And MMM
You can call it a heat wave – but Liquid I.V. sees an opportunity. The Unilever-owned brand, which makes powder that gets added to water to improve hydration (and taste), began its first national branding campaign a week ago, including its first TV, OTT and out-of-home media buys.
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Why Some Brand Marketers Are Going Back To Their Roots With Mix Modeling
Many brand marketers, even some of the most sophisticated data-driven online advertisers, are reverting to tried-and-true methods to measure and plan their campaigns, including media mix modeling and surveys. You can’t blame brands from being pretty much done with promises when it comes to digital marketing.
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Amazon The Unstoppable Continues Its Ad Platform Expansion
If another war breaks out, if Apple tightens the screws even more on targeted advertising, if shopping shifted: Amazon would still report strong and healthy earnings. Q2 this year is no exception. Earlier this week, Facebook reported its first-ever drop in year-over-year ad revenue and Alphabet hosted a defensive investor call, during which the C-suite […]
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Human Merges With PerimeterX To Grow Its Ecommerce And Retail Fraud Detection Business
The ad fraud and verification company Human announced on Wednesday that it has merged with PerimeterX, a cybersecurity and identity fraud detection service. The two startups were introduced by investors and board members familiar with both their businesses, according to Human CEO and Co-Founder Tamer Hassan. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “We were […]
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Google Feels The Digital Media Slowdown (Kinda), With YouTube Growth On An Anxious Decline
The onset of the digital media recession, if not the global economic recession, has struck Google. But Google’s doing just fine, though, thanks for asking.
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AdExplainer: Data Clean Rooms
Over the past two years, data clean rooms have exploded onto the programmatic advertising scene, and they’re already at the center of some of the most exciting new partnerships and growth opportunities. But despite their rapid adoption, the definition of what a data clean room is – and all of the related nuance – is not well understood.
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Programmatic Vet Terry Taouss Is The New President Of The Acceptable Ads Committee
The Acceptable Ads Committee, the group that establishes quality guidelines to whitelist ads on ad blockers, has a new president and he’s an old programmatic hand. Terry Taouss, a Cento vet and currently a principal at ad tech consultancy AdProfs, is taking on the role, replacing Marty Kratky-Katz, co-founder and CEO of Blockthrough.
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RoC Skincare’s Commerce Marketing Strategy Goes More Than Skin Deep
DTC brands are struggling to get by without the Facebook ad engine. Legacy brands are flummoxed by ecommerce. One company that’s hoping to split the difference is RoC Skincare, which spun out of Johnson & Johnson and was acquired by the private equity firm Gryphon in 2018.
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Disney Integrates With The Trade Desk And UID2 In Pursuit Of Better Addressability
If addressable ad IDs are the new keys to the kingdom, then you’ll find The Trade Desk at Epcot this summer. Which is to say, Disney and The Trade Desk announced an identity integration on Tuesday that will allow advertisers to activate against Disney’s first-party data programmatically via its clean room data product using Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) IDs.
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How Carter’s Juggles A Marketing Measurement Overhaul
There’s a disconnect between those ad buyers in the trenches of online advertising and their own corporate leaders up the C-suite, who are accustomed to determining marketing group budgets based on ROI and other basic advertising KPIs that, frankly, are going haywire right now. One way to deal with that disconnect is to add someone who speaks both languages, as it were.
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PODCAST: The Big Story
The Big Story: The Summer Of Bummer
The overturn of Roe v. Wade, the ongoing war in Ukraine, a stock market collapse – it’s all the news that’s fit to print, but how are publishers going to monetize it if brands are skittish about serious topics? Plus: The dangers of data collection in a post-Roe world.
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Pinterest Leans Further Into Commerce Advertising With New Features And Shopping API
Commerce and creator monetization are Pinterest’s two main priorities right now, said Jeremy King, the company’s SVP and head of engineering. King, who is also the former CTO of Walmart’s ecommerce business – he joined Pinterest in 2019 – said that the convergence of creator revenue potential with social media-based shopping and product discovery by consumers “will make Pinterest functional, versus purely inspirational.”
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Why Simple Modern, An Amazon-Native Brand, Ditched The Amazon Ad Platform (For Now)
“We saw the rise and fall that can happen if you’re dependent on digital advertising,” said Bryan Porter, Simple Modern’s co-founder and chief ecommerce officer. “It worked really well for us … until it didn’t.” The experience of surfing an online ad wave and then crashing hard on the beach has shaped Simple Modern’s marketing strategy, which is fully in-housed
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Universal Music Makes Its Data-Driven Ad Platform Play
The parade of data-driven ad platform launches by companies that don’t traditionally monetize through advertising seemingly cannot be stopped. The latest example is Universal Music Group (UMG), a top music label which last week launched its data-driven ad-targeting platform called the UMusic Media Network.
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PODCAST: The Big Story
The Big Story: Google Wrestles With An Analytics Overhaul, While The Ad Tech Market Preps For A Downturn
Google has tried – and so far mostly failed – to get its customers on board with major new migrations for its online advertising platform. But Google means business this time, with the migration to the new GA4 analytics solution. You’ve got one year. Also: Tech layoffs are on the rise.