Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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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 StoryThe 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.
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Nike Touts Its DTC And Data-Hungry Wholesale Deals In Upbeat Q2 Earnings
Two years ago, shortly after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Nike doubled down on what it refers to as its Consumer Direct Acceleration. Nike wasn’t simply weathering a storm, but taking COVID-19’s worldwide shakeup of consumer buying habits as an opportunity to rethink its business “by expanding our digital advantage, reshaping the marketplace of the future and creating deeper, more direct consumer relationships,” CFO Matthew Friend told investors.
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Marketers Have One Year To Migrate To The New Google Analytics – But It’s Already A Mess
In nature, animals migrate. Elephants, birds, turtles – by some combination of memory, instinct and intuition, creatures in the wild know to make the same epic voyage every year. But how did they make the first great migration? If anyone figures that out, let Google know. It’s struggling to get marketers on board with a major analytics migration set for next year.
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Why The Grocery Chain Albertsons In-Housed Its Retail Media Network And What It Plans To Do Next
The grocery chain Albertsons in-housed its advertising services and tech business in February, and is still making big changes to the group. “It’s really about owning the tech stack and the product vision,” said Evan Hovorka, head of retail media products.
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T-Mobile Rebrands Its Ad Biz And Navigates The Perilous Line Between Programmatic And Privacy
T-Mobile is sharpening its programmatic sales pitch and releasing new ad platform features this week. One cosmetic adjustment: The ad revenue group’s name is changing from T-Mobile Marketing Solutions to T-Mobile Advertising. But T-Mobile has also launched App Insights, an app-based analytics platform that’s been in beta for the past year.
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Why Sam’s Club’s Media Biz Rebranded From Advertising To ‘Member Access’
Sam’s Club, the membership-based retailer owned by Walmart, recently rebranded its advertising business as the Member Access Platform (MAP) as it charts its own course alongside other emerging retail media platforms. The notion of “member access” is what sets Sam’s Club apart from other retailers that are focused entirely on advertising as a way to monetize customers, said Lex Josephs, a VP at Sam’s Club and GM of the MAP business.
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Hard Rock Brings A Cost-Conscious Mindset To The Hard-Charging Sports Betting App Market
Legalized sports gambling is flooding the market with betting apps, which are becoming powerhouse spenders as they seek to gain a foothold. Some betting apps put crazy-high premiums on new users that they hope to make up in lifetime customer (gambler) value, but they’re not all in a grow-now mode regardless of costs.
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Marriott’s Ad Sales Leader On Building A Travel Media Network (Don’t Call it Retail Media)
Marriott is one among a platoon of non-advertising companies that have launched programmatic ad platforms lately. Just don’t call Marriott’s new platform a retail media network. “I wouldn’t put us in that category,” said Elizabeth Donovan, global director and head of ad revenue for the Marriott Media Network. “We are a travel media network and I think more like a publisher, too.”
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksCatching Up With Dr. Johnny Ryan On How Ad Tech Can Change So Much – And Also Not At All
For years, data privacy regulators didn’t have the tools – or the teeth – they needed to effectively enforce proper standards on the internet. Then came GDPR. Now they have the tools and the teeth. But, still, privacy enforcers are mostly unable to disrupt the status quo. At least to hear Johnny Ryan tell the story on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
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Volta Charges Up Its Ad Business As Retailer Media Networks Hit Their Stride
Mike Schott joined Volta, which makes electric car charging stations, almost six years ago to build out the company’s nascent advertising business. That makes Volta early to the everything-is-an-ad platform trend. But even back in 2016, Schott, a longtime EV owner himself with a background in ad tech – he’s the former VP of sales for DSP Viant – had the sense that “an advertising business would be a strong differentiator.”
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Web Standards Orgs Call Out For Help As They (And Online Ad Revenue) Are Swamped By Change
Three web standards organizations tasked with the online ad industry overhaul, the W3C, the IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org, called out for help this week during a series of presentations and a joint panel at the AdMonsters Ops conference in New York City.
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European Baby Brand Bugaboo Makes Its First US-Focused Social Media And Content Play
Jeanelle Teves lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the sidewalks are jammed with UPPAbaby strollers. And now it’s her job as general manager of Amsterdam-based baby gear company Bugaboo’s North America business to expand the challenger brand’s presence stateside and into Canada. Teves joined Bugaboo a year ago following a long stint […]