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 Programmatic Prognosticator Who Sees The Tide Turning From Walled Gardens To The Open Web
The investment bank Needham estimates that Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Disney combined will grab around $650 billion of ad dollars in 2023. By comparison, The Trade Desk earned just $1.2 billion in 2021, its first time clearing the billion-dollar mark in a single year, and even the strongest programmatic companies earn in the hundreds of millions, which is peanuts by walled garden standards. But “what that means is that a tiny 1% or 2% shift in budgets from the big platforms could double or even triple.”
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PODCAST: The Big StoryThe Big Story: Frontline Reporting From The TV And Podcast Upfronts
The NewFronts are old news. Now it’s all about the upfronts, which are old. But don’t forget about the podcast upfronts, which are newer than the NewFronts but named after the TV oldfronts … or upfronts. Okay. Now that we’ve cleared that up, tune in for frontline reporting from the upfronts (TV and podcast varieties).
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Google Unveils New Shopping Ad Formats And Packs More Demand Into Performance Max
Google announced the latest updates to its shopping ad products at Google Marketing Live on Tuesday, with changes on the backend to how advertisers use its tech and on the consumer side. These changes are becoming more necessary as the mobile Google Search feed evolves from primarily text-based responses to more visual elements on the […]
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Why This Server Company Launched Its First Ad Product – And Why It Won’t Be The Last
Edgemesh Server, a commerce-based site and server operator, launched its first solution targeted at the ad industry this month to help commerce companies identify and root out bots and automated traffic that trigger valueless ad clicks. Edgemesh is one of several new cloud and mar tech solutions that see programmatic advertising and commerce as a growth opportunity, but aren’t wading into ad tech themselves.
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Brands Lean On New Attribution Tech – Just Don’t Call It MTA – As Budgets Split To New Channels
A rose by any name will smell as sweet, sure. But attribution by any name doesn’t work the same. Call it what you want, the problem of channel-based incremental testing is important. Measured raised $21 million last week, as it expands in the post-attribution attribution category, alongside other startups like Triple Whale, which raised $24 million a month ago, and Northbeam.
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The Pivot To AVOD Is Happening And The Trade Desk Is Here For It
Jeff Green, Founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, has been spiking the football lately in earnings reports, as some of his long-held predictions have come to fruition. First, there was Google’s delay of third-party cookie deprecation, which seemed like a bold bet when he first predicted Google wouldn’t remove third-party cookies by the initial deadline. This quarter, it was Netflix who delivered.
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How TikTok’s Ad Platform Stands After A Half Year Of Whirlwind Growth And New Products
Seven months ago, TikTok surpassed one billion worldwide users, breaking into a club that previously consisted only of Google and Facebook apps. Since then, TikTok has been on a massive ad platform expansion campaign as it tries to both follow in the footsteps of apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and differentiate itself from the old guard of the billion-strong walled gardens.
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AdExplainer: The Evolution Of Retail Media
Retail media is the hottest thing in online advertising and one of the most important categories for the future of programmatic growth. And the most important thing about retail media 2.0, a catchall for retailers using first-party data to target and monetize their audiences, is that the real value doesn’t come from the inventory or even who’s making the buy. It’s all about the data.
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PODCAST: The Big Story
The Big Story: NewFronts Week Means Galas And Shiny New TV Tech – But The War In Ukraine Reveals A Grittier Side Of Advertising
It’s NewFronts season. A week of programmatic pageantry where the data-driven video and streaming media ecosystem plays dress up in an attempt to recreate the glitz and glamour of the age-old TV upfronts. But across the Atlantic, the industry is hard at work dealing with the harsh realities of the online era as advertising becomes a means of “psychological warfare.”
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Facebook Advertisers Are Itching For Change As Bugs Infest Its Attribution Tech
Facebook marketer Rok Hladnik awoke last Thursday to discover that more than half of the 140 Facebook ad accounts he operates had been randomly turned off. The week before, the campaigns were overspending in the wee hours of the morning, when they should have been dormant. 2021 was the year of the cicada swarms in the US. But the bugs have come for the metaverse this year, apparently.
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Amazon Sales And Profits Slip, But Advertising Powers Along
Amazon disappointed investors with a $3.8 billion net loss in Q1 this year, its first quarterly loss in the past six years, plus online sales ticked down 1%. Amazon Advertising, however, did not disappoint. “Advertising revenue was up 25% year over year, and that’s a strong run rate compared to the revenue growth rate,” CFO Brian Olsavsky told investors.
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TikTok Adds Third-Party Cookies To Its Pixel – And Tries To Eat Facebook’s Lunch
TikTok has become accustomed to Facebook and Instagram stealing its cool new features and video formats. So, it’s a refreshing change to see TikTok pilfer one of Meta’s innovations. Starting Thursday, advertisers can add first-party cookies to the TikTok site conversion pixel. TikTok also instituted a straight-up requirement that advertisers collect and pass along third-party cookies.
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Stop & Shop Has Been In Ad ID Test-And-Learn Mode For Four Years – And It’s Only Getting Started
There’s no time to stop and shop when there’s so much to test and learn. Unless, of course, you’re Stop & Shop. The northeastern US grocery chain is four years into a program to expand its ecommerce marketing and first-party data capabilities. But it still feels like early innings, considering how much change has happened […]
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How Retail Media Ad Platforms Are Rewriting The Walled Garden Playbook
Walmart has The Trade Desk. Target’s Roundel uses Index Exchange as an SSP and taps Criteo and CitrusAds on the demand side. Quotient lost the grocery chain Albertson’s but signed exclusive contracts with AutoZone and Hy-Vee. CitrusAds picked up part of the Albertson’s ad tech business. The new varieties of retailer walled gardens are built on a foundation of open ad tech.
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Not To Be Left Out, Roku Announces Its Clean Room Service In Time For The Upfronts
Roku wants in on the clean room conversation. The streaming TV platform announced its proprietary clean room offering on Tuesday, with agency partners including Omnicom Media Group, Horizon Media and dentsu. The product was built on Snowflake’s media and ad tech cloud data infrastructure.
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Noodles & Company On Its Growing Appetite For Loyalty Program Data
Noodle & Company first started a rewards program in 2017, but for the first few years the goal was mainly to “surprise and delight” customers with random freebies or upgrades. In late 2019, it became a points-based program. The most significant aspect of the program’s transformation is mental, going from serving up random benefits to a system “based on personalized [and] targeted offers to individual guests.”
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Land O’Lakes Is Feeding Its Personalization Program With A CDP And Smarter Analytics
Roughly three years ago, dairy and food manufacturer Land O’Lakes tested a customer data platform (CDP) to help with site optimization. People who visited pages about horse management, for example, or how to set up a home chicken coop, were targeted with relevant ads. Land O’Lakes sells farm feed and equipment, not just products you […]
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksAdExchanger Talks: Retail Media Is Back And Ready For Business, With Kroger SVP Cara Pratt
Retail media is returning to the spotlight after its heyday of mascot-branded cereals in Saturday morning TV cartoons, newspaper circulars and cardboard cutouts in store aisles. This time, retail media is powered by first-party purchase data and loyalty programs. We speak to SVP of Kroger Precision Marketing Cara Pratt, an OG when it comes to OGs (online groceries, that is).
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Nextdoor Launches A Consolidated Ad Platform And Expands SMB Features
It’s your friendly neighborhood ad platform. At least, that’s the pitch by Nextdoor as its advertising business matures. Nextdoor launched a consolidated ad platform called Nextdoor Ads (if you can believe it), which brings self-service tech and new formats and features to its local and small business advertisers.
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AppLovin And The Trade Desk Sign Direct Buying Deal And Unified ID 2.0 Integration
AppLovin and The Trade Desk announced twin news items today. The mobile gaming and advertising giant launched an integration with Unified ID 2.0, and The Trade Desk buy directly from AppLovin for the first time. The Trade Desk has historically been a major demand partner for MoPub, said Meagan Martino, AppLovin head of demand for EMEA and the Americas, who came to AppLovin with the acquisition. “Getting The Trade Desk to migrate and transition to AppLovin was one of the top priorities for my team.”
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The W3C Is At A Crossroads For The Web And Itself, With MIT Exiting As Admin And Disarray On All Fronts
The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), the main technical standards developer of the internet, will lose longtime university partner MIT as administrator and US host organization at the end of this year. Many W3C members are advocating for a new organizational structure as a non-profit funded by members and board members – a familiar structure for industry orgs. But there is no immediate solution and MIT won’t renew its host contract at the end of the year. The clock is ticking.
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Instacart’s Ad Platform Hits Adolescence, With New Optimization And Bid Data Products
Two years after Instacart made its first major push into ad tech, the company is launching more products that follow the playbook written by other major online ad platforms. “We’re a maturing ad platform,” said Instacart VP of advertising product management Ali Miller. As Instacart itself learns over time what works and what doesn’t on its ad platform, it will turn those learnings into commercial products.
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A Bird’s Eye View Of The Commerce Agency Landscape
Consumer habits and changes among retailers themselves have reshaped the agency landscape around a new form of commerce media. The trend wasn’t as obvious a few years ago, when online retail media opportunity looked scattered with an emphasis on discounting: think cash-back apps and the heady days of Groupon sales, or CPGs on Amazon Fresh. Now, a brand that sells online faces a different landscape and an entirely different team of partners helping them.
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As Retailers Eye Cookieless Future, Google Intros New Shopper Marketing Tools
Google: Still trying to make shopping on Google happen. The search giant announced a new suite of shopper marketing tools on Monday. Google also that its Smart Shopping campaigns, which are campaigns connected to a merchant’s inventory catalogue, will be folded into its new Performance Max product by the end of the year.
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Window Shopping: How Retailers Are Rethinking Their Businesses For The Digital Age
Walmart uses its “growth algorithm” – adding high-margin advertising and its third-party marketplace businesses as it simultaneously invests in low-margin businesses (namely, groceries and ecommerce fulfillment). Macy’s is pursuing its Polaris plan, an overhaul built around its new customer lifetime value measurements. The mall-based fashion brand EXPRESS has an EXPRESSway Forward plan. Across categories and shopping channels, US retailers have reshaped their businesses.
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One Giant Leap For Cartkind: Instacart Takes its Ad Tech Off-Platform For The First Time
Instacart just took its first steps beyond owned-and-operated Instacart media with the launch of a new retail media offering that serves ads on grocers’ sites and apps. The new retail advertising product, called Carrot Ads, is part of a broader ecommerce offering Instacart introduced on Wednesday, which also includes Carrot Warehouses, a warehousing and fulfillment service, and an advertising analytics product dubbed Carrot Insights.
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TripleLift Snags 1plusX For $150 Million, Its First-Ever Acquisition
TripleLift, once a scrappy gen-two ad tech startup (though by now a grizzled programmatic veteran), announced its first-ever acquisition on Monday, spending $150 million for Swiss publisher data company 1plusX. The acquisition is meant to bolster TripleLift’s two-pronged focus on CTV and identity, TripleLift Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Ari Lewine told AdExchanger.
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OPINION: The Sell SiderIbotta CEO Bryan Leach On Transitioning From A Cash-Back App To Cash-Everywhere Retail Media
If you know the brand Ibotta, you’re likely thinking of the popular cash-back app. Users upload receipts of in-store purchases and redeem credit for products listed for promotion in the app. But while that business still exists – and still represents the majority of Ibotta’s revenue – the company is shifting from DTC app to B2B2C performance marketing network.
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The Trade Desk Adds Adobe’s CDP Email Data To Unified ID
The Trade Desk and Adobe Experience Cloud announced a partnership on Thursday to sync emails stored in the Adobe CDP product with The Trade Desk, which converts the emails into Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) IDs that can be traded programmatically. Advertisers and publishers have moved away from DMPs and other cookie-based advertising ID solutions in […]
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Google Analytics To Stop Logging IP Addresses And Sunset Old Versions In Privacy Standards Overhaul
Major changes are coming to Google Analytics as the company navigates higher consumer privacy standards and increasingly complex international privacy laws. The most consequential change: Google Analytics will no longer log or store IP address information.