Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Mozilla And Meta Submit (Yet Another) Privacy Ad Tech Proposal In New W3C Group
The first meeting of the W3C Private Advertising Technology Group (PATCG) took place this week, bringing together the biggest American browser and tech companies. One important new item on the agenda is called Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), a joint proposal by Mozilla and Meta engineers. If adopted, it would improve cross-device or cross-browser attribution tracking without tripping any of Apple or browser-based privacy policies. That’s a big “if” though. And, even optimistically, could take years to ship.
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The Big Story: There’s Nothing But Green Pasture For Video Game Ads … For SSPs, Not So Much
Activision-Blizzard, ZeniMax Media, Bungie, Zynga, MoPub, Adjust, Glu Mobile: Each multi-billion acquisition happened in the past year, as creative game developers and the ad tech businesses that monetize their apps come together. Plus: What’s new in the SSP market? Google’s iron grip on the category is strong as ever, but there’s room for growth.
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LiveRamp Sets A Course To Cruise On Data Clean Room And Retail Media Tailwinds
LiveRamp earned a total of $141 million in Q4 2021, up 17% from the same period in 2020, with the retail category powering the company’s performance during the year. But LiveRamp isn’t turning a profit. The company reported gross profit of $102 million in 2021, but gross profit comes before costs and expenses, which mean […]
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The App Store Is ‘An Economic Miracle’ – But For Apple, Not Developers
Apple and third-party developers have grown so far apart, it’s difficult to tell when they’re talking about the same mobile app ecosystem. In 2021, Apple’s Services business earned $72 billion, making it big enough to be a Fortune 50 company in its own right, said Apple CFO Luca Maestri on the company earnings call.
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Amazon Breaks Out Advertising Services (At Last) – On A $31 Billion Run Rate
Advertising has finally made it. Out of the Amazon “Other” category, that is. And it was about time, considering Amazon’s ad business earned $31.2 billion in 2021, the company reported during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday.
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The TCF – IAB Europe’s GDPR Workaround – Got Shot Down By Belgium’s DPA, With Six Months To Fix It
The programmatic industry just took the toughest body blow it’s felt since the GDPR became law in 2018. The Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) announced on Wednesday that IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the industry solution for conveying consent data in the programmatic auction, is illegal in its current form. The DPA also fined IAB Europe $280,000 and ordered the trade organization to appoint a data protection officer (which could end up costing more than the fine).
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Alphabet Smashes Ad Revenue Record On The Strength Of Commerce, Cloud And CTV
Five years ago, before GDPR, before TikTok was TikTok and before Google was Alphabet, Google reported Q4 2016 earnings of $26 billion. On Tuesday, the company reported $75.3 billion in total Q4 2021 revenues.
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Why B2B Monday.com Is Buying A Super Bowl Ad (And How It’s Measuring The Impact)
The Monday after the Super Bowl is a big day for marketers, as people kick around their favorite ads from the game. This year, the Monday after will be especially important for monday.com, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based workforce app development platform. The B2B company bought a Super Bowl sponsorship in a space more often associated […]
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Instacart Adds Display Ad Units As It Boosts Its Programmatic Supply
Advertising can be cheap. But acquiring new users is almost always expensive. Which is why the Instacart ads team is focused on creating new advertising opportunities to reach the customers it already has. On Wednesday, the company introduced its first display ad units, as well as branded pages that serve as the hub for CPG […]
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Why LiveRamp Is Banking On Google Cloud For Its Next Growth Spurt
Ad tech companies once gained market share through optimization bake-offs, in agency conference rooms and on the beaches of Cannes. Now, wins come from the cloud. “The cloud and first-party data are exploding right now,” said James Arra, LiveRamp’s head of cloud partnerships. That’s why LiveRamp has forged a strategic relationship with Google Cloud Platform […]
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The DOJ And FTC’s New Antitrust Heads Plan To Overhaul M&A Review (Someday)
The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced a joint effort to rewrite US antitrust law for handling mergers and acquisitions. Don’t hold your breath, though The two agencies are opening a 60-day public comment period for individuals, companies and organizations to submit concerns about M&A and antitrust regulation. That material will […]
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The Future Of Retail Media Platforms Will Split From Walled Gardens, Says IRI’s Pelino
The retail media craze kicked into hyperdrive in the past year. Because of the pandemic, the number of people ordering groceries online for the first time skyrocketed, but the trend was already underway. The rush of retailers into the programmatic platform business meant they tended to follow the playbook laid out by the by the […]
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T-Mobile Acquires Octopus Interactive And Says It’s Still Committed To Ad Tech
It’s become a familiar tale over the years: a major telco makes a big investment in ad tech followed by buyer’s remorse. AT&T and Verizon offloaded their respective ad tech stacks, Singtel is reportedly looking to divest Amobee and Telenor sold Tapad. But T-Mobile is defying the trend. On Monday, T-Mobile Marketing Solutions, its ad […]
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Here’s How Instacart Plans To Become A Major Ad Platform
Instacart is at the forefront of a movement among data-driven companies over the past two years to launch ancillary ad platform businesses, including direct competitors like GoPuff, partner competitors like Kroger and unrelated product or payment companies. The sailing hasn’t always been smooth, but the company is committed to building a major ad tech business.
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Big News In Ad Fraud Land, As Human Raises $100 Million And IAS Makes Another Acquisition
2021 was a scorching year for the ad fraud and verification category – and 2022 is keeping up the pace. Last year, both Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify IPO’d and went on to acquire multiple startups apiece off the back of their multibillion-dollar market caps. Human, formerly White Ops, meanwhile, was acquired by three investment […]
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Where Big Tech Advertising Businesses Stand At The End Of A Crazy 2021
The biggest US tech companies – Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – are often lumped together. But their ad platform businesses have distinct dynamics, and each was affected by the trials and tribulations of 2021 in very different ways. Although Apple’s privacy changes took a knife to Facebook and a hammer to Google, for example, […]
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How M&A Waves Reshaped Programmatic Media In 2021
The past year may have seemed like 2020 redux. But in programmatic media, 2021 has brought a world of change. Ad tech and mobile marketing companies flooded the stock exchange, and already-public companies, including Magnite, Digital Turbine and Media and Games Invest (MGI), which owns the ad tech business Verve Group, have become active consolidators. […]
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Campbell Soup’s New Sales Transformation VP On Testing Instacart’s Free Sample Ad Pilot
When customers walk down a grocery aisle from Thanksgiving through the December holidays, they’re surrounded by Campbell’s products: soup cans and broth accompanied by in-store displays and sales tags. When walking the grocery aisle means breezing a mobile feed of online grocery items and 10-foot-long shelves are squashed into a phone screen, how does a […]
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Xandr, Formerly AppNexus, Is Now Formerly AT&T, After Its Acquisition By Microsoft
AT&T has sold its ad tech business Xandr to Microsoft. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition marks the end of a painful and unsuccessful run for the one-time leader of the programmatic industry, AppNexus, which was rebranded Xandr but never found a home within the AT&T organization. Former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson […]
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The China-Based, Amazon-Based Brand Giant Anker Has Big Plans For Ad Tech Services
The past year has seen a huge influx of consumer brands launching their own advertising businesses. Buy-now-pay-later service providers, ride-share companies Uber and Lyft and food and grocery delivery apps have all recently launched search ads and programmatic sales or data services. The publicly traded multilevel marketing skincare product brand Nu Skin bought an ad […]
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OPINION: On TV & VideoComcast’s Forecast Labs Plots A New Course With Its Approach To VC Investing
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. There’s nothing new about a tech-and-media giant like Comcast creating a venture capital arm. But Forecast Labs, a unit of Comcast Ventures, is putting a new spin on VC investments by leveraging unique access to Comcast inventory and media […]
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OPINION: The Sell SiderThe Sports Marketing Institution Learfield Has Big Plans For College Athletes (Now That They Can Make Money)
Jennifer Davis was named CMO of Learfield, a college sports sponsorship and media company, in March of this year. In June, the Supreme Court upended the world of college sports and marketing by handing down a decision that guarantees college athletes the right to accept sponsorship and endorsement deals – which formerly would have had […]
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Retailers Enter This Year’s Holiday Season With Important Open-Ended Marketing Questions
Retailers and big retail brands typically embark on Q4 with their plan firmly in place. Pricing and promotions, inventory deliveries and expected sales are all known factors. Companies test, learn and implement during the first nine months of the year and by the holidays they should be riding on rails. And tech providers oblige. The […]
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Innovid CEO Zvika Netter On The Company’s IPO And Its Plan To Win CTV Ad Serving
Innovid is a rare breed of data-driven ad tech company. It’s an internet-based tech startup founded in 2007 that focused from day one on … old-school television. Fast forward 15 years to this Wednesday, and Innovid is going public under the ticker $CTV. Innovid is the latest in a troop of ad tech players to […]
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How Aerospike Built A Business To Serve The Data-Obsessed Ad Tech Category
As the ad tech industry matures, vendor types historically focused on other markets are expanding to meet its needs. Media and advertising, for example, is now Snowflake’s biggest business vertical, and payment solutions provider FastPay is helping publishers and ad tech companies manage reconciliation and accounting gaps between when ad campaigns are served and advertisers […]
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Hunger For New Subscribers Is Driving Down Prices As Brands Discard Acquisition Cost Models
The subscription business has never been easy. But this is perhaps the toughest season ever for subscription-based companies. On the one hand, physical product shortages and ecommerce delivery struggles make digital subscription deals more compelling. Consumer products like Masterclass, Peloton and Audible all sell subscriptions. But those same businesses are among the most keenly affected […]
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Nielsen Fires Off Dual Lawsuits Against Panel Measurement Startups TVision And HyphaMetrics
Nielsen took some kicks while it was down this year, delivered courtesy of rivals happy to capitalize on its MRC dis-accreditation and soured relationships with broadcasters. But big companies can take a few kicks, and still throw a few punches of their own. Nielsen is suing TVision and HyphaMetrics, two panel-based TV measurement startups, for […]
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Warner Music Launches WMX, Its First-Party Media Platform Play
If you’ve heard enough about publishers launching their own first-party media platforms … stop reading. And maybe take a vacation for the next year or two. Warner Music Group (WMG) is the latest to throw its hat in the ring, with the launch on Thursday of a rebranded agency and ad tech business geared specifically […]
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Identity Resolution Startup MediaWallah Raises $2.3 Million As The Spaces Catches Fire
The identity data market is heating up as companies collect more first-party data and marketers do their damnedest to maintain addressable advertising without cookies or mobile ad IDs. The category already includes the incumbent LiveRamp, major agency holding companies – Dentsu’s Merkle, IPG and Acxiom and Publicis plus Epsilon – and startups, such as Zeotap […]
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Conagra Data Scientist Brian Archey On Why Retail Data Should Be Bigger Than Retail Media
The retail data revolution is constrained by its laser-focus on advertising, if you ask Brian Archey, Conagra Brand’s sr. director of data science and analytics. Clean room data environments are the playgrounds of digital marketers, who use them for audience extension and analytics. But these cloud-based services hold more promise as business intelligence tools, Archey […]