Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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How Valvoline Shifted Marketing Gears When It Became A Pure-Play Retail Brand
Believe it or not, car oil change service company Valvoline is in the midst of a fascinating retail marketing transformation.
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2025: The Year Google Lost In Court And Won Anyway
From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.
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Why 2025 Marked The End Of The Data Clean Room Era
A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.
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Lionsgate Enters The Ads Biz With An Exclusive Ad Server
The film and TV studio Lionsgate has chosen Comcast’s FreeWheel as its exclusive ad server to help manage and sell the growing volume of ad inventory Lionsgate creates with new FAST channels.
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A Co-Founder Of DraftKings Wants To Help Creators Monetize Content
One of the DraftKings founders now leads HardScope, parent of FaZe Clan, aiming to bring FaZe’s content and distribution magic to creators beyond gaming.
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Albertsons Launches New Off-Site Click-to-Cart Tech
The grocery chain Albertson’s is trying to reduce the time and number of clicks it takes to add an item to an online shopping cart. It’s new click-to-cart product should help.
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Why Cookware Brand Hexclad Produces All Of Its Own Content
An important part of developing the in-house creative group at HexClad is to prove the return on investment, according to Head of Content Matt Duckor.
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Why The Amazon Native AquaSonic Landed A Walmart Deal – And Never Was A Social Brand
People tend to think of digital-native product brands as a single bucket. But there’s a huge difference between companies that are social natives, for instance, rather than an Amazon-based brand.
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Shopify Launches A Product Network That Will Natively Integrate Items From Across Merchants
Shopify launched its latest advertising business line on Wednesday, called the Shopify Product Network.
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Criteo Lays Out Its AI Ambitions And How It Might Make Money From LLMs
Criteo recently debuted new AI tech and pilot programs to a group of reporters – including a backend shopper data partnership with an unnamed LLM.
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Google Ad Buyers Are (Still) Being Duped By Sophisticated Account Takeover Scams
Agency buyers are facing a new wave of Google account hijackings that steal funds and lock out admins for weeks or even months.
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How America’s Biggest Retailers Are Rethinking Their Businesses And Their Stores
America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.
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Broadsign Acquires Place Exchange As The DOOH Category Hits Its Stride
On Tuesday, digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad tech startup Place Exchange was acquired by Broadsign, another out-of-home SSP.
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Meta’s Ad Platform Is Going Haywire In Time For The Holidays (Again)
For the uninitiated, “Glitchmas” is our name for what’s become an annual tradition when, from between roughly late October through November, Meta’s ad platform just seems to go bonkers.
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Closing Arguments Are Done In The US v. Google Ad Tech Case
The publisher-focused DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial is finished. A judge will now decide the fate of Google’s sell-side ad tech business.
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Wall Street Wants To Know What The Programmatic Drama Is About
Competitive tensions and ad tech drama have flared all year. And this drama has rippled out into the investor circle, as evident from a slew of recent ad tech company earnings reports.
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Google Rolls Out Chatbot Agents For Marketers
Google on Wednesday announced the full availability of its new agentic AI tools, called Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor.
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Amazon Ads Is All In On Simplicity
“We just constantly hear how complex it is right now,” Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads VP of engineering, science and product, tells AdExchanger. “So that’s really where we we’ve anchored a lot on hearing their feedback, [and] figuring out how we can drive even more simplicity.”
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Q3: The Trade Desk Delivers On Financials, But Is Its Vision Fact Or Fantasy?
The Trade Desk posted solid Q3 results on Thursday, with $739 million in revenue, up 18% year over year. But the main narrative for TTD this year is less about the numbers and more about optics and competitive dynamics.
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Understanding The Evolutionary Prowess Of The Web’s Top Supplement Brand
“You’ve got to really evaluate your [media] mix almost every day, but particularly when you’re on shelves and on Amazon,” AG1 CMO Paulie Dery, who joined in August 2024, told AdExchanger.
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksThe Legal Analyst In Google's Corner
Vidushi Dyall went from tracking cybercriminals at the Manhattan DA’s office to dissecting online ad empires. In this episode, she breaks down the DOJ’s antitrust battles with Google – and why she sometimes finds herself rooting for the so‑called evil empire.
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The DOJ And Google Sharpen Their Remedy Proposals As The Two Sides Prepare For Closing Arguments
The phrase “caution is key” has become a totem of the new age in US antitrust regulation. It was cited this week by both the DOJ and Google in support of opposing views on a possible divestiture of Google’s sell-side ad exchange.
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The Trade Desk And PubMatic Are Done Pretending Deal IDs Work
The Trade Desk and PubMatic announced a new API-based integration for managing deal ID campaigns built atop TTD’s Price Discovery and Provisioning (PDP) API, which was announced earlier this year.
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Uber Launches A Platform-Specific Attention Metric With Adelaide And Kantar
Uber Advertising, in partnership with Adelaide and Kantar, launched a first-of-its-type custom attention metric score for its platform advertisers.
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Google Shakes Off Its Troubles And Outperforms On Revenue Yet Again
Alphabet reported on Wednesday that its total Q3 revenue was $102.3 billion, up 16% year over year, while net profit increased by a third to $35 billion.
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Criteo And The Programmatic Plug-In Problem
AI agents have infiltrated retail media. At least, that’s how it felt to big Wall Street advertising and tech investors, who brought a sense of existential dread to Criteo’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday.
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Prebid.org Is At A Crossroads, And Must Now Decide Whose Interests It Serves
Prebid’s future is up for grabs as the open-source project grows apart from the IAB Tech Lab, the industry’s self-appointed standards authority.
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PayPal Finds A New Transaction Pool With Retail Media
PayPal Ads is continuing its new product announcement whirlwind with news that it’s partnering with the commerce media startup Rokt to bring non-endemic advertisers to some PayPal and Venmo post-payment pages.
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How Google Stands In The DOJ’s Ad Tech Antitrust Suit, According To Those Who Tracked The Trial
The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.
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How The Beauty Brand Milani Bridges Online Beauty Trends And Mass-Market Retail
AdExchanger caught up Milani CMO Jeremy Lowenstein about how the beauty brand fits into mass-market retail, in contrast to DTC and social-based brands.