Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
-
Shopify Pushes Further Into Social Channels, As The Hunt For Online Customers Intensifies
The first era of online shopping was independent merchants setting up their own sites. And the second era simply belonged to Amazon. But now we’re in a third era, which could be known as the social commerce age. Put differently: the age of Shopify. The ecommerce tech company announced an integration with TikTok on Tuesday, […]
-
Ad Tech Turns To Social Creative To Bring Life Back To Banner Units
Remember the last time a banner ad caught your eye? Same. But one way that advertisers have overcome the low response rates of standard display ad units is to recreate social media content as creative. It’s not a crowded category, notably featuring the programmatic startup Spaceback and Nova, the buy-side business connected to Polar. But […]
-
PODCAST: The Big StoryThe Big Story: TV Drama And Business Data
It must be sweeps week, because TV drama is through the roof. Nielsen lost its Media Ratings Council accreditation for National TV Ratings. The TV currency company calls the loss of the MRC seal of approval a hiatus while it focuses instead on Nielsen ONE, the cross-channel metric expected to launch late next year. Broadcasters […]
-
A US Judge Dismisses First-Ever GDPR Suit In American Court, Brought Against PubMatic
The United States Northern District Court of California dismissed a case earlier this week brought by Hugo Elliott, a citizen of the UK who lives in England, against the American ad tech company PubMatic. The case was dismissed out of hand, so it hardly seems a notable decision. Except that it would have been the […]
-
Earnings Roundup: How Ad Tech And Digital Giants Are Responding To ID Losses
The past few months have been wild for online advertising. Apple has implemented its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, and Google announced it would delay the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome. A tumultuous ride to be sure. What will be the real impact of these moves on ad tech? AdExchanger examined the Q2 earnings reports of […]
-
The Retail Sell-Sider: A Q&A With 84.51°’s Michael Schuh
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s Q&A is with Michael Schuh, VP of media strategy Kroger Precision Marketing’s 84.51°. Kroger, the largest grocery chain in the United States, is capitalizing on major swings in shopping patterns since the COVID-19 pandemic as it expands its retail […]
-
How Church & Dwight’s Orajel Brand Is Reaching Parents Via Their Kids’ YouTube Show
The CPG holding company Church & Dwight started 2021 looking for a new kind of licensing partner for its Orajel kids’ toothbrush and toothpaste product lines. “We wanted to complement our traditional characters from shows and movies with more social influencing brands, say, or Netflix-type brands and characters,” said Kevin Sherlock, C&D’s VP of marketing […]
-
Zeta Global Hones Its Martech Pitch To Wall Street
Zeta Global has had a rocky first two months as a public company. Its stock is down by a little more than a third since IPOing on the New York Stock Exchange in June. But the whims of Wall Street investors don’t always align with the true value of a business. Zeta CEO David Steinberg […]
-
Sports Streamers Bet Picture-in-Picture Ads Can Bring Revenue Without An Ad Break
Streaming networks and programmers are eager to secure more ad inventory as CTV demand surges. But they’re hesitant to include more ad breaks, since that means some users will change channels. Enter the picture-in-picture (PIP) ad. Major broadcasters with sports rights deals have already used this strategy for years, but the streaming ad platform Transmit […]
-
The World’s Largest Ad Blocker Launches A DSP
The German ad-blocker company eyeo will be making more ad revenue than ever after launching a demand-side platform called Trestle on Wednesday. Eyeo operates the ad blocker Adblock Plus (ABP), which can be downloaded as a browser plug-in or a mobile browser app, and created the Acceptable Ads program, a committee of ad blockers (ABP […]
-
CPG Earnings Show Data-Infused Brands Who Are Upping Their Media Spending
The pandemic upended consumer buying habits – and the brands behind these products are not going back to their old ways. Many of the world’s largest food and beverage brands reported quarterly earnings in the past two weeks, and two important themes running throughout those calls was the sharp increase in advertising spend this year […]
-
The Trade Desk Doubles Revenue (In A Weird Year) And Bets The Farm On CTV
The Trade Desk earned $280 million in Q2 2021, doubling its total from the same time last year, the company reported in quarterly earnings on Monday. Its profitability jumped from $25 million a year ago to almost $48 million. The Trade Desk’s crazy year-over-year growth comes with a familiar asterisk during this earnings period: Q2 […]
-
Academic Study Shows European Startup Investments Diminished In The Wake Of GDPR
Investment in European startups has dropped by 36% compared to American or other global startups since the rollout of GDPR. At least, that’s what the data shows in a report published in the academic journal Marketing Science this month. The new report, titled “The Short-Run Effects of the General Data Protection Regulation on Technology Venture […]
-
Can These Search Engines Do The Impossible – Peel Market Share From Google?
After more than a decade of relative stasis in the search engine market – which is to say, Google cementing its dominance at every step – is there an opportunity for Google alternatives to gain share? Some big-name players in the space think so. In June, there was the public launch of Neeva, an ad-free […]
-
Criteo Sees Ad Revenue Rebound, And Reshapes Its Pitch As A DSP And SSP Hybrid
Criteo reported revenues of $551 million in Q2 2021, up 26% from the same period last year, while its profitability increased from $6 million to $15 million. The year-over-year metric is inflated this quarter for practically all advertising companies, because Q2 last year held the worst of the pullback on marketing during the pandemic. And […]
-
How Driscoll’s Stays Sweet As Groceries And Ad Dollars Move Online
Driscoll’s, the century-old fresh fruit company, is no stranger to change. But the transition to online ordering is a tricky one for the brand. Driscoll’s works with geneticists and fruit growers to hone the tastiest berry varieties, and its sales and marketing arm brings the fruit to market. But its marketing and seed-editing machine is […]
-
Amazon Advertising Revenue Eclipses $7B – And Is Still Picking Up Speed
Amazon doesn’t disclose advertising revenues in its quarterly earnings reports. It bundles the ad group into an “Other” category, which consists of advertising and analytics services. But even without a specific number, it’s clear that Amazon’s advertising business is both massive and growing fast. Amazon’s Other category earned more than $7.9 billion in Q2, up […]
-
Conviva Leaps From Video Analytics To Bidstream Data With First Ad Tech Partnership
The streaming analytics company Conviva released its first ad tech product, a contextual data integration with The Trade Desk, on Thursday. Conviva places a sensor in publishers and programmers’ videos or streaming content. The sensor isn’t a third-party data collector like a cookie or SDK. It’s the tool the publishers place in their video players […]
-
Google Cruises On Digital Ad Resurgence And Retail Client Gains
Alphabet reported total revenue of almost $61.9 billion in Q2 2021, a 62% year-over-year increase. The company’s Q2 profit jumped from $7 billion in 2020 to $18.5 billion this year. The eye-popping growth rate is misleading. Q2 last year was a disaster; The first time Alphabet (or Google before that) ever reported a yearly revenue […]
-
Sponsored Product Ads Have Taken Over Amazon Search – And They Won’t Stop There
More and more ecommerce sales are preceded by paid product listings. The advance of ecommerce advertising in the past year and a half can be seen in the revenue growth in Amazon earnings reports and the promulgation of retail media platforms such as Walmart Connect, Target’s Roundel and Google Shopping. Marketers, too, are getting used […]
-
Taboola Targets Ecommerce And Affiliate With $800M Deal For Connexity
Taboola has had a busy month. Three weeks after the company began trading on the Nasdaq, it acquired the commerce-based ad tech company Connexity for $800 million on Friday. Connexity is a logical and alluring takeover target. Taboola places recommendation boxes on publisher sites to connect visitors with advertisers and other publishers. Connexity is also […]
-
Ad Agency Holding Companies Celebrate Return Of Ad Revenue And Regained Confidence
A year ago, all the major ad agency holding companies were digging themselves out of a deep hole, as investors hedged their bets on the return of ad budgets and even the survival of traditional agencies. Fast forward one year – and what a difference that year has made. Omnicom lost more than a third […]
-
Advertiser Perceptions Cookieless Future Report Captures A “Snapshot” Of Industry Evolution
Just before Google Chrome postponed its phaseout of third-party cookies until late 2023, publishers and advertisers were both optimistic and unprepared, according to Advertiser Perceptions’ latest Cookieless Future Report. Based on surveys and interviews taken in April and May of this year, the report practically comes from a different age – but the data is […]
-
Anthony Katsur On Leading The IAB Tech Lab – One Of The Toughest Gigs In Ad Tech
Anthony Katsur comes brandishing a fitting resume for IAB Tech Lab CEO. He held senior leadership roles at DoubleClick, MediaMath, Rubicon Project, Sonobi and Nexstar, and he’s familiar with the messy intersection where IAB rules and business frameworks meet on-the-ground technology. Katsur faces a tough job that would challenge even an experienced leader when he […]
-
Cloud Data Company Snowflake Gives Ad Tech A Boost By Joining UID2
The Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), the programmatic industry’s open web advertising identifier, has steadily added to its partnership roster of brands, agencies, ad tech vendors and publishers in the past couple years, becoming the most-used ID aside from walled garden platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon. But UID2’s newest addition is perhaps its most interesting […]
-
Adelaide Raises $2 Million From Angel Backers To Develop Its Attention-Based Ad Metric
The online ad tech startup Adelaide raised $2 million its first investment round from a crew of industry angel investors to build out its attention-based advertising currency, the Attention Unit [AU], as an alternative to campaigns determined primarily by viewability. Adelaide’s AU factors in the context of the ad placement and the likelihood that the […]
-
OPINION: The Sell SiderRevenueCat’s Barnard On The Simmering Apple-Developer Feud
“The Sell Sider” is a column written from the perspective of the sell side of the digital media community. App creator-turned-developer advocate David Barnard’s career trajectory is one typical of Apple’s App Store, but also exceptional to the App Store. A recording engineer with no software expertise, Barnard built a profitable stable of mobile apps, […]
-
Publicis Groupe Buys Retail Media Platform To Hook Its Identity Into Epsilon
Publicis Groupe will acquire CitrusAd, an Australian retail media company, and place it within the Epsilon data business, the company announced on Thursday. CitrusAd’s direct connections to retailers – and the first-party data partnerships that come along with those connections – were a draw. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. CitrusAd is a competitor […]
-
MGI’s Verve Group Adds Smaato For $170M, Scales Up For Post-Consolidation Ad Tech
Verve Group, the mobile ad tech unit of the gaming publisher Media and Games Invest (MGI), acquired the mobile gaming ad tech company Smaato on Tuesday for almost $170 million (140 million Euros). MGI Group, which trades on the Frankfurt stock exchange and a Stockholm-based Nasdaq exchange, updated its financial forecast after the Smaato deal […]
-
How Ecommerce Is Bringing Online Advertising Into Supply Chain And Product Decisions
Ecommerce and retail marketers can no longer keep their eyes squarely focused on media metrics like ROAS. Their world has just gotten bigger. In addition to the media and advertising supply chain, they must consider product development and manufacturing along with shipping and fulfillment. Amazon provides sellers the metrics ACOS (Advertising as a Cost of […]