Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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CPMs Take A Hit, But Programmatic Auctions Have Healthy ROAS – For Now
While the increased digital media supply caused by the pandemic has prompted CPMs to plummet – dropping 20% in March, according to ad analytics company Adomik – programmatic auctions are still healthy. Certainly bidding in March declined overall, said Francois de Laigue, Adomik’s VP of sales and strategic partnerships. The average dropped from 2.5 to […]
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksSocial Distancing With Friends: Skift CEO Rafat Ali
Travel is the backbone for many business categories, including entertainment, events, hospitality and food and dining. But that backbone is broken right now, and may never fully recover. Rafat Ali, founder and CEO of the travel industry publishing company Skift, has his finger on the pulse of the travel industry. It was three years after the 9/11 attacks […]
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FreeWheel Launches Unified Direct-Sold/Programmatic Product With NBCU And The Trade Desk
NBCUniversal opened more of its inventory to programmatic platforms on Monday, with a new product integration through FreeWheel and The Trade Desk. FreeWheel, a sister-company of Comcast’s NBCU, is coming out of beta with its “unified decisioning” platform, which operates an auction where programmatic demand is considered alongside direct-sold campaigns for OTT inventory and video […]
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OpenX Adds Insurance Line For DSP Payment Defaults
The sell-side ad tech company OpenX said in a note sent to clients Thursday it has added an insurance line to cover potential DSP payment defaults and warned publishers against working with supply chain intermediaries that won’t insure campaign spend. “Our strong advice to you is to only work with exchanges that can indemnify you […]
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Telemedicine Startup Maven Clinic’s Marketing Plan Shifts From B2B To B2C, Due To The Pandemic
Julie Binder left New York City last month for an Airbnb upstate, where she and her husband can get outside and wring excess energy from their two kids. But she doesn’t just have her own family to think about. Binder is VP of marketing for Maven Clinic, a telemedicine startup focused on pregnancy and women’s […]
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Amazon Removes Third-Party Vendors From Its Affiliate Program
Amazon has removed third-party vendors from its affiliate program. Starting at the beginning of this month, affiliate networks such as Skimlinks and Sovrn (which acquired VigLink) can no longer send traffic to Amazon and get a cut of transactions, according to sources at many affiliate networks and publishers. Removing third-party affiliate networks frees up significant […]
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksSocial Distancing With Friends: BuySellAds CEO Todd Garland
Todd Garland spent the past 12 years building BuySellAds into a programmatic mainstay, and a standout of the Boston ad tech scene. “The idea that you can wake up one day and wonder if it’s gone is terrifying,” he says. The questions of existential dread have mostly subsided, as people settle into their work-from-home routine. There are even […]
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Crisis Puts Amazon (And Ecommerce) In The Balance
Ecommerce is all about planning. It’s a carefully choreographed dance between manufacturing, warehousing and selling. But what happens when Amazon – and the world in general – has gone off the rails? It’s the nature of ecommerce and Amazon that tactics constantly change, said Sarah LaVallee, VP of client success at the ecommerce agency Channel […]
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Affiliate Marketing Is A Game Of Chutes And Ladders Right Now
Consumer buying habits are in flux. Need proof? Just look at the affiliate marketing category. Affiliate network Pepperjam is seeing “a dramatic shift” in how people shop,” said CEO Matt Gilbert. Between March 11 and March 16, just as the coronavirus crisis was really starting to crack wide open, Pepperjam’s sales volume, measured across about […]
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The Ad Industry Petitions Platforms For Payment Leniency As Cash Flow Dwindles
The ad tech industry is pressing Google, Facebook and Amazon to offer more flexible payment terms during the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus crisis. An industry petition on Change.org, whose author prefers to remain anonymous due to business conflicts, asks Facebook, Google and Amazon to offer more flexible payment terms during this crisis. The […]
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Google Tests Audience Buying In ADH, A Big Step From Analytics To Activation
Google’s Ads Data Hub (ADH) started as a pure analytics and measurement service. But Google has been testing audience activation with a beta program for the past six months, according to AdExchanger sources who are in the program. The beta program includes large brands and agencies, and is currently only open to select clients that […]
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Starting As CMO During The COVID-19 Pandemic
One thing Adam Singer learned when he was looking for a job over the past six months or so, was that Fortune 500 businesses aren’t equipped for remote workforce management. One CMO didn’t feel comfortable hiring someone in Austin, where Singer moved this year, because she’d never managed someone remotely before. A well-funded tech startup […]
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NCS: Toilet Paper Hoarding Increased Sales 845%
We’ve all heard the anecdotes about people hoarding fortresses of toilet paper. And you’ve probably seen the empty store shelves where home and cleaning supplies used to sit. Now the numbers are coming in that give shape to those trends. Sales of toilet paper were up 845% last week compared to the month prior, according […]
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The OOH Renaissance Was Here – And Then There Was Coronavirus
2020 was going to be a breakout year for out-of-home media. GroupM forecasted 8% growth in the OOH category this year – the fastest-growing (and only growing) traditional media channel. And digital signage had finally reached meaningful scale and been integrated into major DSPs. While it’s still too early for updated OOH projections, the spread […]
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EMarketer Lowers Global Ad Spend Forecast Due To Coronavirus – And It Won’t Be The Last Time
EMarketer lowered its 2020 global ad spend forecast on Thursday, revising estimates down from $712 billion to $691.7 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on media and commerce. That $20 billion global decline is actually an optimistic forecast, and the ad industry should expect more losses and another downward revision when eMarketer releases its […]
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VideoAmp Takes Over Conversion Logic, Last Of The Indie MTA Vendors
VideoAmp has acquired Conversion Logic, the multitouch attribution provider, the company said Tuesday. Conversion Logic’s chief client officer, JP Pereira, will also join VideoAmp as SVP of marketing science. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. And Pereira is one of only “a few key individuals” from Conversion Logic who will go to the video […]
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Unlike Other Marketing Clouds, Zeta Global Is Betting On Its DSP. Can It Pay Off?
Zeta Global, the cloud-based CRM and data services company, plans to break into the marketing cloud arena with a demand-side platform (DSP). “Every conversation starts with, ‘Zeta who?’” said co-founder and CEO David Steinberg. But Zeta has become a known quantity in ad tech. Over the past year, the company has emerged as an exit […]
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Coronavirus Stopped All Sports. Will it Crush Sports Marketing This Year?
American pro sports came to a screeching halt on Thursday, with the NBA, NHL and Major League Soccer each suspending season play, and the MLB pushing back spring training and opening day games. The ATP, the US pro tennis organization, cancelled all tournaments for the next six weeks. The cascade of postponements started Wednesday night, […]
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PODCAST: The Big StoryThe Big Story: The Ills Of The World, And Of The Internet
The Big Story this week (this month, rather) remains the impact of the Coronavirus on media, marketing and global economies. The team examines how the pandemic and ‘social distancing’ affects the advertising industry, which is notoriously built around personal relationships and networking. As Allison Schiff notes, many ad deals come about extemporaneously, whether it’s sitting […]
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How Equity Analysts Are Assessing COVID-19’s Impact On Media And Marketing Sector
Monday’s Coronavirus (COVID-19) related market crash was the worst in the United States and the United Kingdom since 2008. Given the spiraling situation, what will be the impact on the media and marketing sector? The performance of individual stocks and the guidance from equity analysts offer some early clues. Ad-based companies are often the first […]
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What Happens To The Bloomberg Ad Money Now?
Michael Bloomberg’s Democratic primary campaign is finished, but is the Bloomberg media machine exiting the race as well? There is only speculation about how and how much Bloomberg will invest to back Joe Biden, who he endorsed when he dropped out, or on liberal advocacy campaigns. He seems intent on remaining a force in the […]
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Marketers Struggle To Relearn The Former DoubleClick ID
Third-party cookies are going away and Google is restricting ID sharing. What does this mean for Google’s suite of advertising IDs and the advertisers and publishers that rely on them for monetization? It’s one of the most consequential questions for the world of online advertising, but nobody has a clear answer. Google operates two different […]
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OAREX: Ad Payments Have Stabilized, But Payment Gap Remains An Issue
Digital media payment issues have settled down from a year ago, when Sizmek went bankrupt with tens of millions of dollars owed to ad tech companies and publishers, but there are still troubling trends in the market, according to the OAREX Q4 2019 online advertising payments report released on Tuesday. The data for the report […]
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AdExchanger Politics: Super Tuesday Ad Strategies
You are reading AdExchanger Politics, our news roundup in which senior editor James Hercher tracks the latest developments in political advertising, augmenting our political marketing commentary and news coverage. Want it by email? Sign up here. Super Tuesday is the presidential primary’s most important day, with 14 states, a third of delegates up for grabs, and a […]
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As LinkedIn Allows Richer Use Of Audience Data, Madison Logic Taps In
The B2B advertising company Madison Logic launched an account-based marketing (ABM) integration with LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics API on Tuesday. The product connects LinkedIn data with campaign delivery and performance for a better understanding of B2B advertising at an account level. ABM is the B2B industry approach that focuses on specific job titles or account holders […]
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The Trade Desk Starts To Flex Its Muscles With DSP Scale And Media Deals
The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green painted a rosy picture for 2020, telling investors during the 2019 earnings report on Thursday that he’s never been so confident about the company’s growth prospects. The Trade Desk earned $215.9 million in Q4 2019 and $661.1 million for the full year, up 35% and 39%, respectively, from the […]
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OPINION: On TV & VideoCan Comcast’s Blockgraph Bring Data Matching And Crypto Tech To TV?
Comcast’s FreeWheel ad server business has been developing a blockchain-based data onboarding service called Blockgraph since December 2018. The system is finally ready for a broader push into the TV ad industry, said Blockgraph GM Jason Manningham. Last year, Blockgraph ran the first campaign where a marketer’s first-party CRM data was directly matched to a […]
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The Tool Brands Are Using To Get Directly Into An Online Retailer’s Cart
Although Amazon, Walmart and Target know which brands are sending them fruitful traffic, the brands themselves are often in the dark. Some of the top-spending brands don’t have meaningful dot-com sales of their own, and even when they direct traffic to retailers with an affiliate link, people don’t always convert immediately or on the same […]
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Comcast Doubles Down On Ad-Supported Streaming With Deal For Xumo
Comcast has acquired the OTT streaming service Xumo, the companies announced Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Xumo is best known for its free, ad-supported app on platforms like Roku and Apple TV. It licenses content and other networks to create a linear-like television experience. Xumo’s ad revenue is undisclosed, but it’s a […]
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Brand Velocity Partners Combines PE Investments With … An Ad Agency
Brand Velocity Partners (BVP), a private equity firm founded in 2019, is creating a new business model as both a marketing services provider and as an owner of small brands. BVP’s first deal was in January for Original Footwear, which makes gear for police departments and military groups. Last week, it acquired Magma Products, a […]