Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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MathCapital-Backed Tech Startup Octane11 Eyes Programmatic B2B
The B2B marketing platform Octane11, the first company incubated by MathCapital, a venture fund backed by MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki and ad tech vet Eric Franchi, launched on Thursday. Dan Rosenberg, Octane11 founder and CEO, developed strong feelings about B2B mar tech vendors and where there were unmet needs in the market from his time […]
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Nestlé Launches Internal Programmatic Unit To Scour Digital Media Deals
Nestlé has launched a team of media and tech experts to improve its programmatic supply and analytics. The new hybrid unit, called the Global Digital Media Center of Competencies (DCoC), consists of internal media talent and executives from Nestlé’s holding company vendors, WPP, Publicis, IPG and Dentsu. The team focuses on six core competencies: supply […]
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Voters Will See Fewer Political Ads This Year – Thanks To OTT Targeting
People who live in cities like Boston or Chicago will probably see fewer campaign ads for the 2020 election compared to 2016. They can thank the rise of data-driven advertising for that small respite, as campaign ads shift from broad TV markets to targeted OTT and streaming video. Presidential candidates have historically inundated Boston and […]
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How This Season’s Late Thanksgiving Impacts Retail Advertising
Retail and ecommerce technology companies are forecasting a strong holiday shopping season, except for one problem: the late Thanksgiving this year means there’s one fewer week in the prime shopping period between Black Friday and Christmas. But does it matter if there are fewer days for shopping sprees this year? On the one hand, US […]
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Why CTV Is The Trade Desk’s Biggest Focus Of 2020
The Trade Desk brought in $164 million in Q3 revenue, up 38% from Q3 2018, according to its earnings report Thursday. The company’s profitability ticked down from $20.3 million to $19.4 million in the quarter because of large investments in areas like connected TV (CTV) that will maximize profitability over the long term, The Trade […]
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Nielsen To Divide Into Two Companies, Splitting Commerce Data From Media Ratings
Nielsen will split into two separate public companies, breaking apart its Watch media measurement and metrics business from Connect, which provides market share analytics and attribution in the CPG and retail category. The decision, announced during the company’s Q3 earnings report Thursday, comes after a yearlong strategic review, where Nielsen considered sales offers or other […]
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Comscore Moves Into Next Phase Of Turnaround With New CEO Bill Livek
Comscore named board member and former Rentrak CEO Bill Livek as its CEO, replacing interim chief Dale Fuller, the company announced Tuesday in its quarterly earnings report. Comscore earned $94.3 million in Q3, an 8% decline from the same period last year. Revenue was also down sequentially, after posting $96.9 million in Q2, which was […]
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Senators To Platforms: Hand Over The Algo; DoubleClick Vet Brad Bender Transfers To Google News
Monday’s Links: Algo Secrets A bipartisan group of senators filed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act on Thursday, a bill that would require large internet and search providers (those with more than 1 million users, at least $50 million in revenue and 500 employees) to disclose how and why users see certain personalized content, as well […]
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If Facebook Blocks Political Ads, Democrats Would Suffer
Facebook’s controversy over its decision to allow politicians (but only politicians) to promote lies in ads has led to Twitter saying it would forbid political ads and Scott Galloway, a prescient tech industry analyst, predicting Facebook would ban political ads by Thanksgiving. Yet, if such a ban materialized, Democrats would feel the brunt of it. […]
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Will AT&T's HBO Max Be Blocked By Rivals?; Google Sues Over Antitrust Probe
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Distribution Dilemma AT&T is leaning into its 34 million HBO subscribers to drive sign-ups for its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. But it may face roadblocks in working with competitive cable providers on distribution, Digiday reports. AT&T has yet to sign on any distribution […]
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Criteo Names Megan Clarken As New CEO To Lead A Turnaround Effort
Megan Clarken, previously Nielsen’s chief commercial officer, will take over as Criteo CEO in November, the company said Wednesday. Clarken will continue Criteo’s transformation program, which began last year when founder JB Rudelle returned as chief executive in April 2018. Her 15 years at Nielsen have given her strong visibility and esteem in the ad […]
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Google Profits Dip, But The Cash Machine Is Still Roaring Along
Alphabet continued its long run of revenue growth, earning $40.5 billion in Q3, up from $33.7 billion in the same period last year. But its profitability dropped by almost a quarter to $7.1 billion as the company’s expenses increased, according to its quarterly report. The biggest cost center is headcount growth. The company has added […]
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Ad Tech M&A Is On The Upswing In 2019 As TV And PE Lead Consolidation
Advertising technology acquisitions are back in vogue. There were 86 ad tech deals during the first three quarters of 2019, almost double the M&A activity last year, according to a report published Monday by Results International Group, an investment advisory firm. Results International typically doesn’t break out ad tech for its overall marketing technology and […]
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Amazon’s Ad Revenue Grows More Than 45%, But Company Profitability Dips
Amazon stock dropped after the company reported a profitability decline in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday, with net income dropping from $2.9 billion in Q3 2018 to $2.1 billion this year. Amazon’s profitability slowed in the previous quarter as well, following a strong growth streak going back almost two years. And again Amazon executives […]
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Tech Service Provider Inmar Steps Into Programmatic With OwnerIQ Acquisition
Inmar, a tech and data services company, acquired the ad tech startup OwnerIQ on Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. OwnerIQ is best-known for its second-party data exchange, where retailers can enable brands carried in stores to promote deals to known shoppers. The company also operates a DSP, which will help expand Inmar’s […]
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Snap’s Revenue And DAUs Show Healthy Growth, But Ad Rates Are Stuck In Neutral
Snap outpaced estimates for its quarterly earnings released Tuesday, bringing in $446 million, a 50% jump compared to last year. But the company has a long way to go before it’s in the black. Snap’s net losses in Q3 were $227 million, though that’s a $98 million improvement from Q3 2018. Snapchat’s daily active users […]
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Beeswax’s Ari Paparo On The Next Stage Of The DSP Market
Consolidation is the name of the game in the demand-side platform (DSP) industry. Google, Amazon and The Trade Desk have grown relentlessly. And DSP rivals such as Zeta Global, Adobe and SingTel’s Amobee have hoovered up market share with acquisitions of small, unprofitable DSP businesses. But don’t count out the independent DSP category, said Ari […]
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Xandr Buys Linear SSP Clypd, Extending Broadcast Reach Beyond AT&T
Xandr on Friday acquired the linear TV supply-side platform Clypd, its second acquisition since AT&T bought AppNexus and launched the data-driven advertising group last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clypd had raised about $31 million since it was founded in 2012, and the German broadcaster RTL Group is a lead investor. Even […]
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SpotX’s Neal Richter Named IAB Tech Lab Chairman
Neal Richter, has been elected chairman of the IAB Tech Lab, the industry group said Thursday. Richter has been a leader within the Tech Lab for years, helping develop IAB openRTB specs since their first iteration, and helming recent initiatives like Ads.txt and Sellers.json. It’s been a productive year for Richter, since he took on […]
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Facebook And Ad Platforms Reckon With Lying In Political Ads
Lying in digital advertisements has become a flashpoint in US politics this year. A running dispute between Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign and Facebook ratcheted up this weekend, after the Massachusetts senator posted an ad on the social platform featuring a lie that Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Donald Trump for reelection. “You’re probably […]
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Kibo Buys Monetate In Its Vista-Backed Bid To Be The Next Ecom Cloud
The ecommerce technology company Kibo is acquiring Monetate, a brand personalization and content optimization startup, the company announced on Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Monetate had raised $46 million since 2008. Kibo was launched in 2016 when Vista Equity Partners, a leading mar tech private equity fund, bought and consolidated three […]
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OPINION: On TV & VideoDataxu’s Mike Baker: Scaling A DSP In A New World Dominated By TV
The programmatic ecosystem’s maturation into the television industry happened slowly before speeding up rapidly. Dataxu is a fitting example of the trend. The longstanding demand-side platform (DSP) has reshaped its business and client mix in the past two years. Once a pure-play DSP, dataxu now has supply-side deals that put it in the tech stacks […]
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Hulu Moves To First-Price Auctions For Its OTT Inventory
Hulu will switch to a first-price auction for its programmatic private marketplace next week. The streaming service told advertisers and tech partners of the shift in an email sent on Monday. All the DSP partners in Hulu’s invite-only private marketplace will be certified to bid under the new auction terms. Not all of Hulu’s inventory […]
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Google Ad Frequency Feature Shows The New Reality Of Browser Tracking
Google will roll out a feature for its Display & Video 360 (DV360) DSP over the next few weeks that will allow marketers to control ad frequency even when third-party cookies aren’t available. In a blog post published Tuesday, ads privacy product manager Rahul Srinivasan described how this new frequency-capping tool will look at traffic […]
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OpenAP Launches Platform That Buys Across NBCU, Viacom And Fox
OpenAP, the TV advertising and analytics joint venture between Viacom, Fox and NBCUniversal, released on Tuesday its first commercial product, called the OpenAP Market, a campaign planning and buying tool that works across the company’s three broadcast backers. The market product lets advertisers upload data and targeting paramaters, like a brand’s first-party CRM data or […]
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IPG Launches The Data Services Brand Kinesso, Its First Acxiom-Based Business
IPG threw its hat in the crowded ring of tech and data service hybrids Monday with the debut of Kinesso. The new business will encompass the agency ad tech unit Cadreon, the internal data hub AMP and the Mediabrands Data and Technology group. With between 500 and 600 employees in the new business, Kinesso will […]
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How We Got Here: A Look Back At The Privacy Changes That Reshaped Google
As privacy concerns and antitrust actions have dominated the market, Google has reshaped its business to meet new standards set by governments and consumers. In some ways, this is truly a new Google. Well-known products like AdX and the DoubleClick suite are gone, replaced by products like Ads Data Hub, Marketing Platform, Ad Manager and […]
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MediaMath Targets Supply Chain Transparency With SOURCE Framework
MediaMath launched on Wednesday a digital media-buying framework called SOURCE to give advertisers, publishers and every vendor in between visibility across the supply chain. MediaMath has assembled a roster of partners for the initiative that span the ecosystem. They include Havas Media and its own advertising customers, SSPs Rubicon Project and Telaria, news publishers such […]
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Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Is The New Data-Driven Model
Initially, it seemed fair to wonder whether Elizabeth Warren’s campaign could survive a long, grueling primary. The Warren campaign raised $6 million in the first quarter of the year, fifth most in the field, according to campaign disclosures released earlier this year. But it spent almost as much building up the operation, with 160 people […]
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Tapad CEO On Cross-Device Graphs And Where Its Data Comes From (Hint: Not Telenor)
The cross-device company Tapad was an early mover in an ongoing trend where ad tech data companies divest themselves of their media sales businesses. In January 2018, Tapad – owned by the Norwegian telco Telenor – offloaded its DSP to Brand Networks, and since then, its peers like Drawbridge and PlaceIQ have attempted similar pirouettes. […]