Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Digital Advertising Eclipses $100 Billion For First Time, Per IAB Report
Digital ads in the United States accounted for more than $107 billion last year, the first year digital advertising eclipsed $100 billion after totaling $88 billion in 2017, according to the IAB’s annual Internet Advertising Revenue Report. The report, which is conducted by PwC, uses Comscore media metrics to measure audience totals and time spent […]
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The Whys And Hows Of Google’s Ad Growth Rate Slowdown
Google surprised investors on its quarterly earnings last week when it reported roughly $1 billion less revenue than expected and a significant deceleration of its advertising growth rate. On the one hand, Google is still immensely profitable and its business is so large that a smaller growth rate is still huge. Google’s raw ad revenue […]
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Is It The End Of An Era For Ad Tech OGs?
Call it the circle of life, or the post-boom days of online advertising or just the end of the ad tech OG. What’s clear, though, is that many pioneers of the first wave of advertising technology companies are getting out of the game. Brian O’Kelley, co-founder and former CEO of AppNexus, holds the patent on […]
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Prog IO: Google’s Brad Bender On Balancing Web Stakeholders, Without Breaking The Web
Sometimes it seems impossible to reconcile the demands of users, publishers and advertisers, the three main stakeholders of the ad-supported internet. “It’s really important that all three of these constituencies can benefit from digital advertising,” said Brad Bender, VP of product management for Google’s buy and sell-side advertising technology. On topics like privacy, web-tracking cookies […]
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Criteo Earnings Remain Flat As Browser Changes Spook Investors
Criteo’s revenues totaled $558 million in Q1 2019, a 1% decline from last year, though net profitability increased 1% to $21 million, the company said in its quarterly earnings on Tuesday. The core retargeting business outperformed forecasts, helping to keep revenue at a relative plateau, but Criteo’s non-retargeting businesses, like in-app advertising and audience onboarding, […]
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Alphabet’s Quarterly Revenue Passes $36 Billion – But Costs Are Mounting
Despite Alphabet bringing in total revenues of $36.3 billion for Q1 – up 17% from last year – investors are skittish. For one, Alphabet’s revenue would have been higher if not for a $1.7 billion fine levied by the European Union last month on Google’s AdSense business. But analysts were more concerned about the slowdown […]
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Why DTC Brands Are Flocking To Television
A spree of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, including Hubble, Bonobos and Rothy’s, have started running TV commercials. And aside from adding demand to the scatter market, those DTC companies are bringing digital-first measurement standards to the new (ahem, old) media channel. AdExchanger spoke with some top DTC brands about why they’re adding television to the media mix, […]
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Amazon Focuses On Ad Platform Tools As Growth Rate Slows To 34%
Amazon reported slower than usual revenue growth in its earnings report, with overall sales of $59.7 billion in Q1 2019, a 17% increase compared to the year before. Amazon’s annual growth rate dropped, but it is more profitable and its business has a higher profit margin than ever. The company’s operating profit reached $4.4 billion […]
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IAB’s Transparency And Consent Framework Update Is In, And Hopefully Google Will Be Too
The IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab on Thursday released a second version of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), which publishers and technology companies use to pass consent data for online advertising while still complying with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The TCF update will be in a public comment period for […]
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Brave Launches Ad And Rewards Platform, Pitting The Browser Against Ad Tech
Brave, a privacy-centric web browser, launched its advertising and user rewards platform on Wednesday. The Brave browser debuted three years ago and now has more than 9 million users. Its co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich created JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla, which operates the Firefox browser. The new Brave ads are more like browser notifications than […]
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Zeta Global Buys Sizmek DSP And Rocket Fuel DMP Assets For $36 Million
Sizmek will sell its data management platform, which it acquired with Rocket Fuel, and its demand-side platform to the marketing technology cloud Zeta Global on Friday in a deal worth up to $36 million. If the deal is approved, Zeta will pay $5 million in stock and $10 million in cash, with another $20 million […]
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These Are The Supply-Side Ad Servers Trying To Win The Next Generation Of TV
Television advertising is getting smarter. And the smartest companies in digital advertising are coming for TV. That means a royal rumble is playing out over who controls the ad serving for data-driven TV campaigns. AdExchanger looked at the TV and video ad serving landscape, where broadcasters and digital ad platforms like Google and Amazon fiercely […]
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A+E Networks Connects Direct Sold Inventory To Programmatic
A+E Networks said Wednesday that it will work with Comcast-owned FreeWheel to unify demand across its direct sold and programmatic ad buyers. When viewers stream shows via an OTT device, phone or computer, A+E has to balance programmatic bids with direct sold buys sold through cable channels, like A&E, History and Viceland, said Jason DeMarco, […]
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Sizmek’s Bankruptcy Is Changing How The Supply Side Manages DSP Debts
One of the most pressing concerns from Sizmek’s bankruptcy comes from SSPs, which must reconsider how they think about risk and credit with their longtime partners. Brands and agencies often pay DSPs on 90-day or even 120-day cycles. But DSPs pay SSPs between 30 to 60 days. There’s a separate contract between an SSP and […]
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Walmart’s Ad Tech In-Housing Continues With Deal For Polymorph Labs
Walmart Media Group (WMG), the retailer’s data-driven advertising business, took another step forward with its in-house advertising program on Thursday with the acquisition of Polymorph Labs, a San Francisco-based ad tech startup. Walmart did not disclose terms of the deal or how many employees it will add with Polymorph. Polymorph, formerly AdsNative, raised a total […]
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LiveRamp Gets Into Data Privacy Tech With Acquisition Of Faktor CMP
LiveRamp has acquired the consent management platform (CMP) Faktor, the company said Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But LiveRamp will take on Faktor’s 11-person team in Amsterdam. Faktor was founded in 2017, in the run-up to the European Union’s implementation of GDPR, when publishers reevaluated their data collection and privacy policies. LiveRamp […]
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Why Tatari Thinks Smarter Buying And Brands Will Reshape TV Agencies
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands reshaped the way many digital media agencies buy online and pioneered social media, ecommerce and first-party data strategies. Now those same companies are bringing a new mindset to television. “It can be a bit scary, because in Silicon Valley, TV ads often stand for wasted spend,” said Philip Inghelbrecht, co-founder and CEO […]
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Dentsu Aegis Launches Sellwin To Consolidate Amazon Expertise
Dentsu Aegis Network launched Sellwin, an Amazon-focused consultancy, on Wednesday. The business is made up of six consultants, with access to another 130 specialists across Dentsu’s US agencies for things like ecommerce search, creating product page content and Amazon voice skills, said Sellwin President Travis Johnson. The consultancy model is new for Dentsu, Johnson said, […]
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How Sizmek Fell, And How It Could Be Sold
Sizmek regained access to its cash this week after Cerberus, the investment firm that owns Sizmek’s debt and now owns its equity, seized its holdings and pushed the company into bankruptcy last Friday. Sizmek has resumed business operations and is covering payroll and employee benefits, after missing the previous pay period. The next two to […]
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After A Year Of Testing, Albertsons Is Ramping Up Its Ad Platform Business
The US retail chain Albertsons, which also operates grocery brands like Safeway, Acme and Shaw’s, is accelerating investments in the data-driven advertising platform it launched last year for consumer brands carried in stores. The idea is to turn its retail loyalty card programs into an advertising and attribution engine, since those shoppers can be tracked […]
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Will Sizmek’s Employees And Partners Get Paid?
Story has been edited to include Sizmek’s response. While Sizmek’s future will play out over the next couple of months, there are more pressing concerns about the company’s payroll and whether it will be able to resume normal business operations. Chapter 11 bankruptcy isn’t necessarily the end for Sizmek’s business – it’s the kind of […]
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How Xaxis Is Navigating The New Online Identity Landscape
Xaxis technology and partnerships director Nishant Desai will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO San Francisco conference on April 29-30, 2019. Agencies aren’t first-party data owners, cookie trackers or data processors, but they must still keep a handle on online identity while the tech ecosystem shifts underfoot. “The notion of how advertisers identify audiences and what identity […]
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Sizmek Files For Bankruptcy And Faces An Uncertain Fate
Sizmek filed for bankruptcy Friday night, ending the private equity-backed effort to integrate Sizmek and Rocket Fuel into a cohesive buy-side tech stack, and possibly ending the Sizmek brand. Sizmek’s bankruptcy filing estimates its assets between $100 million and $500 million. Though its liabilities are in the same range. Sizmek’s four largest outstanding debts are […]
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IAB Europe Raises CMP Fee And Readies Consent Framework For An Update
IAB Europe has notified vendors of changes to its consent management platform (CMP) program, which registers companies that collect and manage consent data for publishers, and is narrowing the gap between its GDPR framework and Google’s GDPR consent standards. These changes also come with a significant price increase. Last week, IAB Europe notified CMP vendors […]
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Why Anheuser-Busch Is Going Big On Ecommerce, With Or Without The Beer
Buying beer online may be uncommon, or downright illegal in some states, but that isn’t stopping Anheuser-Busch from investing heavily in ecommerce. Except since beer is such a poor ecommerce converter, the world’s largest beer brewer is focusing on merchandise and apparel to generate online sales and shopper data. Branded merch is insignificant compared to […]
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Silicon Valley Tech Is Spending More On Ads – Largely On Itself
Internet-age companies like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Netflix, not to mention Chinese technology giants, are spending more on advertising, catching verticals like CPG, automotive and financial companies that traditionally spend the most on ads. There are 10 new-age tech companies among Ad Age’s top 100 global advertisers. In 2017, the most recent full year data […]
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Disney Closes On 21st Century Fox, And Enters A New Era Of Streaming Competition
Disney closed its $71 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox on Wednesday, more than a year after it signed a definitive agreement to acquire the entertainment company, which at the time was going to cost $52.4 billion. Disney’s initial agreement in December 2017 turned out to be less definitive than the term implies. Comcast stepped […]
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Undaunted By Rising Costs, Skullcandy Goes Big On Social
Although Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter are getting more expensive, they remain the go-to places for brand-building campaigns. That’s the approach being taken by Skullcandy, the maker of headphones and audio devices, as it looks to grow from its action sports roots to a broader audience, according to CMO Jessica Klodnicki, who was hired in […]
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How IRI Is Setting Up Shop For The Next Generation Of Retail Data
The 40-year-old company IRI, known for providing market share data to CPGs, has worked its way into marketer tech stacks, where its data is used for both targeting and attribution. The bulk of IRI’s revenue still comes from its longstanding market share analytics business, said President and CEO Andrew Appel. “But business is shifting dramatically […]
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FreeWheel Making Moves On The Buy Side With First Upfront Event
FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned video ad tech company, hosted its first television upfront on Wednesday and is mounting a campaign to expand its buy-side business. The marketer outreach centers on new attribution features and the launch of FreeWheel Media, which formalizes its buy-side accounts and ad-serving business into a cohesive offering, CRO Brian Wallach told AdExchanger. […]