James Hercher
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
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James Hercher
Articles By James Hercher
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Forrester Buys Its Way Into Technology And Software Subscription Sales
Forrester Research took its first steps into technology ownership on Tuesday with the acquisitions of customer data collection company FeedbackNow and GlimpzIt, a machine-learning and content recognition company. Forrester’s SEC filing said the deals will have insignificant effects on overall revenue and that through 2019 the stock-based compensation and acquisition and integration costs will range […]
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Who Will Buy LiveRamp? A List Of Favorites, And Dark Horses
When IPG acquired Acxiom’s managed services group, Marketing Solutions (AMS), for $2.3 billion last week, it marked the end of a five- months-long strategic review of the business – and the start of the next big sales review process with LiveRamp. Acxiom already had opened a strategic review of LiveRamp but was intent on selling […]
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How World Cup Advertising Is Undercut By GDPR And The US Team’s Absence
The 2018 World Cup has featured an exciting range of upsets and contenders, but some World Cup marketers see early signs of trouble thanks to GDPR throwing a wrench into digital advertising and the absence of the US team. GDPR, which became law less than a month before the soccer tournament, is especially painful for […]
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Facebook And Twitter Offer New Political Ad Transparency Tools To Head Off Bad Actors
Facebook and Twitter each released new political advertising transparency tools on Thursday in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections, as the social platforms try to forestall the malicious electoral interference they enabled during the 2016 election. Facebook began archiving electoral and issue-based ads in May, so any ad by an active candidate or featuring […]
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The Trade Desk’s New Product Suite Could Boost Emerging Programmatic Channels
The Trade Desk on Tuesday released a campaign planning tool called Planner. Powered by company’s first branded AI product, called Koa, which was also released Tuesday, Planner is designed to drive pre-campaign and in-flight optimization. The vendor hopes the two products will accelerate spend in emerging categories such as streaming audio and connected TV and […]
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Why CPGs Beating Up On Influencers Is Great For Influencer Marketing
Unilever CMO Keith Weed gave influencer marketing a black eye at Cannes this year with a call for brand marketers to demand more transparency and accountability in their dealings with social trendsetters. It’s about time the industry took a more critical view, said Ahalogy’s CEO and co-founder, Bob Gilbreath. Ahalogy is an influencer marketing ad […]
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Exchanges Are Under Pressure To Pony Up For Guaranteed Viewability
Advertisers are sick of paying for unviewed impressions, and some programmatic exchanges are appeasing them by eating the cost of anything that wasn’t viewed. Viewability guarantees aren’t new. For advertisers that demand it, ad tech companies can optimize toward viewability on open exchanges or run viewable deals in private marketplaces. The problem is, those options […]
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Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Stutz On Data, Paid Media And The “Passing Fad” Of The CDP
The marketing cloud landscape has taken big steps into advertising technology and media buying, as with Oracle’s recent acquisitions of Moat and Grapeshot or Adobe’s deal for the video DSP TubeMogul. But Salesforce defies that trend. The company has deferred to partners to provide online advertising. And while rival clouds contend for new data sources, […]
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How Salesforce’s Integration Approach Helps Set It Apart From Other Clouds
Teamwork makes the dream work. At least, that could be the new Salesforce mantra for a suite of cross-cloud integrations and partnerships launched this week as Salesforce tries to separate itself from other leading marketing cloud companies. With so much competition and jargon in the cloud marketing technology space, it can be hard to differentiate, […]
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AT&T Can Acquire Time Warner, District Court Rules
The Washington DC, District Court on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner, a decision with far-reaching implications for AT&T and the media and advertising industries. Despite the hefty price tag, industry observers initially expected AT&T’s offer to breeze through under a corporate-friendly administration. The last time the Justice Department […]
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Google Reverses Course On GDPR Consent Tool Limiting Publishers To 12 Vendor Partners
Google is reversing its policy for its consent management platform (CMP) that initially capped at 12 the number of vendors a publisher can list in opt-in messages, following critical feedback from publishers and the ad tech industry. The platform now has no limit. “The change being made now is in line with our priority of […]
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Google Will Enjoy Major GDPR Data Advantages, Even After Joining IAB Europe’s Industry Framework
Even if Google registers its entire product stack with the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), there will still be important differences between Google’s GDPR solution and the programmatic ecosystem. Google has a huge advantage because of its end-to-end status in the online supply chain, said Blake Brannon, VP of product at the privacy […]
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OPINION: The Sell SiderHow Minute Media Spun User-Generated Content Into Tech And Influencer Businesses
When the sports news startup Minute Media was founded seven years ago, Bleacher Report, Huffington Post and other publishers already had demonstrated user-generated content and social traffic growth strategies before ditching the model for more traditional newsrooms. Minute Media wants to prove a new media company can stick with its contributors and generate returns by […]
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Ad Tech Vendors Wrestle With IAB Europe’s Transparency And Consent Framework
The European Union’s GDPR regulations have been in force for less than a week, but ad tech exchange players are already feeling whiplash. The crux of the problem is advertising technology vendors must have user consent for data-driven advertising – yet there are only two scaled ways to get it. Either use Google’s GDPR pipeline […]
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Facebook’s Political Advertising Overhaul Comes To The US
Facebook introduced its political advertising archive and updated transparency policies to the US on Thursday after testing them in other countries, including Canada, Britain and Kenya. Moving forward, all electoral and issue-based ads on Facebook or Instagram will be archived and will have a “paid for by” disclaimer, which prevents political advertisers from promoting content […]
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IAB Tech Lab Unveils Transparency Framework For Assessing Data Segments
The IAB Tech Lab on Wednesday released a disclosure framework to help buyers evaluate the attributes of audience segment data. The Data Transparency Framework is open for public comment until July. The IAB Data Transparency Standards Working Group will incorporate the feedback into a final version released this summer. If the framework is adopted, digital […]
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Google Plans To Join The IAB Europe GDPR Framework, But The Devil Is In The Details
Google soon expects to join the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, which transmits consent across the ad tech ecosystem to serve data-driven ads under GDPR. Google said it will join once it has resolved technical and policy details so parts of its ad tech can operate with the framework. “We absolutely want to be […]
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Shopper Marketing Undergoes A Digital Evolution
Shopper marketing, a longtime favorite of CPGs typically used for in-store signage or to get products on eye-level shelves, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the spread of ecommerce and online shops. Of the $178 billion marketers spend annually on in-store marketing, $55 billion could shift from traditional retail trade marketing to online ads, […]
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Acxiom Working Out How To Maximize Value From A LiveRamp Sale
Acxiom intends to sell its marketing solutions division before moving to a potential sale of LiveRamp, because it believes selling them separately will drive more shareholder value, said sources close to the company. Interest in Acxiom and LiveRamp in particular heated up in March, after Salesforce bought the middleware tech company MuleSoft for $6.5 billion, […]
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Google’s DoubleClick Ad ID Change Presents Both Challenge And Opportunity For Attribution Vendors
Google’s decision to stop providing DoubleClick (DCM) advertising IDs in its ad server log files beginning May 25 will throw a wrench into multitouch attribution, because it will block marketers’ ability to compare Google campaigns with other ad platforms. Whether this policy change is an existential threat to independent attribution or not, the loss of […]
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With Revenue Growing, The Trade Desk Raises Guidance And Keeps On Trucking
The Trade Desk generated $85.7 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2018, a 61% jump from the same period last year, the company disclosed in its earnings report Thursday. Profitability was also up, with net quarterly income reaching $9.1 million, compared to $4.9 million in Q1 2017. The Trade Desk raised its 2018 […]
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Why The NFL Is Building Its Own Data Co-op
In the National Football League, the whole team has to know the same playbook for the plays to work. And the same is true for the NFL’s marketing group, which in 2017 began centralizing its audience data to improve team-level marketing and the value of league sponsorships. “We’re building a data co-op, in a sense,” […]
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Advertiser Perceptions: Non-Walled Garden DSPs Struggle To Get Ahead
Aside from the Trade Desk, which outstrips competitors among agencies, independent DSPs still struggle to differentiate or break out from the pack behind the category killers, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and Amazon’s ad platform, in Advertiser Perceptions’ latest demand-side platform benchmark report released Monday. The report, based on a survey of more 700 execs […]
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Google’s GDPR Consent Tool Will Limit Publishers To 12 Ad Tech Vendors
Google disclosed how it will help publishers obtain tracking consent from users during a call last week with the IAB Europe GDPR Transparency and Consent steering committee, and its approach could spell trouble for media and ad tech companies. The consent gathering tool, called “Funding Choices,” is in beta with some DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) […]
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Criteo Profits Are Up For Now, In Last Earnings Report Before GDPR
On Wednesday, Criteo reported revenue of $564 million in the first quarter of 2018, a 9% increase from the same period last year, with profits up 15% at $210 million. Criteo stock jumped after the earnings reports, as strong financials and its relatively optimistic outlook on GDPR and ePrivacy regulations in the European Union assuage […]
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Twitter Continues Its Push Into Live Programming With New Media Deals
Twitter unveiled a slate of live streaming and original programs at the company’s NewFronts presentation Monday night, coupled with new video advertising services for brands on the platform. Twitter has doubled its programming partners from 16 last year, the first year Twitter hosted a promotional NewFront in an attempt to find blue-chip brands to back […]
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IAB Europe And IAB Tech Lab Go Live With GDPR Consent Framework
IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab released on Wednesday a commercial version of the Transparency and Consent Framework, a new publishing standard meant to reconcile ad tech with GDPR regulations. From a consumer point of view, the experience would be similar to the current standard for web browsing in Europe, where there’s already omnipresent […]
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Improvado Raises $3M Funding Round To Blaze A Trail In Middleware Tech
Trigger warning: This article contains references to yet another three-letter acronym in the advertising technology ecosystem. Improvado is an extract, transform, load (ETL) data startup focused on the agency and advertiser landscape. The company raised a $3 million seed round with backing from a range of familiar ad tech names, including Auren Hoffman, the CEO […]
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Oracle Data Cloud Buys Grapeshot
Oracle has acquired Grapeshot, a UK-based contextual targeting startup, the companies announced Tuesday. Grapeshot provides pre-bid insights based on the media being considered. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Grapeshot will join the Oracle Data Cloud, where it will be combined with Moat to strengthen the company’s brand safety service. The company initially focused […]
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Even After YouTube's Rough Year, Alphabet's Growth Looks Unstoppable
The Alphabet revenue train is full steam ahead, as the company reported more than $31 billion in revenues in the first quarter of 2018, a 26% jump from the same period last year, the company announced in its earnings report Monday. Programmatic and the core search business were the biggest driver of that growth, rising […]