Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Survey: Marketers' Data Priorities Shift From 'Collection' To 'Value'
On Monday the IAB released its second “Outlook for Data” report, a survey conducted by the Winterberry Group that benchmarks data-driven marketing practices. Its responses show “a general maturity in the evolution of marketer data,” said Dennis Buchheim, SVP of data and ad effectiveness for the IAB. The number of businesses that plan to increase […]
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Alphabet Quarterly Revenue Jumps To $26 Billion, But Challenges Are Mounting
Alphabet on Thursday disclosed revenue of more than $26 billion in Q4 2016, a 22% jump over the same period last year and beating industry expectations of $25.2 billion in revenue. But despite overall revenue growth, the digital ad platform giant’s earnings were undercut by other costs, including a one-time tax charge that pushed its […]
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Button Raises $20 Million To Create More Mobile Commerce Inventory
The mobile monetization firm Button announced Wednesday it had raised a $20 million Series B round, led by Norwest Venture Partners. The investment, which brings Button’s total funding to $36.5 million, will go largely toward expanding Button’s headcount as the startup looks to tack on new products in fledgling verticals like travel booking and media […]
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Berkery Noyes Sees Sunny M&A Outlook – But US Election Adds Unpredictability
Venture capital and early-stage tech investments may be harder to come by, but M&A exits across the mobile and online industry are still heating up, investment bank Berkery Noyes reported Tuesday. The overall number of deals in 2016 ticked up 1% from the year before, while the aggregate value of those transactions jumped 12% year […]
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Why Mobile Adoption Is Punishing The Biggest Department Stores
Bellwether retailers like Macy’s, Sears and Nordstrom that once anchored US malls never fully recovered from the onset of web-driven ecommerce. Now they’re facing something new that could either be an opportunity to get back in the game or another threat entirely: mobile commerce. Consumers are spending more time on mobile, including on retail app […]
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After A Shocking Election, Will Data-Driven Campaigners Change Their Game?
In the years leading up to the 2016 election, Democrats continued investing heavily in a shared data and technology platform, NGP VAN, across liberal candidates and causes. Republicans took a more market-based approach, with high-headcount, full-service shops meant to continue product development beyond election years. Republicans wanted competition where liberals emphasized collaboration. In the wake […]
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NBCU's Yaccarino On The Challenges Facing Broadcasters Today
What are broadcast advertising leaders thinking about now, with addressable TV on the horizon but squalls demanding attention? Linda Yaccarino, NBCU chairman of ad sales and client partnerships, addressed her pressing concerns and goals with Jennifer Breithaupt, Citi’s managing director of media, advertising and global entertainment, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Wednesday. Below are Yaccarino’s […]
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Instagram Brings Ads – And Measurement – To Stories
Instagram will allow ads in its Stories section, the company said Wednesday. It also unveiled brand measurement tools. “Over the first holidays with Stories we’ve gotten a chance to peek into what people do when they’re home and with their families, at a level of depth and intimacy we haven’t usually had with Instagram,” said […]
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Data-Driven Political Spending: A Sea Change Or Tidal Wave?
In a bizarre, unruly year for political advertising, an analysis of 2016 campaign, party and super PAC spending does reveal one consistent theme: the rise of targetable media. “It turned the page on what will happen in political spending moving forward, because targeted marketing absolutely replaced mass media,” said Kip Cassino, the executive VP of […]
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The Next Big Test For Ad Blocking: Can Adblock Plus Grow And Grow Up?
A year ago, the rise of ad blockers put the online advertising ecosystem into an existential crisis. But not only did the ‘adpocalypse’ never materialize, many of the same stakeholders who were on the defensive now see a chance to reclaim lost ground. “People were literally saying this is the death of the web, and […]
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Kochava Looks To Spin Its App-Based Measurement Network Into Targeting Gold
Kochava has spent the past year building up the Collective, its audience data co-op for in-app advertising. Last week, it picked up its first DSP partner – The Trade Desk – to carry the data. Kochava’s Collective works by gathering data from three sources: aggregated third-party providers, ad networks that pool audience behavior insights and […]
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YouTube Gained Political Ad Revenue This Year, But Lost Influence With Voters
For YouTube, the recent election cycle was the best of times and the worst of times. Multiple campaign sources think the Google-owned video network remained the single largest platform for political video dollars (aside from TV networks), despite Facebook’s meteoric rise. “YouTube is the second most trafficked site in the US, so it played a […]
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We May Be Losing The War On Ad Fraud (Say The Arms Dealers)
While the online advertising trade groups have created anti-fraud programs and exchanges have instituted inventory standards, fraud is still on the rise. AdExchanger reached out to some of the people in the trenches about where the digital ad tech and media ecosystem stands now and how progress can be made. Click below for their responses. […]
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UK Airline Monarch Tries Cookieless Attribution To Cover Data Gap
Despite skyrocketing mobile traffic and climbing mobile conversion rates, British airline Monarch was struggling to determine precisely what was or wasn’t working for mobile media buys. “We persistently got all the data in and still faced the question: What about mobile?” said Robert Foulkes, senior marketing manager for the low-cost airline. Monarch was among the […]
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Pinterest Adds Former Walmart Exec Brian Monahan
A year ago Pinterest was in the process of winding down its sales and marketing services for all but two partner categories: retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG). But after a year spent working on ad tech product releases – like a CRM match program and an expansion of interest-based targeting – it’s throttling up […]
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Private Equity Strikes Again As Clarion Capital Buys Madison Logic
Private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners said Thursday it had acquired B2B marketing shop Madison Logic for an undisclosed sum. Clarion reportedly spent “hundreds of millions,” according to Fortune. Madison Logic hadn’t previously raised any institutional funding and specializes in account-based marketing, which sends targeted content to specific enterprise decision-makers. “We see an opportunity to […]
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App Marketers Learn From Ad Tech, Even As They Abandon Ads
Mobile apps need revenue but have limited screen space on ads. Enter Button, which lets consumers click on an icon to move easily from app to app. It collects fractional fees from its partners, like a toll road connecting different apps. “We continue to see these transactional models embraced in mobile compared to traditional advertising […]
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Rocket Fuel's Political Gambit: A Cautionary Tale for Ad Tech
Ad tech companies flocked to Washington, DC, during the recent election cycle in pursuit of political ad budgets, but many were disappointed. Rocket Fuel was the most aggressive newcomer, adding approximately 15 people to its DC office for political business development beginning last summer. But the company dismissed most of those hires in the week […]
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Facebook Jumps Out Of The Frying Pan And Into Fire With More Measurement Errors
Facebook admitted additional measurement errors Wednesday, along with policy and organizational changes meant to narrow the trust gap between marketers and the mobile world’s leading ad platform. The news comes less than two months after Facebook disclosed that it had been overstating video engagement results, prompting backlash from agencies and concern from other digital media […]
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Trump Did Have A Paid Media Strategy, And It Focused On Facebook
As many have pointed out, Donald Trump won the presidency while spending a fraction of what Hillary Clinton did on ads and technology. But his campaign had a more concrete paid media strategy than some may have realized. The Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica on polling, digital media and data. The company’s head of […]
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Political Advertisers Have Discovered A Way Around Election Day Laws Thanks To Smartphones
It’s illegal to display political ads or messages, solicit supporters, hand out campaign paraphernalia or try to affect voters’ preferences in almost any way once they’re within a roughly 100-foot radius of a polling location. But sophisticated location-based mobile advertising has exposed a loophole in those laws, wherein campaigns target mobile ads to people while […]
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FastPay Expands Lending Limits For Audience-Rich And Cash-Hungry Publishers
While publishers deliver an online ad in fractions of a second, the buyer typically doesn’t pay for 90 days or more. That’s not a relationship that advantages the sell side. “You have to pay payroll right away and you have to pay supply sources right away, so there’s this working capital friction in ad tech,” […]
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Instagram Tests Product Tagging Feature To See If It Can Drive Purchases
Facebook-owned Instagram hopes its platform can drive market research and shopping. On Tuesday, the company said it will let brands tag products in in-feed images. The pilot will run throughout the holiday season with 20 select US retailers, including brick-and-mortars like J. Crew, Coach and Macy’s, as well as digital-native brands like Warby Parker and […]
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PROG I/O: Google Expands Exchange Bidding As Q3 Ad Revenue Surges
Google is seeing strong growth in its dynamic allocation exchange bidding, countering the advantages gained by other exchanges via header bidding. Six months ago, Google reversed its DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) policy when it opened the server up to third-party exchanges. Since then, it’s more than doubled the number of outside exchange partners, adding Smaato, […]
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The FCC Expands Oversight Of Internet Service Providers
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a stringent set of online privacy regulations on Thursday. The law, expected to go into effect next year, expands the FCC’s mandate over internet service providers (ISPs), which will soon have to obtain individual consent to use data drawn from a subscriber’s activity, such as web browsing, app usage […]
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Snaplytics Debuts Snapchat Measurement Tool With API Workaround
Snaplytics, a third-party Snapchat measurement vendor, came out of beta Wednesday after spending more than a year developing the hardware and software needed to pull marketing insights from Snapchat accounts. “It’s not similar to fairly straightforward API analytics like with Twitter and Facebook,” Snaplytics co-founder and CEO Thomas Cilius told AdExchanger. “You need some custom […]
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Democrats Redirect Ad Dollars In Bid To Reshape Political Map
The old military saying that “generals are always fighting the last war” cautions those who are more concerned with history than with current challenges. It’s a worthwhile lesson for political spenders and media companies as the 2016 US election lurches toward an unexpected battleground map. State Of Play “So far, this election has been the complete opposite […]
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Magna Global Releases Sunny Programmatic Forecast As Ad Tech Exits Adolescence
Programmatic is growing, and it’s also growing up. That’s the message from the Magna Programmatic Growth Report released Friday. Magna projects global programmatic spend to grow from $19 billion this year to $42 billion in 2020. Non-programmatic spend is expected to grow from $27 billion this year to $31 billion, with programmatic becoming the default […]
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With Home Shoppers In Hand, HSN Looks To Expand Its Network
HSN, the broadcast network dedicated to home shoppers, is finding new digital revenue streams to support its core TV business. “We’re a marketing platform for brands we sell,” said Annemarie Frank, HSN’s VP of omnichannel marketing. “A lot of the brands we work with internally and have done well with us are looking for ways […]
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Facebook Tweaks Audience Network To Favor Advertiser Metrics
Facebook is changing the way it values ad placements across its Audience Network as part of an ongoing transition from proxy ad metrics to actual business conversions. “The dominant proxy for the industry, and it’s been true as well for us, is the click,” Facebook ad tech head David Jakubowski told AdExchanger. “[Except] no marketer […]