Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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The FCC Enters The Online Privacy Food Fight, Hits Brands Square In The Eye
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) on Tuesday issued an impassioned rejection of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) proposed change to online privacy and data security regulations. Wednesday is the final day of the public comment period before the FCC deliberates on the policy, which would force marketers to ask for permission to track consumers’ […]
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OOH Is Becoming A Measurement Tool For Digital Marketers
The out-of-home market is turning its real-world infrastructure into a tool for data-driven digital media. An OOH campaign nowadays for a CPG client may look more like a tapestry of strategic relationships. The media provider may allow some mobile tracking (in the US that probably means Outfront or Clear Channel, which together account for a […]
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Bounce Exchange Buys GoChime Social Marketing Tech And B2B Roster
Bounce Exchange, a behavioral marketing provider, has acquired B2B social media marketing startup GoChime, Bounce announced on Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. GoChime extends B2B email campaigns to social and display media. It will now be a Bounce Exchange product called “Behavioral Audiences.” GoChime’s relatively small team has already integrated with Bounce’s […]
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With Money Or Without, Republicans Are Struggling To Find Their Voters (And Inventory)
As the primary period comes to a close, Republican uncertainty – not just for presidential candidates, but in races up and down the ballot – remains a prevailing force in political advertising. “What’s still not clear, and it has actually become a little more confusing, is the question of how much Trump will spend,” said […]
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Germany's Axel Springer Wins Partial Court Victory Against Adblock Plus
After a string of court losses, Axel Springer finally landed a blow on Eyeo’s Adblock Plus (ABP). On Friday, a German court granted the German publishing giant a partial victory in its appeal of a previous decision. In question was ABP’s Acceptable Ads initiative, an open source ad-block revenue channel (meaning other ad blockers can […]
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Nielsen Acquires Repucom As It Pursues Surging Sports Marketing Budgets
Nielsen is looking to score more sports marketing dollars with its acquisition of Repucom, a sports research firm founded in Australia and now based out of the US. Nielsen, which closed the deal on Tuesday, did not disclose the price tag, though German sports industry trade pub Sponsors reported it to be more than $100 […]
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Programmatic Media Hopes To Take Home Gold From The Summer Olympics
The 2016 Summer Olympics are an opportunity for leading media brands to flex their programmatic muscles around a live marquee event. For some, it’s the first time they’re doing anything like this. Condé Nast, for example, launched a set of programmatic offers earlier this year. “Content packages around these kinds of events or moments was […]
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UK Telco Tests Network-Level Ad Blocking, As Ad Industry Awaits The Fallout
The British mobile carrier Three Group on Wednesday began a 24-hour trial of the network-level ad-blocking blueprint it’s been working on since earlier this year. Three deploys its ad blocking through a partnership with the Israeli startup Shine, which installs ad-block tech on telco networks and facilitates new opt-in advertising arrangements between mobile providers and […]
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Democrats Have High Expectations For 2016 As Their Tech And Data Advantage Widens
The last two presidential elections were decided in part by the Democrats’ superior tech and data infrastructure. While the Republicans have since invested in bolstering their own expertise, the Dems believe they still have the upper hand. “Republicans who see our tools still say our solutions are much better than what they have on their […]
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How The ANA Rebate Controversy Could Impact Ad Tech
The ANA report on agency transparency erupted last week, intensifying a long-expected public dispute between brands and their media agencies. While the report focused on brands and agency holding companies, its findings could potentially affect ad tech companies. AdExchanger reached out to some leaders in the ad tech sphere to see how they viewed the […]
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HookLogic Releases Retailer Exchange And Attribution Products, Challenging Amazon’s Retail Hegemony
HookLogic, which places ads on its retail clients’ ecommerce sites, on Tuesday released two products that expand the reach of its ad-serving capabilities. The company will place ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook, and has introduced the attribution tool HookLogic 360 to measure within its retail network. It also revealed a unique way […]
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Another Ad Blocking Solutions Vendor, With A New Approach
Admiral, a performance marketing solution designed to help publishers reacquire and monetize audiences who use ad blockers, launched Monday with a $2.5 million seed round. Admiral identifies audiences with ad blockers turned on, works to re-establish those users (by opting in to a lightened ad experience, say, or asking to be whitelisted) and then makes a […]
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Trump's Intuitive Politics Spell Trouble For Republican Data Ops
Data figured centrally in Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign operations. Hillary Clinton is running a similar playbook. Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz both leaned heavily on technology-enabled voter analysis. But Donald Trump isn’t interested in the data-gathering infrastructure many see as a necessary piece of modern presidential campaigning. “I’ve always felt it was overrated,” […]
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Instagram Adds Business Accounts, A Potentially Valuable Data Source
Facebook-owned Instagram debuted business profiles and account tools on Tuesday. While many personal accounts are used for business, Instagram formalized the system and added promotional capabilities like putting spend behind a post and basic targeting, measurement and reporting tools. While business accounts aren’t meant to be an enterprise-class solution, the vast majority of advertisers on Instagram […]
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The Facebookization Of Instagram Continues – And Everything Else Is Next
Instagram announced Tuesday that it’s opening up its advertising Partner Program to a new category of member: media buyers. The program today is comprised of a set of about 50 vendors certified for Instagram’s ad tech, content marketing and community management services. Bringing media buying services into the fold is the natural next move for Instagram […]
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The Influencer Perspective On Cross-Channel Marketing
Social influencers and content creators, many of whom first distinguished themselves by making and distributing content on a single platform (Instagram influencers, YouTube creators and Vine aficionados), are benefitting from platform proliferation. Nicola Foti, for instance, parlayed his experience making personal videos and sketches on YouTube for more than half a decade into a multichannel […]
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Facebook Brings Branded Video Ads To Audience Network
In a significant expansion of its video ad offering, Facebook will bring video ad formats to its Instant Articles platform and to the external apps and sites in its Audience Network, the company announced Monday. It’s the first time the company will deliver video ads beyond its owned-and-operated properties – excluding its LiveRail video sell-side […]
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To Head Off Mobile Fraud, 'Know Thyself'
Eliza Nevers, Christian Calderon and Michael Oiknine will participate in a panel discussion on mobile fraud at the May 24 CLEAN ADS I/O conference in New York. AdExchanger: What’s the single biggest thing marketers contending with mobile ad fraud should be focused on? MICHAEL OIKNINE, CEO of Apsalar: Fraud has become such a problem in large part […]
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For Advertisers, Amazon Video Direct Provides More Questions Than Answers
When Amazon debuted its Video Direct service on Tuesday, the media hailed it as a rival to YouTube. Video Direct lets content creators post and monetize video directly on Amazon’s Video and Prime platforms. Amazon isn’t commenting beyond the release, but there’s no standalone platform and the only launch partners are media publishers, film studios […]
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Bots And Fraudsters Are Feasting On Political Ad Dollars
Blood in the water brings sharks, and high CPMs bring bots. And political spenders, who often outbid brands on targeted inventory, are uniquely vulnerable to digital fraud and bots. “All the ingredients that typically happen for fraud are a part of the political marketplace,” said Mark Schlosser, senior sales director at the ad fraud security […]
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Adblock Plus Plans Its First Monetization Offer Beyond Its Controversial Whitelist
The German startup Eyeo GmbH, which owns Adblock Plus (ABP), debuted a partnership Tuesday with Sweden-based micropayments provider Flattr in which ABP users will pay for their online content in a new way. The service, called Flattr Plus, sets a minimum threshold for ABP users to pay each month for content. That monthly fee gets […]
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Oracle Marketing Cloud’s Integration Effort Changes Its Relationship With Clients, Partners
Like every marketing cloud, Oracle’s was built through acquisition. The tech giant has devoted more than $3 billion to construct a suite that includes campaign management or marketing automation from Responsys and Eloqua, data management solutions from BlueKai and Datalogix, omnichannel commerce through Maxymiser and online ad targeting tools like AddThis – among many others. […]
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Bleacher Report’s Race To Own The Social Graph (Before ESPN Does)
Turner-owned Bleacher Report is going all-in on social platforms because the chance to set roots in social broadcasting before ESPN does, whether or not reliable platform monetization is a mirage, is too tempting to ignore. Bleacher Report’s future success will “key off our ability to leverage the social graph,” said Rich Calacci, Bleacher Report’s CRO […]
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Three Things To Look Out For This Political Season
It’s been an odd presidential campaign, and this oddness has extended to the realm of political advertising. Here are three things to look out for as the primary season gives way to the general election. Is there enough TV inventory? There’s just too much money to push down the throat of linear TV, and it’s […]
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Mobile Search Growth Fuels Alphabet Q1
In the first quarter of 2016, Alphabet reported total advertising revenues of $18 billion, representing a 16% increase from the same period last year, though slightly below analyst expectations. Google CFO Ruth Porat, speaking on the company’s quarterly conference call after trading on Thursday, attributed the growth to the company’s mobile search business. Today’s earnings […]
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Beeswax Brings Its Bidder Solution Out Of Beta As Ad Nets Look To Reclaim Lost Ground
There are a lot of bidder tools in the market, so when Beeswax came out of beta last Thursday with a solution it calls “bidder-as-a-service” – with Foursquare as its flagship client – its focus was on customizability and price. “With Beeswax we can write our own algorithm for bidding,” said Peter Krasniqi, Foursquare’s VP […]
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HookLogic Has Plans To Expand, Gets Investment From LUMA Capital Partners
LUMA Capital Partners, the newly minted venture capital arm of LUMA Partners (per an SEC filing earlier this year), announced Wednesday its first public investment with the ecommerce performance marketer HookLogic. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. HookLogic, which positions search and display ads within a network of retail sites, is only six months […]
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Paid Media Kicks In (A Little) As Trump Shows Signs Of Weakness
When Reuters reported last month that the Koch brothers’ organization, Freedom Partners, would sit out the remainder of the primary, the reason given was a worry that “spending millions of dollars attacking Trump would be money wasted, since they had not yet seen any attack on Trump stick.” Political insiders now expect a change in […]
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Rocket Fuel’s Plan To Weather The Next Big Shake-Out In Ad Tech
Randy Wootton will speak about advertiser perceptions on April 14 at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC.IO conference in San Francisco. The past couple of years have been a tumultuous adolescence for ad tech, and perhaps no single company embodies the growing pains as neatly as Rocket Fuel, with its near-solo public spotlight, its dispute over margin transparency and the rough […]
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Kik’s Bot Shop Hopes To Attract Brands – And Build Better Services For Users
The messenger app Kik, a chat service catering to teens, debuted its Bot Shop on Monday. The shop lets Kik users download chatbots – automated apps meant to simulate real conversation. The shop currently features 16 bots from companies like Vine, H&M, Funny or Die, The Weather Channel and J-14 (a celebrity mag geared toward […]