Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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GoDaddy Becomes The First Brand To Foray Into Programmatic Live Streaming
On Saturday, small businesses will get a chance to pitch ideas to a GoDaddy executive and other experts at the SheKnows Media conference. To drive viewers to the live-streamed event, GoDaddy will become the first brand to deploy a programmatic video live-stream ad unit from Traction Labs. The session is part of a sponsorship deal […]
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Trump Beat His Data-Savvy Rivals, But They Can Still Punch Back
While Ted Cruz’s suspended campaign committee endures to manage assets like fundraiser lists and voter profiles, it has no intention of contributing anything but the bare minimum of its valuable data to the RNC and its voter-file vendor, the Data Trust, said sources with knowledge of the Cruz committee’s plans. The Cruz committee is not […]
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Will Publishers Ever Get A Successful Day In Court Against Ad Blockers?
Many in the US digital media industry have cherished hope of a day in court against ad blockers. It’s a movement that began with a series of IAB summits last summer and which today is slipping along the spectrum from possibility to fantasy. A year ago, the most likely legal route focused on copyright infringement. […]
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Google Credits Mobile And Video Investments For Strong Revenue Growth
Google parent Alphabet finished out Q2 2016 with $21.5 billion in overall revenue, a 21% jump from Q2 2015. It’s also a notable acceleration of growth rate from that year-ago quarter, when top line revenue grew 11%. [Read the earnings release.] The company chalked up the faster growth to investments in mobile and video. “The strength of the quarter […]
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China Bans Ad Blocking, And Adblock Plus Cries Foul
When China released its first set of digital ad regulations two weeks ago, the impact on search was heavily discussed – and understandably so, since it impacted Chinese market leaders like Baidu and Alibaba. “But hidden among (the new regulations) is language that would seem to all but ban ad blocking,” wrote Adblock Plus (ABP) […]
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Google Offers Call Center Measurement As Sales Calls Become Cool Again
Google launched a customer call center measurement and attribution solution on Wednesday alongside new research on call-based marketing. The product uses a unique identifier placed on Google’s search ads with tap-to-call functionality to tie inbound calls to an AdWords campaign. If the user goes to the company site instead and ends up making a call […]
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How Pandora Punches Above Its Weight For Political Ad Dollars
Political ad dollars, even more so than brand budgets, have conglomerated around a handful of major players. Of the more than $1 billion analysts predict candidates and super PACs will spend online this election, “half will go to Facebook and Google, Pandora – those are the big ones – and Twitter,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics […]
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The Hits Keep Coming, As EU Levels More Antitrust Charges Against Google
The European Union’s antitrust commission on Thursday added two formal charges to Google’s ever-growing pile of regulatory burdens. The first charge substantiates a previous objection claiming Google favors its own comparison shopping service in search results. “It means consumers may not see the most relevant results to their search queries,” wrote European Commissioner for Competition […]
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Advertisers Hope To Catch ’Em All With Pokémon Foot Traffic
Early Wednesday morning, a week after the initial US launch of Pokémon Go, a small milling crowd formed outside Barney Greengrass, an iconic Upper West Side Jewish deli and a “PokéStop” – a real-world location anchored in the augmented reality game interface. It’s not unusual for queues to form for bagels and smoked fish, but […]
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Native Programmatic, The Once And Future King
For many in the native space, the always-on-the-horizon prospect of the Promised Land has been a hard sell to other digital stakeholders. And though the industry has grown at a rapid clip, there’s still deep confusion over questions as basic and crucial as “What is native?” Native is “a broad term that lacks definition,” said […]
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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 […]