Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Adroit Move: MediaMath Spins Retail Data Co-op Into New Data Offering Helix
MediaMath on Wednesday announced a new business unit, named Helix, meant to translate the company’s existing retail data assets into a unified product offering. The move follows a string of MediaMath investments in consumer data, beginning with the acquisition of Adroit Interactive in 2010 and continuing with the purchase of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions (later rebranded […]
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Flashtalking Acquires Encore, Adds Attribution Services To Its Offering
The ad server Flashtalking added attribution analytics to its platform Tuesday with the acquisition of Encore Media Metrics. The terms of the deal and valuation were not disclosed. “We think there’s a real opportunity in the market by bringing together in a bundle all the options for online advertising programs,” said Flashtalking CEO John Nardone. […]
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A Daunting Path For Danish Ad Tech Company Adform As It Enters The US Market
Following its $21.5 million funding round to close out 2015, the Danish ad tech company Adform will test the dense US market. The market entrance was confirmed by Julian Baring, Adform’s general manager of North American business, who was hired last August to build out operations in Canada and the US. European data and advertising […]
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Can Media Agencies Bring Order To The Chaos Of Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing found its stride in 2015, and some expect this year will bring it a big step closer to becoming a mature marketing channel. Influencer marketing has established itself as a media category, but “it will become even more important if done in an ordered and manageable way,” said Rob Norman, chief digital officer […]
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Political Pollsters Are Getting Crushed By Digital Measurement Challenges
“The world may have a polling problem,” declared Nate Silver, the former New York Times statistical wunderkind who’s since launched FiveThirtyEight under the ESPN banner, in an article last year. Silver made this claim following the failure of UK polls to predict results of the country’s general election last May. In the US, he noted […]
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Fight Against Malvertising Drives Business, But Winning Is Tough
Malvertising – or malicious online ads that spread code to commit ad fraud or access a user’s data – might not induce the same industry-wide concern of viewability and fraud, but it’s still an issue. An IAB report from November estimated the cost of malvertising attacks to be more than $200 million – And that’s […]
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GroupM Acquires The Exchange Lab To Combat Digital Buying Fragmentation
GroupM’s purchase of The Exchange Lab, a provider of marketing services and technology that connects multiple DSPs, comes at a time when agencies must tackle digital media fragmentation. While GroupM – WPP’s media-buying umbrella – faces walled gardens and siloed platforms, the Exchange Lab has a tool called Proteus, designed to provide a single interface […]
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Video Advertising Gets Subtle
The native ad specialist TripleLift recently finished testing and hit the market with a cinemagraph format, in which there’s an instant of motion within a static image. The cinemagraph format has existed for years, but its utility as an online advertising vehicle is just starting to permeate from social media platforms to the broader publishing community. […]
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How Trump’s Campaign Is Upending Paid And Earned Media Dynamics
In campaign speeches, TV appearances and public statements, Donald Trump frequently boasts about his campaign’s low ad spending. “I’ve spent no money and I’m No. 1,” he said recently on the “Today” show. “Other people have spent tens of millions of dollars and they’re floundering and doing poorly.” Unfortunately for his opponents, this statement – […]
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Mozilla Is Pulling Back On Its Foray Into Ad Tech
Mozilla’s decision to bail on its brief romance with its advertising products caught many insiders by surprise. The company said Monday it would end its sponsored tile offering, which it had released November 2014. Adzerk CEO James Avery, who was involved in briefings earlier this year meant to set the stage for Mozilla’s foray into […]
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Collective Splits Media And Tech Divisions, Lays Off 20% As Agencies Pull Back
As revenue from big agencies fizzles, ad network Collective is trimming down on staff and shoring up its technology investment. The company has split into two independent operating units, one focused on tech and the other on media services. Collective also laid off 50 employees across the US this week as part of a 20% […]
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Bluecore Raises Series B As Ecommerce Email Referrals Grow
The ecommerce marketing software firm Bluecore on Wednesday announced a $21 million Series B funding round led by Georgian Partners. The company’s terms or valuation were not disclosed, nor were they disclosed during a $6 million Series A in January. Despite the recent round, Bluecore co-founder and CEO Fayez Mohamood told AdExchanger that “it got […]
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Impact Radius Acquires eBay Enterprise Attribution Unit ClearSaleing, As Unbundling Continues
Digital marketing firm Impact Radius scooped up ClearSaleing, the attribution component of eBay Enterprise, which was spun off from eBay in November. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Impact Radius CEO Per Pettersen told AdExchanger that he targeted ClearSaleing because “[t]hey have some very innovative technological approaches to cross-device and consumer journey tracking.” Pettersen […]
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Consumer Spending Soars And Mobile Millennials Are Growing – But Don’t Forget The Boomers
The beginning of the holiday sales period was record-breaking for retailers, despite thinner Black Friday crowds and reduced Cyber Monday shoppers. (121 million compared to 127 million last year according to the National Retail Foundation.) Still, weekend sales reached $8 billion – following a disappointing weekend sales period last year – while Monday sales passed […]
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For Political Campaigns, TV Gets The Glory, But Digital Does The Heavy Lifting
Political campaigns and causes trust their media dollars to strategists who share their ideological vision. Despite that seemingly immutable fact, commercial tech is opening up more opportunity by assuming the role of vertical partner to political vendors as a side-long way to access new budgets. For the past year, Rentrak – recently merged with comScore […]
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On Black Friday And Cyber Monday, Ecommerce Aims To Prove Its Worth
With turkeys almost in the oven, retailers and ecommerce companies are hoping the investments they’ve made all year long in audience segmentation, mobile tech and cross-channel measurement will pay off in the make-or-break holiday season. Ecommerce in particular is looking to benefit from the maturation of ongoing retail and ecommerce trends – such as offline […]
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The Planets Are Aligning For Mobile Shopping This Holiday Season
Marketers are known for demanding ROI and previous results before they embrace new strategies, but they’re going all-in on the assumption that mobile will be a far more prosperous channel this year than in previous holiday seasons. Industry analysts like eMarketer project a strong holiday for retailers, with mobile commerce expected to grow 32.2% over […]
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Political Ad Dollars Are Calling, But For Some It's A Siren Song
In 2012, President Obama’s campaign spent about $112 million on digital media, which was divided among many media companies and some ad platforms. According to Nate Lubin, who was the campaign’s digital director and earlier this year left his position as director of digital strategy at the White House, “We got pitched by I don’t […]
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Acceptable Ads Initiative Must Overcome Logistical Hurdles Before Getting Off The Ground
Following Adblock Plus’ (ABP) peace talk with numerous ad industry executives last week, the company revealed Thursday morning the first steps toward establishing an independent committee to oversee its Acceptable Ads initiative – which whitelists publishers that abide by ABP’s conditions. Those first steps are more goals than reality at the moment and reflect the […]
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Programmatic Is Full Steam Ahead As Tech Leaders Move Up The WPP Ranks
Judging from last week’s news, it’s tempting to say GroupM has got the programmatic religion. But that might be selling the holding company short. WPP Group’s media-buying arm, which controls $106 billion in global ad spending, last week promoted Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser to a big new job running its North America business. His elevation […]
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Publishers And Marketers Are Anteing Up – And Networks Are Folding
Pubs and brands have complained about programmatic inventory on open exchanges for years, but a renewed focus on inventory quality is gaining traction. AppNexus has long positioned itself as the platform for ad networks, but it reversed its policy in recent weeks by removing ad networks that don’t provide direct publisher or seller relationships. Shortly […]
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Fueled By Mobile And User Growth, Facebook’s Q3 Earnings Beat Expectations
Facebook continues to see hand-over-fist growth in its ad revenue and user base, according to Wednesday’s third-quarter earnings report, which pegged overall advertising revenue at $4.3 billion. That’s a 45% gain over Q3 2014, and 57% higher when currency fluctuations are factored in. Facebook’s user growth continues to accelerate. Since the platform’s first-ever billion-user day […]
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Can The Carson Campaign Ride Facebook To The Republican Nomination?
Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has been surging in the polls, by a strict reading the only current rival to Donald Trump. Carson has approached the election from a fundamentally different perspective, said Ken Dawson, president of Eleventy Marketing Group, which received more than $400,000 from the Carson campaign for “web services” in the […]
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MarketShare And Other Vendors Unite Against Walled Gardens
Want to track across devices? Then you’re going to have to enter the walled gardens of Google and Facebook. But the open ecosystem is working hard – and working together – to catch up. It’s in this spirit that MarketShare launched Monday a “Consortium for Cross-Device Measurement,” which for now includes Drawbridge, Crosswise, Tapad and […]
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Google Up After Earnings, But Mobile CPCs Still Down
It was a day of firsts and lasts for Alphabet’s Q3 earnings call Thursday afternoon – the first since CEO Sundar Pichai took over in August and the last before the company unbundles its internal properties next year. Alphabet announced quarterly revenue of $18.7 billion, a 13% YoY increase. Google’s advertising revenue was $16.8 billion, […]
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How Programmatic Tech Will Become A Part Of The Storytelling Process
Creative and tech have an uneasy coexistence. But the advertising world is in the early stages of a new hybrid model, where creative relies on tech for personalization and storytelling. “With programmatic buying and targeting, the contextual opportunities are increased to quantum levels, and we’ll need machines in order to address them,” said Chick Foxgrover, […]
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ANA Masters: How The Power Of Positivity Is Affecting Marketing Budgets
Marketers are known for a near obsession with data – metrics, iteration and ROI – but a string of CMOs at this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing conference avoided the firm ground of data and measurement in favor risk-taking and experiential concerns. “Advertising isn’t dead, but it’s craving courage,” said Arby’s CMO Robert Lynch, pointing to […]
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ANA Masters Show: Disrupt Yourself Or Someone Else Will Do It For You
From global leaders to energetic startups, “internal disruption” has become the driving force behind marketing resources. “The scary thing for me is to see how fast the disruptors are themselves being disrupted,” said Pepsi’s beverage group president Bradley Jakeman at the ANA’s Masters of Marketing conference. He pointed to the speed with which a company […]
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How Ecommerce Companies Prepare For The Make-Or-Break Holiday Season
If late-year sales are particularly important to you, then your holiday strategy and product development should now be entering its final lap. What remains is a race to retain customers coming in during the blitz of holiday marketing. “The actual user connections should be in place before the holidays, not just a strategy,” said Richard […]
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Marketing Tech M&A Soars, Despite Stock Market And Venture Capital Angst
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are thriving in the red-hot technology industry, particularly in the United States, according to a spate of research reports released Thursday. In many pockets of the industry, there are fewer deals but the value of those deals has skyrocketed. The investment bank JEGI said the number of transactions in the database […]