Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Search And Social Make Gains, But It’s Still The Super Bowl Era
Say you’re an advertiser plunking down $5 million for 30 seconds of prime Super Bowl ad time. You’re going to want to make sure that campaign drives some sort of action online. But between Facebook, Google and Twitter, how do you choose what to use? According to a report released Monday, Google’s attribution engine, Adometry, […]
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Krux Opens The Doors On Link, Its First-Party Data Bazaar
Krux opened its business-to-business data-sharing marketplace, named Link, on Thursday with the goal of building an open exchange for media and marketer first-party data. The product has been in development for 18 months and live in beta with some clients for almost a year, according to Krux chief solutions officer and Link general manager Michael […]
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Mobile Location Data Aims To Connect OOH Campaigns To In-Store Sales
Location analytics company Placed announced Wednesday its attribution service would connect billboards to in-store traffic. It will do this via a mix of partnerships with holding company agencies and out-of-home (OOH) inventory suppliers like Clear Channel Media and cinema ad network NCM. “OOH is shifting,” said Michael Lieberman, COO of tenthavenue, an OOH agency within […]
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US And EU Officials Agree On New “Privacy Shield” Data Transfer Pact
US and European officials agreed Tuesday to a data-sharing deal that would replace the Safe Harbor pact. Safe Harbor had regulated commercial data sharing for 15 years until it was overturned by a European court last October after a privacy activist’s suit against Facebook. Few details have surfaced about the new deal, dubbed “Privacy Shield,” […]
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How Digital Video Is Developing In A Political World That Prefers TV
Unlike earned digital media, which is reinventing political campaigns, presidential candidates tend to view digital video as support for their flashy TV advertising. “The hope for digital, in my opinion,” said John Randall, VP of digital at the right-leaning agency CRAFT, “is that by 2020 we don’t even see a difference between TV and online or mobile video ads. But […]
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How Creative Responsibilities Are Coming To Tech And Media Agencies
When many creative agencies failed to pivot into mobile, tech and media companies converged on their own solutions. “Creative agencies were disinterested in making experiences for mobile,” said James Chandler, mobile director for the GroupM agency Mindshare. After all, app-oriented mobile campaigns aren’t built around flashy art or high-production videos. While this mentality frustrated him […]
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Sky Invests $10M In DataXu, With Eyes Toward Real-Time, Addressable TV
The British broadcaster Sky Media on Monday announced a $10 million investment in the DSP and DMP provider DataXu. Sky hopes the relationship will help it better understand programmatic advertising, said Jamie West, Sky Media’s deputy managing director, in a release. “The money substantiates the belief in each other’s companies,” said DataXu CRO Ed Montes […]
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Industry Preview 2016: For Platform Leaders, Getting Over Their Own Walls Is A Growing Concern
Megaplatforms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon dominate every marketing niche they occupy, but they are still in the early stages of honing their measurement, targeting and advertising. In what will be a recurring theme in 2016, walled-garden players are still trying to formulate and communicate what value their data brings to brands, according to […]
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Why Data-Driven Political Marketing Is Easier For Dems
All presidential campaigns must contend with factors that tilt the playing field to one party or another, such as electoral districts, state demographics and incumbency. For the 2016 election, Democrats appear to have solidified advantages in tech, data and paid media that represent a similar fundamental force working in their favor. One straightforward example is TV inventory. […]
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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 […]