Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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With No Safe Harbor, US Brands Will Struggle Through Choppy Atlantic Seas
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s highest court, on Tuesday invalidated the “Safe Harbor” agreement, which since 2000 has allowed companies to store and transfer data between the US and EU. A pillar of the agreement required the US to ensure equivalent protections to those guaranteed by the EU, but […]
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PebblePost Wants To Link Online Advertising With Direct Mail
The ad tech community has taken its strategies to legacy marketing channels before – billboards, radio, point-of-sale systems and even linear TV. Now add direct mail to the list. PebblePost launched publicly and revealed a $3 million seed round on Tuesday. CEO Lewis Gersh hopes to bring real-time analytics to direct mail campaigns for the […]
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Button Announces New Marketplace As Brands Turn To Mobile Commerce
Deep-linking vendor Button announced the Button Marketplace on Thursday in an attempt to sustain the mobile app world without the need for digital ad dollars. “It’s an entirely different paradigm for apps,” said Michael Jaconi, Button’s co-founder and CEO. “You can’t capitalize on search and intent in this world like you did for the web.” […]
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The Adblock Plus Acceptable Ads Initiative Builds Steam
As Axel Springer was rolling out its acquisition of Business Insider on Tuesday, the German publishing giant lost a court case it brought against the Acceptable Ads initiative of Adblock Plus (ABP). The decision gave ABP its fourth consecutive victory against European publishers hoping to prove aspects of its technology or business model are illegal. […]
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A First: Caribbean Telco Digicel Does Network-Level Ad-Blocking Deal With Shine
Of all the threats posed by the ad-blocking trend, perhaps the scariest scenario for publishers is that paid media placements could be filtered at the network level. Now that nightmare seems to be coming true, as Israeli ad-blocking tech company Shine has said it will integrate with wireless carrier Digicel to screen ads aimed at […]
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Origami Logic Raises $25 Million Series C Aimed At Upping The Pace Of Marketing
Origami Logic revealed Tuesday it had received $25 million in Series C funds, which it will use to more than double its teams across sales, engineering and marketing, said co-founder and CEO Opher Kahane. Origami Logic has an employee count in the lower double digits, though Kahane wouldn’t give an exact number. But clients like […]
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Google Allows Targeted Ads Based On First-Party Data
Google said Monday it will let marketers use their first-party CRM data to target specific users based on hashed email addresses. The product is called Customer Match. While Facebook and Twitter both enable CRM matching, that Google now allows it constitutes “a seminal shift for first-party, addressable targeting,” said Merkle’s EVP of digital strategy, Matt […]
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Influencer Marketing Is Not Flying Under The Radar Any Longer
Influencer marketing startups think it’s time to become a more strategic part of content marketing initiatives. Part of the problem is that influencer marketing doesn’t get its own budget line, said Pierre-Loïc Assayag, founder and CEO at the influencer management platform Traackr. It’s as likely to come under the jurisdiction of a PR firm as […]
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Why The Agnostic Ad Tech Industry Needs Partisan Allies In DC
Online political spending – while still trailing far behind the budgets assigned to TV – is poised to match or exceed even the world’s largest brand advertisers. But with no established agency or ad tech model in place, agnostic tech providers are looking to blaze new trails in the hypercompetitive DC market. Rubicon Project and […]
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Altice To Buy Cablevision For $17.7 Billion, Boosts Ad Tech For Operators
Altice continued a string of acquisitions on Thursday when the Amsterdam-based telecommunications giant announced that it would buy Cablevision for $17.7 billion. The Cablevision sale comes six months after Altice’s first move into the US market, when the company bought Suddenlink Communications, a regional cable operator based in St. Louis, for $9.1 billion. Altice has […]
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Retail And Ad Tech Team Up To Compete With Google For Brick-And-Mortar Business
The realm of brick-and-mortar retail data has been steadily absorbed by digital technology in recent years, and that trend took another step forward on Wednesday with the launch of the Cross Device Marketplace by Placed, an in-store attribution firm. While Facebook and Google have put considerable effort into developing retail-specific solutions, Placed founder and CEO […]
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Messaging Apps Have A Goal In Sight, But Out Of Reach
Just as device manufacturers want to be Apple, ecommerce shops want to be Amazon and social networks look up to Facebook, China-based WeChat is the chat application others seek to emulate. Yes, WeChat, a free app with 600 million monthly active users (100 million fewer than Facebook Messenger), enables chatting, but it’s also a platform […]
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HookLogic Raises $15.5 Million To Expand Native Ecommerce Advertising Globally
HookLogic raised $15.5 million in Series C funding and will sell AutoHook, a suite of lead-gen and marketing tools designed for automotive companies, the company announced Thursday. Terms of the AutoHook sale to auto consultancy firm Urban Science were not disclosed. In addition to previous investors Bain Capital and Intel Capital, this funding round included […]
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With Tags Proliferating, Publishers Turn Attention To Shorter Load Times
The rise of ad blocking, mobile usage and a general regard for user experience over pure advertising concerns have all led to a renewed focus on one of the digital world’s most fundamental features: the page load. From buttons and tracking pixels to preload content and infinite scrolling feeds, the digital community is struggling under […]
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AOL-Millennial Media Acquisition Shows It Isn’t Always About The Price
AOL’s acquisition of Millennial Media for $238 million was a coup for its purchaser, if not for its investors. The mobile ad platform went from an opening-day share price of $23.50 to $1.75 when AOL announced its intent to purchase Thursday. But Elgin Thompson, managing director at investment firm Digital Capital Advisors, cautioned not to […]
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Doing Business In The Shadows Cast By Walled Gardens
Attribution companies Adometry and Convertro are frequently linked because they were acquired in quick succession (by Google and AOL, respectively). And the functionality they provide is increasingly important, as marketers want to justify their digital ad spend across channels and devices. Buyers are wary when attribution technologies – which should be agnostic – are integrated […]
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FTC Sets Ambitious Precedent On Cybersecurity Standards
Wyndham Hotels has lost a motion to dismiss an FTC case alleging the hotel chain exposed consumer personal data to potential theft. While the case, which will be sent back to a federal trial court following Monday’s ruling by a three-judge appeals panel, doesn’t directly affect advertisers, it affirms the FTC’s power to penalize companies […]
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Yavli Launches Its Ad-Blocking Solution As Publishers Push For New Strategies
Yavli joined the emerging fray of ad-blocking technology solutions for publishers with its public launch on Wednesday, following an 18-month stealth period. Its technology gives users who have downloaded an ad blocker sponsored content suggestions. If the user clicks on the piece of sponsored material, the publisher charges the brand. “The idea behind it is […]
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Ad Stocks Recover Along With General Market After Monday Turf-Out
The havoc wreaked on the advertising sector by Monday morning’s global stock slide, and the subsequent clawback, has tracked with the general market. Starting at market open, a variety of ad-supported stocks ranging from tiny ad tech holdings (TUBE, RUBI) to platform heavies (FB, GOOG) plummeted and then recovered within a few hours. Criteo, Rubicon, […]
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As Brands Dig Deeper Into Social Data, Twitter Opens Up To Third-Party Developers
Brands know the importance of images or videos uploaded by fans and customers on social media. But for many, it’s like dying of thirst surrounded by the ocean. Relevant content might exist on Instagram and Twitter, but it’s meaningless without a filter – that is, if a poster doesn’t tag or mention your business. Even […]
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After A Long Courtship, DC And Ad Tech Are Getting Serious
Eyebrows and heart rates went up in 2012 when political ad spending across digital media surpassed $150 million. Analysts are shocked that campaigns and super PACs are projected to spend only $1.1 billion in 2016. The media research firm Borrell Associates released a report on Tuesday that demonstrates the gradual embrace of digital marketing methods […]
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Kik Gets $50 Million Investment From Tencent As The Messaging App Arms Race Continues
Kik’s attempt to become “the WeChat of the West” has been bolstered by a $50 million infusion from WeChat’s Chinese developer, Tencent. Kik will use the funds to focus on the US teen market, a decision company President Josh Jacobs said came from observing Chinese-based WeChat’s accomplishments courting native smartphone users. He sees parallels with […]
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App Developers Fight A Saturated Market
Although Apple’s App Store is seven years old and has a worthy competitor in Google’s Play Store, the app store search and discovery ecosystem is stagnant, say many app store optimization (ASO) platforms. “When we look at the landscape, we see it like the early days of Internet, when search and discovery were a mess,” […]
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For Attribution Firms, Mobile Needs To Get Moving
The executives in this story will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. It’s still unclear how effective mobile advertising can be, despite its explosive growth. For instance, mobile passed desktop in terms of user content consumption in early 2014, but still […]
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Adobe And PageFair Release A Sobering Ad-Block Report
Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based ad-block solutions provider, on Monday unveiled new research that claimed there are almost 200 million active ad-block users, representing a projected loss of $21.8 billion globally for online publishers in 2015. The caveat is that industrywide ad-blocking numbers can be misleading given strong variances both geographically and demographically. That skew […]
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Marketers Are Reluctantly Falling Back In Love With The Telephone
Some members of the advertising and marketing community are seeing a renewed interest in one of the oldest, least-loved marketing channels: the phone call. Customer call centers and direct phone sales are parts of a consumer funnel that many brands still try to avoid, according to Peter Christothoulou, CEO of Marchex, which provides software for […]
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How Univision Is Making Political Advertising Better (And More Lucrative) By Bridging TV With Digital
Ted Gurley, a Univision VP specializing in digital sales to political and advocacy groups, compared the current state of the TV industry to retail half a decade ago. Back then, the existence of brick-and-mortars seemed to be on a precipice as ecommerce companies came to power. But traditional stores surged back by integrating digital into […]
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How Merkle Is Navigating The Cross-Device Arms Race
Performance marketing agency Merkle is one of the first agencies to use Google’s cross-device measurement platform, as well as an early strategic partner with Facebook’s Atlas cross-device product. As such, it has unique insights into what company CSO John Lee refers to as Facebook’s and Google’s “distinct pros and cons,” with the caveat that it’s […]
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The IAB’s New In-Feed Ads: Scaling Education Instead Of Technology
As feeds become the new standard for web design, there’s a greater need to develop ad units that accommodate them. Such was the thinking behind the IAB’s Wednesday release of specifications for three kinds of in-feed advertising channels: social feeds (notably sponsored Facebook or Twitter posts), product feeds (which encompass ecommerce sites like Amazon and […]
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Why Startups And Publishers Are Punching Up Against Ad Blockers
From 2007 to 2013 ad-block downloads grew steadily to about 50 million users. In 2013, that number more than doubled, and is on pace to do the same this year. The result has been an influx of startups meant to help advertisers address a problem that in two years has gone from low-level annoyance to […]