Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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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 […]
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LiveRamp’s Travis May On Retail’s Digital Revival In The Age Of Data
Retailers and brands with physical locations are witnessing “an explosion of touchpoints in the ad and marketing tech landscape,” according to Travis May, president and GM of LiveRamp within Acxiom. The result is positive overall, he said, with marketers discovering new ways to demonstrate ROI and reach consumers across channels, but as that adoption takes […]
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Google's Programmatic And Mobile Revenue Surged in Q2
Google cited strong growth in revenue from its DoubleClick unit, YouTube and mobile search in second-quarter earnings reported Thursday. Total revenue for the quarter was up 11% year over year (YoY), somewhat less than the 22% reported for the same period in 2014. Read the earnings release. “Our strong Q2 results reflect continued growth across the breadth of […]
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How Programmatic Is Bringing Back B2B
Many industry analysts expect B2B media marketing budgets to finally reach pre-recession levels by the end of 2015, following a drop-off in 2009 that removed almost one out of every $5 spent on B2B outlets. And those revenue streams are migrating to programmatic technology and new native strategies to develop brand awareness. One of the […]
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Shopper Behavior Begins In-Store – But Brick-And-Mortars Need Tech To Harness It
A few years ago, industry observers wondered if retailers would survive in the face of ecommerce competition. Now it’s become apparent that brick-and-mortar companies have not only weathered the storm, they’ve emerged as a kind technology platform for vendors to build on. But despite numerous startups catering to retailers, there aren’t any major players like […]
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Why Live Nation Thinks Programmatic Can Take Over The Concert And Festival Scene
A year after embracing programmatic technology, Live Nation is planning another major expansion of its ad tech capabilities, this time by connecting its many online and offline properties into a holistic marketing platform. With its “Fan Connect programmatic platform,” the entertainment company is continuing its evolution into a “digital publisher” – not in the sense […]
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Site Redesigns Feed Native Opportunities
The IAB’s native advertising working group is building out recommendations that specifically address the promulgation of feeds. The group, which developed the OpenRTB 2.3 native formats, is narrowing recommendations into three categories: social feeds, news feeds and product feeds. Its focus on feeds indicates an ongoing trend in which traditional website layout, which has tended […]
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The Message Is Clear: Emoji Are Here To Stay
Messaging apps now attract just as many users as social media platforms. The combined users of Viber, WeChat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger now outrank Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, according to recent BI Intelligence research. But marketers have struggled to tap into that audience. Emojis might be a brand’s way in. “Emojis have become for […]
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Yieldify Picks Up $11.5 Million In Funding To Convert Online Window Shoppers
Yieldify is trying to solve what CEO and co-founder Jay Radia calls “a trillion-dollar problem” – which is part of why the company has been able to attract such big-name investors. The London-based startup announced an $11.5 million Series A funding round on Thursday led by Google Ventures and SoftBank Capital. At the moment, conversions on […]
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For Global Advertisers, All Roads Lead To Mobile
IPG’s MAGNA GLOBAL and Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia released global advertising forecasts Monday, both noting that, in very distinct ways, mobile propels the world’s advertising industry. MAGNA predicted mobile will go from 30% of all digital advertising to 55% by 2019, with a 53% increase this year – crossing the symbolic $50 billion mark. ZenithOptimedia similarly […]
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Why Cyber Security Experts Are Taking Aim At Sourced Traffic
The mistaken belief that there’s an infinite supply of targetable inventory on the Internet keeps fraud viable. That’s a key takeaway from a presentation last Thursday by Videology and White Ops at Videology’s New York City office, following a partnership between the two companies in May. “Online ad spending spikes up in November and December,” […]
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Affiliate Linking And Data Collection: When Revenue Isn’t The Value
While affiliate marketing is hardly new – perhaps you’ve heard of Google and Amazon – for some publishers its real value comes from the data and optimization it enables, as opposed to the incremental revenue it generates. At least, this is what Alicia Navarro, CEO and co-founder of content monetization company Skimlinks, was led to […]
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How The Slow-Rolling HTML5 Is Outpacing Flash
Steve Jobs’ notorious open letter “Thoughts on Flash,” published in 2010, was considered the final nail in the coffin for its status as the go-to software for web and mobile development. But like the Internet’s most powerful zombie, Flash has continued to play a prominent role for developers and ad builders. HTML5, the solution listed […]
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Political Ad Tech Is Growing Up, And Growing Claws
In the insulated world of political tech, market forces are insignificant compared to the capricious political winds. Imagine, for instance, if Pepsi had to let go of a significant chunk of its engineering talent if it was outsold by Coke at the end of a four-year period. This is a practical concern for political tech […]
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How Ecommerce Bazaars Are Supporting Traditional Businesses
Macy’s, Walmart, Best Buy: all brick-and-mortar giants looking to go multichannel. But what about the smaller shop owners that don’t have the resources to invest in and maintain digital presences? Many young ecommerce providers are aggregating small businesses into a single, online bazaar. If you’re an independent retailer, these service providers can give you the […]
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One Year After Acquisitions, Attribution Gets A Second Wind
As more brands introduce attribution technology – or push their agencies to do the same – basic models and applications on the vendor side are expanding. Initial players in the space, such as Adometry and Visual IQ, still focus on enterprise clients. Meanwhile, a newer breed of attribution tech is aiming more for a white-label […]
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How Heineken Sees Marketers Flexing The Power Of The Purse
According to a study conducted by the ANA and White Ops in December, 83-89% of agencies and media vendors see fighting ad fraud as a requirement, but only 26-28% actually have the tools in place to accomplish those goals. The latter may look like a discouraging figure, but Heineken senior media director Ron Amram sees […]
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Purch Lands $135 Million To Fund A Shopping Spree
Commerce-focused publisher Purch has raised a big $135 million round, money it aims to spend on potential media acquisitions outside its established B2C and B2B tech verticals. Some of the money will also support an ad tech expansion, including heightened analytics capabilities. “Investors don’t like money in the bank,” said CEO Greg Mason. “We want to […]
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Why Brick-And-Mortar Is The Next Great Data Reservoir
Retailers might look like they’re under siege, according to Gartner VP and analyst Andrew Frank, but they’re actually sitting on a pile of “underleveraged data.” Unfortunately, much of this data isn’t digestible by marketing technologists. In February, The University of Minnesota published a report demonstrating the causal relationship between search engine advertising and local in-store […]
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Ad Blocking Set To Decimate Mobile? Not So Fast
A series of developments over the past week have given rise to a narrative that mobile ad blocking represents a large new threat to publisher revenues. Two mobile ad-blocking products had their debut: one from category leader Eyeo, which produces the Adblock Plus (ABP) software, and another from Shine, an Israeli company with a cybersecurity […]
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Not Always About The Money: Overstock Builds Products To Drive Loyalty, Not Revenue
Most people think of Overstock.com solely as a discount ecommerce retailer, which is no surprise considering the company ranks No. 31 in Internet Retailer’s recent list of the nation’s biggest e-tailers. But Overstock also features a range of services beyond ecommerce that aren’t intended to be revenue generators, but are instead designed to turn general […]
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Centro Lands $30 Million Series B Funding Round
Centro, which sells media management software, revealed $30 million in Series B funding on Wednesday. Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds is the sole investor in this round, joining FTV Capital, which led a $22.5 million Series A round in 2010. Founded in 2001, Centro initially focused on automating the guaranteed aspects of digital advertising, such […]
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BidSwitch Feature Aims To Open Up Native Supply
BidSwitch on Monday announced a feature for its API that will incorporate the OpenRTB2.3 standards, opening up new sources of native supply and, according to BidSwitch GM Bob Walczak, “[enabling] a much higher degree of innovation and efficiency in the native market.” BidSwitch’s value proposition is its ability to integrate once and then connect with […]