Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
Retail and ecommerce technology companies are forecasting a strong holiday shopping season, except for one problem: the late Thanksgiving this year means there’s one fewer week in the prime shopping period between Black Friday and Christmas. But does it matter if there are fewer days for shopping sprees this year? On the one hand, US […]
The Trade Desk brought in $164 million in Q3 revenue, up 38% from Q3 2018, according to its earnings report Thursday. The company’s profitability ticked down from $20.3 million to $19.4 million in the quarter because of large investments in areas like connected TV (CTV) that will maximize profitability over the long term, The Trade […]
Nielsen will split into two separate public companies, breaking apart its Watch media measurement and metrics business from Connect, which provides market share analytics and attribution in the CPG and retail category. The decision, announced during the company’s Q3 earnings report Thursday, comes after a yearlong strategic review, where Nielsen considered sales offers or other […]
Comscore named board member and former Rentrak CEO Bill Livek as its CEO, replacing interim chief Dale Fuller, the company announced Tuesday in its quarterly earnings report. Comscore earned $94.3 million in Q3, an 8% decline from the same period last year. Revenue was also down sequentially, after posting $96.9 million in Q2, which was […]
Monday’s Links: Algo Secrets A bipartisan group of senators filed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act on Thursday, a bill that would require large internet and search providers (those with more than 1 million users, at least $50 million in revenue and 500 employees) to disclose how and why users see certain personalized content, as well […]
Facebook’s controversy over its decision to allow politicians (but only politicians) to promote lies in ads has led to Twitter saying it would forbid political ads and Scott Galloway, a prescient tech industry analyst, predicting Facebook would ban political ads by Thanksgiving. Yet, if such a ban materialized, Democrats would feel the brunt of it. […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Distribution Dilemma AT&T is leaning into its 34 million HBO subscribers to drive sign-ups for its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. But it may face roadblocks in working with competitive cable providers on distribution, Digiday reports. AT&T has yet to sign on any distribution […]
Megan Clarken, previously Nielsen’s chief commercial officer, will take over as Criteo CEO in November, the company said Wednesday. Clarken will continue Criteo’s transformation program, which began last year when founder JB Rudelle returned as chief executive in April 2018. Her 15 years at Nielsen have given her strong visibility and esteem in the ad […]
Alphabet continued its long run of revenue growth, earning $40.5 billion in Q3, up from $33.7 billion in the same period last year. But its profitability dropped by almost a quarter to $7.1 billion as the company’s expenses increased, according to its quarterly report. The biggest cost center is headcount growth. The company has added […]
Advertising technology acquisitions are back in vogue. There were 86 ad tech deals during the first three quarters of 2019, almost double the M&A activity last year, according to a report published Monday by Results International Group, an investment advisory firm. Results International typically doesn’t break out ad tech for its overall marketing technology and […]