Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Why Regional Grocery Chains Are Buying Into Co-Ops
A growing number of retail media networks are partnering with ad tech intermediaries and each other to manufacture national scale. And you can add regional grocery chains Wegmans and Giant Eagle to that list.
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Forget ROAS? The New Retail Metrics Game
Unfortunately, we seem stuck with our longtime measurement standards, like the trusty old CPM and ROAS. But for change to happen, it must come from within.
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PODCAST: The Big Story‘Incrementality’ Is The Buzzword That Stole Prog IO
Well, that’s a wrap on Programmatic IO Las Vegas 2024! The AdExchanger editorial hopped on stage for a live recording of The Big Story to round up all the moments that made us go “a-ha” this week, including observations on commerce media, CTV and generative AI.
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Paramount And Shopsense Add Programmatic Demand To Their Shoppable Ad Network
What if the new storefront is a person sitting on their couch and scrolling their phone?
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksDon’t Call It A Comeback: The Reinvention Of Search Engine Marketing
With the rise of generative AI software and major changes to search platforms in just the past year or two, SEO and SEM tactics are back. Everyone and their mother is trying to figure out how to make search work and what the new world of search marketing even looks like. Enter Navah Hopkins.
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Scott’s Miracle-Gro Is Seeing Green With Retail Media
It’s lawn season – and you know what that means. Scott’s Miracle-Gro commercials, of course. Except this time, spots for Scott’s will be brought to you by The Home Depot’s retail media network.
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Walled Garden Platforms Are Drowning Marketers In Self-Attributed Sales
Sales are way up; ROAS is through the roof across search, social and ecommerce. At least, that’s what the ad platforms say.
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Expedia Has Booked Its Trip To Ad Land
Expedia Group, the online travel agency giant, is here for the retail media revolution.
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Adalytics Claims Colossus SSP Is Misdeclaring IDs In Its Bid Requests
Colossus SSP, a DEI-focused supply-side platform owned by Direct Digital Holdings (DDH), is the subject of Adalytics’ latest report released Friday. It’s a doozy.
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The Trade Desk Reframes Its Open Internet Vision As ‘The Premium Internet’
The Trade Desk is focusing beyond the overall “open internet” and on what CEO Jeff Green calls the “premium internet.”
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Why Ad Tech Is The New Change Management For Retailers
This week, the AdExchanger Commerce newsletter caught up with Mark Heitke, Best Buy Ads vet and new VP of strategy at Symbiosys, a retail media tech biz with a new take on search advertising.
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Google Search’s Core Updates Are Crushing Sites And Reshaping The Web
Google Search, the web’s largest traffic and revenue generator for two decades, is in the midst of sweeping overhauls that have already altered how users are funneled around the internet.
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Liquid I.V. Sponsors A Formula 1 Race As DTC Brands Compete For Sports Fans
Digital-native brands are racing to break free of their social media roots to reach a broader base of US customers. For many brands, this means betting big on sports.
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Criteo Splits Out Retail Media Revenue For The First Time
Criteo split out its retail media segment revenue for the first time during its earnings report on Thursday.
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How Shopify Learned To Love Advertising
This week, the AdExchanger Commerce Newsletter catches up with Shopify, which, in the past couple of years, quietly became one of the most important players in online advertising, despite rarely being thought of in the category.
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Google’s Ad Network Biz Dips, But Search Brings Home The Bacon
By next year, Google will have three separate business lines – Search, YouTube and Cloud – with an annual run rate to generate at least $100 billion, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors.
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Ibotta Crosses The IPO Finish Line – Now The Real Work Begins
Ibotta’s evolution since it was founded 13 years ago – it went public last week – is emblematic of the industry’s overall transition from third-party data marketplaces to first-party and retail media data.
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How Chinese Sellers Are Quietly Reshaping US Consumer Habits
American consumers are buying more and more online products directly from Chinese manufacturers. It’s an important change, though many online shoppers are unaware.
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Why White Claw’s Parent Company Is Pouring Investment Into Headless Commerce
A booze brand and a “headless commerce” platform walk into a meeting with the CFO. That might sound like the setup for a punchline, but it’s just how mar tech works these days.
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As MMM Rides Again, Google Finds Its Place In The Conversation With Meridian
Tracking is a mess. Attribution is broken beyond repair. IP address identity data may go the way of the dodo. Which means marketing mix modeling is back, baby!
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksA New Day For Targeting And Analytics
Jeromy Sonne began bootstrapping his ad optimization and analytics startup Daypart.AI in 2023, having missed the heady days of low interest rates. Still, there’s gold in them thar hills for a programmatic startup that isn’t exactly a DSP, isn’t built on cookie-based data and is native to cloud-based advertising.
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The Rise Of Ecommerce Ad Metrics
As ecommerce adoption has grown, measurement has shifted away from proxies towards metrics that show business results – a move away from clicks and views towards sales and profitable growth.
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The UK’s CMA Wants Ad Tech To Spill All The Tea On Their Privacy Sandbox Concerns
Gathering information from industry insiders is a critical part of the CMA’s evaluation process, says Chris Jenkins, director of the its Digital Markets Unit.
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How RMNs Use MFA And Cheap Inventory To Game Attribution Rules
Retail media is built on its attribution quality, but real purchases can be gamed by programmatic metrics and create perverse incentives for RMNs to serve ads across low-quality inventory.
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For Verizon Business, Reaching The Customer Means Empowering The Marketer
The CMO role has evolved “driven by the customer insight and customer data we have as marketers,” says Verizon Business Chief Product & Marketing Officer Iris Meijer.
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Follow The Money: Why Retail Media Is Part Of A Greater CapEx Revolution
This week, we’re looking at retail media but from a different point of view: the Wall Street perspective.
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How A Regional Grocer Is Taking Advantage Of The Retail Media Revolution
Adopting modern data-driven and ad tech tools is a big shift for a regional grocer like Dierbergs Markets, that wants to remain a grocer – not become a technology company.
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There’s A Lot Wrong With Google’s And Meta’s Non-Transparent ‘Refund’ Practices
Google and Meta are playing with fire. Their opaque refund practices have already exposed them to customer blowback – and could lead to class-action lawsuits by disgruntled advertisers.
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How US Intelligence Agencies Buy And Use Programmatic Data For Surveillance
Mike Yeagley, an independent contractor who has scouted and acquired commercial data and technology on behalf of intelligence agencies, is one of the earliest evangelists of using ad tech tracking information to identify and surveil government targets.
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Adalytics Report Torches Ad Tech For Touting MFA Prevention While Scarfing MFA Supply
Practically every ad tech vendor has put out a press release in recent months full of bluster about cutting out made for advertising sites – and yet supply sources remain oversaturated with garbage inventory.