As Executive Editor, Sarah oversees AdExchanger’s news and feature coverage and event content. Sarah has written extensively about publishers, sell-side technology and Google. Understanding and explaining the business implications of technically complex topics is her forte. Over her years at AdExchanger, she’s documented the rise and maturity of programmatic tech, as data-driven advertising has spread far and wide in its marketing applications.
In this new podcast series, AdExchanger editors break the cabin fever by talking with the top thought leaders and practitioners in digital and data-driven advertising – all while under social isolation. The coronavirus pandemic will create far-reaching economic ripples across the advertising industry, says Watson Advertising CRO Jeremy Hlavacek, who’s currently working double-duty while homeschooling […]
Advertising and ad tech companies are rallying around their employees as their entire workforces move to remote setups. They are experimenting with #WFH Slack channels, virtual group exercise classes and photo contests for the best work-from-home selfie. Some sick employees are even getting food deliveries on the company’s dime. With people under lockdown, companies are […]
Between March and June, brands said they’re spending 33% less on digital media, and 39% less on traditional media, as the vast majority adjust spending for the first half of the year. The IAB surveyed nearly 400 senior decision-makers at brands and agencies in the past week. Seventy-four percent of them anticipated a coronavirus-related downturn […]
The six-year-old storage company MakeSpace had plans to go beyond digital marketing and run its first linear TV ads this March. And then the coronavirus pandemic happened. So shortly after starting its linear TV ads, MakeSpace put its plans on hold. “We’re going to completely pause after this week until we can work through the […]
This month, during the pandemic’s Great Toilet Paper Shortage, Wirecutter’s December review of the best bidet became one of its most popular articles. But it’s not all about bidets. The New York Times-owned site’s overall traffic and readership is up year over year – in some cases more than 50%. Wirecutter’s affiliate program is also […]
When ads positively portray people from a racial or cultural group, or contain cultural insights that resonate with members of that group, they measurably boost brand KPIs such as purchase intent, brand loyalty and brand relevance. But efforts to measure cultural inclusivity are in their infancy. One such effort – a new panel-based metric called […]
For David Simon, Cuebiq’s SVP of channel partnerships, RampUp was the beginning of the end. Simon normally spends 75 nights a year on the road, flying 125,000 miles a year and taking 120 flights. But since attending RampUp in early March, he’s been working from home, eating healthier, drinking less alcohol and sleeping better. And […]
While programmatic campaigns for ecommerce clients can optimize to sales in real time, CPG clients get the short end of the stick. When sales surge and change unpredictably – such as during the coronavirus pandemic – it severely reduces marketing agility. To weather these changes, Goodway Group gained access to a CPG client’s critical real-time, […]
The type of content that matters to people has completely shifted as Americans stay home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital media companies are quickly evaluating what’s doing well or falling flat and adjusting their content production strategies. They’re also figuring out how to produce video content and replace live events as their employees […]
The French video publication Brut emerged with a splash three years ago, just before the French presidential campaign. Brut produces high-quality news content with experienced journalists, but delivered casually, like friends talking to each other. In the short time since its debut, Brut said it became the third-most trusted news source in France. But now, […]
PubMatic unveiled a product Tuesday called Audience Encore, designed to let ad buyers use a publisher’s first-party data across the entire PubMatic exchange. PubMatic Audience Encore lets publishers set up a private marketplace (deal ID) with buyers that includes their audience data. Buyers can then target the audience segment both on that publisher’s site and […]
The technical backbone of digital advertising is being ripped out, and the IAB Tech Lab is committed to helping its members figure out what to do when third-party cookies disappear from web browsers. Although the IAB Tech Lab built a universal ID – DigiTrust – that will continue to run as long as third-party cookies […]
Digital media is starting to feel the effects of COVID-19’s US invasion. Consumer engagement in online content is spiking. And while some advertisers are watching and waiting, others are taking action and shifting media budgets or strategy. The traffic effect At Insider Inc., for example, traffic is way up as people seek information about the […]
Xandr CEO Brian Lesser has resigned, Reuters reported. Xandr did not respond to AdExchanger’s request for comment. There’d been rumblings within the advertising community about Xandr not living up to expectations. AT&T’s ad unit missed internal revenue projections and was off-pace to meet goals it set for later this year, multiple sources told AdExchanger. The […]
WarnerMedia’s wide range of shows, personalities and topics means the company can create vastly different types of branded content. Data plays a key role in matchmaking between the advertiser’s target audience and the content and delivery those potential customers like best. The teams using Launchpad, WarnerMedia’s insights tool, start their sales pitch by showing how […]
In college, Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman started sending a recap of the day’s business news to friends looking for finance jobs. Four years later, he’s built a profitable media company that generated $13 million in 2019 revenue, up from $3 million the year before. The company runs lean. After starting the year with just […]
ESI Media owns The Evening Standard and The Independent, but each newspaper approaches affiliate product recommendations differently. “To add value to our consumers, we ask, ‘What’s relevant to our users? And where do we have authority?’” said Sandro Del Grosso, head of digital partnerships and ecommerce for ESI Media. For example, The Evening Standard offers […]
“Just make this little tweak to your page.” With the clock ticking on third-party cookies, publishers will soon be the only part of the ad ecosystem with direct relationships with their readers. Naturally, everyone else wants in on that relationship. Buy-side ad tech has been more aggressive asking publishers to share user data, even as […]
The list of failed DSPs is getting long: Sizmek. IgnitionOne. Eyeview. Audience Science. Each DSP left unpaid invoices to suppliers they went bankrupt or closed, forcing exchanges to eat the losses or claw back money it already gave to publishers. Now exchanges are getting tough about getting paid. Nearly one year post-Sizmek, BidSwitch, TripleLift, PubMatic, OpenX, […]
As ad-supported local news struggles, member-supported Oregon Public Broadcasting is expanding. In addition to radio, it now produces TV and digital content to keep an audience of 1.5 million people informed. As part of its digital investment, it doubled its newsroom in the past five years. Posting went from supporting radio features, with a 9am-5pm […]
If advertising wants to keep using big data sets filled with consumer information, they’ll have to do a better job protecting them. And differential privacy is one of the most promising weapons in the privacy-protecting arsenal. This week on The Big Story, senior editor Allison Schiff dishes on differential privacy. It might sound like an […]
Rubicon Project delivered a strong end to 2019 by increasing Q4 revenue by 17% to $48.5 million, the top end of its guidance to investors. The exchange also highlighted its growth in video as it prepares to close its merger with Telaria in early April. Video revenue soared 43% to $28.6 million in 2019. Video […]
For two years, the 404bot worked unchecked, exploiting a flaw in the ads.txt spec that cost advertisers $15 million in wasted video ads. The 404bot served 1.5 billion video ads, according to Integral Ad Science, which revealed the scheme Tuesday with a warning for the industry, including for publishers to audit their ads.txt files. Ads.txt […]
The fate of each ad tech company hinges on whether or not it has a privacy strategy. Regulators, privacy advocates and web browsers are targeting core capabilities around targeting and measurement, which affects vendor product, engineering and commercial teams. So TripleLift appointed its first Chief Privacy Officer, Julia Shullman, in January. Her mission is to […]
The brands buying search and display ads on Kroger’s sites could only tie that activity to online sales, even though those ads influenced in-store purchases. So Kroger worked with recent Microsoft acquisition PromoteIQ to attribute offline sales to online ads, by connecting loyalty card data to its logged-in userbase. The unmeasured impact of the ads […]
Rakuten owns an assortment of consumer media properties: Viber is a WhatsApp-like chat app. Viki is similar to YouTube, only exclusively focused on Asian content with 50 million users. And Rakuten TV offers streaming TV. Until recently, each of these assets had its own sales team and unique tech setup, but that’s changing. But Rakuten […]
Without cookies, digital advertising needs to be rebuilt. The IAB wants to partner across brands, agencies, publishers and tech companies to develop a new way to power digital advertising, IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg told members at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, California, Monday. Dubbed “Project Rearc,” for re-architecture, a critical part of […]
Fresh off the acquisition of PopSugar last October, Group Nine Media vowed to turn a profit in 2020 – putting Chief Revenue Officer Geoff Schiller, a PopSugar transplant, in charge of finding the advertising dollars that will bring the media organization into the black. A good amount of those dollars will come from video advertising. […]
Whenever Google changes how its ad server works, publishers fear that Google will wrest control over how they run their digital advertising. Those concerns often have merit. So when Google added rules about how publishers could prioritize different ad exchanges earlier this week – and buried those changes in a confusing help center document instead […]
The New York Times posted strong results stemming from digital subscriptions; Facebook licensing revenue; its new TV show, The Weekly; Wirecutter and its Crossword and Cooking apps. But advertising wasn’t a bright spot. Coming off a tough comparison quarter, advertising declined 10.7% year-over-year to $171.3 million. Advertising accounts for one-third of total revenue. Overall Q4 […]
