As Editorial Director, 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.
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 […]
Disney Plus is off to a strong start. In its inaugural quarter, the subscription video on demand (SVOD) service brought in 10 million subscribers on the first day and 26.5 million subscribers over Q4, Disney said during its Q4 earnings Tuesday. By contrast, twelve-year-old Hulu, which is majority owned by Disney, totals 30.4 million users. […]
As the mobile app space matures and consolidates, one of its early entrants is floundering. Smaato just appointed its fourth CEO in a year after laying off 10% of its staff. Total headcount is down 20% from the beginning of last year, with the mobile exchange going from 240 to 190 employees. Ajitpal Pannu, who […]
OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan is leaving after 12 years to become CEO of GoFundMe. OpenX President John Gentry, a seven-year vet at the company, will step into the CEO role. “I’ve been walking in this direction for a long time,” Cadogan said. “It’s been a quarter of my life.” He said he told the board […]
Like a handful of companies thrust into the CDP category, Simon Data predates the acronym’s hype. Simon Data co-founder and CEO Jason Davis saw the need for a data layer accessible to marketing while working at Etsy, which acquired his first startup Adtuitive, an automated ad tool for small businesses, in 2009. He wanted to […]
People visit WebMD to research their health conditions and treatment, yielding a vast array of data about how people engage with different topics. The medical site’s knowledge about its readers now informs it nearly 3-year-old sponsored content program, which booked $20 million in revenue during its first year. WebMD can show clients how the customer […]
Google GM and VP of apps, video and display Sissie Hsiao will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference in New York on Jan. 28-29, 2020. Google is known for making methodical changes with long roll-out periods. But Sissie Hsiao, who became general manager and VP of Google’s advertising business across apps, video and display in […]
As the streaming wars intensify, NBCUniversal on Thursday sought to draw a clear distinction between the soon-to-be-launched Peacock and its streaming and digital competitors. Peacock will debut with 10 ad experiences that emphasize interactivity and performance, the company revealed during an investor day in New York City. It will run just five minutes of ads […]
With Chrome bidding farewell to third-party cookies, publishers predict a steep rise in use – and value – of their first-party data. Media companies with their own audiences and direct-to-consumer relationships expect power to accrue to them. And many publishers already have a head start. With Apple’s Safari browser blocking cookies for about 30% of […]
Third-party cookies – the backbone of programmatic advertising – are not long for this world. Google’s Chrome browser will phase them out in two years, according to a Tuesday blog post. Google Chrome is betting that its Privacy Sandbox – the privacy-preserving API first unveiled in August – will over the next two years build […]
When Nielsen CEO David Kenny stepped into the top role at the end of 2018, the company was embattled on multiple fronts. Viewers were shifting to streaming TV, which Nielsen struggled to measure. Nielsen’s media customers, frustrated with the company’s slow pace of innovation, started moving away from its measurement services. NBCUniversal, for example, spearheaded […]
Xumo – an early streaming platform that offers an ad-supported, linear-like streaming experience with branded channels – isn’t worried about the new competition entering the market. “Streaming is a growth sector,” said CEO Colin Petrie-Norris. “More users are getting familiar with streaming as an option. And in the ad-supported space, the people providing an ad-supported […]
The right focal image, message and even background color can make one advertising creative shine above the rest. To help marketers improve the performance of their creatives, Watson Advertising built Advertising Accelerator, a tech tool that predicts the best ads and quickly tests versions during a campaign. The goal is to apply the same automation […]
AMC Networks – like the TV industry as a whole – is stepping up its efforts to make TV more data-driven. And a large part of that initiative means making its data across all AMC brands – including IFC, BBC America, SundanceTV and We TV – available to advertisers. In late December, it brought on […]
NBCUniversal wants its content to appear wherever viewers want it: places like YouTube, Roku, NBC apps, Snapchat, mobile phones and work computers, in addition to linear streams in their living room. But scheduling ads that will light up across all of these platforms is a highly fragmented, manual process. So NBCUniversal hired former Kargo President […]
Gin is on the upswing. Gin accounts for just a single-digit percentage of US alcohol sales, but new brand entrants and a renewed interest in its bright flavors are making the category grow faster than many other spirits. Bombay Sapphire, as one of the classic gins on the market, is increasing its marketing investment to […]
Change seems constant in the media business. A chain of digital media consolidations in 2019 has created new scaled players: Group Nine Media and PopSugar; Refinery29 and Vice Media; and Vox Media and New York Media. Besides a greatly transformed competitive landscape, 2020 will see publishers wrestling with new challenges. Privacy and regulation, for instance, […]
The advertising industry today is largely the product of tremendous M&A activity. AdExchanger looked at the acquisitions that made the biggest impact in the past decade. Impact can mean many things. Some of these startups flourished under their new owners, showing worth far more than their deal price. Others, purchased during their downfall, reflect the […]
Whenever Google moves, people pay attention. Half of the 10 most-trafficked AdExchanger stories in 2019 feature Google, showing how any change Google makes ripples across the industry. Readers were also intrigued by stories of great success and … the opposite. On the former end of the spectrum was an examination of The Trade Desk’s massive […]
