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.
2016 was the year that header bidding crossed over and became a disruptive force in the ad industry. The wave of publisher adoption spurred tech companies to create header bidding solutions. Vendors that were slow to adopt, like Rubicon Project, saw their stock crash as their rivals scooped up market share in a world […]
Adam Chandler joined Kargo as its chief business officer this week. He will handle sales, account management and business development for the fast-growing mobile rich media company. Kargo added 92 employees in 2016, for a total of 250. From 2011 to 2015, it’s grown at a rate of 100% a year. Chandler joins from Rubicon […]
Who’s left at Rubicon Project? This year, a wave of senior executives left Rubicon Project, hollowing out the ranks. A company that prided itself on building a strong workplace culture in sunny Los Angeles now faces discontent with what some have described as product missteps and a lack of strategy at the top. Among the […]
When should an ad count? Traditionally, the IAB and Media Ratings Council (MRC) has recommended measuring desktop or mobile ads based on served impressions. So that means the ad only counted after the ad server responded. But now, the IAB and MRC, in conjunction with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), want to change these standards, […]
As part of The Weather Company’s shift to a vertical-based sales organization, it has hired Sarah Ripmaster as VP of automotive sales. Ripmaster, who has a decade of experience working with auto manufacturers, will help advertisers use The Weather Company’s location data, weather data and the Watson Ad platform in their ad campaigns. Ripmaster worked […]
Data-driven editorial just added a new weapon to its arsenal: a Slackbot. Clique Media Group (CMG), which owns flagship style site WhoWhatWear as well as MyDomaine, Byrdie and Obsessee, created a Slackbot in November to alert editors when stories over-index the benchmarks set for each author. The editors receive a Slackbot notification with details about […]
As more money flows programmatically, Prisa Group and other publishers are changing their sales organizations and ad products to focus on serving data-driven buyers. Prisa Group owns or represents media brands in 22 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. Its properties, including El País and the sports site AS, reach 25 million unique users. It also serves […]
Swisscom is an example of how telcos like AT&T, Verizon or Singtel might evolve. In April, the Swiss telco combined its mobile phone and set-top box data with digital, print, radio and TV content from 85 media brands. The joint venture, called Admeira, reaches 95% of the Swiss market and lets advertisers precisely target their […]
In the summer leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, liberal political website ThinkProgress moved from WordPress to Medium. It abandoned its ad networks and programmatic banner ads and switched to Medium’s sponsored posts. ThinkProgress made the change because it saw revenue from banner ads flattening, and it didn’t want to compromise the user […]
Want some free tacos? Just go to a Los Angeles Lakers game and hope they win and the opposing team scores less than 100 points. Over the past decade, the Jack in the Box-sponsored promotion for LA Lakers ticketholders has become a fan favorite. During close games, fans chant “We want tacos!” This season, the […]
Mitú, a digital media company for young Latinos, started out as a multichannel network on YouTube and has since expanded onto Facebook and OTT devices. On Tuesday, the four-year-old publisher will add Snapchat Discover to the mix. “Snapchat recognized a significant portion of their audience, based on demo, is Latino, and wanted to find the […]
Two years ago, Media.net started helping publishers move their header bidding partners to a speedier server-to-server configuration, which has since attracted publishers like The Atlantic, Forbes, The New York Times and WebMD. Media.net had largely not marketed itself, said COO Namit Merchant. But following a $900 million acquisition this past summer by a Chinese consortium, […]
MeUndies discovered a new sales channel on Black Friday: Facebook Live. The underwear company ran a late-afternoon, two-hour event on Nov. 25 complete with a DJ and dance contests. As more people joined, MeUndies unlocked larger and larger discounts. The Live event attracted 13,300 viewers. Those users tallied 5,998 engagements. The Facebook Live audience opened […]
Purch, which first implemented header bidding three years ago, has moved on. The portfolio of product review and tech sites turned off most of its header bidders last month and moved to server-to-server integrations with the same partners. Industrywide, server-to-server is considered a logical next step after header bidding. Amazon is moving server-to-server, and Google’s […]
Amazon’s four-year-old header tag is going server-side, making it among the first header tag solutions to move to the faster, more sustainable setup. Sources briefed on the change described the details of this change to AdExchanger, which Ad Age first reported Thursday. As header bidding has taken off with publishers and more ad tech companies […]
AppNexus has filed confidentially for its IPO, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. AdExchanger reported in June that its IPO filing was imminent. The company is seeking a valuation in the $1.5 billion to $2 billion range, according to the Journal, which would put it in line with its 2015 round of […]
DoubleVerify will release a tool today designed to help advertisers avoid fake news sites. The company developed the capability to filter hundreds of fake news sites after brands asked for it over the past month, said CEO and President Wayne Gattinella. DoubleVerify also offers more than 75 brand safety filters so advertisers can avoid content […]
Local news sites already contain one of the best environments for local advertisers: the right audience in the right context. Trinity Mirror, which bills itself as the largest national and regional multimedia content publisher in the UK, isn’t stopping there. By adding location data to the mix, Trinity Mirror’s news sites help 1 million advertisers […]
Widespread adoption of mobile phones has opened up the opportunity for programmatic advertising in Africa. “The mobile advertising space is still in its infancy in terms of actual numbers, but it has huge potential,” said Anindya Ghose, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business who has studied the global mobile marketplace. Chinese companies […]
SintecMedia will acquire Operative for nearly $200 million in a move that will give media companies with linear TV and digital businesses one software system to manage proposals, trafficking and billing. “We are future-proofing [media companies’] businesses by helping them create a single stack for linear and digital,” said Operative CEO Lorne Brown, who will […]
Hearst’s media encompasses magazines, broadcast networks and newspapers, but tapping into its massive scale means logging deals into 17 separate systems or setting up multiple deal IDs. Over the past year, Hearst’s Core Audience division has brought its properties onto the same ad server, exchange and data management platform. Hearst also built its own viewability […]
Investing Media Solutions (IMS), exclusively represents the advertising for 375 long-tail and mid-tail publications that offer financial advice. As the financial network looks to the future, it’s adding first-party data and more compelling ad formats to maintain stride with its sophisticated financial advertisers. IMS helps financial advertisers like Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab, and brands like […]
The programmatic salesperson only came into existence about five years ago. What started out as an outsider position in the sales organization has become more mainstream as programmatic adoption increases. But the very people holding programmatic sales roles are already predicting its extinction, as the role gets absorbed into the entire sales process. “In three […]
CBS Interactive-owned CNET has long relied on data to make editorial decisions. But its branded content program, Studio 61, also applies editorial insights to branded content. When Motorola wanted branded content to support its Moto Z phone launch, CNET analyzed which content performed best against Motorola’s target segment: Verizon and Android users aged 18 to […]
Buyers can now purchase Meredith’s shopper marketing display units programmatically through a private marketplace set up through The Trade Desk. The units used to be available only through direct buy. “There is a lot of talk of the IO business migrating into programmatic, but a lot of that IO business is custom opportunities like this,” […]
Rubicon will lay off 19% of its workforce, totaling 125 jobs, completing the reorganization it began in Q2. The company is also lowering its guidance for Q4. It will be the third ad tech company with an SSP to make large cuts this year. PubMatic laid off 100 last December, and AppNexus laid off 150 […]
The Wall Street Journal plans to increase subscriptions by creating mobile-specific experiences with its What’s News and London-focused WSJ City apps. The two apps appeal to specific reader needs, unlike the main WSJ app’s broader reach. What’s News features top stories users can scan on a subway or in an elevator. WSJ City offers a […]
AOL, which has signed more than 100 publishers to its header-bidding solution over the past year, is adding a wrapper so publishers can easily integrate multiple header-bidding partners. The company, which works with tens of thousands of publishers, will do the integration work for its wrapper clients. (AOL claims it won’t give an advantage to […]
Epicurious completely rebuilt its app for Thanksgiving, incorporating best practices for designing content and ads for mobile. The first version of Epicurious’ app, launched back in 2009, didn’t show ads. Later, they were tacked on. With the relaunch, Epicurious thought about how content and ads would work together from the start. “We wanted to created […]
Cox Interactive is piloting smart routing technology from Dyn that speeds up the outbound bid request to demand-side platforms (DSPs). It unveiled early results of the test at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O Ops Talks in New York on Wednesday. Faster connections mean more DSPs can deliver bids before publisher-set timeouts. And more bids mean more programmatic […]
