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.
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 […]
Goldieblox, the toymaker that cultivates girls’ curiosity in math, science and engineering, generated a huge amount of goodwill and brand love when it launched four years ago. Newly appointed Chief Marketing Officer Kenny Davis plans to expand Goldieblox from earned media sensation to a brand kids beg their parents to buy, while still delivering its […]
The football site Scout attracts avid fans who congregate en masse during the season but spend the offseason elsewhere. That seasonality adds complexity to Scout’s advertising sales business. Scout employs a small sales force on the direct side, focusing on custom integrations and some display. Most advertisers buy direct in-season. It sells the rest of […]
When online infrastructure company Dyn got hit by three DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks Friday, it shut down major sites using Dyn, including Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify and The New York Times. The attack also disrupted the ad industry. Even if a publisher wasn’t affected, the attack impacted many of the tech partners delivering and […]
The cable model may be going online, if last week’s reports around a possible Snapchat licensing model are true. (Snapchat declined to comment.) Publishers would receive a licensing fee for their content on Snapchat Discover, instead of selling ads themselves and taking a share of revenue. By moving to this model, Snapchat would consolidate all its […]
This year, Facebook appeared to abandon its plan to develop an ad tech stack to rival Google’s DoubleClick. It shut down its SSP (LiveRail), closed the Facebook Exchange and threw away its DSP before it got off the ground. All that remains is Atlas, a former ad server repurposed as a measurement tool, and the […]
By using an overhead shot of hands quickly mixing rainbow cake pops, potato spirals and other creative treats, Tastemade has mastered shooting video for audiences who are using their phones or scrolling through social media. “Today’s modern media company needs to be mobile, social, global,” said programming head Oren Katzeff. “Looking back 30 years to […]
The IAB unveiled a dynamic content ad standard that will move forward programmatic creative, which is open for public comment for the next month. Instead of churning out ads with dozens of different messages for different channels, advertisers simply define all the creative components and variations. Once served, the ads will dynamically assemble to adapt […]
Metamarkets has raised $14.25 million in growth capital from Wellington Financial and City National Bank. The company’s analytics software is designed to help clients like Twitter, Nanigans, AOL, OpenX and Drawbridge gain insight into their programmatic marketplaces. Metamarkets got the funding in part because investors are looking more favorably at ad tech, said company co-founder […]
Julie Clark will speak at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Conference in New York on Oct. 26. Hearst had deployed header bidding for years before it became one of the industry’s hot topics. As a veteran user of header bidding, Hearst focuses on adapting it to make programmatic buying more efficient for marketers and publishers. “The old way would […]
AppNexus laid off 150 of its 1,125 employees on Thursday and Friday, a 13% reduction of its workforce. Internally, the company is telling employees the cuts are part of a reorg that will unify its buy-side and sell-side product groups, which have operated separately until now with distinct engineering, sales and service teams. The company’s […]
For evidence that TV and digital media are continuing to converge, look no further than Discovery Communications. Discovery has invested $100 million in Group Nine Media, a newly formed media holding company that will include four brands: Thrillist, NowThis Media, The Dodo and Discovery’s Seeker. As part of the deal, Discovery Communications will start selling […]
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba wants to use location data to improve how it sells products. It didn’t want to build the tech itself, so Alibaba hired PlaceIQ to make sense of its massive reams of customer data. That’s not all. Alibaba also invested an undisclosed amount in the $25 million Series D round PlaceIQ closed […]
