AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:

Zach Rodgers

Zach Rodgers

Executive Editor

Zach runs AdExchanger’s editorial operations and supports programming strategy for AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO and Industry Preview events. Under his leadership the publication was recognized with a Jesse H. Neal Award in the category of “Best Media Brand” in 2016 and two regional Azbee Awards for “Best Technical Article” in 2017. He was previously Managing Editor at ClickZ, and his work has been published in The Guardian, Mashable and elsewhere.​ He is the host of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast featuring key leaders in the media, marketing and advertising technology arena. He frequently moderates at industry events. ​

Articles By Zach

  • Agencies

    Publicis Struggles With Talent Exodus After VivaKi's Breakup

    BY //

    It’s been a year since Publicis Groupe forced a big transition of its programmatic operation that many saw as the future of data-driven agency services: It decentralized its seven-year-old trading desk, VivaKi AOD, and reassigned its employees to new jobs within the holding company’s media agencies. Today, its grand experiment is seriously strained by a […]

  • Agencies

    WPP CEO Martin Sorrell On The Ad Sector Impact Of Slow Economic Growth

    BY //

    There’s an old ad industry saw that goes, “a little Procter & Gamble budget in everyone’s paycheck.” Well, now there’s a half billion less. The CPG giant told investors on the company’s earnings call in January that the company had succeeded in cutting $370 million in marketing costs in 2015, and that it expected to […]

  • Mobile

    Chinese Firms To Buy Opera, And Its Lucrative Mobile Ad Business, For $1.2 Billion

    BY //

    Allison Schiff contributed. The fat lady hasn’t sung, but it appears likely that a group of Chinese companies will acquire Opera and its lucrative mobile advertising business. Oslo-based Opera told investors Wednesday that it had received a buyout offer of $1.2 billion led by investment fund Golden Brick Silk Road, along with security software player […]

  • Digital TV and Video

    Facebook Signals Plans For Standalone Video Experience

    BY //

    Watch out YouTube. Facebook is coming for your video ad honeypot. In his first week back in the saddle after the birth of his daughter Maxima, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call that Facebook will explore the launch of a video-specific property, possibly an app that would compete with Google […]

  • Investment

    AppNexus Contemplates 'Plan B' Should IPO Market Remain Closed

    BY //

    AppNexus’ management and investors have spent the better part of a year preparing to take the company public. But the harsh (and getting harsher) IPO climate means they might not get to realize that ambition any time soon. As a result, even while AppNexus remains poised for a public offering – and could in fact […]

  • Ad Exchange News

    GroupM's Rob Norman: 2016 Will Bring Less Demand For Bad Media Supply

    BY //

    Rob Norman will speak at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference, taking place in New York on January 20-21. If you were forced to name one media buying entity that sets the agenda for the rest of the industry, it would have to be WPP-owned GroupM. It was GroupM – umbrella to Mindshare, MEC, Xaxis and Essence […]

  • Platforms

    Centro Trims 4% Of Workforce To Sustain Tech Investments And Maintain Profitability

    BY //

    Chicago-based ad platform company Centro let go 29 of its 725 employees on Monday, or about 4% of total staff. Unlike other recent layoffs in the ad tech sector – including at Turn, Collective and PubMatic – the cuts were not motivated by a shrinking pool of cash, restless investors or slouching revenue growth. Instead, […]

  • Platforms

    Bob Lord Steps Down As AOL President

    BY //

    Tim Armstrong is going to have to look for a new successor. The AOL CEO’s heir apparent, the highly visible Bob Lord, will soon step down from the company, which he joined two years ago to help spearhead an aggressive expansion of the company’s ad technology vision. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news […]

  • Online Advertising

    How Rocket Fuel Does Cross-Device Optimization For Microsoft

    BY //

    Rocket Fuel is speeding up the rollout of its device graph. Starting in Q1, the programmatic platform company will make cross-device targeting the default mode for marketer and agency clients of its self-serve DSP. Those customers include Microsoft, which does its own US digital ad buying in-house. Microsoft’s top B2B marketing exec in the US, […]

  • Online Advertising

    Google's Neal Mohan Jumps To YouTube, As DoubleClick Gets A Product Chief From The Analytics Side

    BY //

    Neal Mohan, the long-term architect of Google’s display ad ambitions, has left the building. But he’s staying on the campus. Mohan has taken a post under his old boss Susan Wojcicki, who led DoubleClick for many years before becoming CEO of YouTube a little less than two years ago. In the role he’ll lead all […]

  • Native Advertising

    Google Adds Programmatic Support For Native Ads

    BY //

    If someone asked you to rattle off the big buzzwords in media, it’s a pretty good bet mobile, native ads and programmatic would be somewhere near the top of your list. Google has just knocked down all three in a single gesture, allowing its publisher customers to expose native ad inventory in their mobile apps to buyers […]

  • Platforms

    Rocket Fuel Promotes Sales Chief Randy Wootton To CEO

    BY //

    Eight months after former CEO George John stepped down and the company started a search for his replacement, Rocket Fuel has decided to give head of sales Randy Wootton the keys to the city. Wootton was first hired in March to oversee a reorganization that split the company’s sales efforts clearly into three channels: agencies, direct […]

  • Platforms

    A New AppNexus? CEO O'Kelley Talks About Ch-Ch-Changes On Eve Of Expected IPO

    BY //

    AppNexus has long been the grand poobah of indie programmatic media platforms. But lately it has begun to look like a company under siege. There’s the fraud issue, which became an albatross after competitors Rubicon Project and OpenX cleaned up two years ago while AppNexus continued to allow blind impression resale. It has since fixed […]

  • Agencies

    Omnicom's Accuen Trading Desk Revenue Grew $25M In Q3

    BY //

    Programmatic continues to help more than hurt the agency conglomerates, or at least it has for the largest US holding company Omnicom Group. Omnicom continues to see notable growth from its trading desk, although the growth rate has slowed. The company’s Accuen exchange-buying unit delivered an incremental $25 million in spending growth during the third […]

  • Data

    Dunkin', McDonald’s And ADT Debate: Can We Trust Tech Platforms With Our Data?

    BY //

    It’s a question every CMO must answer: How much of my first-party data can safely be shared with tech platform partners? For advertisers in categories where Google has a product offering of its own, the question has even more urgency. Consider ADT, whose home security business faces an emerging competitor in Google’s Nest smart thermostat […]

  • Platforms

    Facebook Readies DSP Product For Early 2016 Launch

    BY //

    Facebook is taking the next logical step in its evolution toward a full-stack ad tech offering, rolling out a demand-side platform (DSP) capable of executing programmatic buys using the company’s “people-based” advertising methodology. In recent weeks Facebook’s Atlas team has pitched the DSP product to agency partners, including Omnicom Group, Havas, Merkle and others, according […]

  • Platforms

    PubMatic Cuts 8% Of Workforce

    BY //

    Publisher-facing ad platform PubMatic has let go about 50 employees, or 8% of its global headcount of 600. Many of the cuts were in India, where the company has significant development and support operations. The changes were motivated by a desire to improve the overall level of service, including by bringing service teams in-market to […]

  • Mobile

    Ad Blocker With A Heart Of Gold? Developer Yanks Top-Ranked 'Peace' From App Store

    BY //

    Citing a guilty conscience, the developer behind the ad blocking app that shot to the top of the iOS 9 charts has pulled his creation off the App Store shelves. Marco Arment, who cofounded Tumblr and created Instapaper before dabbling in ad blocking, said he ultimately couldn’t endorse an app that blocked ads en masse. Arment’s […]

  • Social Media

    Instagram Goes All In On Facebook's Ad Infra, Opens To Ad Buyers Globally

    BY //

    In the two years since Facebook’s huge image-sharing platform sold its first ad, Instagram has focused on fixed-price advertising from big national brands. In keeping with the platform’s emphasis on aesthetics and high design, many early advertisers were lifestyle companies like Starbucks and Disney. With Instagram’s 300 million global users now accustomed to seeing ads, […]

  • Ad Exchange News

    Saying Goodbye To Curt Hecht, A Media Exec Who Saw The Future And Acted On It

    BY //

    The digital media industry is mourning Curt Hecht. Hecht passed away this week at the age of 47, ending a brilliant 26-year career at Publicis Groupe and The Weather Company. His death has come as a shock to many, not only because of Hecht’s intellectual and physical vigor but also because he chose to keep […]

  • Digital Marketing

    Facebook Fights Back Against Rising Allegations That It Is 'Closed'

    BY //

    “Closed.” The word is often bandied about to describe Facebook’s ad tech business. It has become a rallying cry for smaller competitors as well as independent observers concerned about what they see as a return to AOL-style walled gardens. It would seem the naysayers have struck a nerve. Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of advertising technology, […]

  • Data

    Mobile DMP Apsalar Wants PC Linkages, Taps Tapad To Get Them

    BY //

    Over the past year, a new breed of data-management platform (DMP) has shown up to provide audience management for app-install campaigns. Mobile DMPs, as they’re sometimes called, are possible because of the availability of device and app identifiers commonly used to track campaign effectiveness. But these upstarts need to support audience segmentation in other channels. […]

  • Ad Networks

    Rocket Fuel Sees Lift From Efficiency Push, Trading Desk Courtships

    BY //

    Rocket Fuel turned in a better than expected second quarter, bolstered by enterprise sales of its DMP/DSP products, deal-making with holding companies, and cost savings from layoffs earlier this year. The successes helped the programmatic ad network and ad tech company post a 30% rise in gross revenue to $120 million and achieve “positive adjusted […]

  • Mobile

    Facebook Abandons Plan To Curb Device-Level Data Collection After Advertiser Backlash

    BY //

    Facebook has pulled the plug on a plan to limit device-level data collection for mobile app campaigns in the wake of a revolt by large app marketers against the policy change. A representative for the company confirmed to AdExchanger that Facebook will no longer stop app marketers – including some of the world’s largest mobile gaming […]

  • Platforms

    Desktop Looking Downright Marginal As Mobile Contributes 76% To Facebook's Q2 Revs

    BY //

    Facebook is mostly an app company now. Desktop monetization of Facebook’s owned and operated properties keeps shrinking both in actual numbers and as a percentage of the overall business. In the second quarter of 2015, desktop revenue shrank 8% and contributed less than one-fourth of Facebook’s total ad revenue, the company said in its earnings disclosure […]

  • Online Advertising

    Adobe Pitches Marketers On A Cross-Device Data Co-op, But Privacy Is A Snag

    BY //

    The competition among cross-device providers is no longer a one, two or even three-horse race, but looks more like a mad steeplechase with 20 animals of various sorts, including thoroughbreds, rabbits and perhaps snakes. The biggest consumer platforms, like Facebook and Google, are often given the best odds, but some dark horses are moving up […]

  • Online Advertising

    Talking Beeswax With CEO Ari Paparo: A Bidder When You Need One

    BY //

    Ari Paparo is a longtime builder, explainer and sometimes lampooner of ad tech. And now he’s a CEO. The former product executive with Google, Nielsen and AppNexus has taken the wraps off his new company, Beeswax, which provides a licensed “Bidder-as-a-Service” technology geared to two primary constituents: (1) ad tech firms, such as ad networks […]

  • Online Advertising

    Rubicon SEC Filing: Chango's 2014 Revenues Were $43M, But Retargeting Firm Wasn't Profitable

    BY //

    Chango recorded 2014 revenues of $43 million prior to its acquisition by Rubicon Project, according to a new US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. But the company was not profitable, despite being an early player in the lucrative retargeting niche. It reported a loss of just under $1 million for the year. Read the 8-K. […]

  • Online Advertising

    The Big Question For Many Microsoft Ad Sellers: How Long Will AOL Jobs Last?

    BY //

    Microsoft and AOL observers have a lot of questions in the wake of the companies’ landmark search and display ad deal, announced Monday. Here’s a big one: How will AOL, a company of some 4,500 employees, possibly absorb 1,200 new sales, marketing, biz dev and engineering people? Once the partnership is consummated, AOL will have […]

  • Ad Exchange News

    In Major Search And Ads Deal, AOL To Absorb Microsoft's Display Business And 1,200 Of Its Employees

    BY //

    In a new 10-year search-and-advertising alliance, Microsoft will transfer the lion’s share of its display ad business to Verizon-owned AOL. Under the deal, approximately 1,200 Microsoft employees will get offer letters from AOL, most of them in ad sales. Additionally, AOL will end its search distribution relationship with Google in order to accept Bing search and ads on […]

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