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

  • Advertiser

    CMOs Talk Big TV And Big Data At ANA's Annual Confab

    BY //

    Breaking: The sizzle reel still has legs. Two thousand attendees at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference were treated to numerous examples of the genre Friday, as senior marketers from Chrysler, Walmart, MARS and Coca-Cola showed off their favorite TV spots. Repeatedly. But while the raw storytelling power of television remains […]

  • Data

    Experian Buys Device ID Firm 41st Parameter for $324M, Gets AdTruth In The Bargain

    BY //

    Did you notice? Experian just bought a cross-device ad tracking — ahem — fraud-prevention vendor. The credit-reporting and marketing giant laid out $324 million to nab 41st Parameter, a security and fraud-detection business that guards against unauthorized purchases, among other things. Importantly, 41st Parameter also runs an ad-tracking brand, AdTruth, that hawks the same basic […]

  • Agencies

    Trading Desk Bosses Project 2015 Automated Ad Spend, Declare War On Site Lists

    BY //

    Automation Is Coming. In panel after panel at New York’s Advertising Week, publishers and agencies heaped hate on ad selling inefficiencies and delivered eulogies for their mutual adversary, the insertion order. The big questions: Which players will be first to seize the automation grail? And how long will it take? The holding company trading desks […]

  • Agencies

    Another Loss For Razorfish As Chairman Kokich Exits For Marchex

    BY //

    Was Bob Lord the only beam bracing the dam at Razorfish? The Publicis-owned shop lost another bigwig this morning with the exit of Chairman Clark Kokich for a new job as chief strategy officer at Marchex. Kokich was a mainstay at Razorfish, having previously been CEO and president. Tallying the headcount losses, Razorfish has lost […]

  • Agencies

    CEO Sorrell Says WPP Group Has A New Competitive Set

    BY //

    WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell takes an increasingly broad view of his competitors. In addition to the company’s two largest agency holding company rivals, Interpublic and Publicis/Omnicom (the future Publicis Omnicom Group), and smaller players Havas Media and Dentsu/Aegis, he says the company now competes broadly with Internet giants, researchers and data firms. “We […]

  • Social Media

    Twitter Ponders Self-Serve Option For 'Amplify,' Its TV Reach Extension Program

    BY //

    Twitter is in New York this week talking up Amplify, which is at the heart of the company’s monetization strategy around broadcast content. The Amplify program offers audience extension for TV networks by letting them tweet short video clips such as sports replays minutes or seconds after their on-air broadcast. Broadcast advertisers can “ride along” […]

  • Online Advertising

    Rocket Fuel Shares Priced Higher, In Upbeat Sign For 'Programmatic IPOs'

    BY //

    Rocket Fuel is expected to begin trading this week and has raised the target price for its upcoming IPO to a range of $27 to $29 per share, up from $24 to $27. The late boost may be due to heightened interest from investors in the programmatic ad story — versus the broader ad-tech category. […]

  • Online Advertising

    Ad Industry Consortium Quits 'Do Not Track' Group

    BY //

    In perhaps the biggest challenge yet to the legitimacy of the Do Not Track standard-making process, the Digital Advertising Alliance is giving up on efforts to build consensus for a browser-based DNT solution for Internet users. The self-regulatory group will also begin its own efforts to initiate a browser-based tracking choice mechanism for Internet users, […]

  • Social Media

    FBX Gains Velocity. Next Up: Mobile Inventory?

    BY //

    In Facebook’s last earnings call, Sheryl Sandberg surprised some by saying the Facebook Exchange “is actually a very small part of our business.” That may be changing, as the company pushes more ad space into its RTB marketplace — and there are signs mobile News Feed inventory is waiting in the programmatic wings. “We believe FBX […]

  • Mobile

    Twitter's Kevin Weil Talks MoPub Deal Rationale And Scaling Native Ads

    BY //

    Buying MoPub does a few things for Twitter, potentially. It adds $100 million in 2013 revenue to Twitter’s income statement in the months leading up to a probable IPO. It creates an opportunity to monetize Twitter’s valuable data “off-platform” through an internally run mobile exchange. This could work by creating BlueKai-like data segments that would […]

  • Agencies

    How Digital Agency Critical Mass Grew A Standalone 'Marketing Science' Unit

    BY //

    Critical Mass has lasting expertise in analytics. The digital agency specializes in optimizing websites and other user experiences by placing data at the center. For some clients, such as Nissan, it acts as the measurement hub for all shops in the roster. The agency’s Marketing Science group is led by Shaina Boone, who oversees about 30 […]

  • Agencies

    Survey: 42% of Advertisers Handle Data/Analytics Through An 'In-House Agency'

    BY //

    More advertisers are running in-house “agency” units in 2013 than did five years ago, according to a new survey from the Association of National Advertisers. The change is driven in part by the weak global economy, but also could be chalked up to digital acceleration – including data/analytics and social imperatives. The survey of 203 […]

  • Online Advertising

    Conspiracy Theory: AOL And Yahoo Diverge, Then Merge

    BY //

    AOL and Yahoo – so different, right? Well, not exactly, but they have less in common than they once did. Here’s a crackpot theory for you: The companies are taking different paths in preparation for an eventual megamerger of the sort that was discussed, and then scrapped, back in 2011. Now we’re deep in speculative […]

  • Agencies

    Water Cooler Talk: New Agency Group Sees Wider Role For Data In Content Marketing

    BY //

    This week saw the formal launch of a marketing services company geared to entertainment clients. Water Cooler Group contains four agency brands – Maude (offering creative and strategy), Media Storm (planning and buying), Hip Genius (social media) and Bolt (for iTV). Among its clients are Food Network, MLB Network, Major League Soccer, Viggle, and cable […]

  • Ad Exchange News

    OpenX Faces The Music On Traffic Quality

    BY //

    The rise of programmatic buying has been a boon for some unscrupulous publishers that have learned to game the system by unloading junk ad impressions on exchanges. Now the money grab may be ending as exchange operators respond to improvements in fraud detection and to buyer demands for legit inventory. At least one such player, […]

  • Online Advertising

    Could A Nasdaq-Style Glitch Bring Ad Trading To Its Knees?

    BY //

    Now and then the question comes up. How vulnerable is the digital ad ecosystem to the technical problems that occasionally knock out trading in the major financial markets? One such glitch hit Nasdaq on Thursday, freezing out investors for three hours. Time to revisit! Once the preferred way of explaining RTB to one’s relatives, the “financial […]

  • Online Advertising

    Bots Win! Nonhuman Ad Impressions Still Selling Like Hotcakes

    BY //

    It’s been six months since botnets entered the advertising lexicon in a big way, thanks to research and publicity efforts by self-styled fraud fighters and firms that specialize in detecting nonhuman traffic. March stories in Adweek, AdExchanger and other publications shined a spotlight on the pervasiveness of nonhuman Internet traffic and its threat to the value […]

  • Digital TV and Video

    AOL's Adap.tv Is At The Heart Of IPG's TV Automation Deal

    BY //

    With its new partnership with a number of TV media sellers, announced yesterday, Interpublic Group has begun to make good on its pledge earlier this year to “automate” 50% of media. The use of “automation” here is perhaps a bit misleading however, since what IPG is really trying to solve is a workflow problem – […]

  • Digital Marketing

    Architects Of IPG's Trading Desk Create Programmatic Consulting Firm

    BY //

    The guys who came up with Interpublic Group’s display ad-trading strategy have embarked together on a joint consulting venture. Their new company, Unbound, will serve as a systems integrator to brands and publishers as they make decisions about programmatic ad technologies. “We saw a pretty big gap in the marketplace. There’s no real technology-and-service systems […]

  • Agencies

    Big Test For TV And Radio Automation, As IPG Preps New Pipes For Broadcast Buys

    BY //

    Interpublic Group is making good on recent pledge to automate 50% of its cross-channel buying activity by 2016. The holding company’s Mediabrands division has signed up a group of broadcast partners to install an automated media buying system that will span TV, radio, and digital out-of-home ads. The list of the IPG Mediabrands’ initial partners […]

  • Agencies

    Publicis Aligns Engauge With Zenith, Another Sign Of Media Agency Clout

    BY //

    Media agencies have more influence than ever, thanks to the runaway train of audience fragmentation and the infrastructure/manpower needed to address it. This trend is nicely articulated by Publicis Groupe’s acquisition of digital agency Engauge Marketing – not because Engauge is a digital media agency (it’s not) but rather because it’s a creative and content-centric […]

  • Digital Marketing

    Google 'Gaze Tracking' Patent Points To Ad Viewability For The Real World

    BY //

    A new Google patent for a wearable “gaze tracking” technology (US patent #8,510,166) has fantastical implications for how advertising could evolve in a world full of head-mounted interfaces such as, oh, Google Glass. The possibilities include far-out concepts such as billboard viewability reporting and “pay-per-gaze” billing for ads. In its patent claim, Google describes a […]

  • Online Advertising

    GroupM Cuts Global Ad Forecast, Sees Video Robbing TV In Some Countries

    BY //

    GroupM has lowered its global ad spending forecast for the second year running. The media investment arm of WPP cited Eurozone weakness as the main reason why it expects 2013 ad growth of 3.4%, instead of the 4.5% it previously predicted. Argentine currency volatility, a wobbly Japan and Egypt’s chaos were secondary reasons. The five […]

  • Mobile

    Millennial Media Snaps Up Jumptap For $193 Million

    BY //

    One big old mobile ad network is set to acquire another. Publicly-traded Millennial Media announced an agreement to buy Boston-based Jumptap for a combination of tech and stock. Read the release. While Jumptap’s roots are in a traditional publisher network model, Millennial called Jumptap a “programmatic and mobile-first” platform. According to Millennial CEO Paul Palmieri, Jumptap’s strategic benefits […]

  • Online Advertising

    Rakuten Snaps Up PopShops, Purveyor Of Product Data Feeds

    BY //

    Rakuten – owner of affiliate giant Linkshare and the Mediaforge retargeting platform — is determined to grab a wider share of digital marketing spend. The Japanese ecommerce player has agreed to buy PopShops, a Seattle-based provider of pipes for live product-data feeds. PopShops is primarily used by affiliate publishers as a means to obtain up-to-the-minute […]

  • Advertiser

    Mobile-Commerce Convergence Brings Change At Sprint Nextel

    BY //

    Sprint Nextel has seen mobile visits as a ratio of overall traffic spike dramatically in recent months. And it has responded by throwing marketing investment at mobile touch points – including paid media and mobile-in-retail experiences. “The embrace of mobile in commerce, in shopping, in everything we’re doing across marketing has been a huge shift,” […]

  • Digital TV and Video

    Sizing Up Adap.tv's $405M Price Tag: 1.3X HuffPo, 2X WaPo, 1X AdMeld

    BY //

    AOL will shell out $405 million for Adap.tv, as we reported this morning. That’s a lot of scratch for an ad-tech company – or any company, for that matter. While M&A comparisons are only useful up to a point, it might be instructive to consider the video-ad platform in light of other few recent deals […]

  • Digital TV and Video

    AOL Nabs Adap.tv For $405M

    BY //

    AOL has agreed to buy video-ad company Adap.tv in a deal that will add another arrow to the programmatic quiver, with products facing both the buy and sell side. Adap.tv is one of a handful of mature companies, alongside YuMe, Tremor Video and TubeMogul, that are seizing the digital video opportunity. Its revenue growth has […]

  • Agencies

    Another Path For Publicis-Omnicom: Turn Accuen Into A 'Conflict Desk'

    BY //

    Here’s a far out option for Publicis and Omnicom as they attempt to fit their trading desk units together: Allow the smaller of the two, Omnicom’s Accuen, to continue as a standalone unit to manage clients that are competitive with Publicis’s Vivaki AOD. It would be the programmatic equivalent of a “conflict shop.” Last week, […]

  • Agencies

    Razorfish Media Chief Jeff Lanctot Follows CEO Lord Out The Door

    BY //

    Razorfish’s global chief media officer has resigned, becoming the latest seasoned digital exec to exit a Publicis-owned agency. Jeff Lanctot’s departure, first reported by Digiday, comes close on the heels of Razorfish CEO Bob Lord’s exit for the top job at AOL Networks. Speaking with AdExchanger, Lanctot said Lord’s exit was a motivating factor but […]

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