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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

    Agency Holding Company Of The Future? Check Out The MediaMath Family Tree

    BY //

    Last year MediaMath Sales VP Charles Cantu approached his CEO, Joe Zawadzki, to give his notice. He had gotten a competitive job offer that included a major pay raise and the opportunity to manage a team. Zawadzki asked him, “What do you want to do after this?” Cantu replied, “I want to run my own […]

  • Agencies

    Publicis-Omnicom Merger Is Official, A Bid For Scale And Digital Relevance

    BY //

    Publicis and Omnicom have confirmed their intent to create a merger of equals. The two global ad agency holding companies will form a new entity called Publicis Omnicom Groupe – with ownership structured approximately 50/50 and a market capitalization of $35 billion U.S. (press release) Speaking with press from Paris this morning, CEOs Maurice Levy […]

  • Agencies

    The Publicis-Omnicom Merger: Scenarios For Their Trading Desks

    BY //

    A merger of Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe, the announcement of which is expected tomorrow, would result in a sprawling array of media agencies — and digital agencies that buy media — under one corporate roof. Omnicom’s big media agency brands are PHD, OMD, and Resolution Media. The Publicis side is sprawl-ier, consisting of Starcom […]

  • Agencies

    MDC Partners Sees Boost From Varick Trading Desk, Plans Modest Digital M&A

    BY //

    Data-driven buying methods have boosted media margins at MDC Partners, although programmatic is still small as a percentage of the whole business. On the holding company’s earnings call yesterday, CEO Miles Nadal said digital media stands out in its portfolio of marketing services firms with margins surpassing 20%. “Strategically, our media investments especially digital media […]

  • Ad Exchange News

    Facebook's Q2 Brings Big Jump In Mobile Ad Revenue

    BY //

    Facebook reported Q2 earnings after business close today, and its ad revenue picture is rosy, especially from a mobile standpoint. Revenue from ads grew 61% year over year to $1.6 billion, of which mobile contributed 41%, or $656 million.  That’s a striking increase from Q1, when mobile contributed 30% of total ad revenue. During the quarter […]

  • Agencies

    Does Publicis Groupe Have A Digital Talent Problem?

    BY //

    Publicis Groupe is hemorrhaging senior digital talent. With his exit for a plum job as CEO of AOL Networks (AdExchanger story), Razorfish CEO Bob Lord became the latest in a string of digital agency CEOs to leave the French holding company. Among the others are Colin Kinsella, former CEO of Digitas North America, who recently […]

  • Agencies

    Analyst: Trading Desks In Pole Position As Programmatic Grabs One-Fifth Of Non-Search Spend

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    “Trading desks, which include WPP’s Xaxis, Publicis’ Audience on Demand, Omnicom’s Accuen and Interpublic’s Cadreon, probably deployed $2 billion of online spending in the US last year, up from around $1bn in 2012 and may spend up to $3bn in 2013. This represents a substantial change in the context of a market which saw $18 […]

  • Email

    Attribution Data Shows Email's Impact Still Misunderstood

    BY //

    Summertime M&A has put the spotlight on email. The obvious example is Salesforce.com’s purchase of ExactTarget, though Adobe’s Neolane buy also covers messaging to some extent. Clearly enterprise platforms believe email will eventually be managed centrally through the same workflow as display, video and search campaigns – giving companies a better handle on the fractional […]

  • Social Media

    For Social Retargeter Triggit, A Surge In FBX Revenue

    BY //

    Facebook’s Exchange is big business. Just how big can be hard to pin down, since Facebook breaks out neither revenue nor volume for its retargeting business. That leaves us grasping at occasional straws dropped by the 17 qualified FBX vendors. For example, late last year AppNexus indicated Facebook was exposing somewhere around 7 billion daily […]

  • Creative

    Cannes Post-Script: Is The Creative Agency Becoming A Point Solution?

    BY //

    Once upon a time, ad agencies were masters of data. Which is to say, research. Before the internet, firms like Leo Burnett and The Martin Agency wielded – and still wield – sizeable research budgets, which they used to uncover demographic opportunities and strategic consumer insights. These insights were turned into big ideas and placed […]

  • Online Advertising

    Quote: Twitter's Big Future In Ad Tech

    BY //

    “Twitter is in many respects the most powerful ad tech company in the world, just because of their ability to keep their finger on the pulse of where the conversation is right now. If you’re a brand and you want to enter the conversation, Twitter is obviously ground zero to that. The power they wield […]

  • Social Media

    Facebook Ad Lead Gokul Rajaram Exits, Will Oversee Square's POS Software

    BY //

    Gokul Rajaram, the fast-talking architect of Facebook’s ad products for the past couple years, has left to oversee product engineering at Square, where he’ll drive software development for the company’s Square Register point-of-sale software, among other products. At Facebook, Rajaram led a rapid iteration of the company’s ad platform, including the development of Facebook Exchange, […]

  • Agencies

    Mobile RTB Needs Scale, Says Mobile Agency M&C Saatchi Mobile

    BY //

    Seven-year-old mobile agency M&C Saatchi Mobile offers strategic consulting, mobile production, and mobile paid media services. The London-based firm, part of independent agency network M&C Saatchi, employs about 75 staff, and its paid media efforts are focused on direct-response campaigns. Eric Mugnier came to New York in 2011 to open M&C Saatchi Mobile’s first US […]

  • Agencies

    Trading Desks Go Global And Embed at Media Agencies

    BY //

    Last week in Cannes, global leaders from the five biggest holding company trading desks convened for a panel discussion hosted by the Rubicon Project. The event took place on a rooftop against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, while on the sidewalk below creatives scurried between beach parties and celeb-packed sessions at the Palais des […]

  • Online Advertising

    Q&A: Talking Paid Media With Tumblr CEO David Karp

    BY //

    Today in Cannes, Tumblr CEO David Karp sat down with me to discuss his views on advertising and the work Tumblr and Yahoo are doing there. “They’ve got more than a decade of real powerful ad tech under their belt,” he said. “This is very likely an opportunity for us to move much faster to […]

  • Social Media

    Facebook Talks Ad Simplification, Custom Audiences And Privacy At Cannes

    BY //

    Facebook has made so many embellishments to its ad monetization machine in the past year that communicating it all to clients has become a big chore. This week in Cannes, the company participated in a “Creativity at Scale” panel and convened its 18-member Client Council to discuss its embrace of hashtags, its recent decision to […]

  • Advertiser

    Cannes Lions: Shell Lacks Faith In Display Ad Creative

    BY //

    Talking about data feels a bit transgressive in Cannes, where creativity is literally center stage. But with data driving so much change at agencies – including at creative shops – it seems an unavoidable topic. It came up frequently in a conversation on Tuesday with Americo Campos Silva, Shell’s Global Media Manager, and Sasha Savic, CEO […]

  • Agencies

    Kepler Group Has Doubled Clients One Year After Spinoff From MediaMath

    BY //

    It’s been a little more than a year since Kepler Group was spun off (see AdExchanger’s Q&A) from MediaMath, where it had previously been the direct-to-client professional services group. So how’s it going for the world’s first independent agency to be incubated within a demand-side platform? Not bad at all. Kepler is hiring up and […]

  • Online Advertising

    Cannes Lions: BMW Wants Agencies To Tout Failures

    BY //

    AdExchanger is in the French Riviera, where some 12,000 people have gathered for the 60th annual Cannes Lions festival of creativity. We’ll have updates throughout the week, and a definitive (!) answer to the question, Can Big Data can play nice with the Big Idea? This morning Adobe hosted a discussion around advertising and trust, […]

  • Platforms

    Turn Hires Former Lyris CEO Wolfgang Maasberg To Run Global Sales

    BY //

    Turn has snatched up Wolfgang Maasberg, the former chief executive at email and marketing automation firm Lyris, to lead its global sales operation. Prior to his job at Lyris, which he quit in March, Maasberg held North American sales leadership roles at Omniture and later Adobe. The hire speaks to two priorities at the demand-side […]

  • Online Advertising

    Privacy Advocates Reach For Cyanide Pill On 'Do Not Track' Process

    BY //

    A few members of the group charged with creating the spec for a browser-based Do Not Track function have signaled their displeasure with the process by supporting a “contingency plan” that would effectively end the two years of talks without an outcome. But it’s far from clear whether they can find consensus to push that […]

  • Online Advertising

    Rakuten-LinkShare Makes Case For Merging Retargeting And Affiliate Spend

    BY //

    It would be generous to say the attribution puzzle is half-solved. A quarter or an eighth solved is more like it. But the direction is clear. Advertisers are getting better at allocating conversion credit to brand interactions up and down the funnel. Platform companies are helping them, but their efforts can sometimes seem clumsy, calling […]

  • Social Media

    Facebook PMD Blinq Media Pivots, Aligns With Gannett Sibling ShopLocal

    BY //

    Facebook ad platform Blinq Media has made some big changes since Gannett bought it last year for an estimated $92 million. Among those changes is a potentially powerful tie-in with ShopLocal, the dominant player in digital ad circulars and Blinq’s corporate sibling at Gannett. The idea is to convince ShopLocal’s existing customers (national retail giants […]

  • Social Media

    PMDs React To Facebook's Streamlined Ad Formats

    BY //

    Last week, when Facebook signaled plans to sharply reduce the number of discrete ad formats it offers, no one criticized the move. And why should they? After Facebook’s early frenzied experiments in advertising, it’s a natural step to assess what performs best, lose the rest and restructure the whole ad offering around advertiser objectives rather […]

  • Social Media

    Facebook Culls Ad Formats, Restructures Paid Media Around Objectives

    BY //

    Facebook is preparing to slash the number of ad formats it sells from 27 today to less than half that by Q4. On the chopping block are online-only Offer ads, Questions ads and standalone Sponsored Stories placements. Going forward, Facebook will structure and optimize ad buys based on “six or seven” marketer objectives, distributing messages […]

  • Platforms

    Brand Networks Raises $68M To Grab 'Big Retail' Opportunity On Facebook

    BY //

    Brand Networks, a company that serves the social marketing needs of large retailers and other companies with dozens or hundreds of local outlets, has raised a whopping $68 million round from AEA Investors. As one of the remaining scaled independent platforms in social marketing, Brand Networks says it needs the capital to aggressively develop and […]

  • Agencies

    Xaxis Axes DSP, Calls Trading Platforms 'Commoditized'

    BY //

    WPP Group’s trading desk Xaxis is known for its proprietary approach to technology. The GroupM unit has incubated numerous ad platforms, a legacy of WPP’s 2007 acquisition of 24/7 Media. It offers these products to clients as an alternative to licensing from vendors. By contrast, trading desk rivals VivaKi AOD (Publicis), Cadreon (IPG), and Accuen (Omnicom) are […]

  • Agencies

    VivaKi AOD Ends Reliance On Google's Ad Stack

    BY //

    When Publicis Groupe launched it five years ago, VivaKi Audience On Demand was among the first holding company trading desks. And Google was its key partner, supporting a great majority of AOD’s ad serving and auction-based display media buying. But those days are over. As of Q1, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (formerly Invite Media) is […]

  • Advertiser

    Lancome Unifies Retargeting And Affiliate Channels

    BY //

    There are almost as many approaches to solving the attribution puzzle as there are brands. At Lancome, part of the strategy is to consolidate two key channels with a single vendor. Alessio Rossi is VP of digital marketing, ecommerce and CRM for the Loreal-owned luxury cosmetics brand. Since joining in May 2012, he has reevaluated […]

  • Platforms

    Purple Cloud Aims To Unify Ad Touch Points, With Smartphones As The Glue

    BY //

    A new venture from former Magnetic CEO Josh Shatkin-Margolis aims to help retailers consolidate their multi-channel interactions with consumers, using the smartphone as the hub. Called Purple Cloud, the company offers a consumer-facing app that creates incentives for users to interact and share data. The company is in beta with retailers and expects to close […]

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