Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hard Of Hearing Podcasters are rushing to add programmatic to their bag of monetization tricks. But they’re confronting familiar issues for publishers when software decides what ads to run and where, The Verge reports. An ad for HBO’s “The Sex Lives of College […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Criss-Cross Media Measurement CTV ad dollars are expected to double by 2026, according to GroupM’s most recent industry forecast – which means ad tech firms with advanced measurement capabilities could be looking to make acquisitions this year, Business Insider reports. Measurement companies have their […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Double Dutch Salesforce and Oracle got a holiday gift from the Court of Amsterdam in the Netherlands last week, which dismissed a lawsuit brought against them by The Privacy Collective (TPC), a data privacy advocacy group. TPC alleged that the companies breached the […]
Keeping Track Third-party trackers were hosed by GDPR, right? Perhaps not. A University of Oxford study found that third-party trackers in Google Play and Apple iOS apps remain relatively unchanged. “The same handful of third-party tracking companies have similar prevalence and prominence,” according to the Internet Policy Review journal. The number of apps with zero […]
Check Your Priors Advertisers usually look for in-market or interested customers – but sometimes people need a push, not just a nudge. Two psychology studies identify tactics that could work for particular goals or advertisers, writes Marketing Week. In one study, Stanford researchers gave homeowners a lesson on driver safety and asked them to put up […]
The Trade Winds The balls keep bouncing for advertising lobbyists. Yesterday’s newsletter cited the IAB’s transition from publisher-focused group to a representative for all internet advertising stakeholders. The decision could open a lane for Digital Content Next, a publisher lobbying group that advocates against the IAB in many instances. On the flip side, the IAB […]
The “Big Tent” Backlash The IAB announced last week that advertising and media agencies will now be able to join the industry trade association as members. All the big agencies are already partners out of the gate. The IAB makes the case that online advertising must span many categories to work effectively, and the industry […]
That’s A Wrapped If you were on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok last week, you probably saw the Spotify Wrapped feature, an annual breakdown of each user’s most listened to songs and programs for the year. That roundup is then shared on social media, with captions like, “Spotify thinks I need therapy.” Every year, Spotify […]
An Axe To Grindr Norway’s data protection authority (DPA) fined Grindr $7 million for GDPR violations. The Norwegian watchdog says Grindr passed data to third parties without consent, and that it shared data on sexual orientation, which is prohibited regardless. The full text is worth reading. Grindr, an LGBTQ dating app, objected on the grounds […]
Another Cook In The Kitchen The ecommerce-focused publisher Food52 has acquired Schoolhouse, a lighting and home goods company, for $48 million, Forbes reports. The deal was funded by Food52’s private equity owner, TCG. To coincide with the deal, TCG also contributed an incremental round of funding. The capital will be used to back Food52’s expansion […]
The Last Place You Search Mozilla, which reported its earnings on Monday, expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year. That’s up from roughly $465 million last year and around the same the year before. Where’s the money coming from? Historically, Mozilla’s revenue has been very reliant on its Google search licensing deal […]
Rules For Thee, Not For We Leaked emails reveal the horse trading between Microsoft and Apple to bring Xbox games to iPhones, The Verge reports. (Microsoft settled on web-based gaming to avoid app store fees.) Also this week, YouTube and Roku signed a last-minute distribution deal. In the hardball negotiation, Roku exposed Google’s domineering style, […]
Smash-And-Grab Ecommerce Retailers are petitioning Congress and attorneys general to strengthen laws targeting online marketplaces that sell stolen goods. CVS CEO Karen Lynch told CNBC that a spree of smash-and-grab robberies in the US has been fueled by such marketplaces, because it’s so easy to anonymously resell products without repercussions. Sellers would still keep their […]
Play Nice Will they? Won’t they? They will. Roku is bringing YouTube TV back onto its devices after a monthslong clash with Google that spilled over into Congress. Roku and Google finally agreed on a multiyear extension for Roku distribution of the YouTube and YouTube TV apps, Axios reported. In April, Roku warned customers that […]
Amazon The Impervious Google and Facebook are reeling from data privacy changes. Tim Cook warned investors that Apple underestimated part shortages and would not meet demand until next year. Macy’s slimmed its store inventory. Disney’s production schedules are delayed by months and even years. And Amazon is – doing great. The ongoing supply-chain drama, COVID-19 fallout […]
Google Fails To Deliver In 2014, Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt raised eyebrows when he referred to Amazon as Google’s primary search opponent, rather than Yahoo or Bing. Fast-forward eight years, and Amazon is now its obvious challenger, and Google has utterly failed to address its own ecommerce vulnerabilities, according to a LinkedIn post by Faisal […]
Legal Beef Byron Allen’s $10 billion discrimination suit against McDonald’s was dismissed by a federal judge on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Allen owns Allen Media Group, whose brands include The Weather Channel and Bally Sports Regional Networks, among others. He alleged that McDonald’s discriminates against Black-owned media companies in its TV ad investments. […]
First-Party Time As first-party data sets grow, marketing operations are reining in their ad costs and boosting ROI, The Wall Street Journal reports. For example, PepsiCo has amassed around 75 million user records from its consumer base. This data saves tens of millions of dollars on ad spend, according to Shyam Venugopal, the SVP of […]
By Konstantin Bayandin, Founder & CEO at Tomi.ai Every advertiser knows the value of using microsegmentation to target audiences most likely to buy a product. But only the savviest online advertisers know the inherent downfall of that approach – and how to overcome it. With predictive optimization, you can still target the highest-performing audience segments […]
(More Dead Than) Amazon Live Amazon Live still hasn’t gained much traction with influencers or product review publishers and their valuable audiences. Amazon was hoping that a slew of publisher-produced live video programs would drive Cyber Monday shoppers to its live content and discovery service. But many publishers were hesitant to jump in after Amazon […]
Will Meta “GIF Up” GIPHY? Facebook parent company Meta is in the hot seat again. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s competition watchdog, has called on Meta to offload Giphy, the GIF search engine and content animation service it acquired in May 2020, citing multiple anti-competition concerns in a press release. The CMA […]
Ads Are There For You Publishers attempting to cut themselves a slice of the commerce pie are running into an unlikely – or maybe not so unlikely – competitor: Google. Seems like everywhere they turn, there’s Google with a new way to penalize them for experimenting with alternative revenue sources. Take BuzzFeed, which has emphasized […]
Subscription Conniptions We live in a “subscription economy” now, writes Nieman Labs. You don’t buy the Aladdin DVD; you subscribe to Disney+ “until you die or your card expires.” But as subscriptions become more important business metrics, particularly in news and entertainment, it’s important to be honest about what companies mean when they report subscriber […]
Bolt From The Blue Twitter Blue, Twitter’s $3-per-month subscription service, was met with applause this month by digital media and news publishers thrilled to see a tech platform cut them a rev share. Participating publishers offer ad-free articles on Twitter’s in-app browser and earn a share of the Twitter Blue subscription pool in return. The […]
Street Appeal Outbrain will acquire Video Intelligence, a contextual targeting startup focused on video and CTV, for $55 million. It’s Outbrain’s first big move since the content recommendation company IPO’d in July. The deal makes sense. Web advertising isn’t dying, despite reports you may have heard. Then again, it’s also not in an impressive growth […]
Safari, Don’t Call It A Comeback Veteran browser developer Bruce Lawson recently penned a manifesto of sorts calling for Apple to “set Safari free.” But there is reason to believe the Safari WebKit group is being dusted off after a decade spent in storage in Apple’s attic. WebKit evangelist Jen Simmons tweeted out the group’s […]
All Charged Up It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s another random company launching an ancillary ad business! Volta, which operates almost 3,000 electric vehicle charging stations, introduced the Volta Media Network on Thursday. But the rollout is less random than it seems. According to Volta, a retail media play was always part of its […]
Un-Cornering The Market For years, the public market was quicksand for ad tech. Investors were unimpressed by early public companies like Rocket Fuel, Sizmek and Millennial Media, to name just a few. Wall Street also didn’t want to bet against advertising-dependent companies in competition with Google and Facebook. (The Trade Desk was a notable exception.) […]
Can You Samba Alone? Samba TV filed its S-1 on Tuesday, often the precursor to an IPO (although many are filed in vain). Samba is one of a few automated content recognition (ACR) companies that are specialists in recognizing and attributing content played on a smart TV. But the ACR market is tough for independents. […]
Turn The Other Cheap Zoom CEO Eric Yuan shot down proposals to introduce ads in 2019 and again in 2020, when some executives floated a chance to capitalize on the influx of traffic and new users during the pandemic. One person who heard Yuan’s response says he called the idea of ads on Zoom “cheap […]
