Six ad industry trade groups have called for Apple to rethink an upcoming change to Safari that will unilaterally block some first-party cookies. Apple’s Safari browser started blocking third-party cookies by default earlier this summer with the release of its Intelligent Tracking Prevention, a machine learning-based feature that discourages cross-site user tracking. But an extension […]
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will become law next May, is stressing out the marketing industry. “I have a feeling that people are just scared,” Acxiom’s European privacy officer, Sachiko Scheuing, told AdExchanger at Dmexco in Cologne, Germany. That fear may be preventing many advertisers from speaking up in the debate over […]
The IAB Tech Lab wants to change its OpenRTB 3.0 programmatic auction standard so that it authenticates basic details of the transaction, like the identity of the seller. The current OpenRTB standard assumes buyers and sellers honestly identify themselves and their intentions – but some shady players took advantage of that honor system. One problem […]
As it finalized its $145 million acquisition of Rocket Fuel on Wednesday, Sizmek named Mark Grether to take over as CEO. Simultaneously, the company said it would sunset the Rocket Fuel brand and integrate its DSP and DMP assets into a single demand-side stack under the Sizmek name. A co-founder and former COO of WPP […]
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands are threatening steep investment pullbacks if higher standards aren’t met on marketing measurement and transparency. And those Fortune 500 CPGs, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Mondelez, Nestlé and Kraft, seem to be holding to their lines in the sand. In the past few weeks, holding companies like IPG, WPP and […]
As retailers pump more data into traditional marketing channels, they’re uncovering more about how their online and offline marketing interacts. The luggage manufacturer and retailer Tumi last year started working with PebblePost, a startup that connects website cookies to home addresses to automate retargeting via direct mail, and found 96% of the sales driven by […]
DoubleVerify said Wednesday that private equity firm Providence Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. AdExchanger reported in July that DoubleVerify was exploring a sale that would have valued the company in the $350 million range. The exact size of the Providence stake was not disclosed in the deal announcement, but The […]
Oppenheimer & Co. managing director and senior analyst Jason Helfstein will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on Oct. 25-26 in a presentation titled “Programmatic Wall Street.” Wall Street is changing how it looks at ad tech. The Trade Desk went public, and its consistent overperformance has made it the darling of investors who had sworn […]
Every vendor in the supply chain takes its cut before a CPM goes to work, and that includes a fee for brand safety protection. It’s a small price to pay, said John Montgomery, global EVP of brand safety at GroupM, running somewhere between two and 10 cents per thousand impressions for brand safety protection when […]
For the independent demand-side platform (DSP) market, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. On the one hand, it’s unlikely any new scaled DSPs will enter the market. The costs to build a competitive platform – nine digits off the bat and another eight digits per year in operational costs […]
In the two years since the Trustworthy Accountability Group got off the ground, the industrywide fraud-fighting coalition has received more than 350 applications from companies within and outside the United States for TAG registration to get verified as a trusted partner. As of this time last year, the registration count was only about 100 mostly […]
The largest advertisers in the world are still dead set on cutting advertising costs and reducing agency fees. On earnings call after earnings call in the past week, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies sent a clear message to the ad industry: The belt is tightening. On Thursday, Procter & Gamble CEO Jon Moeller told investors […]
Ad blocking is generally associated with early browser extensions like AdBlock and eyeo’s Adblock Plus (ABP), which both make their money through the Acceptable Ads whitelisting platform designed by ABP to monetize ad-block users. But the consumer market for ad blocking has branched into apps, mobile browsers and antivirus software all peddling ad blocking wrapped […]
Zeta Global, a provider of cloud-based CRM and email marketing services, has acquired Boomtrain, a machine-learning marketing technology startup that works primarily with retailers and media companies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Boomtrain previously raised almost $15 million, and headcount was down 8% in the first six months of 2017, according to LinkedIn […]
Some advertisers are shifting from traditional CPM buying to new tactics, often dubbed dynamic CPMs or dCPMs, which connect digital media dollars to lifetime value (LTV) metrics. While most brands still make online ad buys based on cookies and bidstream data evaluated in milliseconds, publishers are starting to accommodate forward-thinking advertisers. For instance, Angie’s List […]
Blockchain, an unmodifiable and unbreachable digital ledger, was conceived 10 years ago to support the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But it has since seeped into new categories, jumping from finance to health care and, more recently, digital advertising. It’s doing so with the backing of big companies like IBM and Comcast, as well as smaller startups like […]
DoubleVerify is looking for a home. AdExchanger has learned that the independent verification company recently hired a banker from tech-focused investment firm Pacific Crest Securities. Final bids were due Tuesday, and sources tell AdExchanger the deal price could be somewhere in the $350 million range – a lofty bid, though considerably less than the reported […]
Ad tech vendors are clicking “add to cart” on first-party retailer data. As brands and retailers grow more comfortable sharing first-party data, shopper marketing budgets – traditionally spent on last-leg marketing efforts like high-performing shelf space, in-store signage, coupon circulars and co-marketing (“Find us at your nearest…”) – are moving online. “Merchants are talking to me […]
The drumbeat of blockchain industry news continues this week with the launch of AdLedger Consortium, a blockchain-enabled online advertising group backed by MadHive, a blockchain ad tech startup, IBM, Integral Ad Science and Tegna’s OTT ad subsidiary Premion. As with other initiatives, like Comcast’s fledgling Blockchain Insights Platform, the AdLedger Consortium is still in the […]
Adobe is looking to get schooled on AI and data science. While many technology giants foster relationships with academics by offering them lucrative part-time consultancy positions. Adobe is pursuing a different tack: dishing out $50,000 no-strings-attached grants to professors and doctoral students working on projects of joint interest. “What academia provides is more the advanced […]
Spice manufacturer McCormick’s online ads draw in consumers with recipes that include unexpected but on-trend pairings, like a Greek yogurt taco dip. But creating many versions of online ads ran up costs with its creative agency. “We would get very targeted with our media campaigns, and we wanted our creative messaging to follow suit,” said […]
The native advertising technology platform Sharethrough parted ways with company president Patrick Keane and CRO Mike Gaffney last week as it focuses on its programmatic exchange. Christopher Schreiber, who had been Sharethrough’s VP of marketing and communications for the past five years, also left the company. The executive departures are not part of broader layoffs, […]
A new IAB Tech Lab standard will help publishers and platforms make their header bidding container setups as efficient as possible. The lab will accept public comment on the standard through July 28. The lab decided to create a baseline standard because header bidding has started to mature. “We don’t create standards until something has […]
Self-styled gentleman hacker Michael Tiffany is standing down as chief exec of White Ops. On Wednesday, the company announced that Tiffany, who co-founded White Ops in 2013, is transitioning to the president role, where he’ll work more closely with the engineers focusing on product innovation and on evangelizing fraud prevention in the industry. Sandeep Swadia, […]
Apple’s announcement on Monday that its Safari desktop browser would block third-party tracking information by default worries the ad tech industry – even though Safari represents less than 5% of paid search clicks, according to data from performance marketing agency Merkle. But not everyone is alarmed. The change is likely just another stepping stone in […]
The share price of Electronic Arts has nearly doubled in the past two years, as it reshapes around data and connectivity. The video game company’s focus on driving player engagement has led to major changes for EA’s advertising team. That team has media buying and attribution responsibilities brands typically delegate to agencies or vendors, and […]
Businesses spend around $40 billion a year on digital content marketing, and Demandbase, which announced a $65 million financing round on Thursday, is looking to cut itself a slice of the pie. Led by existing investor Sageview Capital with participation by a smorgasbord of others, including Adobe Systems, Altos Ventures and Sigma Partners, the financing […]
By Ryan Joe and Tilde Herrera If you’re looking for one takeaway from all of the announcements Google is flinging around at its Marketing Next event on Tuesday, it’s that the internet giant really wants to account for marketing spend in as many channels as possible. Google is powering up its attribution product, connecting local […]
With the dynamics of header bidding changing, Criteo created a new version of its header bidding product Direct Bidder with more controls and added transparency and flexibility. Direct Bidder, which Criteo first started developing in October, can be plugged directly into the ad server, or work within header bidding wrappers from Prebid or Index Exchange. […]
Major ad platforms like Facebook and Google are soaking up the local and small-business market at an eye-popping rate. And it’s taking business away from smaller platforms like Yelp, whose stock has dropped almost 30% after local advertisers moved spend to Facebook and Google. Facebook, for instance, announced March of last year that it had […]
