Small advertisers stick with what they know during a recession – and what they know is Facebook. As of January, Facebook had more than 8 million active advertisers on its platform, of which multiple millions are no doubt small and medium-sized businesses. Facebook doesn’t break out how many SMBs there are in its overall advertiser base […]
Quantcast laid off just under 5% of its staff and implemented tiered pay cuts due to the economic impact of coronavirus. The salary cuts are tiered according to compensation level, with some employees taking 5% cuts and the highest-paid employees taking 30% cuts. Its global staff numbers more than 600 employees, according to Quantcast. CEO […]
MediaMath reduced its workforce by 8% through a combination of layoffs and furloughs due to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remaining employees will take a 10% pay cut and MediaMath paused 401(k) matching. “We are preparing our businesses to weather these uncertain times and taking actions that will strengthen our position for the […]
Facebook and Twitter both acknowledged this week that they’ll be taking revenue hits due to the coronavirus situation. These admissions aren’t surprising – but they are telling. Late Tuesday, Facebook said that its services are experiencing “unprecedented” growth and “new records in usage almost every day,” but that this isn’t translating into ad revenue gains. “Our […]
Facebook is banning ads for hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and COVID-19 test kits in an effort to prevent price inflation for high-demand health products. On Thursday, Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, tweeted about the ban and said Facebook will be “ramping” its automated enforcement for problematic COVID-19-related ads and commerce next week. “If […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied recent reports that it plans to share smartphone location data with the US government to help health authorities track and understand the spread of coronavirus infections. On a call with reporters Wednesday to talk about Facebook’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, which includes a coronavirus information center with real-time health […]
PubMatic unveiled a product Tuesday called Audience Encore, designed to let ad buyers use a publisher’s first-party data across the entire PubMatic exchange. PubMatic Audience Encore lets publishers set up a private marketplace (deal ID) with buyers that includes their audience data. Buyers can then target the audience segment both on that publisher’s site and […]
Xandr CEO Brian Lesser has resigned, Reuters reported. Xandr did not respond to AdExchanger’s request for comment. There’d been rumblings within the advertising community about Xandr not living up to expectations. AT&T’s ad unit missed internal revenue projections and was off-pace to meet goals it set for later this year, multiple sources told AdExchanger. The […]
Despite the grueling news cycle and string of roiling controversies over the last few years, how Facebook tells its story to marketers hasn’t changed much since its early days, according to Mark D’Arcy, Facebook’s VP of global business marketing and its chief creative officer. “Even before I joined, the story went like this: When you […]
The list of failed DSPs is getting long: Sizmek. IgnitionOne. Eyeview. Audience Science. Each DSP left unpaid invoices to suppliers they went bankrupt or closed, forcing exchanges to eat the losses or claw back money it already gave to publishers. Now exchanges are getting tough about getting paid. Nearly one year post-Sizmek, BidSwitch, TripleLift, PubMatic, OpenX, […]
While Pinterest’s stock has been challenged since the company went public in April 2019, it anticipates direct-to-consumer and small and medium-sized businesses will be a huge growth vector. “The Fortune 500 are great – but, this is the thing, there are only 500 of them,” said Harold Klaje, head of global growth at Pinterest. Pinterest […]
The brands buying search and display ads on Kroger’s sites could only tie that activity to online sales, even though those ads influenced in-store purchases. So Kroger worked with recent Microsoft acquisition PromoteIQ to attribute offline sales to online ads, by connecting loyalty card data to its logged-in userbase. The unmeasured impact of the ads […]
Direct response and improving its revenue products are top priorities for Twitter in 2020. Twitter, which reported more than respectable Q4 earnings on Thursday, plans to finally finish rebuilding its ad server – codename: Project Tao – during the first half of 2020, and roll out a revamped version of its mobile application promotion product (MAP). Last […]
Facebook said Wednesday it will nix mobile web publishers from Audience Network in order to exclusively focus on apps. Beginning on April 11, Audience Network will no longer fill any ad requests to web and in-stream placements. Facebook warned that campaign performance may fluctuate during the phase-out period. Read Facebook’s post on the change here. […]
Snap is super focused on improving its average revenue per user (ARPU) this year. Snap’s ARPU for North America is growing – up 31% year over year (YoY) in the fourth quarter of 2019 – but at $4.42, it still significantly lags Facebook’s, which topped $41 in Q4. On Tuesday, chief business officer Jeremi Gorman outlined […]
Amazon is the ultimate bottom-of-the-funnel play for brands. But the company sees big opportunities to expand into branding. “I don’t think we do a good enough job of allowing brands to have a recreational and ongoing conversation with consumers,” said Colleen Aubrey, VP of performance advertising at Amazon, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview in New York […]
Remember those “ad targeting-related headwinds” Facebook keeps talking about every quarter? They’re finally going to hit this year. Facebook experienced some effects in 2019 from global privacy regulations, privacy-focused changes made by mobile operating systems and browsers (Google did a thing) and its own privacy product rollouts. However, “the majority of the impact lies in […]
OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan is leaving after 12 years to become CEO of GoFundMe. OpenX President John Gentry, a seven-year vet at the company, will step into the CEO role. “I’ve been walking in this direction for a long time,” Cadogan said. “It’s been a quarter of my life.” He said he told the board […]
Google GM and VP of apps, video and display Sissie Hsiao will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference in New York on Jan. 28-29, 2020. Google is known for making methodical changes with long roll-out periods. But Sissie Hsiao, who became general manager and VP of Google’s advertising business across apps, video and display in […]
As the streaming wars intensify, NBCUniversal on Thursday sought to draw a clear distinction between the soon-to-be-launched Peacock and its streaming and digital competitors. Peacock will debut with 10 ad experiences that emphasize interactivity and performance, the company revealed during an investor day in New York City. It will run just five minutes of ads […]
When Nielsen CEO David Kenny stepped into the top role at the end of 2018, the company was embattled on multiple fronts. Viewers were shifting to streaming TV, which Nielsen struggled to measure. Nielsen’s media customers, frustrated with the company’s slow pace of innovation, started moving away from its measurement services. NBCUniversal, for example, spearheaded […]
Running a programmatic exchange requires PubMatic to process around 800 billion bids a day and 80 million bids a second – which generates 100 terabytes of compressed data per day. And this number has only risen as header bidding multiplies the number of daily bid requests. Data analysis in real time instead of a day […]
Data management platforms (DMPs) were once painted as a panacea for all of a marketer’s data needs – from collection, to harmonization to segmentation and syndication. But marketers have since cooled on the technology, concluding that it‘s too disjointed to perform many of the functions promised. Marketers tell AdExchanger they have struggled to achieve ROI, […]
Acquia said Wednesday it has acquired customer data platform AgilOne for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition is Acquia’s third this year and its fifth in two years. The company wants to build a “digital experience platform.” “There are so many siloed marketing technologies today,” Acquia CEO Mike Sullivan said. “Communication across channels is not coordinated, […]
Verizon Media, the telco giant’s ad tech and content unit, added digital out-of-home (DOOH) supply to its SSP on Tuesday. The SSP launch completes Verizon’s full-stack DOOH offering, having launched a DSP solution for outdoor media buys earlier this year. Verizon also has a network called Verizon Digital Signage, a collection of 3,000 interactive screens […]
As it prepares for an IPO, Sprinklr made its 12th acquisition Tuesday with the purchase of Nanigans’ performance advertising business for an undisclosed price. Sprinklr will completely absorb Nanigans into its “front office platform,” and it will no longer be available as stand-alone offering. Beyond paid media, Sprinklr connects mar tech to ad tech with […]
When Facebook, Google or Instagram approve of an engagement-boosting tactic, they usually describe it with positive words, such as “organic” or “authentic.” Tactics they forbid, however – generally unilaterally and sometimes without warning – are characterized as “unnatural” and whoever uses them is a “schemer” or an “offender.” Most news articles covering these guideline changes unquestioningly adopt […]
Most agencies are myopic in their approach to Amazon. They might only focus on retail optimization or just concentrate on search. But Amazon also offers an array of opportunities across OTT, audio, social and branding, said Travis Johnson, global CEO of Amazon consultancy Podean. “What Amazon is doing is very broad, [and] nobody is thinking […]
Three auction clearinghouses have come to dominate digital advertising: Prebid, Google open bidding (formerly known as exchange bidding) and Amazon Publisher Services’ Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM). With the rise of header bidding, publishers needed a way to have multiple exchanges bid against each other in real time. Prebid launched in 2015 as an independent and […]
Facebook is allowing advertisers to whitelist content as part of an overall improvement to the brand-safety controls on the platform. Brands can use the controls, still in alpha, to create whitelists of publishers for in-stream video and Facebook Audience Network. “Whitelists have been a request for advertisers for some time,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP […]
