If TikTok is still proving its value as a marketing platform, despite skyrocketing popularity among Gen Z, it got a huge boost in October when the cosmetics company e.l.f. ran a sponsored hashtag challenge, #eyeslipsface, that amassed 1.6 billion views in just over a week. Two factors led to e.l.f’s success on TikTok: showing up […]
Companies large and small have griped for years that tech giants – Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple – habitually engage in anticompetitive behavior. Regulators around the world are now paying attention. In some cases, companies proactively proffer their grievances, while in others, regulators solicit their feedback as evidence gathering in newly launched antitrust investigations. Here’s […]
Assembled from acquisitions totaling in the multibillions, Oracle Data Cloud (ODC) had become inefficient, too focused on its declining business selling third-party data. Now, the embattled unit is trying to streamline. ODC cut 10% to 15% of its staff Monday, multiple sources told AdExchanger, after which it will focus on contextual data, brand safety and […]
Google’s advertising chief Prabhakar Raghavan is reorganizing Google’s ads business – and adding new heads of measurement and privacy, according to multiple AdExchanger sources. As part of the reorg, he’s re-visualizing the company as four “concentric circles.” The innermost circle is Google’s owned-and-operated properties, including search and YouTube. The next circle outside of that is […]
While you chill on the sofa trying to figure out what to watch next, there’s a war raging for your attention, and Facebook is the most recent combatant. On Wednesday, Facebook launched the latest additions to its suite of Portal hardware products, including a streaming stick for TV sets complete with video chatting functionality, augmented […]
Advertising in the news feed is set to get more interactive with the introduction of three new ad products: poll ads, playables and augmented reality ads. “This is advertising that users can play with, and I use the term ‘play,’ because it should be fun,” said Mark D’Arcy, VP of global business marketing and chief […]
The Washington Post became the latest publisher to develop a self-serve platform to compete with Facebook when it released Zeus Prime on Tuesday. Zeus Prime adds a self-serve buyer interface to Zeus, The Washington Post’s revenue platform. The software-as-a-service platform emphasizes fast ad load times and high viewability. Most recently, it added the cookie-less contextual […]
After Freestar landed atop Inc.’s 2019 list of “Most Successful Companies in America,” co-founder Chris Stark pointed to header bidding as the reason the 45-person company’s growth exploded 36,680% over three years. Freestar solves for the complexity programmatic and header bidding created for publishers. In recent years, publishers managed bids through AdSense, then waterfalls, then […]
Oracle wants to help marketers bridge the gap between the known and unknown. The company integrated the BlueKai data management platform (DMP) and ID graph with its customer data platform (CDP), it said Tuesday at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. The move is meant to help marketers tie device-level data about unknown prospects […]
Usually, you’ve got to pay lawyers for legal advice. But between sessions at Fordham University’s annual conference on international antitrust law and policy in New York City on Friday, there was lots of informal chatter about Google’s growing list of antitrust inquiries. The takeaway: This isn’t Google’s first antitrust rodeo, but it might be different […]
Longtime AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein will leave the business at the end of the year. Rubenstein is the latest top executive at AppNexus to leave since the company was acquired by AT&T under its Xandr unit for $2 billion in June 2018. Founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley left the company in October 2018. Rubenstein joined […]
The data-management platform (DMP) was sold as a tool with the power to turn publisher data into dollars. Vendors wooed publishers into signing multiyear contracts to use the technology. But the expectations didn’t match reality. As those contracts have expired, especially this year, many publishers aren’t renewing them. Just as marketers are moving from the […]
Facebook has warned investors to expect a pronounced revenue slowdown in the second half of the year and into 2020 thanks to “ad targeting-related headwinds.” And Instagram can expect to weather the same challenges. Instagram has been a growth driver for Facebook, both in terms of engagement and ad spend. The two share data between […]
Goodbye AppNexus SSP, hello Xandr Monetize. One year after its acquisition by AT&T, AppNexus is rebranding its exchange to Xandr Monetize. It’s also adding a slew of new features to support its vision of offering a full programmatic stack for video-heavy publishers. Xandr Monetize is the third Xandr-branded product to launch, after Xandr Community and […]
Facebook is changing the way users discover businesses and engage with bots on the platform. In the coming months, Facebook will phase out the Discover tab, one of the portals within Messenger where people can browse Messenger bots, businesses to message and games to play. Released in 2017, the tab was originally posiitoned as one […]
Amazon is developing clean room data technology that could improve measurement and data for ad campaigns, according to sources familiar with the product. The idea is similar to other clean room offerings, like Google’s Ads Data Hub (ADH) or Facebook’s enterprise data-sharing service, which enable advertisers to measure campaigns or mingle their first-party data with […]
Pinterest had a great second quarter – which is also only its second quarter as a public company – but don’t expect the sort of numbers you see from Google, Facebook or even Snapchat. “When will we be as mature as Google and Facebook? I think it’s a long road ahead,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann told investors […]
Device sales overall are still on the decline at Apple, but services revenue is starting to grow like gangbusters. Apple generated $11.45 billion in revenue from services during its fiscal third quarter, which ended in June, the company told investors on Tuesday. That’s a 13% year-over-year increase. Services accounted for 21% of Apple’s overall revenue, which […]
Bad news, disco fans: Advertisers will soon no longer be able to target people on Facebook based on their love of ABBA’s 1977 hit “Take a Chance on Me.” That’s just one of several thousand infrequently used targeting options Facebook is getting rid of in an effort to declutter its ad system, the company said […]
Facebook is getting poked by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, but that doesn’t mean it’s facing two separate antitrust probes in the United States. “It would be unprecedented, not to mention duplicative, for the DOJ and the FTC to be investigating the same company for essentially the same conduct,” said […]
Twitter is super focused on direct response advertising, the company told investors Friday on its second quarter earnings call. To that end, it’s in the process of deprecating legacy formats, including carousel ads, and investing in more DR-focused ad offerings, such as its mobile app promotion (MAP) product. Twitter plans to also retire other formats […]
Facebook’s stock dipped slightly on Wednesday morning after the Federal Trade Commission formally announced its $5 billion dollar fine over privacy violations. But by the time Facebook reported its second quarter earnings after the bell, the stock had recovered and then some. Facebook is up 3.2% after beating expectations and raking in the ad revenue. […]
It’s a big day for the big blue app. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) formally announced Wednesday it will fine Facebook $5 billion over Cambridge Analytica-related privacy violations and install oversight procedures to prioritize privacy and ensure enforcement at the company. In addition, a more than $100 million fine is expected from the Securities and Exchange […]
TikTok isn’t developed enough yet to be a fully-fledged contender for ad dollars, but it’s growing like #area51, and advertisers have finally noticed the short-form video app. Roughly 60% of the app’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the US are between 16 and 24, according to a TikTok pitch deck circulated to US ad […]
Turns out people really like those Snapchat baby face and gender swap filters. The app’s daily active users hit 203 million in Q2, up 8% year over year, and revenue was far better than expected at $388 million, a 48% increase from this time last year, according to the company’s Q2 earnings disclosure. This is […]
How does a smaller DSP survive, as the largest buying platforms command more of the marketplace? For Dstillery, the answer is to become a data company. Dstillery officially shut down its bidder and stopped operating a DSP on July 1. Its focus now is selling custom audience segments through the buyer’s DSP of choice. Since […]
The Trade Desk and Google are locking horns on pending industry specifications designed to bring transparency to programmatic buying. Why? The Trade Desk, rather than Google, is the one throwing its weight around for a change. As one of the originators of the Open RTB SupplyChain object spec, The Trade Desk has been gunning to […]
Optimera increases site viewability solely from a publisher’s point of view. The tech optimizes campaigns toward the most viewable placements in real time – key in an era where buyers demand highly viewable ads, but publishers lack the technology to meet these demands in a way that’s sustainable for their businesses. “The market has failed […]
Amazon Publisher Services shot up in the rankings in the 2019 Advertiser Perceptions supply-side platform (SSP) report, emerging as a challenger to Google. The survey evaluated 18 exchanges via a poll of 155 sales and ops staffers from sites with at least 3 million monthly uniques. Amazon’s sell-side ad tech business rose from eighth last […]
The TDB company that was formed when IBM sold the bulk of its Watson Marketing portfolio to private equity firm Centerbridge in April finally has a name: Acoustic. Acoustic is starting out with a large stable of clients – around 3,500 – inherited from IBM, and a headcount of 1,100. It’s also hiring, with a particular focus […]
