AppNexus has been wanting to make its fees transparent, even before it was acquired by AT&T’s ad unit Xandr, but it couldn’t because of how contracts are written and structured. But now, buyers can find out how much of their media budgets went to tech fees when they buy publisher inventory through AppNexus, a level […]
Forrester released a Wave last week examining the emergent location intelligence platform space and here’s your main takeaway: Companies want to apply location data to make decisions across all of their digital touchpoints – but the technology to do that is still in its early stages. Although location data vendors are a dime a dozen – you […]
What do advertisers outside of China need to know about Tencent? For one, it’s got much more going on than just WeChat – the Tencent app with the most name recognition outside of China. Second, WeChat is more than just a social platform: It’s embedded into the fabric of Chinese life. “Global brands have heard about […]
You may have received a news alert from The New York Times Wednesday morning about the latest Facebook data-related misstep as you sipped on your cup of joe. What’s Facebook accused of this time? Providing special pay-for-play access to user data for whitelisted advertisers, including Airbnb, Lyft and Netflix, while penalizing others by cutting them […]
Revcontent named Omar Nicola as its new CEO Wednesday, replacing co-founder John Lemp in the top role. One of his first orders of business has been making further layoffs at a company whose employee count is around 80, down from a reported peak of 150 when it appeared on the Inc. list of fastest-growing companies […]
Representatives from nine governments gathered in London on Tuesday with pointed questions for Mark Zuckerberg about fake news, misinformation, hate speech, election interference, privacy and data collection. Thing is, Zuckerberg wasn’t there, having declined repeated invitations to testify before the UK’s Digital Culture, Media and Sports Committee. The parliamentarians from Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, Belgium, […]
One year ago, Rubicon Project removed buyer fees from its platform, halving its take rate to 12.8%. The gutsy move occurred during a battle over take rates: Competitor AppNexus said its take rate stood at 8.5%, and its CEO called for a price war. Drastically cutting take rates forced Rubicon to use cash reserves to […]
Aside from dedicated fans, most people who show up to a concert never hear from the band again. That fleeting relationship poses a challenge for musicians. How can they get people to come to their next concert? Or buy merch? Hurdl is solving that problem with connected LED wristbands, which live event attendees activate using […]
Instagram is shopping for its share of holiday dollars. On Thursday, Facebook’s much-cooler sibling added three new features designed to help people browse, discover and save items more easily. A lot must happen before someone buys, and while shopping can be a by-product of spending time on Instagram, people aren’t there to fill their cart […]
Google Ad Manager is the dominant SSP, according to Advertiser Perceptions’ 2018 Programmatic Intelligence Report. But, the 154 publishers surveyed also valued platforms in areas like proactively shared insights and reporting – categories where Google didn’t perform as well as its competitors. “Google is the clear leader,” said Kevin Mannion, chief strategy officer at Advertiser […]
It’s been a tough year for Snap, as its stock tanks and its executive team flees the ship. Despite growing revenue 43% in Q3 to a record $298 million, Snap’s stock hit an all-time low in September of $10 per share. Snapchat is also bleeding daily active users after rolling out an unpopular redesign and facing increasing competition from Instagram. “Snap is struggling to […]
The news feed is still a money-printing machine for core Facebook. But people aren’t sharing like they used to – Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser used Nielsen data to detect that consumption on core Facebook, including Messenger, was down 13% in September – and now Facebook is putting its faith into what it hopes will […]
The B2B martech space is heating up as titans spend billions to build their stacks – and now it’s makeover time at LinkedIn. On Monday, LinkedIn opened the public beta for a revamped version of Campaign Manager, the self-service tool advertisers use to manage and measure campaigns on its platform. The idea is “to make it […]
Pinterest is growing its ad inventory with a new promoted carousel format, which moved out of beta on Thursday. Carousels, which allow advertisers to include up to five images within a single format, can appear within the Pinterest main feed as a related pin recommendation or through search. Users tap the cover image and then […]
Even the mighty miss on revenue – but Facebook is still raking it in per user and Stories monetization across platforms is just getting started. Facebook reported $13.73 billion in revenue for the third quarter on Tuesday, $40 million less than what analysts expected. It’s Facebook’s second earnings miss in a row. But Facebook now […]
Starting Oct. 30, Google will make parallel tracking the default way to run third-party tracking for Google search and shopping ads. It’ll become mandatory for display and video ads by March 2019. For now, only Chrome traffic will use parallel tracking, with other operating systems and browsers to be added throughout the rest of the […]
Snap may have invented the Stories format, but Instagram Stories are attracting most of the ad spend. The two main reasons why sits at the heart of an existential dilemma for Snap: its audience and its scale. Snap’s youthful users are one of the platform’s primary selling points at the same time they’re a potential […]
Although Alphabet’s revenue grew 21% to $33.7 billion in Q3, that fell short of its target, sending its stock sliding 4.5% in after-hours trading Thursday. “We feel good about the underlying strength in the ads business,” said Google CFO Ruth Porat, noting that Google is investing in machine learning to further improve its ads business […]
Last quarter, Twitter’s stock got hammered after user growth stagnated, despite its solid financial results. But analysts appear ready to stop punishing Twitter for its user numbers. Although Twitter shed 4 million users in the third quarter year over year – monthly actives now total 326 million – the company’s stock grew nearly 3% in premarket trading […]
Putting together a sponsored content program is a time-consuming headache for buyers and publishers. BrandVerge, a marketplace where buyers can browse publishers’ sponsored content options, aims to make it faster and easier to create sponsored content deals. The platform claims to shorten the deal-making process by an average of 67%. Smaller agencies and direct-to-consumer brands […]
What kind of stories do people in market for a luxury SUV read? Forbes is answering that question using data, not a gut feeling, so brands can buy sponsorships and branded content based on what resonates with an audience. That question was once impossible to answer. Publishers would know, for instance, if readers indexed highly […]
Oracle kicked off its OpenWorld conference Monday by introducing a customer data platform (CDP) to connect disparate data sources and a subscription management product to capitalize on the blossoming subscription economy. The CDP, CX Unity, is now pre-integrated with the Oracle Customer Experience (UX) Cloud and is designed to tie marketers’ first-party data to anonymous third-party offline […]
Sovrn closed a $25 million Series E round Thursday to help it acquire companies outside of ad tech. Sovrn’s original investors, led by Foundry Group, all participated in the round. “Our business is 100% focused on tools and technologies that help publishers – of which advertising is an important one,” said Sovrn CEO Walter Knapp. […]
Facebook has been going full tilt since March to convince advertisers and consumers alike that it’s a safe platform on which to spend money and time. On Wednesday, for example, Facebook said it’s further reducing the distribution of low-quality, spammy ads within its auction. Advertisers with multiple low-quality ads – those that contain sensational language, for […]
Six top ad exchanges are asking the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to referee auction dynamics. The CEOs of OpenX, PubMatic, Rubicon Project, Sovrn, SpotX and Telaria collectively signed a letter to advertisers and publishers outlining principles of transparency, efficiency and fair-market practices. They want to clearly state what’s acceptable and what’s not to restore trust […]
What do an international pop group, the creator of “American Idol,” Cirque du Soleil and actor Clive Owen have in common? SAP. “Marketers in the B2B space have to realize one very simple and fundamental thing: We are all human beings,” said Alicia Tillman, SAP’s chief marketing officer. “We as B2B marketers need to speak […]
Facebook’s Marketing Partner (FMP) program is getting a bit of a facelift with the addition of new badge categories and tools to help with measurement and creative. Hundreds of tech companies, agencies and consultants jammed into the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Wednesday to get the skinny at Facebook’s sixth global marketing partner […]
The third-party cookie isn’t crumbling so much as imploding. In a Friday email to advertisers and publishers, Facebook said that on Oct. 24 it will start offering a first-party cookie option for the Facebook tracking pixel so that businesses can keep targeting their ads and measuring their campaigns without relying on third-party cookies. Facebook confirmed […]
Brian O’Kelley’s departure as CEO of AppNexus surprised few in the industry who know him. His sharp opinions and independent mindset made him an ad tech provocateur and a fearless leader. But that same personality seemed incompatible with taking a subservient role to Xandr CEO Brian Lesser within the AT&T mega-corporation. After all, this is […]
Facebook has been aggressively pushing its non-core apps to make money, a decision that caused friction between the mothership and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram, all of whom have recently left the building. So, where does that leave Messenger – a homegrown app with over 1.3 billion users that, thankfully for Facebook, has no […]
