Technology

Uber ended 2024 with its strongest quarter ever, posting 20% year-over-year revenue growth of $12 billion in Q4 – due in no small part to Uber Advertising.

What captured our readers’ attention this year was both a continuation of and a departure from years past. Our top 10 stories in the past year coalesce around two themes: kookies and kwality. Ahem, cookies and quality.

On Thursday, TV measurement company Samba TV announced its acquisition of audience data and contextual targeting solution Semasio.

By applying Adelaide’s Attention Unit scoring, buyers can target low-, medium- and high-attention inventory via TTD’s self-serve platform.

VIA Rail and The Globe and Mail are combining their first-party data sets to create bespoke ad targeting audiences in partnership with data clean room provider Optable.

Publishers trafficking in pirated movies, TV shows and games sold programmatic ads alongside this stolen content, while using domain cloaking to obscure the “cashout sites” where the ads actually ran.

Adelaide used this latest cash injection to boost its valuation to $60 million ahead of an all-stock acquisition of Rita, an Amsterdam-based data marketplace with a focus on the EU.

The partnership makes MFA-blocking tools more accessible to mid-size buyers. Plus, AdLib can block MFA regardless of whether a DSP is willing to proactively filter it.

The SSP revised its full year outlook down by $10 million, due to a DSP partner adopting first-price auctions and weakness in key ad verticals. But it highlighted mobile in-app as a new key revenue stream.

PilotDesk offers AI- and machine-learning-based workflow software for ad buyers and sellers. These solutions are based on the company’s experience with how ad servers like SpringServe function.

Curation’s shift to the sell side is giving DSPs less control over how advertisers curate audiences, which is creating new tensions in the programmatic ecosystem.

Last year, eyeo partnered with a university student initiative in Munich to have students find new approaches to using AI in the company’s online ad filtering.

To fill in the gaps left by third-party data loss, Adobe has added a data collaboration product to its Real-Time CDP that lets advertisers match their data to a partner’s to create lookalike audiences, target ads or attribute campaigns.

It’s difficult for people who haven’t experienced war or whose country doesn’t have compulsory military service, like Israel does, to understand what it’s like.

The UK-based ad marketplace announced an additional $1.25 million in funding to supplement its $3 million Series A round, with the goal of attaining profitability.

Claritas acquired AI-driven marketing automation platform ArtsAI to strengthen its personalization, measurement and AI capabilities.

The demand-side platform Viant announced an expansion of its supply-path optimization solution for connected TV ad buying.