The Big Story features a roundtable discussion with the AdExchanger editorial team on the week’s top news stories. New and previously published episodes are available on this page and on your preferred podcast app.
For ad tech companies Criteo and Viant, it’s onward and… upward? Last week, Nielsen Chief Commercial Officer Megan Clarken was announced as Criteo’s new CEO, replacing JB Rudelle. (Incidentally, Clarken’s exodus from Nielsen makes a lot of sense, considering the measurement company’s decision to split into two.) This week on The Big Story, the team […]
The most sophisticated marketers want direct deals with exchanges; it’s hard to wean yourself from Google; and Facebook’s political ads policies continue to roil the public. This week on The Big Story, it’s all about relationships – both building them and moving on from them. First, we look at how some big brands – including […]
Ten years after dataxu raised its first round (and $87.5 million later), the demand-side platform has found its forever home. Roku intends to acquire the company for $150 million, a move that gives it the tech it needs to launch an open marketplace similar to what Xandr is doing with AppNexus. Because dataxu plugs into […]
Change is in the air. To wit, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, topping the polls of Democratic presidential candidates, has made the breakup of big tech into a pet issue on the campaign trail. At the same time, regulatory and privacy concerns are driving state legislation that could transform the way consumer data is collected and, thus, […]
In the lead-up to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Google enacted a bevy of changes that affected how advertisers could track and measure campaign performance on Google properties. This week on The Big Story, we look at those changes and the fallout with advertisers. Editor James Hercher examined some of Google’s biggest recent policy […]
Elizabeth Warren has big plans for Facebook: Break it up. This week on The Big Story, the team places Warren’s plan, and her campaign strategy, under the microscope. The Verge published the transcript on Tuesday of a Q&A Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had with his employees, in which he addressed Warren’s plans to break up […]
Owning a business that relies on consumer data is riskier than ever – in terms of both public sentiment and potential regulation. And this risk has caused Google and Oracle to make structural changes. This week on The Big Story, we look and what happened and why. Earlier this week, Oracle laid off 10% to […]
Like it or not, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) is an inevitability as of Jan. 1, 2020. We’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible covering the law and its potential impact. Earlier this year, new bills were introduced in an effort to influence that impact. Some bills – tweaking some of the language […]
Are we in the midst of an ad tech resurgence? It’s way too early to say, but public companies like The Trade Desk, Telaria, Cardlytics and Rubicon Project have been outperforming recently. This week on The Big Story, the team looks at what the heck is going on. Certainly business models have matured – no […]
Cookies: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Well, that depends on who you ask, and the experts disagree. This week on The Big Story, the team examines both sides of the heated debate on the value, or lack thereof, of third-party cookie tracking. On one side of the fence, a study from May […]
Amazon’s clean room is … well, not open for business. But it exists! James Hercher and Alison Weissbrot on Tuesday reported on a closed beta test run by Amazon that will give ad buyers access to more of its vaunted data. This week on The Big Story, we’ll see what they uncovered in terms of […]
The practice of sending targeted messaging to people online is under fire – and not just in Europe. Both Apple and Mozilla are restricting the ability to target on their respective browsers, and it’s forcing Google’s hand with Chrome. This week on The Big Story, we take a look at some recent news related to […]
After more than a decade apart, Viacom and CBS have gotten back together. In many ways, though, this is a marriage of necessity. The new ViacomCBS entity must find its foothold in a world that’s been disrupted by Netflix and Amazon, faces further disruption from Google, Facebook and Apple – and where peers such as NBCU, […]
Real-time bidding (RTB) is at a crossroads, thanks to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This week on The Big Story, we check out what the future holds for a tactic that revolutionized the way ads online were bought and sold. While final decisions aren’t imminent – European data authorities are only investigating into 2020 […]
TV buyers brightened when Amazon Fire TV made some of its inventory available through the DSPs dataxu and The Trade Desk, bringing real-time bidding to the purchase of CTV inventory. This week on The Big Story, the team talks about that development and examines the state of RTB in programmatic TV and what sort of […]
Ad tech titans face off with each other this week as The Trade Desk takes a stand against Google, the FTC fines Facebook and TikTok… well, I suppose its denizens talk about invading #Area51. First up, Sarah Sluis broke wide open a scuffle about standards – namely, how will Google’s exchange bidding product be defined […]
Working with Google can feel like an arms race. Header bidding threw Google for a loop, since it took away its priority in the waterfall auction. But Google rebounded when it released a product called exchange bidding more than a year ago. Since then, it has continuously tweaked its auctions to accommodate – or control […]
This week on The Big Story, it’s all about quality – the quality CPM (qCPM). It’s a new – but actually kind of old – way for ad buyers to figure out whether they’re getting good value for the inventory they purchase by adding indicators of quality, such as viewability and brand safety, to the […]
Nothing says Fourth of July like a big helping of hot dogs, potato salad and The Big Story podcast. It’s the middle of the year (well, a little past the middle), and this week, the AdExchanger team takes stock of what happened so far and what will likely happen in the year to come. The […]
While most of the interest in TV happens in front of the glass, there’s a great deal of intrigue taking place behind it. This week on The Big Story, we dive into some of the most recent data dealings, with LiveRamp buying Data Plus Math and how much of that TV-generated data is collected and […]
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is just about over, and media, tech and marketing execs are stumbling back to the airport to begin the arduous trek home. It was a more muted festival this year. MediaLink, the Cannes Lions’ sister company, positioned a giant white tent along the pier, which served as the […]
TV buying is changing and, goodness, it seems we’re in the storm before the calm. There are different operating systems, content owners, data owners, platforms on which to buy and ways to measure. And all the vendors and MVPDs offering solutions to “simplify” everything sometimes seem to add to the complexity. This week on “The […]
This week on “The Big Story” we start by winding down the epic of Sizmek. The near-final chapter of this saga came last week with Amazon’s acquisition of two of Sizmek’s most coveted assets: its ad server and its dynamic creative optimization (DCO) technology. Of the two, Sizmek’s ad server has always been the notable […]
Wait, LinkedIn bought cross-device connection company Drawbridge? Very few saw that one coming, especially since LinkedIn hardly even announced it. Despite the unlikeliness of this pairing, there might be both rhyme and reason. This week on “The Big Story,” the team delves into LinkedIn’s unexpected purchase of Drawbridge. Certainly Drawbridge has faced tremendous headwinds, and […]
This week on “The Big Story,” we travel to Washington, DC, tour some walled gardens and fly into the clouds – before coming back to earth to piece together the evolving TV landscape. First pit stop: AppNexus founder Brian O’Kelley spoke at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing called “Understanding the Digital Advertising Ecosystem and the […]
After a long winter, the birds and beasts come out of hiding to have their fill of the greenery now flooding the land. That’s right, the upfronts are here, the money is flowing and everyone wants a piece. This week on “The Big Story,” we look at the news coming out of all the advertising […]
Google always seems to be the big story, and this week is no exception. Because when Google so much as sneezes, the advertising industry shakes. Naturally, the reports that updated privacy settings were coming to the Chrome browser had many advertisers worried. If they were as draconian as Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention mechanisms, they could […]
We take Google’s unstoppable growth for granted. And yet, on Monday, it might not have stopped, but it certainly slowed – dropping from 28% in Q1 2018 to 17% a year later. Seventeen percent growth isn’t bad for most companies, but it’s worrying for Google. And it’s still not clear exactly what happened. This week […]
This week “The Big Story” is all about coming together. First up, our editor Alison Weissbrot outlines how the Comcast-Cox-Charter sales consortium NCC Media and AT&T-owned Xandr are each in their own way trying to aggregate more addressable TV inventory. You’ll recall that multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) are granted two minutes of inventory to […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Publicis Groupe spent billions on a tech company. That déjà vu you’re feeling? Could have a little something to do with the $4.4 billion Publicis just paid for Epsilon. This week on “The Big Story,” the team looks at this massive acquisition on the heels of Dentsu buying […]
