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.
The business practices of both Facebook and Google came to light in unflattering ways over the past week. Last Friday, a judge unsealed the 173-page antitrust complaint against Google – and there was a lot of interesting info underneath those black squares. Many of the details allege that Google manipulated the auction to ensure market share […]
Mobile advertising companies are being snapped up at eye-popping valuations. But wait … isn’t Apple torpedoing the ability to target and measure app advertising with its AppTrackingTransparency framework, SKAdNetwork and other privacy-focused policies? We untangle that contradiction on this week’s episode of The Big Story, where the editorial team is joined by special guest John […]
Attribution on Facebook ain’t what it used to be. The Facebook that enabled hundreds of creative versions, targeting variations and near-instantaneous optimization – all fed by data – is changing. Apple took a big bite out of Facebook’s attribution capabilities when its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) required apps to collect a user opt-in to track their account […]
Facebook weathered two storms this week: a whistleblower and a sweeping outage across multiple platforms. First, the Facebook whistleblower revealed herself as Frances Haugen, who spoke with 60 Minutes about how platform changes like a 2018 decision to prioritize posts that “spark conversation” amped up divisiveness on the platform. Then, on Monday, Facebook, Instagram and […]
The technology of marketing is always evolving, and that lifecycle is especially evident on this week’s episode of The Big Story. The use of customer data platforms (CDPs) – the trendy software category taking over where DMPs left off and building on CRMs and marketing automation – is on the rise. Special guest Stuart Schneiderman, SVP […]
From Instacart to Uber, a wide variety of digital businesses are realizing that they can spin up advertising businesses. Their inspiration? Amazon’s “other” revenue category. Composed mostly of advertising revenue, it’s proven to a slew of digital companies that they can gain profitability by pursuing the sky-high margins in advertising. On this week’s Big Story, […]
The $3.1 billion deal on AdExchanger’s radar this week? TransUnion’s acquisition of Neustar. The deal brings together an identity resolution company with a credit reporting agency. But why is identity being tied together through these two companies? And should this raise privacy red flags? To answer those questions, we bring on former Neustar executive Steven […]
As connected TV takes off, Amazon is making a bold move: It’s making its own TVs. Amazon – which already sells the Fire TV Stick and operates a CTV app store and an AVOD and SVOD service – is branching out into TV manufacturing, according to a report by Insider. What’s in it for the […]
China’s new privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), is no GDPR – but it’s close. PIPL requires an opt-in and aims to help Chinese citizens get better control over their personal data. But the law exists alongside other more surveillance-focused policies, such as China’s recent requirement that video game companies collect the real […]
The field of public ad tech and digital media companies is growing large – both in number of companies and their market value. To help us untangle all of the M&A, IPOs and SPACs, Progress Partners Chief Operating Officer Domenic Venuto explains how investors approach the digital media and advertising sector. One important tell for […]
It must be sweeps week, because TV drama is through the roof. Nielsen lost its Media Ratings Council accreditation for National TV Ratings. The TV currency company calls the loss of the MRC seal of approval a hiatus while it focuses instead on Nielsen ONE, the cross-channel metric expected to launch late next year. Broadcasters […]
Wall Street can’t get enough of ad tech – creating a hot market for stocks and making quarterly earnings a who’s who of ad tech companies. Not so long ago, the ad tech bellwethers were The Trade Desk and Magnite, but earnings season now features a parade of companies young and old: PubMatic, DoubleVerify, Viant, […]
Getting online shoppers to click and add a product to their cart – and then have that product ship cost-effectively to a customer – is the latest challenge for CPG companies. During earnings calls over the past week, leaders of CPG companies had to answer to investors about their ecommerce strategies, which have accelerated thanks […]
Connected TV has arrived – a bit earlier than programmers may have expected. The pandemic-related boom in streaming, along with record TV upfronts, means there’s going to be a “wild Q4” ahead as programmatic buyers scramble for access to streaming inventory. One key issue is that CTV measurement capabilities aren’t developed enough yet, noted Kelly […]
Will Xandr find a home with InMobi? As InMobi prepares for an IPO, we talk about the Axios report that the company is in talks to acquire Xandr. AT&T has been shopping the company formerly known as AppNexus around for months – so when will a buyer materialize? Ad tech’s stratospheric public market valuations should […]
What your colleagues and competitors think of digital advertising’s cookieless future was revealed in AdExchanger’s latest research report on identity. On this week’s episode, we delve into the juiciest bits and key insights from the report, which is available in full to our paid members. For example: Even as the industry pins its hopes on […]
The Trade Desk made waves this week with the release of Solimar, its new beach resort brand. Psych! Solimar is real, but it’s the company’s new DSP dashboard. In addition to the updated UI, The Trade Desk also launched a venture capital arm called TD7 – named for the $7 million seed investment that got […]
When Google delayed the end of third-party cookies, ad tech’s first reaction was “stunned silence,” said Matt Barash, SVP of global publishing and platform partnerships at Zeotap and a self-described “ad tech socialite.” For this week’s episode, we talk through the fallout of Google’s decision to delay the phaseout of the third-party cookie by nearly […]
The teacher just gave the class an extension on a hard, confusing assignment. Third-party cookies won’t go away in Google Chrome until the end of 2023, a delay of nearly two years. Google said the decision would allow its Privacy Sandbox proposals to move further along. Currently, only three of more than 30 are in […]
We’re entering the end-game for third-party cookies, but an unlikely group could intervene to keep them alive: regulators. Last Friday, Google agreed to let UK watchdog group Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) approve its decision to remove third-party cookies. The move is unusual, reports senior editor Allison Schiff, because it’s an example of regulators guiding […]
IP address is a tell for several things, namely a user’s location – and it can be used to triangulate identity via fingerprinting. But soon that will no longer be the case, at least not in Apple’s ecosystem. Apple raised the privacy bar at its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, and IP address was in […]
The architect of Methbot was found guilty in a New York court last week. The verdict came nearly five years after the ad fraud scheme was first publicized back in December 2016. We dive into the most intriguing details of the case – from the likely political motivations behind the prosecution to the sophistication of […]
Epic has accused Apple of running a monopoly, and this week the trial concluded. Why should we care over in advertising land? While there have been antitrust cases in Europe for some time, now they’re happening on big tech’s home turf. The District of Colombia filed a case against Amazon this week, and of course […]
The upfronts kicked off this week with news of a megamerger between WarnerMedia and Discovery Communications. But Xandr isn’t coming along for the ride. AT&T’s ad tech acquisition remains with the telco. We can only speculate why, but one reason might be that AT&T is planning a second spinoff in light of the currently frothy […]
The sun hasn’t been shining on Wall Street this week as tech stocks dipped precipitously – The Trade Desk among them. Despite turning in decent earnings, TTD’s stock dove by more than 25%, making it one of the most affected of the ad tech bunch. It was a surprising development after more than a year […]
Remember when telcos kept dropping billions on media and ad tech assets because they just couldn’t wait to activate their first-party data for advertising purposes? Didn’t pan out. This week on The Big Story, the team dives into the “why” in the wake of private equity firm Apollo Global Management’s $5 billion acquisition of Verizon […]
After months of anticipation, Apple will start enforcing ATT with the debut of iOS 14.5. Check out our infinite coverage here. Interestingly, this in-the-weeds ad tech story got picked up by the mainstream media, with Apple cast as the valiant steward of privacy. Because we live in a world where the only thing protecting us […]
This week on The Big Story, the team broadcasts LIVE from AdExchanger’s Innovation Labs: Commerce Day event. And here’s your main takeaway if you weren’t able to attend: the fragmentation in the world of commerce-related media is … insane. An emerging cluster of media networks from retailers such as Walmart, Target, Kroger and numerous others […]
Hey kids, are you trying to read the blacked-out redactions on a PDF? Simply copy and paste the text into Microsoft Word, and then read everyone’s legal secrets. It’s the digital hack to reading invisible ink. Google learned that lesson the hard way recently when, in responding to the Texas-led antitrust suit, it accidentally revealed […]
Late last year, with the end of the pandemic hopefully in sight, Luma was beginning to see investor confidence return. If anything, that cautious optimism was understated, as this Spring, Luma saw the best quarter in deals that it had ever seen. This week on The Big Story, we welcome back Conor McKenna, Luma director […]
