Identity

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 […]

The cookie-based identity regime that fueled the first 25 years of the digital advertising is dying. What will replace it? David Moore, ad tech veteran and CEO of fledgling startup BritePool, says he has an answer. Moore is one of a handful of early ad tech entrepreneurs who are still actively building companies today. As […]

It’s a cliche to say that data is fuel but, in GasBuddy’s case, that’s literally true. The GasBuddy app, which helps drivers crowdsource information about cheap fuel prices, has access to opted-in location data from more than 15 million monthly active users. Users are more than willing to share their data, because they’re receiving a utility […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Lightning Strikes The Washington Post introed a first-party data ad targeting tool called Zeus Insights that can work without third-party cookies and target across display, video and native ads, reports Digiday. Zeus, which can be used in both direct deals and programmatically, looks at […]

Firefox is starting to block third-party tracking by default, which will throw a wrench into the business model of any company that relies on cookies. But that doesn’t mean Firefox doesn’t care about how this change affects the bottom line – especially its own. Beyond the normal usability testing done before rolling out a new […]

McDonald’s is starting to throw a few ideas on the grill after spending around $300 million to acquire personalization and decision logic tech startup Dynamic Yield in March. Dynamic Yield’s technology has been integrated into the drive-thru experience at roughly 700 McDonald’s restaurants in North America so far with plans to roll out more and […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Placed has found a new home. Foursquare is buying the location-based measurement company from Snap. Separately, it raised $150 million in fresh funding courtesy of The Raine Group, some of which is going to fund the acquisition. The rest is earmarked for R&D. The deal, announced early Friday morning, comes less than two years after […]

LiveRamp earned $78.3 million in the second quarter, a 30% increase from $60.2 million in the same period last year, according to its earnings report released Tuesday. The company’s gross profit also grew year over year, from $36.4 million to $40.6 million. LiveRamp is still shaking off the blow from Facebook’s third-party data prohibition. The […]

Browser fingerprinting isn’t a new tactic, but it’s newly in the headlines as all of the primary web browsers – Safari, Firefox and now Chrome – crack down on the practice in the name of privacy. The main problem with fingerprinting from a privacy perspective is that there’s no way for a consumer to opt out or to […]

Google Chrome is increasing its privacy controls for users and will scramble efforts by third parties to identify users via fingerprinting, making it the last major browser to strengthen its privacy protections for users. The changes, formally unveiled during the Google I/O event Tuesday, will roll out in coming months. Chrome will make it easier […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A man walks into a bar after seeing a TV ad … but there’s no way for the advertiser to prove it ever happened. On Tuesday, TV data company Alphonso inked a partnership with PlaceIQ to use the latter’s location data as a bridge between sitting on the […]

Travel is a personal experience, and travel marketing should be too, according to Sheila Schottland, senior director of brand marketing at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “People travel for different reasons – family, business, leisure – and they have different needs,” she said. “Because these moments are relatable, we make sure that our media mix follows suit, […]

Xaxis technology and partnerships director Nishant Desai will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO San Francisco conference on April 29-30, 2019. Agencies aren’t first-party data owners, cookie trackers or data processors, but they must still keep a handle on online identity while the tech ecosystem shifts underfoot. “The notion of how advertisers identify audiences and what identity […]

McDonald’s is buying an Israeli startup called Dynamic Yield that provides personalization software to brands and publishers – but this acquisition is about a lot more than tailoring menus based on the weather or serving up customized content. The deal, announced late Monday, is the first major acquisition McDonald’s has made in around 20 years, and […]

The amount of online media with audience data attached is shrinking, thanks to Apple, which now blocks third-party cookies in Safari, and GDPR, which requires user consent to show personalized ads. But when advertising cookies are missing, marketers have limited, costly alternatives. Some demand-side platforms (DSPs) don’t offer any contextual buying. Or buyers must pay […]

A slew of consortiums, collaborations and integrations have emerged to fill the need for a universal advertising ID, which would help publishers and ad tech companies level the playing field with Google, Facebook, Amazon and other platforms with vast logged-in user data. But those vendor-focused initiatives struggled to gain broad adoption and overcome competitive issues […]

MillerCoors doesn’t have the opportunity to collect much first-party data: Most of its sales come through independently-owned convenience and liquor stores or bars and restaurants. “It’s very difficult to identify or measure audiences because of the nature of how these businesses are run,” said Brad Feinberg, VP of media and consumer engagement at MillerCoors. “They’re […]

Some ad tech companies are getting out of the managed media business – and others are jumping in with both feet. On Monday, mobile analytics company UberMedia sold its managed media business to location data platform Gimbal, marking the latter’s second acquisition of a media services unit in less than a year. Gimbal acquired Drawbridge’s managed […]

The past two years have seen a rush of consortiums, coalitions and ad tech products that all hope to standardize online IDs to improve match rates. But industry leaders, for-profit startup and nonprofit initiatives can have very different ideas on how to solve that problem. “The question is which one of these models will gain […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. F Is For Fake Last year was a point of “inversion” for the Internet, which has become oversaturated with malicious nonhuman traffic, ad fraud, fake news, falsely reported metrics and other forms of digital unreality, according to a New York Magazine story. It was […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

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 […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Chip Schenck, senior vice president of data and programmatic solutions at Meredith Corp. Identity is the foundation of addressable marketing, and yet it’s being treated as a precious resource. This is because digital identity […]

Drawbridge is one of the cross-device OGs, but it’s in the midst of a pivot. The company revealed $15 million in new financing on Monday from existing investors Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Northgate. The money, which brings Drawbridge’s total funding to $70 million, will be immediately invested into a product road map focused on non-advertising-related […]

Dynamic Yield’s latest financing round is about one thing: growth. The company, which provides personalization software for ecommerce brands and publishers, raised $32 million in Series D cash on Wednesday, led by Viola Growth with participation from Union Tech Ventures. The round brings its total funding to $77 million since 2013. Dynamic Yield, whose clients […]

This article is sponsored by Throtle. As consumers bounce relentlessly across an increasingly wide array of devices and applications, the data trail they leave behind becomes more and more fragmented. And that’s a problem for marketers who are often left wondering: Who’s the person behind the screen – exactly – that we’re talking to? To solve […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.  Today’s column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an independent audience strategy consultant.  Today’s increasingly enhanced privacy era requires a closer collaboration between media companies and their audiences, based on a true value exchange, trust and transparency. Users who […]

Advertisers know linear TV spots drive store visits. Proving it is another story. On Tuesday, Snap-owned location company Placed released a tool that attempts to tie the two together. To power its offering, Placed is licensing viewership data from Inscape, the data division within smart-TV manufacturer Vizio, which has access to around 8 million opted-in […]

Emodo, Ericsson’s mobile ad platform for telcos, is aiming to boost the quality of location data in the ad ecosystem with a tool launched Thursday that uses carrier data to verify mobile audiences on a pre-bid basis. Marketers are shelling out for bad targeting and it’s akin to flushing their budgets down the toilet, said […]