Identity

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 […]

Social plugins, your cookie-dropping days are numbered – on Safari, at least. At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced that the third-party widgets that litter the internet will no longer be able to place cookies on visitors using Safari. “We’ve all seen these like buttons and share buttons and these comment fields,” said Craig […]

Oracle has acquired Grapeshot, a UK-based contextual targeting startup, the companies announced Tuesday. Grapeshot provides pre-bid insights based on the media being considered. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Grapeshot will join the Oracle Data Cloud, where it will be combined with Moat to strengthen the company’s brand safety service. The company initially focused […]

Dish Network hopes to perform attribution and cross-device targeting using non-cookie-based browser data, said Brad Stamulis, Dish’s director of digital marketing. The satellite TV provider is using a solution called fTrack, from online ad platform Flashtalking, which recognizes consumers based on about 50 data points – including browser type, user location, screen size and orientation, […]

This is the second in a series of deep dives from AdExchanger on mobile fraud and mobile data quality, including guides to fraud tactics and threat vectors and practical solutions from advertisers in the growth and user acquisition trenches. Read the first story (“2018 Will Be A Year Of Reckoning For Mobile App-Install Fraud”) and […]

Placed, the Snap-owned location data company, is giving away its analytics tool for free. Starting Thursday, brands and media planners can use a public version of its insights service to view foot traffic trends for around 2,000 businesses in the US. Placed pulls the aggregated data from its audience of around 300 million monthly active […]

Pixability, a platform that originated as a tool for identifying high-performing YouTube channels, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company will refund advertisers for views that run on YouTube inventory that is not brand-safe or fails to meet an advertiser’s agreed-upon brand safety terms, either through cash or TV-like “make-goods.” Although Pixability […]

At Crayola, the lines between paid and earned are blurring. “The interaction between friends and family is so valuable – and it just can’t be garnered from paid media,” said Marisa Scurato, who oversees the brand’s strategic digital marketing efforts. “But we do believe that those things go hand in hand.” Crayola consumers create a lot […]

Cross-device provider Tapad is offloading its media business with Brand Networks, a social marketing tech firm that serves large retail brands and enterprise clients. The deal, announced Tuesday, is structured like a partnership rather than an acquisition, said Tapad CEO Sigvart Voss Eriksen. Tapad’s managed media and creative teams will join Brand Networks to help […]

TGI Fridays has a growing appetite for artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization. AI tech is a strategic investment area for the casual dining restaurant chain this year, said James Washington, TGIF’s product manager for digital platforms. Top-of-the-agenda use cases include improving the dining experience and enhancing the brand’s cross-channel messaging strategy, both of which hinge […]