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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No Compromise For Google Google’s reported offer to US regulators as a bid to avoid an antitrust suit was to spin off part of its ad business. But that news apparently landed with a thud.  The Department of Justice is poised to move […]

Just three months after Netflix surprised the world with the news that it plans to launch an ad-supported tier, the streaming leader has settled on its third-party vendor of choice: Microsoft. But why Microsoft? It wasn’t considered a serious programmatic contender until it acquired Xandr from AT&T (and that deal only closed last month). Still, something made Microsoft stand out from the crowd.

Advanced TV platform Cadent announced a partnership with data provider Tunnl with an eye on what’s known as issue advocacy segments, which are different from general political ad segments. Issue advocacy campaigns go beyond political affiliation and aim to reach people based on the “hot button” issues that voters are concerned with, such as climate change or reproductive rights.

Google is signaling it may spin off its ad tech business. A DSP and SSP change would create new winners and losers and potentially open up access to walled-off inventory, says our guest, Ari Paparo, founder of Marketecture. Plus: How Google Analytics’ coming change will affect publishers.

Open auctions appear to democratize and simplify CTV ad buying because they let marketers define parameters for viewers or inventory, enabling them to place ads quickly and cheaply across the ad-supported streaming services. But there’s a better way – open auctions are risky, and the emphasis is placed on price and meeting broad criteria, writes Ruby Resendez, director of digital solutions at Stirista.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get The Net! Corks are popping in Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft, after news that Netflix selected Microsoft Advertising as the global sales and technology partner for its ad business.  “Microsoft has the proven ability to support all our advertising needs as we work […]

Google may have a solution to the antitrust regulatory pressure it’s facing from governments around the world: a proactive spinoff. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is exploring splitting Google’s digital ad business into a separate entity under the Alphabet umbrella. The question is whether Google’s proposed solution will pass muster with regulators, and if it does, who stands to win – and who stands to lose?

Unity will merge with ironSource in an all stock transaction that values the latter at $4.4 billion. The companies expect the merger to help deliver a $1 billion run rate by the end of 2024 and $300 million in annual EBITDA synergies the year after that.

El Pollo Loco began as a small restaurant chain in the 1970s, first in Mexico and later in Southern California. The brand only started leaning into digital ad channels in 2019, and today, it spends half its media budget on digital – a huge portion of which is reserved for TikTok. Last month, El Pollo Loco launched its latest campaign, “Abuela Approved” – its first TikTok-only campaign.

Digital media is undergoing rapid evolution. However, from CTV adoption to industry protocols around user privacy, growth and innovation tend to focus first on advertiser challenges, writes Andrew Smith, SVP of publisher products at DoubleVerify. Publishers need a seat at the table, too, he said, rather than being forced to make do with limited resources and bridge gaps in tech stacks.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Death By A Thousand Subscriptions News subscriptions. OK. Entertainment subscriptions, sure. Gaming subscriptions … I can see it.  But subscriptions have now taken over the economy.  This year, Sweetgreen and Taco Bell started testing subscription offers, and Alaska Airlines also began testing a subscription […]

If addressable ad IDs are the new keys to the kingdom, then you’ll find The Trade Desk at Epcot this summer. Which is to say, Disney and The Trade Desk announced an identity integration on Tuesday that will allow advertisers to activate against Disney’s first-party data programmatically via its clean room data product using Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) IDs.

Ad tech entrepreneur Chris Cunningham’s early-stage investment firm, C2 Ventures, has a new fund: just over $20 million for pre-Series A companies, plus $2.55 million for pre-seed startups. But there’s one thing he won’t be investing in, and that’s ad tech. Listen in to learn why.

There’s a disconnect between those ad buyers in the trenches of online advertising and their own corporate leaders up the C-suite, who are accustomed to determining marketing group budgets based on ROI and other basic advertising KPIs that, frankly, are going haywire right now. One way to deal with that disconnect is to add someone who speaks both languages, as it were.

Meta lost in court against French ad-tech champion Criteo, and it will now have to grant better access to its inventory. Meanwhile, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, just deemed Google Analytics illegal – a move that the Italian data privacy authority has just followed as well. What happens now? It turns out there may be a server-side solution, writes Hugo Loriot, partner at fifty-five.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get The Net Netflix isn’t just vetting third-party vendors for its pre-launch ad business (though it is vetting vendors, to be clear).  The streaming leader is on the hunt for an executive to lead its incubating advertising business, The Wall Street Journal reports.  […]

One of the most popular technical solutions to streamline campaign flights on connected TV is server-side ad insertion (SSAI). SSAI is technology that stitches together ads within a video stream before the stream loads on a user’s device. Most of the demand is coming from the explosive growth of CTV, but it can be used in any connected or over-the-top (OTT) video environments, including social.

The impending Google customer force-shift from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) represents a major change to how advertising ROI will be measured via Google’s services going forward. But publishers that spoke to AdExchanger about their migration plans aren’t feeling the same pressure as with, say, preparation for third-party cookie deprecation, Google’s other major upheaval scheduled for next year.

Netflix is planning to introduce an ad-supported model to attract new viewers, and chances are it will embrace programmatic advertising, too. Without the portfolio of strategic partners that NBC and Disney have, Netflix will need to catch up somehow. Programmatic is one enticing option for doing so, writes Nicole Scaglione, global VP, OTT and CTV business, at PubMatic.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Can A Tiger Change Its Stripes? Google offered to split its ad tech business into a stand-alone company (owned by Alphabet) as a concession to divert an antitrust suit, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s unclear which products Google would transfer – although […]

The overturn of Roe v. Wade, the ongoing war in Ukraine, a stock market collapse – it’s all the news that’s fit to print, but how are publishers going to monetize it if brands are skittish about serious topics? Plus: The dangers of data collection in a post-Roe world.

Brands and tech vendors can do a lot more to make good on their public promises to support diverse and Black-owned media, says Rhonesha Byng, the CEO and founder of Her Agenda, a digital media platform for millennial women, and co-creator of the Black Owned Media Equity and Sustainability Institute.

Google recently began testing Topics API, the latest part of its Chrome Privacy Sandbox. It’s a significant improvement over FLoC, but it leaks audience information from trustworthy sites and enriches large platforms at the expense of niche or independent sites – especially sites that invest time and skill to cover categories in detail, writes Don Marti, VP of ecosystem innovation at CafeMedia.

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Positive Influence Recession-wary brands are redirecting ad spend away from Google Search and Facebook and toward influencer marketing, Marketing Brew reports. Influencer marketing is more effective than other media channels right now, according to Junior Pence, CMO of Peace Out, a skincare brand […]

While programmatic advertising has its faults, it is still evolving. And as it has matured it has become a powerful, efficient and effective tool for brands to surgically disseminate their commercial messages to highly targeted consumers. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to be done, writes Eric Warburton, SVP of technical account management and platform partnership success at Horizon Media.

Commerce and creator monetization are Pinterest’s two main priorities right now, said Jeremy King, the company’s SVP and head of engineering. King, who is also the former CTO of Walmart’s ecommerce business – he joined Pinterest in 2019 – said that the convergence of creator revenue potential with social media-based shopping and product discovery by consumers “will make Pinterest functional, versus purely inspirational.”

When customer experience software company Sprinklr went public in June of last year, it joined a veritable stampede of ad tech companies that hit the public market in 2021. And then … 2022 happened. The market might be tough right now, but Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr’s CEO, isn’t letting it shake him.

CTV presents an exciting opportunity for the midmarket and emerging brands and agencies – if they can leave some of the common misconceptions behind, writes Michael Wolk, senior director of business development at Goodway Group. Unlike traditional TV advertising, when the technology and data are used correctly, CTV is closing the gap between large and small brands.