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

Do Me A Favor Amazon told Congress in 2019 that it doesn’t favor Amazon-owned brands in search results. But that isn’t credible to sellers, who time and again see Amazon rivals shoot into the top three search results immediately. A former Amazon employee told The Markup that Amazon reserved a top search spot for new […]

Developers have been reporting allegedly strange behavior from AppLovin’s MAX Unity SDK. At least one developer discovered that MAX, AppLovin’s in-app monetization solution, appears to have been capturing iOS 15 postbacks for installs generated by other ad networks automatically and without permission. The tip was shared anonymously with the mobile ad industry forum Mobile Dev […]

Oh, (beta testing in) Canada. On Thursday, The Trade Desk said that live beta testing of Unified ID 2.0 is now underway in Canada. Some existing UID2 partners are helping to shepherd the test, including Index Exchange, Magnite, Publicis, Omnicom Media Group and IPG’s Kinesso. (Kinesso is one of two “closed operators” for UID2 that […]

Data clean rooms are secure – that’s the whole point. But they’re not always flexible or scalable, said Jason Manninghan, CEO of advanced TV data platform Blockgraph, which is jointly owned by Comcast, Charter and ViacomCBS. TV advertisers in particular need a wide range of capabilities in order to tie media spend with viewing and campaign […]

Let us help you serve yourself. That’s the accelerating trend in fast-food chains, car dealerships, remote work life and, yes, in ad tech. The ascendancy of the self-serve DSP is here, according to the latest Advertiser Perceptions DSP wave. The report is based on a survey of 336 brand and agency advertisers who spend at […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Tom Donoghue, VP of CTV and OTT at GroundTruth. As we all get set to enjoy the traditions of fall, such as watching the leaves turn colors, visiting a pumpkin patch with the kids and […]

Platform Peril Seemingly every grocery chain now has a programmatic platform, not to mention Lowe’s, Home Depot, Instacart, GoPuff and buy-now-pay-later companies like Afterpay and Klarna, to be joined soon by Uber, perhaps Shopify and who knows who else. Many of these companies – the BNPLs and all the mobile app-based businesses – got into […]

Longtime Facebook executive Nicola Mendelsohn will permanently fill Carolyn Everson’s shoes (so to speak). Everson, who served as VP of Facebook’s global business group, left the company in June after more than a decade and took a job as president of Instacart a few months later. Marne Levine, Facebook’s newly appointed chief business officer (also […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. After this exclusive first look for subscribers, the story by AdExchanger’s Allison Schiff will be published in full on AdExchanger.com tomorrow. Driving downloads is important. But Ben Webley, CMO of game developer Scopely, is looking for users who want to stick around. “We’re […]

AndroidTrackingTransparency For smartphone owners with Android 12 or higher, Google has created a new location data option that allows users to share “approximate location data” that’s accurate to within a mile or so, unlike the granular targeting data often in use by mapping or directions apps. This means app developers can request permission for some […]

Emoji have entered the lexicon. Two of Holler CEO Travis Montaque’s favorites are the upside-down smiley face and the dizzy face with spiral eyes, new on iOS 14.5. He breaks out the latter “when I’m on Zoom calls for six hours.” Although there was a time when emoji might have seemed like a facile, even […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Melinda Han Williams, Chief Data Scientist, Dstillery.  Google’s announcement that its “data-driven attribution” – that its machine-learning-driven attribution modeling will be the default attribution method in Google Ads – took […]

How Blockbusters Survive Netflix The latest Bond flick, “No Time to Die,” and the Marvel movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” kindled hope for cinemas with blockbuster ticket sales. But Hollywood won’t return to pre-pandemic standards. For one thing, only action or horror movie franchises have performed, “particularly when they are offered […]

Starting Monday, users who don’t explicitly link their Facebook and Instagram accounts in Facebook’s Accounts Center will be treated as two separate people. The privacy-centric course correction could affect measurement and estimates for audience reach for advertisers. In the past, Facebook served ads across a user’s Facebook and Instagram accounts based on assumptions that linked […]

This is part one of a two-part deep dive series on the changing face of attribution. Facebook’s had a tough time of it recently. There was the explosive Wall Street Journal Facebook exposé, whistleblowing on Capitol Hill and the stock market’s reaction, which shaved tens of billions off Facebook’s valuation in a single day. But […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is written by Jonathan Teitloff, director of product management at TripleLift. Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the bidders and the auctions that you’re used to. Ultimately, we know that you’re going to have it your […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Deliver Or Delay The global supply chain crunch is hitting the ad industry, even before the Q4 holiday shopping season moves into high gear. Brands and their creative and media agencies plan campaigns months or a year ahead. But those campaign rollouts are being […]

Is ad tech’s hot streak on the public market sustainable? No, and that’s not a bad thing. After four quarters of spiking valuations and an IPO runway so crowded that one ad tech company opted to postpone its IPO until next year, the market is starting to stabilize. Although some ad tech stocks achieved all-time […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Humphrey Ho, US managing director of Hylink Digital. Link blocking has long been a challenge for many advertisers in China when interacting with the nearly 1 billion internet users in […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Lior Shvo, Managing Director at Sellers.guide. It’s not rocket science: Advertisers want to reach the right audience, at the right time, at the right price. Here’s the thing, though: Doing that is waaaay too […]

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. Big Game Amazon CEO Andy Jessy (Jeff who?) issued a bold statement at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle this week. “In the case of games, we have a belief that that could end up being the largest category in entertainment over a long period […]

There’s no denying climate change – on YouTube and in Google ads, at least. On Thursday, a week after banning anti-vaccine activists and accounts from YouTube, Google announced a new policy to prohibit the monetization of content that denies the existence of or effects related to climate change as agreed upon by authoritative scientific consensus. Think […]

First-price auctions are coming to Google AdSense. The change will go into effect later this year, Google shared in a blog post on Thursday. Google Ad Manager and AdMob have already switched to a first-price auction. Though not nearly as momentous as when Google flipped the switch for Ad Manager, the AdSense change signals that […]

If there’s one thing lawmakers from both sides of the aisle seem able to agree on, it’s the need to rein in Big Tech. Bipartisan support for taking Big Tech down a peg was evident during Jonathan Kanter’s nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. (The same bipartisan vibe was also on display […]

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 […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Outside Inc. CEO Robin Thurston is very aware of subscription fatigue. At a time when streaming platforms are working to boost their subscriber numbers with bundled ad-free and ad-supported channel packages, Outside TV is being used in part as a vehicle to entice […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Creative Galaxy Snap is fending off competitors with new money-making tools for creators, Variety reports. Next month, Snapchat will launch Spotlight Challenges, cash bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 for accounts with top views in categories like “Best Trick Shot.” The tool is a […]

Sustainable digital media business models exist – just look at Dotdash. Dotdash acquired Meredith at a $2.7 billion valuation Wednesday to form a new media business to be called Dotdash Meredith. At first glance, the two entities coming together feels like a marriage of opposites: a century-old magazine media company and a digital native. But […]