Marketers

With signal loss on the rise, many advertisers are giving first-party data more of a shot. Not scotch whisky brand Dewar’s, though.

Stop thinking about brand safety verification as “insurance” – a way to avoid undesirable content – and start thinking about it as an opportunity to build positive brand associations, says Kenvue’s Mark Proulx.

To explain Forrester’s latest creative ad tech wave, we bring on the report’s author, Senior Analyst Nikhil Lai. Then, the untold story of how Prebid.org became an independent industry organization.

Brands have two options for avoiding election misinformation on YouTube: block all news, or only monetize credible news. But blocking all news restricts campaign reach and harms reliable journalists, just when we need them most.

Brands need more automated tools for buying podcast ads at scale, says Publicis Groupe. Now, Barometer will provide brand safety rankings for all of Acast’s podcast inventory to assist pre-campaign planning.

Google holds court with bloggers bumped from its search algorithm; a backlash is brewing as the online recommendation engine goes into overdrive; and X pushes conservative politics to accounts with nonpartisan interests.

Ad revenue grew 56% YOY even without some of Reddit’s shiny new ad products, including generative AI creative tools and in-comment ads, being fully integrated into its platform.

The programmatic open marketplace is designed to sustain the business models of ad tech, agencies and consultancies, rather than serving the interests of advertisers, audiences and media owners. It cannot be fixed. It must be rebuilt.

By implementing the anti-MFA playbook detailed in the ANA’s November report, brands were able to reduce the portion of their programmatic budgets going to made-for-advertising sites to about 1%.

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

With the growing number of social media users paying for a premium and often ad-free service, how can marketers engage these audiences?

Ari Paparo’s Marketecture acquires another ad-tech publication; Spotify is launching an SSP; and CPG brands turn to “chaos packaging” to stand out among the crowd.

From the Amazon Ads Unboxed conference, AdExchanger reports on the ad tech products it’s building. Plus, why brand safety and news publishers remain at odds with each other, and what each side is doing about it.

GoGo squeeZ CMO Mark Anthony Edmonson shares the key insight that helped his brand expand its audience beyond its traditional target.

Even brand safety companies think news blocking has gone too far. DV is exploring ways to help advertisers support legitimate news and just hired its first-ever head of news.

Sovrn is now offering its header bidding managed service, dubbed Ad Management, as self-serve software for a flat CPM fee.

Dividing brand and performance makes sense as long as the two sides collaborate closely, says Jennifer Burch, Hasbro’s senior director of global media.

PayPal officially launched its ads business. Plus, Media buyers are worried that “an advertising mistake can become the news.”

Prohaska Consulting debuted the ProNews Collective, a private marketplace of premium news publishers whose ad inventory will be exclusively available via Index Exchange.

On Wednesday, video monetization platforms Connatix and JW Player announced plans to merge into a new entity called JWP Connatix. The deal was first rumored in July.

Billups, a managed services agency that specializes in OOH, is making its attention measurement solution and a related analytics dashboard available for general use.

Just three weeks after it began, the Google ad tech antitrust trial in Virginia is over. The court will now take a nearly two-month break before reconvening for closing arguments right before Thanksgiving.

During certain periods this year, advertisers blocked more than 40% of The Washington Post’s inventory over brand safety concerns.

As we lean heavily on AI tools to enhance content efficiency, we may have reached a tipping point where we are creating more content in service of media algorithms, rather than for the benefit of consumers and brands.

Open programmatic ad spend has only grown 3% since 2021, according to Wolfe Research – but there’s hope for the open internet.

Randomized controlled trials are the best source of evidence of cause-and-effect relationships, including advertising’s impact on sales. Imagine the potential for conducting geo experiments using ZIP codes instead of DMAs.

On Tuesday, mar tech company GrowthLoop announced the launch of its new customer data platform, called The Loop.

While CTV has emerged as a powerful and unique advertising medium, venue-based DOOH streaming is distinct and requires its own marketplace to fully realize its potential.

Albert Thompson, a buy-side veteran with 20+ years of experience, weighs in on attention metrics, the value of MFA sites, brand safety backlash and how publishers can improve their inventory.

Someone will eventually need to make a Netflix-style documentary about the Google ad tech antitrust trial happening in Virginia. (And can we call it “You’ve Been Ad Served?”)