Marketers

For Vice Media, an edgy, youth-oriented publisher rooted in eccentricity, being brand-safe means giving advertisers enough control over their ad placements to keep the briefs coming. “There’s certain content brands would like to be associated with and certain content they would not,” said Andrew Smith, VP of digital for Vice Media. He noted that much of […]

Whisper, an app that lets its anonymous users post what’s on their mind, is still going strong after five years – even after other secret-sharing social apps like Yik Yak have closed shop. One reason for its longevity is that it is making money through programmatic advertising. Demand partners include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, OpenX […]

8 p.m. Katy Perry. That’s all. 7:40 p.m. Google Preferred FTW Google Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl claimed Google Preferred (translation: Google’s top tier videos) has tripled its number of advertisers. Kyncl credited YouTube for turning publishers like BuzzFeed, Vice and AwesomenessTV into “daily destinations of can’t-miss programming.” Consumers watch over 1 billion of hours […]

Seven years after first embracing programmatic buying at scale through its secretive Project Hawkeye initiative, Procter & Gamble is saying goodbye to long-time ad tech partner AudienceScience. In its place the company will install Neustar as its data management platform alongside an assortment of demand-side platforms, including The Trade Desk. Ad Age first reported the […]

When a public company is having performance issues, it needs an excuse. For Twitter, TellApart is shaping up to be that boogeyman. After barely a mention of TellApart on its earnings calls for several quarters, last week Twitter CFO and COO Anthony Noto implied that the remarketing platform will hurt revenue through the rest of […]

America’s most data-driven retailers and product manufacturers increasingly use mobile channels to drive shoppers to a store. Take the big kahuna. Walmart two weeks ago began offering discounts for products selected online and then picked up at a store. Walmart clears the margin on those discounts because the retailer can push products through its stores […]

Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]

Procter & Gamble will slash $1.5 billion from its marketing budget over the next five years, the CPG giant said during its Q1 earnings call Wednesday. At least $1 billion will come from media, specifically by lowering rates and getting rid of supply chain waste, said Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller. P&G wants to save […]

Chocolate eggs are big business for Hershey’s, the company behind Reese’s peanut butter cups and Cadbury eggs. The candymaker generates $550 million in sales of Easter candies, making it the second-biggest holiday after Halloween. The beloved Reese’s Eggs fill up Easter baskets everywhere. But this year, the Easter candy market became more competitive as other […]

On the heels of Google’s ongoing brand safety headache, MediaMath is trying to add a few safety bumpers to the sharp edges of the digital ad ecosystem. The programmatic buying platform took the wraps off a product on Thursday that aims to help advertisers find addressable audiences on brand-safe sites at scale. MediaMath vets a […]

Black Angus Steakhouse operates 45 restaurants in six states. And it’s just hired its first chief marketing officer, Liz Geavaras, to bring a fresh approach to the 53-year-old restaurant group’s marketing. Geavaras will dial back Black Angus’ heavy print expenditures, replacing them with digital. She also plans to segment customers and customize messages to address […]

Publishers are learning to love influencer marketing as a way to grow broader advertising and sponsorship deals. “An advertiser might come with a traditional sponsorship package, and to complement that, they want a programmatic component,” said Rachel Parkin, SVP of strategy and sales at digital media company CafeMedia. CafeMedia owns a network of women’s interest […]

The Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA), an industry trade group spanning out-of-home media and advertising technology, on Monday released its first programmatic standards for digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns. The DPAA hopes these standards, which are like existing openRTB guidelines from the IAB, will facilitate digital out-of-home buys. The DPAA’s standards outline video ad formats […]

There’s a “simultaneous frustration” on the buy and sell sides to move beyond legacy TV currency standards like C3 ratings, said Linda Yaccarino, chairwoman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCU, at the 4As Transformation show in Los Angeles on Tuesday. This upfront season, NBCU is asking buyers to rethink the way they approach […]

Intel’s decision to bring programmatic media buying in-house boiled down to this: audience insights. “Our biggest aha, our epiphany, was that we wanted to have a holistic view of our customer,” Julie Keshmiry, Intel’s global media director, said Tuesday at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco. But getting that view is particularly difficult for a non-customer-facing […]

Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]

As advertisers yank spend from YouTube and Google Display Network due to brand safety concerns, premium publishers see an opportunity. These pubs have long complained that audience-based buying devalues the context they provide – context they claim ensures brand safety. “Marketers are recognizing in a blunt force way the difference between a platform and publisher,” […]

By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]

Ad-supported brand-unsafe content is on the rise. DoubleVerify, which validates tens of billions of advertiser impressions per month, has blocked 8 million ads from appearing on content pages classified as hate speech – up threefold since January. And according to keyword targeting tech platform Grapeshot, the amount of terrorism-related content it sees flowing through its systems […]

The UK boycott of YouTube and the Google Display Network jumped the pond Wednesday when AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson joined the ever-growing pile-on of advertisers suspending their ad spend over brand safety concerns. But the issue at the heart of this developing scandal – ads appearing next to extremist and offensive content – […]

The mobile app Ibotta, which offers users cash back on purchases from retail and brand partners, is turning its receipt verification system into an in-store attribution tool. Ibotta users can link a loyalty card account or upload a picture of a store receipt to get cash back on products for which it offers discounts. But […]

NewsCred on Wednesday laid off 10% of its staff as it changes its product offering and adds advisory services to its content marketing software. As part of the reorg, NewsCred hired a president and COO, Charles Hough. “We’ve been selling [brands] content marketing platforms, but they need expert services, and someone to hold their hand […]

Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]

by Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis, James Hercher, Kelly Liyakasa and Ryan Joe Programmatic advertising comes in many flavors. A handful of brands load up to take their buying fully in-house. Many give their agency partners carte blanche. Other brands take ownership of the tech contracts and segmentation, while letting their agencies pull the […]

Hotel and travel brands are looking to pour more performance dollars into Facebook. For years, hotel operators have used the social platform as a source of online check-ins, reviews and customer service responses, but “the next step was taking it to advertising,” said Chris Georgas, digital marketing manager for Fairmont Hotels. After debuting its Dynamic […]

As consumer attention continues to fragment, creative agencies are relying more on real-time insights to craft personalized messages and optimize them on the fly. That requires bringing media and creative services closer together. While smaller indie shops are bringing media execution in-house to make messaging more relevant, holding companies experiment with cross-discipline and cross-agency teams. […]

Speaking Thursday at the ANA Media Conference, Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard was pleased that Facebook and Google had agreed to independent MRC audits, but he emphasized that the audits are only the first steps toward improving the media supply chain. “It’s not enough to accept [audit pledges] until the audits are […]

Marla Kaplowitz, named president and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) on Friday, has made mending fences with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) a top priority. Addressing the rift between the two organizations – and, more broadly, between marketers and agencies themselves – over agency transparency has “got to happen this […]

Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ (NCS) original value prop focused on connecting media consumption with in-store sales for CPG brands. But in the past two years, NCS has moved beyond attribution and into building programmatic audience segments. Programmatic targeting is already almost 25% of NCS’ business, with a revenue goal this year between $20 million and $25 […]

Product placements aren’t new, but with the rise of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services – and a reduction in cable networks’ commercial loads – branded TV content is primed to take off. That said, it’s hard to credit a sale of a bucket of KFC chicken to Jimmy Kimmel peddling it on his late-night show, so one company […]