Marketers

Why is programmatic media buying so dang complicated? That question was an ever-present topic at the 2025 ANA Media Conference in Orlando, Florida this week.

Meta introduces new ad placements, promo opportunities and AI prompts; an influencer campaign prompts right-wing influencers to oppose RFK Jr.’s soda crackdown; and transcription platform Otter launches an AI assistant.

Warner Bros. Discovery officially launched OpenPath last week, with the goal of driving demand for its news sites’ display inventory. But for now, CTV is not part of the integration.

Based on the way advertisers deal with publishers, you’d think they were sworn enemies. Our failure to prioritize collaboration on the open web and build a positive value chain has been our collective downfall.

Video gaming is the only market where revenue is largely tied to the sales of consoles and ad-free subscription services, André Swanston tells AdExchanger.

Programmatic algorithms optimize for performance, which can leave digital media companies floundering. Inside programmatic’s pursuit of “premium.” Plus: an ad tech acquisition forged on matchmaking buy-side and sell-side IDs.

T-Mobile may be considering an acquisition in the mobile data market; Google’s glitch shuts down ads for a weekend; and ad tech’s old guard is salivating over AI startups.

Google has been spotted triple serving ads to search pages. Plus, good luck getting ads next to Oscars content this year.

The Brand Safety Institute released a new tool that lets publishers check whether their site domains have been flagged as MFA by third-party verification vendors.

Pinterest is being overrun with low-effort generative AI slop. Plus, Stagwell partially credits its 14% growth last year to – you guessed it – AI.

In her last week at AdExchanger, Senior Editor Alyssa Boyle reflects on three years of change, and stasis, in the CTV space. Then, how Ozempic is changing the marketing world.

To solve ad tech’s intractable problems, there’s a solution that the advertising industry could borrow from the hacker world: bug bounties.

Amazon is still lowering its Prime Video ad rates across the board. Plus, there are disadvantages to being a big tech giant.

2025 is officially the year that GLP-1 solidifies itself as a force in the advertising world.

According to CreativeX, ad creative is responsible for nearly half of sales lift, which is more than reach, recency and targeting combined. So why doesn’t creative get the credit it deserves? Until recently, says Anastasia Leng, CEO and founder of CreativeX, technology wasn’t advanced enough to measure creative decisions at scale.

When an ad shows up next to illegal content, there is often not a single point of failure. Adalytics Krzysztof Franaszek walks us through why he found ads showing up next to the worst kind of criminal content — and the simple and complex solutions to this problem.

Meta is no stranger by now to complaints from ad buyers, particularly ecommerce brands and social agencies, reporting major systemic platform issues, including outright bugs and glitches – not to mention decreased marketing returns at higher CPMs.

“For the first time in 8.5 years as a public company, our results came in below expectations,” The Trade Desk CFO Laura Schenkein told investors during the company’s Q4 and full-year 2024 earnings reports on Wednesday.

DDM is expanding its performance-focused contextual targeting solution, D/Cipher, to third-party inventory.

Like Kendrick Lamar during the Super Bowl halftime show, Interpublic Group CEO Philippe Krakowsky had a message for all the haters out there: the impending Omnicom merger won’t affect IPG’s ability to do business in the meantime.

Basis Technologies introduced Unify, a new feature in its DSP that facilitates data access and campaign planning across a brand’s in-house departments and external teams.

Hyundai’s latest campaign, titled “The Road,” debuted during the NFL AFC and NFC championship game on January 26, the weekend before the Super Bowl.

On Friday, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) sent co-written letters to Amazon, Google, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, the MRC and TAG notifying the companies that they have been identified as “responsible for serving or certifying” ads on pages hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

What makes fans tick? Media agency Elevate is using AI to try and answer that question with a solution for targeting specific sports and entertainment fandoms.

Pinterest reported $1.2 billion in Q4 revenue, an 18% year over year increase – and its first-ever billion-dollar quarter.

Why worry about AI replacing jobs when a megamerger might make them redundant?

Alphabet is beset by challenges on all sides. But the company’s revenue growth remains unchecked.

Coinbase has acquired a blockchain-based advertising and attribution startup. Plus, is brand safety on social media a myth?

Criteo’s Brian Gleason shared how it is working with agencies to capitalize on curation and measurement opportunities in retail media and CTV.

In light of T-Mobile’s plans to buy Vistar Media, Atmosphere TV’s business model shines a brighter spotlight on the grey area between connected TV and DOOH billboards.