Measurement

The Trade Desk’s stock was up nearly 5% in after-hour’s trading on Thursday, despite posting a 13% year-over-over dip in revenue in the second quarter. To what does TTD owe this optimism? Two words: connected TV. “We believe that the COVID pandemic has permanently accelerated the growth of CTV,” CEO Jeff Green told investors on […]

Did you hear the one about Microsoft maybe buying TikTok? No, really, there’s a potential deal in the works. Amid ongoing drama over TikTok’s Chinese ownership and threats from the Trump administration of a ban on the app in the United States, the technology company most associated with office software could become the owner of […]

Hypercasual dominated the mobile gaming charts even before the pandemic. Installs of hypercasual games, characterized by extremely lightweight, free-to-play mobile titles, more than doubled between December 2019 and March of this year, according to joint research from Adjust and Unity. Once lockdowns started, the growth accelerated, with play sessions up by 72% in March. But […]

Jam City is jamming, despite COVID-19. The LA-based casual mobile game studio plans to hire artists, producers, data analysts and people focused on creative strategy. Gaming is one of the few verticals that’s growing during the ongoing health crisis. People started playing more games when stay-at-home orders were announced in March, and the behavior has […]

Despite a healthy second quarter that shrugged off the economic downturn, Facebook CFO Dave Wehner warned investors on Thursday that Apple’s IDFA changes coming in iOS 14 could “prove to be a challenging headwind.” “We’re still trying to understand what these changes will look like and how they impact us and the rest of the […]

Gaming apps are getting better at beating install fraud. Just 3.8% of paid installs are fraudulent among gaming apps, according to research published by AppsFlyer on Tuesday, compared with 32% of non-organic installs for apps in other categories. Finance apps have the highest app install fraud rate at 48%, for example, followed by travel apps […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Bot-And-Mouse Game The low-hanging fruit of ad fraud is mostly gone. But more sophisticated bad actors are still active. Protected Media identified an in-app bot fraud network, dubbed “Hydra,” that siphoned off an estimated $100 million, Business Insider reports. “It’s the most disciplined operation […]

Once Apple’s IDFA becomes opt-in for consumers, its utility to advertisers will be greatly limited. But what does this new policy mean for Facebook and its powerful, lucrative Audience Network? As one source told senior editor Allison Schiff, targeting on Audience Network is all but dead. But does that mean it’s the end? In this […]

Companies that rely on Apple’s proprietary ad ID are seeking solutions for a post-IDFA world. Although Apple didn’t actually kill it, the IDFA will become opt-in for consumers starting with iOS 14 in September. Without user permission, IDFA tracking will be zeroed out, just like when Limit Ad Tracking is enabled. Some are predicting opt-in […]

Nielsen plans to overhaul its digital measurement methodology to prepare for a future without cookies or mobile ad IDs. The first phase of the overhaul will happen in early 2021, with more stages to follow. Because its product is used as currency in some global markets, the measurement company is giving its customers a heads […]

“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 Danilo Tauro, global director of media, tech and data at Procter & Gamble. Is advertising waste being driven by lack of technology, incentives, capabilities or all of the above? To […]

Apple’s move to make its IDFA only available on an opt-in basis will either set Facebook’s hair on fire or further solidify Facebook’s dominant market position. Depends on who you ask. Those opposing opinions underscore the confusion consuming the mobile ad tech ecosystem as it grapples with the de facto loss of user-level tracking in […]

“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 Ari Paparo, CEO at Beeswax. It’s been a couple of weeks since the Apple WWDC conference, where we learned how the IDFA will become opt-in for consumers. Arguably this change […]

  Nielsen is caught in the middle of a dispute between TV buyers and sellers about whether to include out-of-home (OOH) viewing as part of its linear TV ratings stream this year. The measurement company initially planned to integrate viewing that takes place at bars, restaurants and other public establishments as part of its national […]

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

In January, Google Chrome said it would phase out third-party cookies over the next two years. No problem, right? The W3C, which creates common standards for web browsers, will figure out an alternative. Except, man, it’s certainly taking its sweet time. Two years might sound like ages but it’s not, when you consider how foundational […]

Media buying has gone far beyond age and gender – with agencies betting on their first-party data platforms as the new secret sauce to guide planning and activation. But the tools to plan campaigns using advanced segments across mediums like TV, digital and radio often involve slow, manual matching and lots of grunt work. To […]

Nielsen expects to lay off 3,500 people – roughly 8% of its global workforce – as part of a restructuring, the company said on Tuesday. Headcount was around 46,000 in 2019. The move – which Nielsen called “an optimization plan” – is more accurately described as a massive cost-cutting effort to support Nielsen’s upcoming split into two […]

After a nearly three-month-long standoff, video analytics and brand safety measurement company OpenSlate said on Tuesday that it’s back in the YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP). Google and OpenSlate were at loggerheads since April, which is when YouTube relaunched the program with a handful of new partners and an updated organizational structure. OpenSlate had been a […]

SKAdNetwork could become the de facto way to attribute mobile app installs on Apple devices with the release of iOS 14 in September. But when Apple first introduced its SKAdNetwork API in 2018, only a handful of industry insiders paid attention. At the time, the low-key rollout of a privacy-focused test API that would allow […]

“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 Simon Harris, head of sales EMEA at MightyHive. Over the past 24 months, Apple has implemented increasingly aggressive iterations of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), with the feature now blocking third-party cookies by […]

When Google Chrome announced in January that third-party cookies would be phased out in two years, senior ad tech leaders joined the W3C – the group that creates common standards for web browsers – to find ways for browsers to support advertising use cases such as targeting, attribution and frequency capping. Now six months have […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Apple Vs. … GDPR? Are the privacy-focused changes for the release of Apple’s iOS 14 in September compatible with the GDPR? Not according to a coalition of European advertising and publisher trade organizations, including IAB Europe and News Media Europe. In a letter to […]

Measurement is a major selling point for local TV advertisers as the economy starts to (sort of) reopen. Scale, however, has historically been a problem, and there hasn’t been enough data for broadcasters such as TEGNA to properly track user journeys to completion. On Wednesday, Alphonso, TEGNA’s long-time attribution and TV data partner, added TV […]

Apple didn’t kill its ad ID this week, which some see as a cause for cautious optimism. But others view Apple’s move to require an opt-in to use its IDFA as the harbinger of, well, a coming apocalypse for mobile ad tech. Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) is now essentially Apple’s default position on app tracking. […]

Did Apple deal a death blow to the IDFA, the identifier used by the mobile ecosystem to understand app audiences? Not yet – but according to senior editor Allison Schiff, the tech giant certainly shined a light on it at its developer conference Monday. As Allison reported, Apple didn’t end the IDFA as some speculated […]

“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 Angelina Eng, vice president of measurement and attribution at IAB and IAB Tech Lab. In less than two years, many publishers, advertisers, data vendors and technology platforms will need to reevaluate […]

Apple didn’t explicitly kill off its ad ID during its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday as some expected, but it sure looks like it’s laying the groundwork. Sandwiched between flashy announcements about the Apple Watch, macOS Big Sur and surround-sound AirPods, Apple dropped a bombshell for third-party mobile ad tech. Starting with iOS 14, which […]

Facebook’s Audience Network is seeing in-app bidding start to pick up some serious momentum. The number of publishers monetizing through a unified auction increased sevenfold over the past year. Half of them now earn the majority of their Audience Network revenue through programmatic bidding. “Bidding is the new normal,” said Steve Webb, global lead on […]

Apple seems poised to clamp down on the rampant, unauthorized use of its mobile ad ID, the IDFA. Earlier this week, Apple added a new screen to the user interface within App Store Connect, the portal that developers use to upload and manage the distribution of their apps. The screen, discovered in the wild and […]