Measurement

While good-acting companies knock themselves out trying to comply with data protection and privacy laws, and regulators debate the minutiae of cookie consent policies, bad actors simply couldn’t care less. The front door may be locked, but the basement windows are wide open. Unauthorized data harvesting from mobile apps has continued nearly unabated in the […]

When it comes to ad tracking in Safari, Apple usually taketh away. But sometimes Apple giveth advertisers a little something. Meet privacy-preserving ad click attribution for the web. Think of it as Apple throwing a bone to advertisers who need a way to measure the effectiveness of their ads in Safari, which is where tracking […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Scott Worthem, senior vice president, strategic partnerships, at Comscore. The skinny bundle – seen by many as the “bright spot” for pay TV – has garnered quite a bit of media attention of late. […]

Video tech startup VideoAmp is on a hiring spree, thanks to a $70 million cash infusion. The round, announced Wednesday, was led by investment bank The Raine Group, which kicked in $50 million. Ankona Capital contributed the rest, bringing VideoAmp’s total funding to just over $100 million since 2014. VideoAmp isn’t taking any money off […]

Television advertising is getting smarter. And the smartest companies in digital advertising are coming for TV. That means a royal rumble is playing out over who controls the ad serving for data-driven TV campaigns. AdExchanger looked at the TV and video ad serving landscape, where broadcasters and digital ad platforms like Google and Amazon fiercely […]

Less than a year after stepping into the CEO role at Comscore, Bryan Wiener is stepping out of it. In a statement late Sunday night, Wiener cited what he called “irreconcilable differences” with the board over how to execute the measurement company’s strategy. And he’s not the only one heading for the exit. Comscore president […]

National Football League players train during the offseason – and so does the NFL’s marketing team. From January through July, Aaron Jones, the NFL’s director for club and international marketing, is busily stress-testing his marketing stack and experimenting with new tools to prepare for August and September, when it’s all about activation. “Then, it’s like Black […]

Mark Zuckerberg penned a lengthy post last week laying out Facebook’s vision for a “privacy-focused” future – but it’s not going to change Facebook’s business model. Although Zuckerberg expends a lot of ink on the importance of data security and protecting messaging with end-to-end encryption, he doesn’t mention the interest and user-related data that powers Facebook’s […]

Branded content is a priority for Instagram in 2019 – but measurement is seriously lacking. “That’s one of the things I wish you guys would work on,” said Edlynne Laryea, director for global Neutrogena digital transformation and sustainability, speaking at an Instagram media event Tuesday. Although Instagram claims that 68% of its users choose to interact […]

It’s out with the old and in with the new at Nielsen. Revenue for Nielsen’s Watch segment decreased 3.5% to $881 million in Q4, while Buy segment revenue declined 8.4% to $777 million. But freshly minted CEO David Kenny has a plan. Kenny, who joined Nielsen from IBM Watson in November 2018, wants to bring Nielsen’s […]

Nielsen’s move into addressable TV planning and measurement starts with the smart TV. About a week after Nielsen bought Sorenson Media for $11.25 million in a bankruptcy auction, the measurement company has formally launched a new unit: the Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group. That group consists of Gracenote, which was acquired in 2016 for $560 […]

Oracle has uncovered an ad fraud operation it calls “DrainerBot,” which siphoned off ad dollars and monthly data packages. Oracle’s internet infrastructure business Dyn originally discovered the operation after it picked up suspicious activity among some mobile apps using an SDK from Tapcore, a Dutch mobile monetization company. The apps obscured web data with proxy […]

Walmart, Nike, Amazon, Dell, Honda, Lowe’s – all brand advertisers you can trust, until a bad actor steals their ad creative to use as a vehicle for spreading malware. The problem grows during periods of higher traffic, like the holidays, said Maggie Louie, CEO and founder of DEVCON, a cybersecurity startup focused on fraud detection. […]

by Sarah Sluis, Alison Weissbrot, James Hercher and Ryan Joe The economy is a roller coaster. It’s up, it’s down, it does a loop-de-loop. A downturn isn’t guaranteed, but there’ve been enough rumblings that people are waiting for the other shoe to drop. The last recession in 2008 catalyzed some change in the industry – […]

Nielsen and Comscore take a lot of heat for moving too slowly and failing to provide the sort of cross-channel measurement buyers and sellers say they crave. But cut ’em some slack, said Beth Rockwood, SVP of portfolio research at Turner. “Both Nielsen and Comscore have made good advances in the last year and they’re […]

NBCU did something it had never done before: transacted on a TV advertising campaign based on business outcomes. The campaign for the STXfilms movie “The Upside” was guaranteed based on ticket sales and, secondarily, show time searches, the broadcast giant said Friday. Comscore will measure viewership data and tie it to ticket sales from Fandango, […]

Cords are getting cut left and right, but TV still works … right? “We all know that TV does drive ROI, but there haven’t really been any proof points like there has been in digital,” said Donna Speciale, Turner’s president of advertising sales, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York City on Wednesday. That’s […]

Does the world need yet another tech company to combat malvertising on the internet? “Well, do you still constantly see malvertising when you browse the internet?” said Seth Demsey, co-founder of Clean Creative, an anti-malware company started by a handful of security experts and Oath vets who exited before the name change. Touché. Based in […]

There’s no rest for direct-to-consumer mattress marketers. “We’re constantly running tests,” said Scott McLeod, co-founder of DreamCloud, a mattress startup housed under Nectar Home, parent company to a growing portfolio of DTC sleep and home furnishing brands, including Nectar Sleep and ecommerce rug brand Wovenly. “We have disdain for the idea of running something without […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Jockeys Amazon has a monster ad business, but it’s missing one piece: video inventory. The Amazon Prime video library has the audience, but like Netflix, it’s ad-free. Some recent moves show how Amazon will broaden its video supply. At CES last week, Amazon […]

Nielsen went public with ratings for the Netflix hit film “Bird Box” on Tuesday, estimating that the blockbuster (so to speak) attracted 26 million US viewers in its first week. But wait, didn’t Netflix say 45 million accounts watched “Bird Box” in the first seven days? Netflix rarely discloses specific viewership numbers for any content, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. CTV Sees Green Innovid has raised $30 million to invest in CTV ad serving and measurement products. Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing Group led the round, bringing Innovid’s total funding to $52.6 million. Innovid has held on to its independent status, which it thinks […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Broadcast Impasse CBS will be without Nielsen ratings after failing to renew a contract that expired on Monday. The dispute began six months ago over pricing, with CBS, which spent $100 million with Nielsen last year, demanding fairer terms and arguing that the metrics […]

Over-the-top TV wasn’t invented in 2018, but 2018 was certainly its year. Advertising on over-the-top (OTT) was one of the hot-button issues at Dmexco, Advertising Week and other major conferences this year – for good reason. Content providers, DSPs and others in the industry are seeing explosive growth in this sector of their businesses. The […]

Dish and Sling TV are joining Comscore’s cross-platform measurement solution in beta, their parent company, Dish Media, said Thursday. Dish Media is the first multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) to join the Campaign Ratings pilot program, which launched in September. Campaign Ratings is designed to be a cross-platform metric that can be tracked across linear, […]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The old adage applies to the new media landscape, where sweeping technology changes have scattered US audiences across new devices but has also greatly increased the amount of content consumed per year. The average American adult watches 5 hours and 24 minutes per day of […]

A Nielsen survey released Thursday suggests esports watchers are a prime target for advertisers, but old strategies won’t work on them. The 2018 Nielsen Esports Fan Insights report includes behavior data from hundreds of esports gamers collected over the last year. These fans watched and participated in games like “League of Legends,” “Overwatch League,” “Fortnite” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Adapting Accenture Interactive will acquire Adaptly, an ad tech and programmatic services company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Adaptly has 150 employees and has raised $13 million in funding. Adaptly should help Accenture Interactive “enable workflow, improve quality assurance and really […]

After a protracted, year-long alpha period, the IAB Tech Lab has released the specs in beta for the app version of its Ads.txt initiative to reduce counterfeit ad inventory. The App-ads.txt hold-up was caused by app stores dragging their heels on providing support for the Tech Lab’s preferred solution of using metadata tags – essentially […]

When people learned in 2014 that ad fraud was a $6.3 billion problem, many asked why no one had been arrested for stealing all that money from brands. Four years later, that day has arrived. “Finally, somebody gets arrested for this,” said Neal Richter, chief architect of Rakuten Marketing Platform. The FBI charged eight people […]