Measurement

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 […]

Nielsen’s hire of IBM Watson honcho David Kenny as CEO, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is a major bet for the measurement company as it rises to meet new competitive challenges and prepares for a possible sale of the business. Kenny oversaw IBM’s artificial intelligence initiatives, using machine learning to support enterprise […]

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) released a study on Thursday that found an 84% drop in fraud compared to the industry average when all members in the supply chain are vigilant, badged and on the level. TAG analyzed 75 billion display and video impressions across desktop, mobile web and in-app channels to look for sophisticated […]

An actor, AI expert and the former head of digital at CNBC walk into a bar. They create an analytics startup. There’s no punchline here – that really happened. (Maybe not the bar part.) Ed Norton, Daniel Nadler and Kevin Krim’s new company EDO announced Thursday it raised $12 million in Series A funding. The […]

Pinterest is growing its ad inventory with a new promoted carousel format, which moved out of beta on Thursday. Carousels, which allow advertisers to include up to five images within a single format, can appear within the Pinterest main feed as a related pin recommendation or through search. Users tap the cover image and then […]

Brad Stamulis, director of digital marketing at Dish Network, has long called out viewability measurement’s shortcomings – but at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O in New York City on Tuesday, he specified the steps the industry needs to take to fix it. Eliminating waste in programmatic marketing is always a challenge when it comes to viewability and […]

Brian Wiener will present on video measurement at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. ComScore is getting back on its feet. After the Nasdaq delisted the company due to a string of financial foibles and leadership changes, the measurement company brought on former 360i Chairman Bryan Wiener as CEO in April. By May, […]

The first rule of ad fraud: If it can be spoofed, it will be spoofed. Bad actors are pretending to be legit, demand-side platforms to try and fool partners and blend in with real ad calls as a way to purvey malware and litter the web with forced redirects. “They weasel their way onto the […]

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. So you’ve made it to the final day of Advertising Week in New York City. Congratulations. This year, the annual shindig crammed its attendees […]

Nielsen is reviewing “strategic alternatives” to selling its entire company, the company told investors this month. The TV ratings giant is reportedly under pressure from hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. “All options are being weighed,” a Nielsen spokesperson told AdExchanger. “The company has hired external advisers to conduct a full review and the board is […]

Pooja Midha will speak on the future of TV measurement at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. Founded in 2007, true[X] was acquired by Fox in 2014 for $200 million. Its president, Pooja Midha, has hit the ground running since she assumed the role in March. “I was a true[X] customer […]

AT&T’s promise to connect data, technology, distribution and content to make advertising better for all constituents is exciting. So exciting, in fact, that industry executives from both the buy and sell sides gathered in support of the idea at the Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., this week, willing to help make it happen. But […]

Advertisers on Dish’s over-the-top service Sling TV can now power their addressable TV campaigns using Nielsen audience segments based on purchases and loyalty programs. Sling TV advertisers can also measure using Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings currency. These capabilities are available due to an expanded partnership between Dish’s media sales team and Nielsen, which the companies […]

For the last four years, mobile measurement company TUNE has been “fighting with one hand tied behind its back,” said Alex Austin, CEO and co-founder of California-based deep-linking outfit Branch. In 2014, TUNE lost its Facebook marketing partner badge for allegedly retaining user data for too long. “But we’re giving TUNE both its arms back […]

Advertisers that want to exclude people interested in “Passover,” “Native American culture” or “evangelism” from seeing a campaign on Facebook will soon be out of luck. On Tuesday, Facebook said it’s planning to remove more than 5,000 ad targeting parameters that could be used to discriminate against minority groups. The targeting options will be unavailable […]

Believe it or not, many marketers still use last-click attribution. Goodway Group President Jay Friedman has had enough of it. So, he’s pushing the indie programmatic platform to tie all campaign measurement to lift-based metrics. “By requiring a lift-based approach, we can avoid vanity metrics,” he said. “It’s changed the dynamic of our relationships with […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Media Diet On average, US adults spend 11 hours per day consuming media, with six of those hours spent watching video, according to Nielsen’s Q1 Total Audience Report. Read it. Total video consumption grew 11 minutes over the previous quarter, with six of […]

There’s still no magic pill that ties advertising to outcomes. Take Lyft, which can connect metrics to spend in display and search, but has trouble measuring across channels. But because it has difficulty uniting data around brand marketing, referral programs or brand ambassador outreach, its marketing strategy is largely built around user acquisition (UA), said […]

OTT audiences are increasing in volume and engagement, but the channel must still overcome issues related to content discovery, measurement and fill rates. At A&E Networks, OTT’s share of audience is up 150% compared with decreases in engagement across desktop and mobile. At Bloomberg, 30% of its OTT audiences watch for 30 minutes or more […]

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

Intel has a product to sell, but it’s not a retailer. And that’s where campaign management gets tricky. The chip manufacturer has long partnered with retailers and ecommerce sites like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon to sell laptops and desktop computers with Intel processors inside. Intel, which doesn’t sell consumer-facing hardware on its own […]

AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Tealium. ComScore CEO Bryan Wiener will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference taking place Oct. 15-16. One month into the job, comScore’s new CEO, Bryan Wiener, hopes to renew the company’s sense of purpose. It’s a […]

Travel publishers often miss the boat on attribution. Although their content is an integral part of the trip-planning process at the top of the funnel, there’s no easy way to credit its role in an eventual hotel booking. Fathom, a site that publishes curated destination guides and first-person travel accounts, knew it was leaving money […]

Spotify and TGI Fridays are hooking up with Foursquare as a preferred measurement partner. Solid measurement is what seals the deal with marketers, said Brian Berner, head of US sales at Spotify. “Many of our [brand] partners have a brick-and-mortar presence, so we’ve seen increased demand for measurement that showcases how our ad platform connects […]

Vista Equity Partners’ plan to buy a majority stake in Integral Ad Science – valuing the company at $820 million, according to AdExchanger sources, or up to $850 million, according to Axios – underscores the ongoing importance of ad verification and the pressure these vendors face to grow their product offering to remain competitive. “There’s […]

Ads.txt is headed to the app ecosystem. What form will it take? That’s still shaking out. The IAB Tech Lab released guidance on Wednesday with several proposals for how to implement Ads.txt within an app environment. Ads.txt is the Tech Lab’s initiative to reduce inventory spoofing and help advertisers distinguish legit supply sources from the […]

Publishers like to pretend that consumers can’t live without content – but if 95% of media brands disappeared tomorrow, no one would care, said Rafat Ali, CEO and founder of travel publisher Skift, at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit in New York City on Tuesday. Despite the value media people ascribe to the importance of what they […]

There was a time when the yogurt company Chobani had to track its digital marketing activity vendor by vendor. But last October, it put out an RFP to consolidate its activity with a marketing cloud. “One of the benefits with a marketing cloud is it gives us a holistic picture of all of our digital […]

Apple just made a move under the radar that could cause third-party attribution providers to become obsolete. In late March, Apple quietly released SKAdNetwork, an API for iOS 11.3 that allows ad networks or advertisers to directly attribute installs from the App Store without relying on an attribution vendor. Apple’s well-documented stance on consumer privacy […]

Google’s decision to stop providing DoubleClick (DCM) advertising IDs in its ad server log files beginning May 25 will throw a wrench into multitouch attribution, because it will block marketers’ ability to compare Google campaigns with other ad platforms. Whether this policy change is an existential threat to independent attribution or not, the loss of […]