Platforms

Data privacy. Clean rooms. Measurement. Gaming. M&A. Which trends deserved the hype – and which ones didn’t – in 2022? We dig into some of the biggest topics of the year

Podcaster adoption of dynamic ad insertion (DAI) increased from less than 50% in 2019 to a whopping 84% in 2021. But for podcasters to get the most value out of DAI, they need an open environment. Using DAI within a walled garden makes it harder to get the full benefit of great innovation, writes Jon Stephenson, Founder and CEO of SoundStack.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Shake-Up At Nielsen Nielsen just can’t catch a break. First, Nielsen lost its MRC accreditation. Now the company is undergoing a massive reorg – and some industry folks are worried Nielsen might miss a very important deadline. Nielsen’s revamped measurement platform, Nielsen ONE, […]

The European Commission just left Meta a lump of coal in its stocking. On Monday, European regulators charged Meta with antitrust violations for “distorting competition in the markets for online classified ads,” including through unfair access to advertising data pulled from its competitors. Specifically, the commission issued what’s known as a “statement of objections,” which […]

In a recent terrorism advisory bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security increased levels of concern for potential violence against LGBTQ, Jewish and migrant communities. It’s now more important than ever for brands to have strong ethics and flex their ad dollar muscles. They must demand that social media platforms do all they can to rein in hate speech and insinuations of violence on their platforms, writes Michael Benedek, CEO of Datonics.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Untangling Web2 From Web3 Which Web2 social platforms are driving Web3 growth?  It turns out there’s “an interesting inversion” happening, according to a blog by Antonio García Martinez, co-founder of Web3 attribution company Spindl. Web3 companies get huge value from Twitter, whereas Google […]

UK-based publisher LADbible Group is testing post-cookie alternatives and building its contextual targeting capabilities. But the social-first publisher has yet to be convinced that any of these alternatives will be a truly viable replacement for the much-maligned – and yet still widely used – third-party cookie.

The most commonly cited rationale for publisher staffing cuts has been marketers’ hesitance to spend on advertising amid persistent economic uncertainty. But publishers’ latest pivot to video and increased competition among digital channels is also likely to blame.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Can You Talk The Tok? With TikTok, it’s like the clone wars. (We’re looking at you, Reels and Shorts.) But TikTok has a special power, which is its seemingly limitless feed of quick, infinitely swipeable, likable, shareable videos. Reproducing TikTok’s success is no […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. BuzzCuts BuzzFeed is laying off 12% of its workforce, Variety reports, based on an SEC filing. The reduction will apparently help BuzzFeed “weather an economic downturn that I believe will extend well into 2023,” writes CEO Jonah Peretti in a memo.  BuzzFeed’s revenue […]

Back in 2018, Tim Cook said, “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer—if our customer was our product.” Fast-forward to 2022, and, to deliver the most relevant Apple Search Ads, the company uses “information a customer includes in their Apple ID account” for ad targeting purposes. If that isn’t monetizing your customers, what is, writes Uriah Av-Ron, partner and founder at Oasis Public Relations.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. That’s A Wrapped This week once again saw social timelines taken over by Spotify Wrapped, the audio service’s year-end user roundup of the most-played music and podcasts. In addition to highlighting Spotify’s first-party data, Wrapped has become the company’s most effective marketing tool, […]

Thanks to signal loss, recession fears and the “ad tech tax,” publishers of all sizes are seeing their ad revenue suffer. But the problem is more pronounced among local news publishers, many of which were barely getting by before platform privacy changes roiled the digital advertising industry. The Local Media Consortium (LMC) shares how it’s helping its members mitigate these headwinds.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Yahoo? Yahoo has taken a 25% stake in Taboola as part of a 30-year exclusive ad deal (uhh … pardon?) that makes Taboola the primary native inventory seller for Yahoo’s media properties, The New York Times reports. The announcement leaves questions hanging. A […]

Brands are starting to look at video games as an inventory source, but there’s no scaled programmatic infrastructure to help aggregate supply in video games. And so that’s where in-game ad platform Bidstack is focusing its road map.  “We’re moving toward being a gaming SSP, a pure tech play,” Bidstack Founder and CEO James Draper told AdExchanger.

Every major social network is trying to make livestream video shopping happen. And don’t count out the Amazon-owned game-streaming platform Twitch, which hosted its third “Pog Picks” live shopping event the days before Thanksgiving.

Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the heads of privacy, security and compliance all abruptly left the company. The legal department is scrambling to pick up the pieces, asking engineers to “self-certify compliance.” The door is open for massive privacy breaches, writes Vuk Janosevic, co-founder and CEO of Blindnet.

How should advertisers approach a wild-child platform like Twitter? David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau – who recently spoke with Elon Musk himself on that very topic – weighs in. Also in this episode: grappling with the term “commercial surveillance,” retail media real talk and marketing in the metaverse.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AdExchanger’s daily news round-up will return on Monday. Enjoy your holiday, and may all your online orders arrive on time. A Little Bit Lauder Now Estée Lauder wasn’t a first mover on TikTok – but it was a very fast follower.  The Estée Lauder […]

Meta had a rocky third quarter and the market reacted accordingly. Its metaverse division, Reality Labs, lost nearly $3.7 billion. But the metaverse (whatever that ends up meaning) is still five to 10 years out, and Nicola Mendelsohn, VP of Meta’s global business group, told AdExchanger that Meta is still investing heavily in its core, including ad performance.

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Hasbros And The Have-Nots Companies like Netflix, Roku, Apple, Amazon and Paramount are thirsting for recognizable brands they can build a content universe around.  Media franchises provide a solution. Because, apparently, people will settle for only franchises and nothing new, ever again.  […]

Between Amazon blocking beer ads during NFL Thursday Night Football and Meta’s newly introduced restrictions on pharmaceutical advertising, marketers are running into all sorts of unexpected (and perhaps anti-competitive) obstacles. Dan Meehan, Founder and CEO at PadSquad, offers suggestions for marketing around these restrictions.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Gaming The System Apple’s ATT has far-reaching ramifications not just for mobile game monetization but for how studios conceive and build games. Google and Facebook were so adept at funneling players to game developers because they matched people precisely based on gaming history. […]

As BuzzFeed struggles with advertiser uncertainty and a drop in user engagement, it reported flat Q3 ad revenue. Advertising revenue was $50 million, matching last year’s Q3. Ad revenue growth decelerated compared to Q2, “driven by ongoing price compression and uncertainty around consumer demand,” said BuzzFeed CFO Felicia DellaFortuna.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. What’s For Sale? Amazon has started down the path of “Googlification.” Which is to say, its search engine has flipped from primarily serving up the best organic options to servicing advertisers with the best prospecting and conquesting opportunities.  There were turf wars in […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Retail Wags The Dog CTV is a shiny object, but retail media is even shinier. Unlike CTV, which is a maturing channel, retail media is still floating down a river of optimism and the hype is swirling. Retail media prices, for example, are […]

The Facebook advertising platform has been beset by glitches and miscues all year. But advertisers who hoped that the bugginess would sort itself out by the holiday season are only discovering coal in their stockings.

Following a dramatic courtship between Unity and ironSource, Unity put a ring on it. The merger closed on Monday. The purpose of the deal is to bring all of the tools developers need to create, test, launch, grow and monetize their games together under one roof.

Musk’s promises to overhaul Twitter’s content moderation and user verification policies have caused brands and agencies to rethink their budgetary commitments to the platform. Plus, Musk’s seemingly disingenuous tone shift on advertising and his tweeting of fake news may make brands more inclined to pull budgets from a platform that was never seen as a must-buy anyway.