Platforms

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No Compromise For Google Google’s reported offer to US regulators as a bid to avoid an antitrust suit was to spin off part of its ad business. But that news apparently landed with a thud.  The Department of Justice is poised to move […]

Unity will merge with ironSource in an all stock transaction that values the latter at $4.4 billion. The companies expect the merger to help deliver a $1 billion run rate by the end of 2024 and $300 million in annual EBITDA synergies the year after that.

Meta lost in court against French ad-tech champion Criteo, and it will now have to grant better access to its inventory. Meanwhile, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, just deemed Google Analytics illegal – a move that the Italian data privacy authority has just followed as well. What happens now? It turns out there may be a server-side solution, writes Hugo Loriot, partner at fifty-five.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get The Net Netflix isn’t just vetting third-party vendors for its pre-launch ad business (though it is vetting vendors, to be clear).  The streaming leader is on the hunt for an executive to lead its incubating advertising business, The Wall Street Journal reports.  […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Positive Influence Recession-wary brands are redirecting ad spend away from Google Search and Facebook and toward influencer marketing, Marketing Brew reports. Influencer marketing is more effective than other media channels right now, according to Junior Pence, CMO of Peace Out, a skincare brand […]

Commerce and creator monetization are Pinterest’s two main priorities right now, said Jeremy King, the company’s SVP and head of engineering. King, who is also the former CTO of Walmart’s ecommerce business – he joined Pinterest in 2019 – said that the convergence of creator revenue potential with social media-based shopping and product discovery by consumers “will make Pinterest functional, versus purely inspirational.”

When customer experience software company Sprinklr went public in June of last year, it joined a veritable stampede of ad tech companies that hit the public market in 2021. And then … 2022 happened. The market might be tough right now, but Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr’s CEO, isn’t letting it shake him.

Video games can support intrinsic or native in-game ads, as well as ads that are delivered alongside gameplay but exist outside the game itself, like pause-menu display ads and rewarded video. Marketers can also sponsor and advertise on channels related to gaming, such as at esports events and across online streaming platforms, particularly Twitch and YouTube. And we can’t forget about the metaverse.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…   Happy July 4! This classic AdExchanger comic was originally published on June 22, 2018.

Working closely with creators and influencers – can be less expensive than traditional media and can afford agencies and brands a much more targeted avenue for building trust and loyalty. How can brands get it right? Jason Chitwood, general manager of MarketerHire for Agencies, offers three recommendations to keep in mind.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Paid Upfront NBCUniversal says this year’s upfronts was its highest-grossing since Comcast acquired the programmer in 2013.  Unsurprisingly, streaming media helped break the record. Of NBCU’s $7 billion in ad commitments, per a release, $1 billion is earmarked for its AVOD service Peacock […]

Steve Webb, the former global head of Facebook’s Audience Network, has joined Unity Technologies as VP of revenue for ads under its Operate division. Webb’s first day was June 13 and he replaces Julie Shumaker, who was elevated to SVP of revenue for Unity’s Create division in October. (Unity, which went public in September 2020, […]

Google’s decision to delay third-party cookie deprecation until 2023 came the day before Salon CRO Justin Wohl’s wedding. Salon had converted its ad business to an open-web programmatic model a few years earlier, so the brief reprieve from signal loss came as a huge relief and another reason to pop some champagne. Since then, Wohl has been laying the groundwork for effective post-cookie monetization on the open web.

How should brands think about advertising in the metaverse? The question is a little hard to answer when there’s no consensus about what exactly the metaverse is or what it might become

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Shopify Is ‘Just Browsing’ Ads Shopify held its twice-annual road map update event this week. Shopify Editions, as the get-together is called, offered up a handful of tantalizing tidbits for industry observers awaiting news of a consolidated Shopify ad platform.  In May, there […]

Aflac launched its first-ever campaign on TikTok, dubbed #DuckVibes, to engage younger consumers with what it considers a mid-funnel-focused strategy. The new campaign, which will run throughout the summer, uses catchy music, lyrics and visuals involving the eponymous Aflac duck to encourage “duets,” a split-screen feature TikTokers use to retroactively “respond to” other creators’ videos.

Foundry, formerly known as IDG Communications, wants to shed its old identity and build a new reputation not as a digital publisher but as a provider of data and marketing tech, according to Foundry President Kumaran Ramanathan. Ramanathan spoke to AdExchanger about why Foundry walked away from open-web programmatic, how it’s fusing its first-party data with a marketing and data tech stack and its M&A ambitions.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get Connected The coveted prizes in programmatic right now are exclusive CTV contracts.  In Cannes, the crème de la crème for handshakers and lunch-takers is Netflix. Google is meeting with Netflix there, Ad Age reports, and is an obvious choice as Netflix purportedly […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. One Plus One Plus One Plus One Plus …  Snapchat is testing a paid subscription service called … wait for it … Snapchat+. It would cost about $5 per month or $50 per year. Details were first posted to Twitter by mobile researcher Alessandro […]

The platforms taketh away – but sometimes regulators can giveth back. Google is seriously flirting with the idea of reopening YouTube inventory to appease European regulators and Criteo just won its 2019 case against Meta over being booted from the Facebook Marketing Partner program.

Google may open up YouTube to outside programmatic demand as a bargaining chip to EU regulators. And a looming recession won’t deflate digital advertising – although don’t expect pandemic-level growth.

Back in 1997, when the oldest Gen Zers were born, Liz Smith joined a Silicon Valley startup called Yahoo! What started off as a group of misfits on the internet turned into a “Frankenstein’s monster” of sorts, said Smith, who left Yahoo! for film school and captures the effects of technological submersion on the next generation in her latest movie, I Am Gen Z.

The IAB, in collaboration with the IAB Tech Lab and the Media Rating Council (MRC), released its first update to in-game ad measurement standards since 2009. The new standards reexamine the metrics for counting a valid in-game ad impression and add criteria for measuring ad placements in 3D and virtual environments. They also define in-game measurement terms in alignment with cross-channel measurement efforts.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google’s $18 Billion Offer Almost exactly one year ago, the EU began an antitrust inquiry into whether Google restricts access to the cross-site web and app data it uses to benefit its own products. Specifically, the European Commission examined how Google forces advertisers […]

As clients look for alternatives to third-party cookies, ad agency Dentsu can steer them to its in-house Contextual Intelligence tool, which launched today. Although contextual targeting is often considered inferior to demographic or behavioral targeting, it can drive performance. Jewelry retailer Pandora piloted the tool during the 2022 Valentine’s Day season. Ads placed using the solution represented 2% of campaign spend, but drove 36% of revenue, a 24x return on investment.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brick By Brick-And-Mortar The march of the retail media networks cannot be stopped.  Dollar General on Tuesday announced a rebrand of its advertising business, now DGMN (for Dollar General Media Network), to extend its data to ad-buying across the web. According to the […]

CreativeX will use the funds to broaden its offering beyond its current focus on providing feedback on social media creatives. The company will also launch new measurement capabilities, including solutions for rating a campaign’s accessibility and sustainability. And by upgrading its API, marketers can integrate creative data into their existing data lakes more easily.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. So Sue Me One of the myriad sticking points standing in the way of a US federal privacy law is the question of whether people will be able to sue tech companies in open court. Terms of service often stipulate that signatories give […]

Whenever there’s a sociopolitical or economic crisis, the lowest rung of online marketers finds a way to prey on the vulnerable and disenfranchised. The pending overturn of Roe v. Wade is no different – it’s creating a new class of online audiences that are potential prey, and publishers can stand to take more steps to filter out misleading ads (like donation scams and brand infringement) that harvest and sell users’ personal information.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. WWD-See It To Believe It Ad tech is on tenterhooks waiting for privacy-related news from Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference next week. Sandwiched between glitzy announcements about shiny new products and hardware, many expect a momentous mention as to whether Apple will start […]