Platforms

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Contextual Seed The contextual ad tech startup Seedtag raised $40 million, Business Insider reports. The Spanish company plans to add 30 employees and expand its US footprint. Before this round, Seedtag had raised $6 million to date. But contextual targeting is a buzzy category, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Podcast Talk Podcasting has heated up, with big M&A deals in recent years, including Amazon’s acquisition of Wondery for $300 million and Spotify’s $235 million deal for Megaphone. Podcast advertising is forecasted to exceed $2 billion by 2023, according to emarketer, which revised up […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sting Like A VAB Days after the Media Rating Council stripped Nielsen of its accreditation for National and Local TV Ratings, the Video Advertising Bureau is getting in another dig. The industry group kickstarted Nielsen’s MRC drama in July with a call to remove […]

New York-based startup Marpipe clinched $8 million in Series A funding with the backing of some big-name investors that it will use to fuel the growth of its creative testing platform as it looks to become an ad tech unicorn. The company, founded by 26-year-old CEO Dan Pantelo last year, uses automation to generate thousands […]

The Media Rating Council (MRC) may have stripped Nielsen of its National and Local TV accreditation last week, but it also made another significant announcement: It is now defining over-the-top as connected TV. The MRC issued final measurement guidelines on August 30 for CTV. The guidelines, first established with the IAB in 2018 in order […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Is The Cart Half Full Or Half Empty? Instacart’s grocery delivery business has slowed, or at best is showing zero sales growth from this time last year. That’s largely because quarantines forced people to order online, and many have returned to in-store shopping. Frankly, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The TV Prize Amazon plans to introduce its own line of smart TVs in the United States, perhaps as early as October, Business Insider reports. On the one hand, it’s surprising Amazon hasn’t released its own television, since it would be a natural extension […]

Facebook’s org chart is changing. Several of its most longstanding and recognizable advertising and media executives left big blue for greener (or at least other) pastures this summer. Just this week, Mark D’Arcy, Facebook’s chief creative officer and VP of global business marketing, said he’ll be stepping down after more than a decade with the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. They See Me Rollin’ Uber tapped former Sizmek CEO and Amazon ad exec Mark Grether to lead its advertising business, Business Insider reports. Poaching Grether is a big deal for Uber as it stands up a global advertising strategy. Though Uber’s ad revenue isn’t […]

Reddit launched a new native ad unit Thursday, four months after discontinuing all programmatic advertising on its site on April 30. The offering, called Conversation Placement, appears in comment threads on Reddit sandwiched between the original post above and the first comment in the thread below. The ads are available through Reddit’s direct sales channels […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. FTC You Next Time The FTC had its Facebook antitrust case dismissed, and recently refiled a new suit. The issue is if Facebook’s competition includes YouTube, Snap, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Spotify, Hulu and Netflix, then it’s hardly a monopolized market. The FTC’s […]

Facebook has been selling itself short. A bug in Facebook’s measurement system caused Facebook to undercount app install campaigns on iOS 14 via SKAdNetwork (SKAN) for nearly seven months. The bug, which Facebook identified on August 20, only impacted iPhone 12 users that were using the Facebook app. Instagram users and Audience Network partner apps […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The SPAC Attack Online publishers are popular takeover targets for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which promise a route to IPO without the typical pre-IPO roadshow – the well-known brand merges with an already-public shell company. First-party data and ad tech companies have boomed […]

Ad verification and measurement provider DoubleVerify is set to acquire Berlin-based ad tech company Meetrics, a deal that will help fuel the newly minted public company’s global expansion. The all-cash purchase is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021. DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski declined to disclose the sale price. Meetrics was founded in […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Settling For Nothing Apple agreed to a number of App Store updates to resolve a US class-action lawsuit by developers. It’s a measly commitment by Apple, which promises to extend its 15% commission for apps that make less than $1 million for at least […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Publisher Action  Forbes is jumping on the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) bandwagon as a route to go public, CNBC reports. The business publisher announced plans to IPO at a $630 million value. The cash infusion will help Forbes’s “digital transformation,” and CEO Mike […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Vizionary Vizio Ads made big gains during the recent upfronts negotiations, where Roku has been the CTV champion in recent years. Vizio announced in a press release that it locked in more than $100 million for 2022, quadrupling its total from last year (which […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Under Pressure NBCUniversal is turning the screws on Nielsen as the MRC considers stripping its National TV rating. Nielsen has long dominated TV ratings but is under fire for underreporting viewers and missing visibility into streaming, mobile and desktop. The Olympics on NBC underwhelmed […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Second Verse, Same As The First? The Federal Trade Commission is trying again to present a convincing antitrust case vs. Facebook after a federal court dismissed its initial lawsuit for failing to prove the social giant runs a monopoly. The FTC on Thursday filed […]

Erik Huberman, CEO and founder of marketing consultancy Hawke Media, has some pretty strong – if not outright harsh – words for most media agencies out there: “They’re full of [expletive].” Before founding the Los Angeles-based company in 2014, Huberman launched and sold two commerce companies – Swag of the Month and Ellie – and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Everything Store Adds More Audio Amazon is new to podcasting but it’s moving fast, borrowing from Spotify’s playbook. After scooping up podcast publisher Wondery eight months ago, it’s now signing exclusive distribution and ad deals with buzzy podcasts like SmartLess (hosted by Jason Bateman, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Booming Biz The DSP Viant reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 66% to $50.4 million. Viant IPOed in February, part of a recent boom in programmatic companies on the public market. As with most of those companies, Viant is going big on CTV, which […]

Ad verification and measurement provider Integral Ad Science held its first earnings call after going public just over a month ago. Revenue increased 55% to $75.1 million year-over-year. That growth was largely fueled by programmatic revenue, which jumped 94% to $31.8 million compared to the same period last year. Programmatic accounts for 42% of total Q2 revenue, as […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Reddit, Set, Go That plucky startup Reddit picked up $410 million in new venture funding from Fidelity, and may raise as much as $700 million in a new round valuing the company at $10 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company raised about […]

TV measurement company VideoAmp is bringing on Tony Fagan, a former Google VP of ads data science and engineering, as its first chief technology officer. Fagan joins a number of other C-level hires over the past year, as VideoAmp plots an expansion after a $75 million funding round in May. Since 2020, former Comscore COO […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pour One Out For The Insta-Brands Facebook surprised most analysts with a powerhouse Q2, despite the rollout of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework and new IDFA rules. But Facebook’s diminished targeting and attribution capabilities are having concrete effects on advertisers. A few years ago, many […]

Can YouTube Make Shorts Happen? YouTube launched one of its biggest brand campaigns ever this week to promote Shorts, The Drum reports. YouTube Shorts, the aptly named short-form video format (i.e., a TikTok clone), have taken over consumption on the platform. Though that’s largely because YouTube is pulling all the levers it can to make […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Agency Revival “Broad-based recovery” is the term of the week, repeated in quarterly earnings calls by ad giants like Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook, as well as the publicly traded agency holding companies, which capped off unexpectedly strong years with additional growth in Q2 […]

Roku saw viewership decline in Q2 as pandemic restrictions eased. Streaming hours dropped a billion hours from Q1 to 17.4 billion hours in Q2, and the company’s stock was down 9% on Thursday. While Roku’s streaming hours declined sequentially, they still increased 19% from the previous year, during the early days of lockdown. It added […]

The travel industry came to a screeching halt last year as consumers stayed indoors during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel, however, is bouncing back, and while the delta variant could potentially derail that recovery, it hasn’t stopped airlines from encouraging folks to fly. “We definitely saw through COVID that younger audiences were traveling […]