Platforms

The coronavirus pandemic slashed Alphabet’s growth rate from 22% last year down to zero in Q2 2020. Revenues totaled $38.3 billion vs. $38.9 billion the year prior – a 2% year-over-year decline, or 0% once constant currency is taken into account. Like many of its advertising revenue-dependent peers, Google reported steady improvement throughout the quarter. […]

Big tech CEOs – collect ’em all. Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos (making his first appearance before Congress) convened virtually on Wednesday for a historic hearing hosted by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust delving into the market power of online platforms. The hearing (which was ironically livestreamed on Google-owned YouTube) is […]

After experiencing a slowdown in Q1, ad spend began to rebound at Spotify in June as some markets exited pandemic lockdowns, the company said Wednesday on its Q2 earnings call. Ad spend in April and May were down 25% before inching up to a 10% decline in June. For the quarter, ad-supported revenue increased 11% […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Re-Unified The Trade Desk is updating its Unified ID solution, a shared third-party cookie pool for advertisers and ad tech companies, to function in post-cookie advertising, Adweek reports. The project will be open source, so anyone can use the currency, though The Trade Desk’s […]

Ad management firm Freestar said Tuesday it has acquired Chocolate’s app mediation platform so it can serve more mobile app publishers. Terms were not disclosed. Freestar is largely a services company that performs tasks such as setting up header bidding and optimizing yield for about 400 desktop and mobile web publishers. But the fast-growing company […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Bot-And-Mouse Game The low-hanging fruit of ad fraud is mostly gone. But more sophisticated bad actors are still active. Protected Media identified an in-app bot fraud network, dubbed “Hydra,” that siphoned off an estimated $100 million, Business Insider reports. “It’s the most disciplined operation […]

Once Apple’s IDFA becomes opt-in for consumers, its utility to advertisers will be greatly limited. But what does this new policy mean for Facebook and its powerful, lucrative Audience Network? As one source told senior editor Allison Schiff, targeting on Audience Network is all but dead. But does that mean it’s the end? In this […]

The direct response advertising that’s proven itself to be a resilient mainstay for other platforms during COVID-19 remains elusive for Twitter. But that’s not for a lack of trying. Twitter completed the long-promised rebuild of its ad server in the second quarter and is making progress on accelerating its performance ads road map, CEO Jack […]

OpenX has turned the growing number of log-level data requests from buyers into a product that simplifies the process, called Bidding Intelligence Data Set (BIDS). “Our intent was to make what used to be a wonky and difficult process into as streamlined, productized and standardized a process as possible, to make our customers’ lives easier,” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Viva La Pérsonalization The French government will loosen archaic laws this month that have undercut French broadcasters for years. The biggest change will be to repeal a 1993 law that says all French households must receive the same broadcast stream. So French TV stations […]

Snap had an all right Q2 but warned that the ongoing pandemic could impact Q3 ad demand. Similar to last quarter, Snap did not provide guidance for Q3, although it did give investors some comfort by sharing its year-over-year revenue growth of 32% through July 19. Snap is “cautiously optimistic” that the trend could sustain […]

The formal Facebook advertising boycott didn’t kick off until the beginning of July – but advertisers in the United States were already starting to pull back in June. Ad spend decreased by 31.6% across North America during the last two weeks of June, according to data released Tuesday by social media metrics company Socialbakers. That means […]

Nielsen plans to overhaul its digital measurement methodology to prepare for a future without cookies or mobile ad IDs. The first phase of the overhaul will happen in early 2021, with more stages to follow. Because its product is used as currency in some global markets, the measurement company is giving its customers a heads […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Chris Peterson, managing partner at Rain the Growth Agency. Pausing advertising on Facebook can look risky. Facebook has become the marketing lifeblood of a long tail of small businesses while serving […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Anti-Antitrust What happens when companies being investigated by the FTC or the DOJ poach staffers for their own defense? Unfortunately, it’s not a hypothetical, writes antitrust economist Hal Singer at The American Prospect. Amazon and Facebook both recently hired staffers from the Senate Judiciary […]

As COVID-19 cases spike across America, the joyous reopening is on pause. (Unless you’re Disney World, because apparently the virus has no effect on the land of enchantment and childhood dreams.) But having gone through the initial shutdown in March, brands are more prepared this time around. They’re pulling back on some of the more […]

During times of crisis, advertisers want to connect with people reading local journalism. Michigan-based healthcare company McLaren Greater Lansing used Gannett’s sponsored content offering to share critical messages during the pandemic with a more nuanced, responsive approach than it could achieve with just banner ads. For example, the health care company noticed many patients were […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Called To Account Snapchat users may finally start to see brands posting organic content. There are 30 brands testing account pages, including Ben & Jerry’s, Target, Tim Hortons and Gucci. The new brand landing pages feature videos, custom AR lenses and a native storefront […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, president and partner at Goodway Group. As an industry, we’ve spent the last several years talking about the duopoly, specifically how Google and Facebook receive and control around 60% of […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Cloud Bundle Google is forging major cloud infrastructure deals. In some cases, it’s attracting new business using classic tactics, like rolling out new features for Google Cloud Platform, The Wall Street Journal reports. But one interesting fact about the GCP toolkit: “Pricing varies […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Kunal Gupta, CEO at Polar. I believe Facebook’s course ahead will have to start with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg showing some humility and accepting that they were wrong in […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Philip Inghelbrecht, co-founder and CEO at Tatari. Facebook has largely weathered most of its criticism unscathed. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Facebook’s user base has ballooned to 2.6 billion monthly actives and the stock price is […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Politics Facebook is considering nixing political advertising this year in the leadup to the 2020 US presidential election, Bloomberg reports. That decision would mark a major change for Facebook, since CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists on the importance of enabling political discourse and outreach […]

Add Bayer to the list of brands pausing paid media on Facebook for the month of July. The consumer health and pharma giant confirmed the pause with AdExchanger, but declined to share details on whether the move is directly connected to the broader Facebook boycott spearheaded by civil rights groups such as Color of Change, […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an audience and data strategy consultant. Remember all the times that media owners complained about how the majority of advertisers’ budgets end up in the pockets of Google and Facebook? Today […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Fighting Up Streams NBCUniversal will likely launch the streaming subscription service Peacock next week without Roku or Amazon Fire TV distribution deals, CNBC reports. That’s a tough pill to swallow, considering the two platforms own about 70% of the connected TV market. NBCU’s disputes […]

While Facebook, Google and Amazon have all been adamant that they don’t sell people’s data, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into force on July 1, has a very broad definition of what’s considered a data sale. In short, a sale under CCPA is about more than just the transfer of a California […]

Media buying has gone far beyond age and gender – with agencies betting on their first-party data platforms as the new secret sauce to guide planning and activation. But the tools to plan campaigns using advanced segments across mediums like TV, digital and radio often involve slow, manual matching and lots of grunt work. To […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Clock’s Ticking TikTok is beefing up its army of lobbyists after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to ban the app along with other Chinese social media platforms on Monday. TikTok, which is growing like gangbusters in the United States, is bringing on five […]

Consolidation has opened up better measurement solutions in podcasting – and big brands are jumping in. On Wednesday, Omnicom said it will invest $20 million upfront into podcasts on Spotify in the second half of 2020, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The deal also gives Omnicom access to exclusive and original content globally and […]