Platforms

AppLovin may be facing heat over its data privacy practices, but soaring profits and big AI ad bets have investors cheering anyway.

Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.

LiveRamp’s gift could make IAB Tech Lab’s AI consent model workable; Spotify hypes video podcast growth and nabs a bigger ad margin; and Coke launches another AI holiday ad campaign.

The Trade Desk is going after Amazon; Facebook creators are going after Meta; and everybody’s going after Warner Bros. Discovery.

Uber Advertising, in partnership with Adelaide and Kantar, launched a first-of-its-type custom attention metric score for its platform advertisers.

While Reddit had plenty to crow about on the advertising front, it was less sanguine about the rise of generative AI search, which CEO Steve Huffman said is “not a traffic driver today.”

Alphabet reported on Wednesday that its total Q3 revenue was $102.3 billion, up 16% year over year, while net profit increased by a third to $35 billion.

Meta’s Q3 earnings saw increased growth in its ad business and continued the conversation on superintelligence.

Prebid changes its mind on universal TIDs; streaming media takes advantage of live events; and short-form video clips are (still) all the rage.

Greg Glenday weighs in on why Acast is resisting the allure of video, the trade-offs of accepting political ad bucks and positioning influencer marketing as audio’s entry point into the omnichannel mix.

My Marketing Pro has set out to automate the entire marketing process, from brainstorm to launch, via conversations with an agent.

Procter & Gamble is spending less on ads; OpenAI is spending more on ads; and guess which side of the scale Mondelez is falling on?

WPP puts AI tools in the hands of brands; YouTube’s dynamic sponsored segments could redefine creator monetization; and Hollywood is getting into “microdramas.”

Hightouch’s new ID Express solution aims to simplify the process of converting email addresses and phone numbers into UID2s.

AWS RTB Fabric offers ad tech platforms more streamlined integrations with ecosystem and infrastructure partners, allegedly lower latency compared to the public internet and discounts on data transfers.

Reddit sues four companies for scraping and selling (and buying) its data; Unity Software’s new zero-fee product is good news for mobile developers; and brands aren’t thrilled by TikTok shop’s latest updates.

Apparently, we’re in for a hardware revolution; advertisers don’t know what to expect from the US’s new version of TikTok; and live sports should take better advantage of ad opportunities.

Walmart’s AI shopping deal with ChatGPT might ding its retail media biz; the MRC shares updates on which platforms won and lost accreditation; and kids’ sports streaming is becoming a real media channel.

TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

Publicis celebrates as its growth aligns with the IAB’s downgraded ad spend projection; Spotify and Netflix partner to chase YouTube’s video podcast biz; and how investor cash keeps health data safe from advertisers.

The fate of the open web will be decided on who controls the data that drives monetization and the AI that determines distribution. Google controls both, and proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly do not address this imbalance.

The layoffs reflect a strategic decision on People Inc.’s part to free up money to invest in growth areas, according to CEO Neil Vogel’s memo to employees.

Ask advertisers, not Meta, how best to use Meta’s ad platform; holdcos and big brands are pressuring Big Tech to self-regulate; and how data-driven animal husbandry is impacting marketing.

Publishers must coalesce to gain a credible bargaining position and stop the bleeding caused by AI search. From there, we must put the processes in place to actually operate a licensing mechanism.

ChatGPT and others continued the fragmentation of the search journey, which today hops between platforms and intents. The funnel no longer exists. Here’s how to pivot your brand’s SEO/GEO strategy.

HUMAN has recently started complementing its bid request analysis by analyzing the time between when a bot clicks an ad and when the landing page loads. Now it’s offering the solution to individual advertisers.

TTD says OpenAds is not just a reaction to Prebid’s TID change, but a new model for fairer, more transparent ad auctions. So what does the DSP need to do to get publishers to adopt its new auction wrapper?

The Trade Desk insists its OS is still coming; TikTok Shop is becoming a grocery store; and for AI studios, bad press is still press.

The number and scope of U.S. laws that require advertisers to disclose the use of AI are limited. But there are some restrictions and guidelines that advertisers must follow to ensure their compliance.

Mastercard launched an ad network; Meta plans to sell targeted ads based on engagement with its AI products; and the Washington Post is in trouble if Ad Chief Johanna Mayer-Jones departs.