Platforms

“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. Several political, business and tech leaders have called for the break up of Facebook, usually suggesting that Facebook split its core social networking app from […]

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week on AdExchanger Talks, Smaato CEO Arndt Groth discusses the changing rules of in-app advertising. The company – with offices in New York, Hamburg, Berlin, Singapore and Shanghai – has Chinese backers and a monetization deal with […]

Facebook’s controversy over its decision to allow politicians (but only politicians) to promote lies in ads has led to Twitter saying it would forbid political ads and Scott Galloway, a prescient tech industry analyst, predicting Facebook would ban political ads by Thanksgiving. Yet, if such a ban materialized, Democrats would feel the brunt of it. […]

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Distribution Dilemma AT&T is leaning into its 34 million HBO subscribers to drive sign-ups for its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. But it may face roadblocks in working with competitive cable providers on distribution, Digiday reports. AT&T has yet to sign on any distribution […]

Privacy regulations have the potential to consolidate market share among large technology platforms. Aka, when publishers reduce the number of ad tech, audience measurement and other web technology vendors they work with, Google and Facebook win, according to new academic research examining the unintended consequences of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The skittishness with […]

Facebook’s ongoing PR nightmare didn’t impact its quarterly earnings – yet again. On Wednesday, Facebook reported $17.7 billion in revenue for the third quarter, up 28.6% year over year, beating the consensus by a cool $300 million. The company’s stock rose nearly 5% in after-hours trading. Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the earnings call with a […]

Twitter will ban political advertising as of Nov. 22. CEO Jack Dorsey broke the news with a tweet storm on Wednesday, citing conflicts of interest that occur when politicians use targeted advertising to influence votes. Read it. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” he wrote. “A political message earns reach when […]

For Placed, life at Foursquare is a lot different than life was at Snap. Case in point: Foursquare and Placed completed the integration of their first-party audience data sets into a single attribution product within 90 days of the acquisition, which closed this summer. Snap sold Placed to Foursquare in May after acquiring the company […]

Alphabet continued its long run of revenue growth, earning $40.5 billion in Q3, up from $33.7 billion in the same period last year. But its profitability dropped by almost a quarter to $7.1 billion as the company’s expenses increased, according to its quarterly report. The biggest cost center is headcount growth. The company has added […]

This story previously said Spotify switched off of Google’s ad stack. A Spotify spokesperson said the company misspoke and that it has only switched off of Google’s order management system, Google Sales Manager. Friction from migrating off of Google Sales Manager in July caused Spotify to take a roughly $10 million revenue hit in Q3, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Picking Up The Tab Facebook has long demurred that it’s a technology platform and not a publisher. But Friday marked a milestone: Facebook is going to pay publishers for content and it’s hiring journalists to curate top stories for a dedicated news tab on […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Good Job LinkedIn is growing like gangbusters. The Microsoft-owned job platform saw “record levels of engagement” this quarter, CEO Satya Nadella told investors during the company’s earnings call this week. Read the transcript. Microsoft reported a 25% YoY revenue increase for LinkedIn, but didn’t […]

Twitter’s stock fell like a lead balloon Thursday morning – down as much as 20% in pre-market trading – after reporting an anemic third quarter. According to Twitter, revenue took a hit in Q3 thanks to a bit of seasonality in July and August and a few ad product-related “bugs” that it’s working to fix. […]

On the menu in Washington, DC, today: Mark Zuckerberg, served skewered and moderately grilled by House reps during a hearing on Facebook’s impact on the financial services and housing sectors. Most of the questions he faced were skeptical queries about the potential pitfalls of Facebook’s attempted foray into cryptocurrency with Libra, which Rep. Brad Sherman, […]

Snap outpaced estimates for its quarterly earnings released Tuesday, bringing in $446 million, a 50% jump compared to last year. But the company has a long way to go before it’s in the black. Snap’s net losses in Q3 were $227 million, though that’s a $98 million improvement from Q3 2018. Snapchat’s daily active users […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Power In Numbers Attorneys general from 31 additional states have joined New York AG Letitia James’s probe into Facebook, bringing the number of states involved to 46 (not including the territory of Guam, which is also hopping aboard). James first launched the probe, which […]

Facebook is shoring up its political advertising policies in advance of the 2020 US presidential election, which, god help us all, looms large on the horizon. In a press call on Monday, Mark Zuckerberg laid out the steps Facebook has taken and will take to try and make sure that 2020 isn’t 2016 all over […]

Rubicon Project acquired header bidding management and analytics platform RTK.io for $11 million in cash on Monday. The plan is to integrate RTK.io’s tech and analytics functionality into Rubicon Project’s Demand Manager product by the first half of next year. “This will accelerate our vision to be a leader in the Prebid managed service business,” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Race To 5G  Sprint and T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday. The vote came in 3-2 along party lines, with both Democratic commissioners opposing the deal. The companies still face a legal battle from state attorneys […]

Diageo has an internal mantra: “Responsible media performs.” “When was the last time irresponsibly sourced media was good for anybody?” said Joshua Nafman, head of global media buying and operations at Diageo, on stage at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York on Wednesday. Yet, ad buyers hunting for scale have spent years avoiding the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. CMO A Go-Go Dunkin’ CMO Tony Weisman will step down in December after a busy two years at the company. Weisman oversaw a major rebrand (from “Dunkin’ Donuts” to its more general coffee and food focus today), as well as the first overhaul of […]

This article is sponsored by Facebook. More than 2.7 billion people now use Facebook and its family of platforms – including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp – every month.[1] In this age of platform-based interactions, Facebook ad campaigns and customer service features are no longer a “nice-to-have,” they have become a necessary touchpoint to build customer […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Welcome To The Jungle Safari introduced a new private browsing mode that disables the now-common tactic among news companies of blocking incognito traffic, which they do because readers use private browsing to avoid paywalls. “This will lead to a hard paywall for all readers […]

Chipotle delivers. Getting customers to switch to online ordering has been a key part of Chipotle’s brand transformation. Digital sales soared 100% YoY for the first half of 2019. That metric, along with an increase in same-store sales, doubled its stock price. Chipotle’s app enables in-store pick-ups or, through a DoorDash partnership, delivery requests. And […]

Lying in digital advertisements has become a flashpoint in US politics this year. A running dispute between Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign and Facebook ratcheted up this weekend, after the Massachusetts senator posted an ad on the social platform featuring a lie that Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Donald Trump for reelection. “You’re probably […]

If TikTok is still proving its value as a marketing platform, despite skyrocketing popularity among Gen Z, it got a huge boost in October when the cosmetics company e.l.f. ran a sponsored hashtag challenge, #eyeslipsface, that amassed 1.6 billion views in just over a week. Two factors led to e.l.f’s success on TikTok: showing up […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Vote With Your Feet Mobile location data is gaining importance in US politics. Campaigns can now connect supporters at a rally or event to online audiences via mobile device IDs collected at the venue, a popular trick for campaigns with large rallies and social […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ad Booking Frenzy YouTube created an instant reserve program to allow political campaigns to lock up key slots through February 2020. Just like when your favorite band goes on sale at Ticketmaster, campaign employees stayed up until 3 am so they could book the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Twitter Oops Twitter used emails and phone numbers provided by users for two-factor authentication – when you provide a backup security contact to catch any improper account logins – for advertising purposes. Specifically, emails and phone numbers were used for Tailored Audiences campaigns, Twitter’s […]