Platforms

Supply-path optimization (SPO) lets buyers find the best way to access the inventory they want. But the next stage of SPO is emerging, where buyers will negotiate with exchanges to create their own low-fee paths to supply. In that spirit, the agency Goodway Group and the exchange PubMatic inked a deal Wednesday where PubMatic will […]

Spotify said Wednesday in a blog post it would acquire podcast production network Gimlet Media and podcast creation, distribution and sponsorship platform Anchor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources pegged the price at roughly $230 million. If that estimate is correct, it’s the most high-value acquisition of a podcast network or platform […]

While Facebook’s earnings last Tuesday prove that marketers still spend, some wonder if consumer backlash against the platform could one day damage brands advertising on it. “The slow stream of press has caused more angst and questions,” said James Douglas, executive director and head of media at performance agency Reprise. “Every day it seems like […]

Snap is no longer losing users. For the third consecutive quarter, Snap managed to stave user decline. Its Q4 daily active users clocked in at 186 million, which was flat sequentially but a slight year-over-year dip from 187 million. And advertisers are still spending on the platform. Q4 revenue grew 36% to $390 million, while […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Commerce + Ads Wayfair is expanding its paid media business, also known as “Wayfair Media Solutions,” Digiday reports. Like Amazon, Wayfair reports its sponsored products revenue under an “other” revenue category, which was a relatively tiny $13 million in Q3 2018 (Amazon’s “other” business […]

For many app publishers, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was an opportunity to examine each of their many SDK integrations and ask, “Does it spark joy?” The answer, in many cases, was no: It sparks the potential for data leakage and compliance headaches. In 2018, the number of unused SDKs – those that a publisher […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The New News News industry downsizing continued last week with layoffs at Vice and buyouts at McClatchy, close on the heels of similar painful cuts at BuzzFeed, Verizon Media and Gannett. “We are changing the size of the workforce to align with the revenue,” […]

Facebook is getting beaten up by a punishing news cycle – but, for its part, it’s beating the street. The stock surged more than 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Revenue for the fourth quarter clocked in at $16.91 billion, a 30.4% year-over-year (YoY) increase. Nearly all of that – $16.64 billion – was thanks […]

Reddit is getting into the performance marketing game. On Wednesday, the self-described front page of the internet launched the ability for direct response advertisers to buy any of its inventory across desktop, mobile web and app on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. Until now, advertisers could purchase ads on a CPM model – or cost per […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Down, But Still Substantial Verizon’s media biz dropped 5.8% YoY in Q4 2018 – bringing it to “only” $2.1 billion in the quarter. Verizon Media (née Oath) has disappointed this year. “Certainly, when you see -6.9% revenue growth in 3Q and -5.8% in 4Q, […]

Apple actually mentioned the word “advertising” on its earnings call. Although hardware isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s services business, which includes search ads in the App Store, is becoming increasingly meaningful to the company’s bottom line. “Services are scaling quickly,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri told investors on Tuesday. Although iPhone sales were weak during the holiday […]

Facebook’s plan to integrate the backend infrastructure of its messaging platforms isn’t sitting well with privacy advocates, security experts, European regulators or US lawmakers. Alarm bells are ringing all over the place. The Irish Data Protection Authority says it’s going to be “very closely scrutinizing” the situation, particularly where it might involve the sharing and […]

Adobe Marketing Cloud’s top executive, Brad Rencher, is leaving the company after nearly a decade. Rencher, who as EVP and GM Digital Experience set the vision and strategy for the software giant’s digital marketing platform initiatives, first joined Adobe in 2009 through the acquisition of Omniture, which later became Adobe Analytics, a key component of […]

OpenX signed a five-year deal with Google Cloud Platform worth more than $110 million that will move its infrastructure completely to the cloud. OpenX is transitioning to the cloud within six months, and it expects the transition to be completed by Q2 of 2019. Once complete, OpenX expects its publishers and buyers will see several […]

After more than a year in beta, Facebook is letting advertisers use third-party vendors to manage brand safety on its platform. Facebook is putting a ring on its commitment to brand safety by adding a new badge for brand safety protection companies under its marketing partner program. DoubleVerify and OpenSlate are the first two verification […]

LinkedIn launched interest-based targeting through its self-serve ad platform on Wednesday after more than three months in beta. B2C marketers are accustomed to targeting prospects based on their interests – “fast food lovers,” “coffee drinkers,” “gym goers” – but there is less interest data available for B2B marketers, said Abhishek Shrivastava, LinkedIn’s director of product. “A […]

Beeswax raised $15 million in Series B funding which it will use to support connected TV and win marketer clients. As it expands to achieve these initiatives, Beeswax will  double its current headcount of 65 by the end of this year. The software-as-a-service DSP last raised funds in 2016. The new round brings total funding […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brand Safe Enough AT&T is advertising on YouTube again after a two-year hiatus. The telco, one of the world’s largest advertisers, pulled spend from the video platform at the height of its 2017 brand safety scandal with a promise not to return until major […]

After 14 years at Google and DoubleClick, ads vet Jonathan Bellack has joined Alphabet-owned Jigsaw as its first-ever director of product. Google created Jigsaw as a technology incubator with the mission of using technology to make the internet safer. Jigsaw’s projects have protected news organizations from toxic comments, gave readers uncensored access to sites and […]

As Twitter’s video ad business grows, so does the amount of user-generated content on its platform. The challenge for Twitter, and brands that advertise on it, is to keep brands safe from, well, the Internet. In April 2018, 50% of Twitter’s business came from video advertising – and that still holds true today. In Q1 […]

Overcoming the banality of a standard banner ad in favor of a custom unit requires a lot of work. Buyers need to work with creative tech companies to build the units, and publishers need to adjust their ad setup to support the unusual formats. When header bidding became the norm, it cut off these companies’ […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Snap Safety Some marketers have complained about Snapchat brand safety issues now that it’s transitioned to a self-serve ad platform. Last week, an ad directed to a fake news story about Chrissy Teigen promoting weight loss pills, Digiday reports. And last year, an ad […]

Facebook will distribute $300 million across multiple news projects over the next three years to support local newsrooms and help publishers create new business models, the platform announced Tuesday. Donations include a $5 million endowment gift to the Pulitzer Center, $6 million for the UK-based Community News Project and a $20 million expansion of Facebook’s […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Doubled Up DoubleVerify has acquired the Finnish contextual ad tech startup Leiki for an undisclosed sum. Leiki is DoubleVerify’s first acquisition and comes a year and a half after DV was bought by the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. Other ad tech companies […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Jockeys Amazon has a monster ad business, but it’s missing one piece: video inventory. The Amazon Prime video library has the audience, but like Netflix, it’s ad-free. Some recent moves show how Amazon will broaden its video supply. At CES last week, Amazon […]

Amazon’s release Thursday at CES of a free, ad-supported streaming video channel called IMDB Freedive could provide an opportunity for the digital giant to exhibit its targeting capabilities and pose a real threat to the Facebook-Google duopoly. Freedive is currently available on Amazon Fire devices and through Amazon’s desktop site. With about 50 million Fire […]

Piano, whose tech and services gives digital publishers a way to supplement their ad revenue, raised $22 million in Series B funding Thursday to expand its offering and help it buy other companies in the space. “There’s all this ad tech out there, but nothing exists to help publishers treat their traffic as readers and […]

RTL Group is paying up to $33 million for Yospace, a UK-based server-side ad insertion company. The company will operate independently, but work closely with SpotX, which provides video ad serving and advertising demand to video publishers. “This acquisition will go a long way toward solving issues with programmatic and OTT,” said SpotX CEO Mike […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Thinking Inside The Box Amazon is testing a program to deliver free product samples on behalf of brands like Maybelline and Folgers, Axios reports. With its ecommerce data, Amazon says the old-school free sample tactic can lead to “a higher likelihood of conversion than […]

Matt Derella, Twitter’s global VP of revenue and content partnerships, will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 23-24. Two years ago, Twitter was a company in distress. Usage and revenue were in decline, executive turnover was rampant and the company was rumored to be for sale. “For someone who loves this company, and so […]