Platforms

Crimson Hexagon is back in business on Facebook and Instagram – mostly. The social analytics platform, which uses AI to analyze public data across social networks, said Friday that most of its customers have had their access restored to both Facebook and Instagram data since the end of last week. The process was far swifter for […]

Google is going full-court press on universal app campaigns (UAC) through a partnership with Unity Technologies, a company that makes development tools for game creators. Starting Thursday, Unity’s more than 10 million developers have access to advertiser demand from AdMob via a direct integration. It’s the first partnership of this nature between Google and a […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Good While It Lasted Facebook’s data partner program will shut down on Aug. 15, a result of policy changes following the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, and some marketers dread the impending loss. The program included data brokers like Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Epsilon […]

Rubicon Project beat its Q2 revenue expectations, sending the stock up 15% in after-hours trading Wednesday. Rubicon Project is still in the middle of steering a huge ship out of danger: It’s burning cash faster than it can increase ad spend on its platform, the result of cutting buyer fees from the platform in November. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Media Diet On average, US adults spend 11 hours per day consuming media, with six of those hours spent watching video, according to Nielsen’s Q1 Total Audience Report. Read it. Total video consumption grew 11 minutes over the previous quarter, with six of […]

Spotify has terminated its relationship with AdsWizz since Pandora acquired the programmatic audio platform for $145 million in March. Spotify confirmed the news Tuesday, shortly after Pandora’s second quarter earnings call. “We did sunset our partnership with AdsWizz,” said Spotify in an emailed statement to AdExchanger. “That being said, we remain dedicated to offering advertisers […]

Facebook’s stock took an unprecedented beating last week after the company raised concerns about its future growth – but the show must go on, and it’s gotta be measured. On Tuesday, Facebook said it’s making a bunch of modifications to the way it measures video in the news feed, with the goal of giving advertisers a […]

By Sarah Sluis, Ryan Joe, Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot and Rae Paoletta Programmatic is expanding, becoming a glossier way to transact and add value to both the buy and sell sides. “We are moving rapidly into a programmatic-first world,” said Sal Candela, president of enterprise partnerships at Omnicom. “There is a surge of quality inventory […]

Another day, another Facebook blunder, mishap or scandal – or so it’s felt since the Cambridge Analytica storyline started to unfurl in mid-March. But the nonstop headlines and incremental news hits make it easy to lose historical perspective. (As a colleague recently noted with surprise, “Wait, the Cambridge Analytica news only came out five months […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Opera, The Other Operator The Norwegian software company Opera, maker of eponymous web browsers and mobile apps, IPO’d on the Nasdaq stock exchange last Friday, raising about $115 million. Opera has a 2% sliver of the global browser market but hopes to grow along […]

That moment when you realize Wall Street will never give you a break, even if you beat on revenue and report profits. #MAUproblems. Twitter’s stock tanked more than 16% in pre-market trading Friday morning based on lackluster user growth in Q2, despite reporting a 24% overall revenue uptick and a third sequential quarter of profitability. […]

Even Facebook isn’t impervious to the downstream effects of repeated scandals, macro privacy trends and the law of large numbers. With Cambridge Analytica, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and flatlining use in North America, which is Facebook’s most lucrative market, the buck had to stop, or at least stall, sometime. It did so on Wednesday […]

This is a new podcast from AdExchanger. It will be available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.  In the wake of Facebook’s suspension of social listening tool Crimson Hexagon from its platform late last week, it’s easy to trace the reason for the crackdown to residual squeamishness from its Cambridge Analytica nightmare. In the latest episode […]

While most of Spotify’s ad-supported revenue comes from direct-sold inventory, its programmatic self-serve platform is growing fast – and now brings in 20% of total ad revenue. In Q1, Spotify reported that its programmatic revenue grew 94% in 2017 but did not break out a figure. Spotify launched its self-serve platform, Ad Studio, in the […]

Facebook’s monster growth narrative is set to stall in the coming quarters, due in part to its recent privacy and data policy changes. Shares plunged more than 20 percentage points in after-hours trading Wednesday when Facebook reported a $120 million whiff on its revenue goals – the company’s first miss since 2015 – and warned investors that […]

It is “inevitable” that nation-states will try to leverage Facebook and its ad platform to influence elections and political sentiment again as they did during the 2016 presidential election, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s director of cybersecurity policy. Yet, despite the persistence of false news and misinformation on the platform and likely efforts by bad actors […]

Getting in bed with Facebook sometimes means waking up alone – and without your wallet. Social analytics platform Crimson Hexagon is experiencing an unpleasant prolonged morning after following a report late last week accusing the company of tapping into public user data for government contracts in possible violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Facebook suspended Crimson […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Race For 5G Verizon is in talks to partner with Google and Apple to provide online television when it releases its first 5G network in select cities later this year. Verizon fell short in developing an online TV service and wrote off its […]

Verizon revealed Tuesday that it is taking a $658 million writedown for “product realignment” that is “mainly related” to Go90, which it shut down in late July. Verizon also had $339 million in severance charges and $120 million in charges related to its Oath integration, the company said during an earnings call. Taken together, the […]

Boost Mobile’s recent campaign on Snapchat’s hit series “Phone Swap” went three levels deep to make its ads as seamless and relevant as possible – all the more important because they were among the app’s first unskippable ads. The ads ran on mobile phones while viewers watched the dating show where a potential couple trades […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. WPP In A China Shop WPP is exploring selling 20% of WPP China, its agency subsidiary in the market, to the Chinese media triumvirate of Tencent, Alibaba and China Media Capital Holdings, reports Sky News. The discussions are in the early stages, but WPP […]

Ad tech is a buyer’s market right now, and MediaMath just got $180 million in cash to fund acquisitions. Could one of those targets be Rubicon Project? “That’s an interesting idea,” MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki told AdExchanger Thursday. “No, we are not buying them at this time.” The idea of a top-tier DSP and SSP […]

Snapchat took a short-term revenue hit last year when it pivoted from its original direct branding business to a self-serve ad platform. But the low inventory prices and data and user-tracking features that have accompanied Snapchat’s programmatic transition are making the company more competitive with Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat’s improved measurability come as Facebook’s platform […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Auction Exit Amobee won the Videology bankruptcy auction this past weekend with a bid of $117.3 million with an adjustment of -$16.1 million for a net purchase of $101.2 million. British broadcaster ITV was also in the bidding for Videology’s assets, driving up […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Blockchain Fever While still buzzy, advertisers are starting to test blockchain as a tool that can shine a light on the digital supply chain. Marketers such as AB InBev, AT&T, Kellogg’s, Bayer and Nestle are using the technology to measure the flow of their […]

Hold the phone, it ain’t over yet. One month after losing its case to block AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner, the Justice Department filed an appeal Thursday. In a statement, AT&T’s general counsel, David McAtee, sounded a bit baffled. “The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based and well-reasoned,” he stated. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Snap’s OK Instagram may have run away with Snap’s stories format, but – consolation prize! – Snap is benefiting from all the exposure. According to Digiday, Snap story ads are now seen as a great value, selling at CPMs of just $1.88 versus as […]

MediaMath is flush with cash and ready to ignite consolidation in ad tech. Thanks to a $225 million investment by private equity firm Searchlight on Tuesday, MediaMath will end up with a $180 million cash infusion to spend on acquisitions and building new products. MediaMath, whose flagship product is a DSP/DMP, used $45 million of […]

Machine Zone’s (MZ) experiment with homegrown ad tech is over. The gaming company shuttered Cognant, an internal demand-side platform created in 2016 to help MZ’s media buying team plan, create, buy, optimize and measure marketing campaigns. MZ laid off the entire Cognant team in June, as well as around half of its in-house media buyers, […]

Facebook is augmenting the news feed. The company has been testing AR ads for the past couple of months with a limited number of brands, it announced at an event for advertisers and agencies in New York City on Tuesday. The plan is to release the format more generally in the lead-up to the holiday […]