Platforms

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 […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Edward Kim, founder and executive chairman at SimpleReach. Facebook recently announced the launch of IGTV, a hub for long-form, vertical videos that’s accessible from both a new app and the existing Instagram app. Facebook’s […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Zuck Abides Readers might be forgiven for thinking this has been a brutal year for Facebook, given the long string of scandals and investigations the company has faced. But in some important ways, Facebook is humming along as smoothly as ever, according to […]

Facebook’s scale – 1.45 billion daily active users at last count – has been its armor through a no-good, very bad year of repeated privacy failures, questions of Russian election interference and other controversies. But scale needs to be maintained. Although only a handful of advertisers pulled spend in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica, that wouldn’t […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Devlin Jefferson, vice president of product at Operative. Bauer Xcel recently gave publishers advice about working directly with brands that take programmatic in-house. Note that the advice was written by Bauer’s new in-house programmatic […]

“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 Bjarte Humborstad, digital director at RED Media Consulting. Following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Google has allowed advertisers to serve their YouTube ads only from Google-owned […]

Cheers to IGTV, Instagram’s new long-form video offering. Bacardí is one of the first brands to raise a glass. On Friday, less than two weeks after the service was launched, the liquor brand was already running its first live experience. “Any platform that gives you full view and a longer time for storytelling is great,” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Outlook Hazy The fate of Hulu depends on the outcome of Comcast’s and Disney’s bidding war for 21st Century Fox. Whoever wins will own a majority stake in Hulu, and both companies have very different visions for the platform’s future. Comcast wants to invest […]

Facebook and Twitter each released new political advertising transparency tools on Thursday in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections, as the social platforms try to forestall the malicious electoral interference they enabled during the 2016 election. Facebook began archiving electoral and issue-based ads in May, so any ad by an active candidate or featuring […]

Google is kicking many of its product names and acronyms to the curb – including the 22-year-old DoubleClick brand. Google is rebranding its products into three groups: Google Marketing Platform for enterprises, Google Ads for small and medium-sized businesses and Google Ad Manager for large publishers. The transition will begin in mid-July. This transition will […]

AT&T has big plans to operate a programmatic exchange for the advanced TV advertising industry. Its Monday acquisition of AppNexus gives AT&T the infrastructure and relationships with content owners and buyers to operate that exchange at scale. But it remains to be seen if AppNexus clients will be spooked by its loss of independence and […]

Instagram dropped its answer to YouTube on Wednesday, and the timing couldn’t be riper. Ad spending across the top 70 YouTube channels is essentially flat, with only a 0.2% increase this year, according to ad sales intelligence business MediaRadar. Why? Marketers are increasingly worried about their brand reps on YouTube, said MediaRadar CEO and co-founder […]

In Bruce Falck’s office, there’s a piece of paper tacked to the wall with a list of important reminders: GDPR, MRC, transparency, measurement. But rather than focusing on “external factors,” the GM of Twitter’s revenue product and his growing team are “getting back to basics.” Twitter has spent the last two years striking content partnerships, […]

It’s been a weird four months for Aleksandr Kogan. The 33-year-old went from an obscure research psychologist at Cambridge University to one of the villains at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Kogan, who testified Tuesday before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, apologized for his role in the controversy, but disputes that the data provided […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. DSPayday? AT&T is in talks to acquire AppNexus and the two companies are close to finalizing the deal, reports Cheddar. AppNexus brass are reportedly unwilling to sell for less than $2 billion. That sounds like an awful lot, but there are factors working in […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Weed Whacks Influencers Influencer marketing has a fraud problem, and Unilever CMO Keith Weed has had enough of it. At the Cannes Lions festival, Weed said Unilever will no longer work with influencers who buy followers to inflate audience and engagement metrics. Unilever will […]

The global ad market is set to grow even faster than forecasted. Why? It’s the duopoly, folks. In a report released Monday, IPG-owned Magna Global significantly revised its global ad market growth projection from 5.2% to 6.4%, which translates to $551 billion in global ad spend. In Q1, Google and Facebook’s collective ad revenue increased […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. How The Sausage Gets Made Facebook announced new requirements for businesses building Custom Audiences. Facebook wants to make it clearer to users how their names got on lists that are commonly used for ad targeting. Starting July 2, businesses using the tool will have […]

Spotify and TGI Fridays are hooking up with Foursquare as a preferred measurement partner. Solid measurement is what seals the deal with marketers, said Brian Berner, head of US sales at Spotify. “Many of our [brand] partners have a brick-and-mortar presence, so we’ve seen increased demand for measurement that showcases how our ad platform connects […]