Platforms

In its first earnings report as a public company on Wednesday, Spotify said its programmatic revenue was up 94% year over year. It didn’t give a figure, however. “We’re seeing super fast growth of programmatic,” Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy said on the call. “That’s coming principally from developed markets, with the US far and away […]

Hulu told advertisers at its upfront on Wednesday that it’s reached the 20-million-subscriber mark. While 20 million subscribers is a lot smaller than rivals Netflix (125 million subs) and Amazon Prime (100 million subs), Hulu is ad-supported and only in the US. Ad-supported subscribers are up 40% this year to 40 million viewers, said Hulu’s […]

Google’s decision last Friday to limit portability of the DoubleClick ID outside of Google’s ecosystem was done in the name of consumer privacy. But the change will also stunt advertisers’ ability to do cross-platform reach and frequency measurement – unless they’re using Google’s Ads Data Hub. While agency execs support changes to protect consumer privacy, […]

“This has been an intense year – I can’t believe we’re only four months in.” Mark Zuckerberg kicked off Facebook’s F8 developers conference in San Jose on Tuesday with a joke, and he got a few chuckles from the gathered crowd of 5,000 developers. Facebook’s recent crackdown on API access and data flows in response to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Listen And Learn Data scientists from Uber, Pandora and Netflix published joint research measuring the impact of audio ads on listeners over a 21-month period. Pandora listeners were broken into nine groups, each with different ad exposure levels over that time. With such a […]

Snap’s hotly contested app redesign had a material negative impact on revenue, the company said in its Q1 earnings report Tuesday. Revenues for the quarter were up 54% year over year to roughly $231 million, but sequentially, they were down 19%, “primarily due to seasonality and our redesign,” the company said in its earnings release. […]

Twitter unveiled a slate of live streaming and original programs at the company’s NewFronts presentation Monday night, coupled with new video advertising services for brands on the platform. Twitter has doubled its programming partners from 16 last year, the first year Twitter hosted a promotional NewFront in an attempt to find blue-chip brands to back […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. TV Dinner A raft of new YouTube ad products highlights the importance of OTT and skinny pay-TV services in its strategy. For the first time, advertisers will be able to target YouTube television screen inventory, just as they can choose to exclusively buy tablet, […]

Facebook’s CTO, Mike Schroepfer, faced five hours of intense and technically savvy grilling by members of a parliamentary committee on Thursday. The takeaway: UK regulators don’t trust Facebook. To put it more pointedly in the words of British conservative MP Julian Knight: Facebook is a “morality-free zone” with no respect for consumer privacy or the […]

Google is making it more difficult for advertisers to have an independent view of the data generated from ad buys in its ecosystem. In a note to partners sent Friday and obtained by AdExchanger, Google said it will no longer let buyers use the DoubleClick ID when leveraging its data transfer service. The service allows […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Amazon Ad Revenue Accelerates Revenue in Amazon’s “Other” category grew 132% YoY to $2 billion this quarter, with advertising services making up a “majority” of that segment, CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. So it’s safe to say Amazon’s ad […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Criteo Swaps Out CEO   With the GDPR compliance deadline bearing down, Criteo has restored its former CEO to the corner office. JB Rudelle will once again take the reins at the company, as Eric Eichmann steps into an advisory role prior to transferring […]

Facebook might be weathering more headwinds than you can shake a stick at right now, but that didn’t stop it from posting gangbuster earnings on Wednesday. Revenue for the quarter clocked in at $11.97 billion, up 49% year over year – beating the Street’s estimate of $11.41 billion. Click here to read the release. Proof […]

Twitter was the comeback kid in Q1. The company experienced its second consecutive quarter of profitability, with 21% YoY revenue growth to $665 million – $575 million of it thanks to advertising. Growth would have been higher – around 27% this quarter – if not for the headwind still blowing from the direction of the now fully […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Free Ride Spotify updated its free, ad-supported app on Tuesday with personalized playlists and other features. The changes elevate the user experience to within spitting distance of its paid tier. So why would anyone buy a subscription? “The better our free experience is, the […]

Although a handful of advertisers have suspended their Facebook campaigns in the wake of the platform’s ongoing data scandal, most are staying the course. “Both advertisers and developers are very understanding about having some features removed that they were using,” said Mark Rabkin, Facebook’s VP of ads and business platform, who took the reins from […]

As the governing body for professional surfers globally, the World Surf League (WSL) promotes the sport to both casual fans and diehards. But just a few years ago, the WSL – at the time called the Association for Surfing Professionals – lacked a cohesive marketing strategy, and campaigns for different surf events were heavily siloed. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Other Giant Google deserves some of the flack that Facebook is almost exclusively catching in the wake of its Cambridge Analytica scandal, writes Christopher Mims for The Wall Street Journal. Mims argues that Google has lax standards for merging data between its various […]

Airfare and hotel prediction app Hopper is different from other travel booking services. When you download Hopper, the app tells you not to buy anything. And that’s because Hopper acquires users at the top of the funnel. “We’re looking for people who are just browsing on social, people who aren’t necessarily looking for a flight […]

Most consumers are only just learning about the inner workings of the ad-supported internet – and they don’t like what they see. David Fischer, Facebook’s VP of business and marketing partnerships, understands their frustration. “A lot of the discomfort people have is when they feel like they don’t actually know what’s going on with the ad […]

Vevo uses YouTube for a large chunk of its distribution and viewership. A joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, Vevo creates and distributes more than 330,000 music videos across YouTube and its owned-and-operated channels. Vevo gets access to YouTube’s massive audience, and YouTube gets a cut of the […]

“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 Matt McGowan, president at Adestra. Facebook’s move to shut down its Partner Categories program helps it look good in the court of public opinion, shores up some loose ends with […]

“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 Eric Picard, vice president of product management at Pandora. Last week, the IAB Tech Lab released the Open Measurement (OM) Software Development Kit (SDK), a universal SDK to support standardized, […]

TBS and TNT try to be “brands that live outside of television,” said Karina Kogan, SVP of digital media and products for the two networks. Beyond its owned-and-operated networks, sites and apps, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat are the networks’ workhorses for driving engagement with viewers – and acquiring new ones. “We start with who’s watching […]

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced a second congressional grilling on Wednesday in Washington, DC, the company’s VP of ads and business product, Mark Rabkin, addressed a more ad-savvy audience at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco. The takeaway in SF: Facebook will continue to make policy changes to the way data is handled on its […]

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry.” A contrite yet confident Mark Zuckerberg, wearing a suit rather than his usual gray T-shirt and jeans, testified Tuesday before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees in Washington, […]

In Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared statement for Congress, he describes how his company hopes to prevent illicit data sharing and enhance transparency around political advertising. The testimony, which will be delivered Wednesday, partially reiterates changes that Facebook publicized last week. Last Wednesday, Facebook detailed API data restrictions. And last Friday, it described the tools […]

YouTube will no longer support third-party ad serving on reserved buys in Europe beginning May 21, and it will assess whether to extend that policy globally, according to a memo obtained by AdExchanger. Google advised advertisers who aren’t currently using its ad server DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) to host video on YouTube to “retraffic their […]

Facebook on Friday implemented new transparency and verification processes for political advertisers. Last October, the company said it would begin allowing only authorized advertisers to run electoral ads, which explicitly advocate for or against an active political candidate. But those limits will now apply to any advertisers who want to run “issue ads” that more […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. True or false: While Facebook was looking the other way, Cambridge Analytica exploited easy loopholes in its data policies to steal user data and swing a US presidential election. In this week’s podcast, Gartner Research VP Martin Kihn picks apart the assumptions underlying the latest […]