Platforms

Sovrn closed a $25 million Series E round Thursday to help it acquire companies outside of ad tech. Sovrn’s original investors, led by Foundry Group, all participated in the round. “Our business is 100% focused on tools and technologies that help publishers – of which advertising is an important one,” said Sovrn CEO Walter Knapp. […]

Facebook has been going full tilt since March to convince advertisers and consumers alike that it’s a safe platform on which to spend money and time. On Wednesday, for example, Facebook said it’s further reducing the distribution of low-quality, spammy ads within its auction. Advertisers with multiple low-quality ads – those that contain sensational language, for […]

Six top ad exchanges are asking the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to referee auction dynamics. The CEOs of OpenX, PubMatic, Rubicon Project, Sovrn, SpotX and Telaria collectively signed a letter to advertisers and publishers outlining principles of transparency, efficiency and fair-market practices. They want to clearly state what’s acceptable and what’s not to restore trust […]

What do an international pop group, the creator of “American Idol,” Cirque du Soleil and actor Clive Owen have in common? SAP. “Marketers in the B2B space have to realize one very simple and fundamental thing: We are all human beings,” said Alicia Tillman, SAP’s chief marketing officer. “We as B2B marketers need to speak […]

Contrary to popular belief, video did not kill the radio star. It made them a YouTube influencer. Advertisers use influencer marketing to reach consumers at a time of increased ad aversion. But the sheer volume of influencers and content on YouTube alone can be overwhelming for advertisers searching for the best fit for their brand. […]

Facebook’s Marketing Partner (FMP) program is getting a bit of a facelift with the addition of new badge categories and tools to help with measurement and creative. Hundreds of tech companies, agencies and consultants jammed into the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Wednesday to get the skinny at Facebook’s sixth global marketing partner […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Stars Video ad spend in the United States will grow to $27.8 billion, about 25% of all digital ad spend, by 2020, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast. That’s a 30% growth spurt from 2017. Facebook will emerge as the big winner in the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Setting Up A Private Practice Amazon’s private-label brand business is on pace to generate $25 billion by 2022, up from $7.5 billion this year, according to investment firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. And Amazon has quietly taken measures to rapidly grow its exclusive brand roster, […]

The third-party cookie isn’t crumbling so much as imploding. In a Friday email to advertisers and publishers, Facebook said that on Oct. 24 it will start offering a first-party cookie option for the Facebook tracking pixel so that businesses can keep targeting their ads and measuring their campaigns without relying on third-party cookies. Facebook confirmed […]

Brian O’Kelley’s departure as CEO of AppNexus surprised few in the industry who know him. His sharp opinions and independent mindset made him an ad tech provocateur and a fearless leader. But that same personality seemed incompatible with taking a subservient role to Xandr CEO Brian Lesser within the AT&T mega-corporation. After all, this is […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brand Safety, Cont. More than a year after the YouTube scandal that catapulted brand safety to public attention, the issue remains a stubborn thorn in the side of online advertising. Hundreds of websites with objectionable content or political propaganda attract mainstream brands via Google, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hand Over The Keys Facebook has confirmed that last week’s hack affecting 50 million accounts did not extend to third-party apps using the Facebook login, The Wall Street Journal reports. “We have now analyzed our logs for all third-party apps installed or logged during […]

Facebook has been aggressively pushing its non-core apps to make money, a decision that caused friction between the mothership and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram, all of whom have recently left the building. So, where does that leave Messenger – a homegrown app with over 1.3 billion users that, thankfully for Facebook, has no […]

MediaMath will stop buying from supply partners that play auction games, preferring to create an economic incentive for fair, transparent programmatic auctions and put an end to auction manipulation. The DSP sent an open letter Wednesday morning to its 50 directly integrated suppliers. The full letter is reproduced at the end of this article. “Auction […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sridhar Out One of Google’s key ad executives is riding his horse off into the VC sunset, Forbes reports. SVP Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy will depart the Googleplex for a role with Greylock Ventures. Sridhar helped Google’s ad platform business grow from $1.5 […]

Facebook may have to roll out a “sorry” button. In the meantime, there’s Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global head of marketing solutions. After revelations last week about questionable data-sharing practices capped off by a large data breach, Everson was invited to kick off Advertising Week in New York City on Monday and address Facebook’s most recent […]

Six exchanges and a handful of top publishers who work with Index Exchange’s wrapper say they consistently notice anomalies indicating the exchange prioritizes itself. At least two of those exchanges are composing a letter to Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale threatening to withdraw from its wrapper unless it takes steps to ensure neutrality, AdExchanger has […]

Jay Seideman will present on programmatic best practices at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. AT&T’s new advertising and analytics unit, Xandr, is capturing the headlines and Amazon is on its way to making the duopoly a trio – but don’t count out Oath. The Verizon-owned digital media company is avidly […]

Although M&A for data-driven companies slowed before the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation took effect, Salesforce charged ahead. The CRM giant dropped $6.5 billion on middleware firm MuleSoft in March. It followed with a reported $800 million acquisition of data integration company Datorama, which closed Aug. 20. A month later, multiple Salesforce customers are already […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brick By Brick Amazon’s newest foray into offline retail is a store called Amazon 4-star in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood featuring products that have high ratings and are trending with New Yorkers. The store will be similar to Amazon’s small chain of bookstores, […]

Snapchat introduced ecommerce advertising capabilities on Thursday, including a product catalog ad format called Collection Ads, a performance marketing agency partner program and more than 40 shopping partners, including eBay and Wish. “This is the first time we’re addressing the needs of a specific vertical, as opposed to previously building general products for advertisers,” said […]

Pooja Midha will speak on the future of TV measurement at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. Founded in 2007, true[X] was acquired by Fox in 2014 for $200 million. Its president, Pooja Midha, has hit the ground running since she assumed the role in March. “I was a true[X] customer […]

AT&T’s promise to connect data, technology, distribution and content to make advertising better for all constituents is exciting. So exciting, in fact, that industry executives from both the buy and sell sides gathered in support of the idea at the Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., this week, willing to help make it happen. But […]

Snap Fizzle? This year, eMarketer estimates Snapchat will bring in $662.1 million in US ad revenue, a significant drop from the $1.03 billion it had projected last March. “We now expect that Snap will not break $1 billion in US ad revenue until 2020,” according to the revised figures. The downgrade is mainly due to […]

Two multibillion-dollar acquisitions and one Justice Department lawsuit later, AT&T’s advertising and analytics unit finally has a name: Xandr. AT&T revealed the brand at its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., Tuesday, a debutante ball for the new unit that gathered 300 top advertising and media executives at the lavish Ritz-Carlton Bacara. The name pays […]

The Plateau Problem Digital publisher Vox is set to miss its goal of $200 million in revenue this year by more than 15%, though it should still see double-digit growth over last year’s take of about $160 million, The Wall Street Journal reports. The issue came up at a board meeting last week amid investor […]

SiriusXM said Monday it has offered to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion, a 13.8% premium on the current stock price. Read the release. If the deal goes through, SiriusXM would be able to distribute its content beyond vehicles and gain both a subscription radio business and an ad-supported streaming business. It would have the opportunity […]

Augmented reality is about to hit its stride thanks to large media platforms, which are leading the way. Snap was early, but over the past 12 to 18 months, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and others have all made big bets on AR by either investing in companies or creating (some might argue copying) […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Right Place, Wrong Time Location-based technology fueled optimism about mobile ad revenue, but regulations like GDPR and mobile policy changes from Apple and Google have put a damper on those expectations. Now some location companies are ditching their media-buying business to focus on more […]

What’s a good, succinct way to describe the current US system of data security and privacy regulation? “It’s a mess,” said Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a series of hearings from mid-September through November to help it rethink its approach to […]