Platforms

Adobe and AppNexus plan to give marketers supply-chain transparency from the DSP to the SSP by partnering on a pilot program. Adobe Advertising Cloud will reveal all fees taken by the DSP, including the platform fee and any add-ons, as well as AppNexus’ bill to the publisher, which will help marketers track media dollars through […]

Spotify was an early mover in programmatic audio, and it’s taking that momentum into 2018. “Marketers are moving so much money to programmatic. We’ve seen that channel explode,” said Brian Benedik, global head of ads monetization at Spotify. “We’ve seen brands [come to Spotify] that have never invested in audio because we’ve made it programmatic-enabled.” […]

In-app header bidding is coming to MoPub. On Tuesday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange started testing an advanced bidding solution to replace the app ads waterfall with a unified auction. Roughly a dozen publishers are testing the solution. The closed alpha test does not have a set end date. Until now, advertisers could buy MoPub […]

Product and marketing go hand in hand at OkCupid. There’s a dotted line between user engagement, platform tweaks and the deployment of marketing dollars to reach specific types of users, mainly on social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Snap, said OkCupid CMO Melissa Hobley. “Our product truth is that we create experiences based on depth, […]

Mark Zuckerberg expects people to spend less time in the news feed once Facebook throttles the organic reach of publisher content. That change will lead to less inventory at higher prices, said James Douglas, SVP and executive director of social media at IPG-owned Society Agency. After Facebook announced plans Thursday to deprioritize public content from […]

When a company as large as SAP doubles down on digital, the executive org chart must change. For the last six months, the enterprise software company has had two primary CMOs: one who is responsible for brand and media and another who focuses on demand generation, life cycle marketing and bottom-line revenue. But they work […]

Demand-side platforms (DSPs) make money by taking a percentage of the media buys that flow through their technology – and from lots of other hidden extras they charge for. Interviews with more than a dozen sources reveal that even as marketers make progress in understanding what they’re paying for, nontransparent fees abound in the DSP […]

Two years ago, lift tests weren’t something OLX Group even talked about. Today, lift tests, which measure the incrementality of a marketing channel or advertising tactic, are in heavy rotation at the Argentinian web company, which owns and operates 17 classified apps and sites around the world, including Craigslist competitor Letgo in the US. Performance […]

Searching and not being able to find the perfect GIF to embed within a chat is the definition of a first-world problem. But it’s a real pain point, and something Emogi, which uses predictive technology to suggest contextually relevant emoji, stickers and GIFs within conversations, is able to solve for brands that want to get […]

Brand safety and transparency were top-of-the-agenda items for advertisers in 2017. But if this was the year of faux pas, mea culpas and the start of a move toward better controls, 2018 will be about buckling down. “The billions of ad dollars pulled off platforms in 2017 was a clarion wake-up call,” said Bill Marino, […]

Twitter is gunning to become publishers’ platform partner of choice, and it’s leveraging live video as a way to capture content – and dollars – currently flowing to the duopoly. This week, Bloomberg debuted its 24/7 global news network TicToc on Twitter after reaching nearly 8 million people during Bloomberg TV’s live stream of three […]

Is enabling age targeting for online recruitment ads a form of discrimination? Facebook, called out by ProPublica and The New York Times on Wednesday for the practice, says no. “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason,” Rob Goldman, Facebook’s VP of ads, responded in a blog […]

Campbell’s Soup wants to help solve the daily “dinner dilemma” – that period between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. when people figure out what’s for dinner. And who better qualified to brainstorm novel dinner recipes than IBM Watson? Last winter, Campbell’s Soup tested Watson Ads to dynamically recommend recipes in its ads, using the Chef […]

Rubicon’s CEO Michael Barrett will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on January 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York.  Rubicon Project is in the midst of a risky move – one that CEO Michael Barrett thought he could avoid when he joined nine months ago. Because of customer outcry, the company stopped charging […]

Creative often gets neglected by app publishers gunning for installs – but it’s one of the most important aspects of any app-install campaign, said Artur Grigorjan, head of growth marketing at Russian game studio Playrix. “By this point, most advertisers have enough expertise when it comes to buying,” Grigorjan said. “Now they’re transitioning to the next […]

Digital advertising is growing, and big platforms like Google and Facebook continue to reap the profits. That’s the insight from global ad spend forecasts released Sunday by GroupM, Zenith and Magna, which predict the industry will grow between 3.1% and 5.2% this year to as high as $535 billion, as reported by Magna. Advertising growth […]

Online display advertising spend in the US will grow 70% from $42 billion this year to $72 billion by 2021, propelled mostly by social media ad spend, according to Forrester’s annual Online Display Advertising forecast, released Wednesday. As mobile adoption continues to surge, Forrester predicted, social ad spend will reach $40 billion by 2021, and […]

During a speech Tuesday at think tank R Street Institute, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai justified his plan to scrap net neutrality (“We’re shifting from one-size-fits-all preemptive regulation to targeted enforcement.”) and took a shot at edge providers like Twitter, Google and Facebook. “Let’s not kid ourselves: When it comes to a free and […]

The Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend showed how mobile has grown from a retail investment-and-innovation channel to a true pillar of US commerce. On Cyber Monday, mobile commerce crossed a new threshold with $2 billion in sales, according to data from Adobe. Black Friday of 2016 was the first time US shoppers spent more than $1 […]

The ad industry needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. That was the rallying cry Tuesday at NBCUniversal’s swanky State of the Industry Forum, where 150 digital and broadcast advertising luminaries gathered in midtown Manhattan for fancy eggs and frank discussion. “I’ll cut right to the chase: We have a problem,” said Linda Yaccarino, […]

The question-and-answer site Quora considers itself a unique hybrid of search and social. Since neither of those platforms open themselves up to programmatic demand, Quora decided it wouldn’t go that route either. Quora’s ads platform officially went live in May with 300 advertisers on board, who could only purchase ads through Quora’s Facebook-like self-serve ad […]

Facebook is gearing up to grab automotive advertising budget with dynamic and lead ads for auto brands, both released on Thursday. Dynamic ads for auto, like Facebook’s other dynamic ad products for ecommerce and travel, allow advertisers –auto manufacturers and car dealerships, in this case – to retarget auto intenders and create lookalike audiences for […]

Oath is switching things up within its ad and platform executive ranks. The company has named Tim Mahlman president of advertising and publisher strategy, Oath revealed Tuesday. Mahlman replaced Bob Lord as president of AOL’s platform business in June 2016 and has manned AOL’s publisher and ad platform strategy since. Rohit Chandra becomes head of […]

Programmatic platform Choozle picked up $6 million in Series B funding Tuesday, and it’s got growth on the brain. “We’re buying time to become a bigger player in the mid-market,” said Choozle CEO and co-founder Andrew Fischer, who sees recent ad tech consolidation and the lack of investment in early-stage companies as an opportunity. Choozle, […]

Yieldbot founder and CEO Jonathan Mendez has vacated that role. “Jonathan and the board came to a mutual understanding,” a company spokesperson confirmed to AdExchanger on Friday. The change was effective in early October, but Mendez is keeping his board seat. Yieldbot has had a tough year. It laid off a third of its staff […]

When Snap reported disappointing earnings on Tuesday, it said revenue was constrained by its shift from a direct sales model to a programmatic, auction-based model. Snap’s excuse mimics one that publishers used in the early days of programmatic to explain their revenue shortfalls, and it doesn’t fully take into account immaturities and nuances in Snap’s […]

AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley has been waiting 10 years for ad tech to become transparent. Less than a week after Rubicon Project slashed its take rate in half, to 10% to 12%, by doing away with buy-side fees, AppNexus said its fees are even lower. The company revealed it charges an 8.5% average to the […]

AI-driven marketing automation platform Artsai came out of a two-year-long stealth period on Thursday with plans to help brands cut down on marketing vendor fragmentation hell. Client Pandora has been using Artsai to help its ad partners with dynamic creative optimization and to gather and apply campaign performance data and insights across touch points. Pandora […]

The French video platform Dailymotion is a fraction of Google’s size – YouTube’s 1.5 billion-plus monthly viewers dwarf Dailymotion’s 300 million. But scale isn’t stopping the company from repositioning its platform to woo US advertisers and publishers from the dominant video-sharing site. Breaking into a video market ruled by streaming video services such as Netflix […]

Former Adap.tv CEO Toby Gabriner, who became AdRoll’s president in April, has been promoted to CEO, effective immediately. The company’s founding CEO, Aaron Bell, will transition to chief product officer. Gabriner has for the past year advised AdRoll, which wanted to evolve from an early retargeter focused mostly on Facebook to a mid-stage, cross-channel performance marketing […]