Platforms

Facebook is going to stop allowing third-party data providers from offering targeting directly on its platform. The move is a direct reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In the past, advertisers could use a feature called partner categories to supplement the targeting they do on Facebook with data from brokers, such as recent purchases or […]

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said Facebook faces big repercussions because it breached users’ trust. “The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Facebook’s business model is based on data people don’t [always know] they’re sharing and then selling that data … to a buyer Facebook [doesn’t even] know,” Burke said Tuesday in response to Facebook’s […]

“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 Mike Romoff, head of global agency and channel sales at LinkedIn. Ad agencies face an existential crisis, years in the making, and it feels particularly urgent at this moment. There […]

The lack of a standard measurement protocol has been an issue for the podcast industry for years. When podcasts are streamed, only the owner of a podcast player app knows how long a person listened to an episode, where they skipped and stopped in that episode or whether they heard an ad. That makes it […]

“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 Joshua Lowcock, executive vice president and chief digital and innovation officer at UM Worldwide. The advertising industry often talks about trust – trust between advertisers and their agencies, trust between […]

#WheresZuck? Posting a mea culpa on Facebook after nearly five days of conspicuous silence. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which broke over the weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to explain what happened and to outline fixes. He promised Facebook would investigate all apps that had “access to large amounts […]

Pandora has been vocal about its need to increase its ad tech capabilities since CEO Roger Lynch took the helm in November. With Wednesday’s acquisition of programmatic audio platform AdsWizz for $145 million, Pandora has gone from a programmatic newcomer to one that could control the market. “We’ve invested in proprietary ad tech for a […]

The Cambridge Analytica debacle demonstrated that Facebook has no systematic way of knowing what happens to data once it leaves the platform. What happened wasn’t a data breach – but that isn’t what matters. “Partners are bound by agreements that say they’re not supposed to share the data out, but there’s no way to regulate it, […]

Moen’s social marketing stack used to include everything but the kitchen sink. “We used seven-plus tools to facilitate our social media program and I always say ‘use’ is a very strong word because we certainly weren’t leveraging all those tools,” said Brittany Neish, senior social strategist for kitchen and bathroom fixture manufacturer Moen. And because […]

The almighty duopoly is losing share – but just a little bit. Google and Facebook will take a 56.8% share of US digital ad spend this year, down from 58.5% in 2017, according to a report published by eMarketer on Monday. The report also predicted the duopoly’s share of new digital ad dollars entering the […]

Facebook is running out of eyes to blacken in the wake of revelations over the weekend that Trump-affiliated data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested information from 50 million Facebook accounts without permission. But as long as ads continue to perform on Facebook, the scandals won’t lead advertisers to pull back their spend. “We may see individuals […]

Reddit is banking on native mobile ads to generate advertiser karma. Starting March 19, advertisers will be able to buy native promoted posts in Reddit’s official iOS app, with Android inventory to follow within the next few weeks, the company said Wednesday. The only visual difference between in-feed native posts and organic posts created by […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Susan Panico, senior vice president of strategic solutions at Pandora. Unilever CMO Keith Weed made headlines at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting when he threatened to pull advertising investment from online platforms that create […]

Penske Media, the publisher of WWD, Variety and new majority owner in Wenner Media, acquired multiplatform women’s lifestyle publisher and events company SheKnows Media, the company revealed Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SheKnows, which claims to reach 79 million uniques per month across its flagship property, StyleCaster, HelloFlo and BlogHer sites, also […]

Publishers are rethinking their Facebook strategies in the wake of LittleThings’ sudden shutdown on Tuesday. While LittleThings is the first pub to fall victim to Facebook’s news feed algorithm change, it is likely not the last. Many pubs play Whac-A-Mole with the news feed, optimizing article and video content to fit the whims of a fickle Facebook […]

When Facebook, Twitter and Google executives were summoned late last year to testify before Congress on political interference and advertising in the 2016 election, they were steadfast that they could manage the issue through ad policies and disclosures. Early bipartisan calls for legislation have mostly faded and, for now, self-regulation is the name of the […]

Spotify filed its F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, forgoing a traditional IPO for a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Read the filing. The direct listing means Spotify can directly post its shares on the stock exchange rather than going through the traditional process of hiring a bank […]

Did Facebook’s algorithm force the Clinton campaign to pay more for ads than the Trump outfit during the 2016 US presidential election? That’s fake news, said Facebook, which provided a rare public statement on the dynamics of its ads auction on Tuesday after claims of discriminatory pricing. Senior Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth disclosed on Twitter […]

With additional reporting by Alison Weissbrot. Sizable brands and top-tier publishers can use their clout to pressure media platforms into sharing more measurement data – but what are advertisers actually getting? Just enough to keep them spending, said Chris Kane, founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media. “Walled gardens will do the minimum acceptable thing so […]

Although athletic apparel manufacturer New Balance makes more than $4 billion in annual revenue in 130-odd markets, it doesn’t share the same name recognition as competitors like Nike, Adidas or Under Armour. “We found through market research that in most of our markets globally, consumers are aware of us, but they weren’t considering us because […]

Facebook is doing some early spring cleaning in Ads Manager, the tool advertisers use to create, manage and track campaigns. Starting Thursday, it will begin labeling whether metrics are estimated and start marking metrics that are still being tested. The goal is to give advertisers more insight into how metrics are calculated. Knowing when metrics […]

Mobile texting never quite made it into the marketer toolkit, but some online sellers are re-examining SMS as a more cost-effective way to engage known customers than advertising. And ecommerce tech vendors are beefing up mobile messaging because the channel now supports data-driven segmentation, like retargeting campaigns. These capabilities are increasingly valuable as frictionless mobile […]

Call it fashionably late: Pandora has finally showed up to the programmatic audio party. The digital audio platform said Tuesday buyers can now purchase its audio inventory programmatically through a private marketplace (PMP) via The Trade Desk, MediaMath and AdsWizz’s AudioMatic DSP. Pandora is testing the PMP in a pilot program with five to 10 […]

Data is helpful in the fight against fraud, but it’s not enough, said Martzel de Domingo, who leads user acquisition at French gaming giant Ubisoft, whose titles include “Assassin’s Creed” and “South Park: Phone Destroyer.” Fraudsters know how to hide behind the numbers. “Some people might not look to see what’s happening after an install,” […]

Ericsson remains keen on ad tech. On Wednesday, the Swedish networking and telecom company announced its acquisition of Placecast, a combo data management and demand-side platform (DSP) for location data. Placecast is now part of Emodo, Ericsson’s programmatic mobile ad platform that helps telcos monetize their subscriber data. Emodo is housed within a newly created […]

FTD Companies, parent company of online floral delivery brands ProFlowers and Interflora, wants to get back to the basics of brand marketing. “Our company, like many brands, has been obsessed with directly attributable, perfectly measured marketing for the last five years,” said Jeff Severts, CMO of FTD Companies, who previously served as CMO of Ulta […]

Paris-based app retargeting platform Adikteev – think Criteo for apps – snagged $12 million in Series B on Tuesday. The company plans to spend it on research and development and on expanding its 100-person headcount with around 40 new engineer hires over the next month. The round, which brings Adikteev’s total funding to $14.2 million since it […]

There’s no point eating up engineering resources to build technology that can be provided out of the box, Lomit Patel, VP of growth at IMVU, said at the Mobile Growth Summit in San Francisco last week. Although most mobile growth marketers would rather build than buy, nearly every app relies on a constellation of third-party […]

Publishers, prepare yourselves for another Facebook organic reach reality check. Starting Monday, Facebook will finally begin measuring organic page reach the same way it measures paid ad reach: based on viewable impressions. This is only a reporting change and unrelated to how organic distribution works on Facebook. Facebook started alerting publishers in early February, but […]

The New York Times is making good on its goal to rev digital subscription revenue, but not at the expense of its other key growth driver: digital advertising. The Times’ total subscription revenue surpassed $1 billion in 2017 as the company added 157,000 net new, digital-only subscriptions in Q4, it announced during its Q4 earnings […]