Publishers

Like a pumpkin turning into an elaborate stagecoach, Disney’s programmatic ad sales have grown rapidly in recent months.

Concern over brand safety and suitability is now tied with campaign underperformance as the top reason for why advertisers pull back on budget.

Shopify is growing its advertising and data business; the privacy train is slowing down; Roku is striking deals to make its data more accessible.

Short-form video, infinite scrolling and hyper-targeted algorithms aren’t neutral mediums. They shape, and often compromise, the attention they harvest, creating compulsive habits that warrant serious reflection.

DDM reported 1% Q1 revenue growth, citing traffic downturns Google’s AI search results and soft advertising demand due to tariff-induced uncertainty.

Roku acquired subscription streaming service Frndly TV for $185M and reported Q1 revenue over $1 billion. But its Q2 outlook missed expectations due to tariffs dinging manufacturing revenue.

Agentic AI aims to take the work out of campaign targeting; marketers are increasingly using retail media data in non-retail channels; and Puma drives sales by re-embracing its branding.

FreeWheel thinks the best way to simplify streaming video is by fostering more direct connections between buyers and sellers.

Shutterfly’s recent CTV campaign tested a custom algorithm that relies on search data to find geographic regions with the most prospects. It performed better than targeting deterministic IDs.

Parts of Comcast might be struggling, but the company still feels “well-positioned” in advance of the TV upfronts in May, according to CFO Jason Armstrong.

The Brand Safety Institute is expanding its publisher transparency initiative to include new media quality assessments, including data compliance.

On Wednesday, AD-ID announced a partnership with Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), a division of Comcast Cable that develops buying and planning products for advertisers.

More competition between SSPs and ad servers should be a boon for publishers in the long term. But publishers will feel some growing pains if there is a sudden disruption in Google’s ad payouts or if their ad server fees increase.

The wave of ad tech headlines in recent weeks represents a long overdue moment of reckoning for companies who (still) hold disproportionate control over publishers’ website traffic and revenue potential.

It’s still too soon to tell what kind of impact Netflix’s proprietary ad tech platform is having on the streaming service’s larger revenue goals –- but so far, leadership says, the rollout has “gone well.”

There’s a decision! On Thursday, Judge Leonie Brinkema published her long-awaited ruling in US v. Google, finding Google guilty of having monopolized two online advertising markets.

It’s important to have frank discussions with clients, explaining the need and value of brand safety. That way, marketers can make an educated decision on whether they truly need to pay for it.

Many well-intentioned advertising standards efforts gather digital dust thanks to industry politics and competing interests. Here’s how the industry can stop sabotaging its own progress.

Agencies around the globe weigh in on principal-based buying; live sports are king, but new sports like F1 are having trouble gaining traction; and Adobe gets roasted by Bluesky’s artist community.

After adopting OpenPath, Freestar pubs now see 3x higher inventory fill rate from The Trade Desk demand and 27% higher programmatic revenue from these buyers.

Comcast is trying to win over digital-native and social-savvy marketers for with its recently launched Universal Ads, a self-serve ad buying platform that makes it easier for SMBs to buy streaming TV inventory.

An Adalytics report released Friday details numerous instances of brands serving ads to known bots that appear on the IAB Tech Lab’s International Spiders and Bots list and TAG’s Data Center IP List.

The IAB Tech Lab is proposing that ad auctions move to a Trusted Server from the browser. Why its prototype attracted controversy. Plus, should data privacy be viewed as a badge of honor, or a baseline standard?

Warner Bros. Discovery officially launched OpenPath last week, with the goal of driving demand for its news sites’ display inventory. But for now, CTV is not part of the integration.

Could AppleTV+ be the next CTV platform to turn to ads in order to turn a profit? Plus, the bubble may have already burst on creators launching direct-to-consumer brands.

Why should browsers get to control publisher monetization? That’s the question the Tech Lab is aiming to answer with the release of an open-source framework for server-side ad management.

The Netflix Ad Suite, as the company is calling it, is set to launch April 1, the company’s new Advertising VP Nicolle Pangis disclosed during the Cynopsis and AdExchanger CTV Connect event in New York City last week.

Dotdash Meredith (DDM) has hired Jim Lawson to run its ad tech division D/Cipher. Plus, can Target become a true advertising powerhouse? 

NBC, Fubo, Disney-owned ESPN and ad agency Mindshare weigh in on the creative flexibility offered on CTV and whether sports streamers really reach incremental audiences.

Just because curated PMPs and direct-to-DSP deals are trendy doesn’t mean they should be the focus of every publisher’s tech stack.