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The question isn’t whether Google will fall, but whether its time is near. And, if so, what will finally bring it down?

Yahoo pulling the plug on its SSP demonstrates how difficult it’s become for supply-side platforms to prove their value in a commoditized marketplace.

Media planning is evolving in the lead-up to the midterm elections. Geotargeted CTV campaigns are winning over local media placements. Plus: Is Meta the new AOL? The argument for and against a behemoth’s slow decline.

This article is based on interviews with participants. Martin Kihn speaks to all the main players. It was inspired by Microsoft’s supposedly surprising selection as Netflix’s ad tech partner. But driven by the acquisition of AT&T’s Xandr, that’s just the latest chapter in a breathtaking adventure of pivots, write-downs, partnerships and potential.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tele-Come And Go The telco ad tech hypothesis has lost its shine.  Verizon ditched its ad tech assets, aka, AOL and Yahoo bundled as Oath and now back to Yahoo as a private equity-backed business. AT&T abandoned advertising as the third pillar of […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Dropped Call It’s no surprise that Verizon is reportedly exploring a sale of AOL and Yahoo, the Web 1.0 titans it acquired in 2015 and 2017, respectively. As The Wall Street Journal points out, the telco has already divested itself of Tumblr and HuffPost. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. From CCPA To The Cabinet President-Elect Joe Biden has selected Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services – a name that should be familiar to privacy-heads the world over. Becerra is the attorney general of California, and it’s his office […]

The advertising industry today is largely the product of tremendous M&A activity. AdExchanger looked at the acquisitions that made the biggest impact in the past decade. Impact can mean many things. Some of these startups flourished under their new owners, showing worth far more than their deal price. Others, purchased during their downfall, reflect the […]

The writing was on the wall, but now it’s written in ink: Oath honcho Tim Armstrong will leave Verizon at the end of the year. Current Oath president and COO K. Guru Gowrappan was named as the new CEO, Verizon said in a release. Armstrong will aid in the transition. When Armstrong joined the telco […]

Marni Walden, EVP and president of global media and the highest-ranking female executive at Verizon, will step down and move into an advisory position as of Dec. 31. She will leave the company in February, according to a Verizon SEC filing dated Sept. 28. CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed the news late Wednesday, stating that Walden […]

John DeVine, Oath’s newly minted CRO, faces a steep challenge in integrating Yahoo and AOL’s sales organizations. “Priority one is cultural alignment and making sure we have clarity on who our clients are and where we’ll win in the marketplace,” DeVine told AdExchanger. “We’re going through the process now to bring the two sales teams […]

By Sarah Sluis, Kelly Liyakasa and Alison Weissbrot Some publishers excel in programmatic in ways that make buyers take notice. The best way to stand out in programmatic is by integrating sales teams so it’s easy to buy programmatically and direct with a single conversation. Smart publishers don’t create incentives that make salespeople push direct […]

Yahoo’s new parent, Oath, will have to make do without one of the acquired company’s key ad platform executives. BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti is exiting the video demand-side platform and exchange he founded in 2006, according to a source with knowledge of the company. Yahoo bought BrightRoll for $640 million in 2014. An unconfirmed number […]

  Oath is having its coming-out party in Cannes. On Monday, AOL executives officially launched Oath at the advertising festival in Cannes, following the close of Verizon’s $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo last week. The execs also clarified lingering questions about how it will integrate assets from AOL and Yahoo into Oath’s pending ad tech […]

Verizon completed its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo’s search, email and digital media assets on Tuesday, almost a year after announcing its intent to buy the first-wave internet giant. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s embattled CEO since 2012, is leaving the company. Just because Verizon has cleared the first and most fundamental hurdle in creating Oath, the […]

Although Verizon’s appetite for ad tech was the main driver behind its acquisition of AOL, it’s content that really sweetened the deal. “Our content is a differentiator for Verizon amidst all of the other telcos,” AOL CMO Allie Kline told AdExchanger. But there’s a lot knocking around under the AOL umbrella – everything from ad tech […]

The Verizon-Yahoo marriage is still on and will close “as soon as practicable” in Q2, the companies announced Tuesday. The companies have jointly amended the terms of their purchase agreement by $350 million, shaving 7% off Yahoo’s original sticker price of $4.8 billion. The agreement puts an end to a monthslong game of “Will they, […]

Publishers like Bloomberg and The Washington Post have raced to roll out non-intrusive ad formats priced on attention and engagement metrics. The IAB’s efforts to curb disruptive ad experiences also reinvigorated the dialogue. Verizon-owned AOL is the latest to join the conversation. On Thursday, it dished up several new ad formats designed around consumer engagement […]

The Verizon/AOL vision is starting to take shape, and it looks a whole lot like Facebook Custom Audiences. But there’s a FCC-shaped question mark looming over the endeavor. The Federal Communications Commission passed sweeping online privacy regulations in October that will require internet service providers to obtain an affirmative opt-in consent before using a customer’s […]

To even the most casual observer, AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner appears to accelerate the multiyear land grab between telcos like Verizon and the media and ad tech hybrids like AOL. Although the deals have obvious similarities – both AT&T and Verizon are mobile carriers seeking to grow subscribers and diversify their infrastructure […]

“AdExchanger Politics” is a weekly column tracking developments in the 2016 political campaign cycle. Today’s column is written by Michael Balabanov, account director at AOL. If we treated political advertising the same way we treated consumer advertising, we’d pull wide swaths of demographic data – female, 18-34 years old, educated – and spray them with […]

There’s no splashy programmatic AOL upfront at this year’s Advertising Week. Instead, the company is addressing more serious matters – like the state of integration with Yahoo amid a data breach. AOL’s senior execs are also talking up consumer-driven content and innovative ad formats. “We had this giant emphasis on algorithmically driven media over the […]

Microsoft underwent big shifts in its platforms and ads business in the last year, first when it shook up its sales structure by outsourcing its direct order business to AOL and again, when it dropped $26.2 billion on LinkedIn. And now, Microsoft is eyeing artificial intelligence. It recently bought messaging app developer Wand Labs to beta test intelligent chat […]

Yahoo and AOL sell the same stuff to the same advertisers and, once their sales organizations combine – likely after the deal closes around Q1 2017 – there will be plenty of layoffs. Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer said as much in Monday’s call to investors as the acquisition progressed. She said the company already has its lowest headcount since […]

Despite similar origins as Web 1.0 content portals, Yahoo’s inability to shake its roots and AOL’s decisive transformation into an ad tech company sent the two down starkly different paths, even as they both landed beneath Verizon’s big red checkmark: the communications giant purchased AOL for $4.4 billion last May and revealed its intention to […]

Verizon won’t complete its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo until next year, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about which pieces of ad tech will come along for the ride. As Yahoo and AOL built their respective ad stacks to serve publishers and advertisers over time, obvious crossovers have occurred. So what’s complementary, what’s redundant and […]

With its acquisition of Yahoo on Monday, Verizon – and therefore AOL – is sinking its hooks into a treasure chest of cross-device data. “It’s very large and very deterministic,” said 360i president Jared Belsky. Cross-device connectivity was ostensibly one of the big motivators behind Verizon’s acquisition of AOL in May 2015, and now the same […]

By Kelly Liyakasa and Zach Rodgers   Verizon emerged victorious in the bidding contest for Yahoo, snapping up the media and technology assets of the still huge if perpetually down-at-the-heels digital media giant for $4.8 billion. The deal, officially announced Monday, dramatically extends the carrier’s addressable audience, adding 600 million monthly active mobile users that […]

Microsoft and LinkedIn both have advertising businesses. But Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn wasn’t about advertising. At least, that’s not the main reason. “It’s less about ad tech and more about mar tech,” said William Furlong, a former Bizo executive and current adviser and consultant. Forrester VP and principal analyst Melissa Parrish agreed. While […]

With TV upfront negotiations underway, digital tactics are wielding more influence as networks court buyers with cross-platform guarantees and enhanced data products. “You can still invest client dollars in proven media, but upfronts are now about online video partnerships you can make long-term investments in,” said Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for Interpublic Group’s […]