AT&T rode into Cannes this year amid fanfare following its Time Warner acquisition, freshly rebranded as WarnerMedia. But trailing in its wake are a lot of questions around what this mega-merger means for the advertising landscape. Intentionally or not, AT&T added to the ambiguity with its Cannes branding – or complete lack thereof. The telco […]
You know stuff is getting real when the consortiums start forming consortiums. Over the past two years, two scaled initiatives have emerged to build a common ID that would reduce data loss, tags on page and site latency issues resulting from cookie syncing across dozens of ad tech companies. One is Advertising ID Consortium, led […]
Advertisers are sick of paying for unviewed impressions, and some programmatic exchanges are appeasing them by eating the cost of anything that wasn’t viewed. Viewability guarantees aren’t new. For advertisers that demand it, ad tech companies can optimize toward viewability on open exchanges or run viewable deals in private marketplaces. The problem is, those options […]
In late April, Google said it would limit the portability of the DoubleClick ID outside of its ad server DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM), effectively killing independent attribution (at least to the extent that it was possible). Marketers who want access to the DoubleClick ID, which ties together data across Google’s properties, will have to use it […]
Even if Google registers its entire product stack with the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), there will still be important differences between Google’s GDPR solution and the programmatic ecosystem. Google has a huge advantage because of its end-to-end status in the online supply chain, said Blake Brannon, VP of product at the privacy […]
The European Union’s GDPR regulations have been in force for less than a week, but ad tech exchange players are already feeling whiplash. The crux of the problem is advertising technology vendors must have user consent for data-driven advertising – yet there are only two scaled ways to get it. Either use Google’s GDPR pipeline […]
IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab released on Wednesday a commercial version of the Transparency and Consent Framework, a new publishing standard meant to reconcile ad tech with GDPR regulations. From a consumer point of view, the experience would be similar to the current standard for web browsing in Europe, where there’s already omnipresent […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Free Ride Spotify updated its free, ad-supported app on Tuesday with personalized playlists and other features. The changes elevate the user experience to within spitting distance of its paid tier. So why would anyone buy a subscription? “The better our free experience is, the […]
The IAB Europe GDPR working group has released for public comment its framework for transmitting user consent data up the supply chain, from publishers to technology companies and marketers. The final version is scheduled to come out mid-April. Read the tech specs. The framework provides standards so that publishers can provide transparency into their data […]
Data providers have embraced an alternative way of buying audience segments: selling data as a percentage of media rather than transacting on CPMs. Instead of buying data at a fixed rate per thousand impressions, a percent-of-media model ties the cost of data to the cost of media. An advertiser, for instance, is unlikely to spend […]
Although video header bidding is still nascent, early adopters are starting to see results. Social-heavy publisher Diply has been using AppNexus’ video header bidding solution Prebid Video since the end of last year to allow programmatic auctions to compete alongside its ad server – Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Customizing its header bidding wrapper helps […]
The advertising industry has been plagued by a lack of trust, with vendors, agencies and marketers looking at each other askance. Ad fraud, bad traffic and hidden fees have taken their toll, and while industry players have taken measures to reinstitute their good standing, their work isn’t nearly complete. During a panel Thursday at AdExchanger’s […]
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 […]
While ad tech companies have been accumulating VC funds and growing their stacks – and sales orgs – for a while, many took pains to rightsize over the past year or so. For some, the intent was to recapitalize or to prep for a sale if an IPO was a no-go. For others, it was […]
Want to tap News Corp.’s first-party data to target ads across all of its properties? As of Tuesday, you can, thanks to the release of News IQ, which is a managed service (for now) ad platform owned and operated by News Corp. News IQ unifies inventory from publications as varied as The Wall Street Journal, […]
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 […]
A number of ad tech-backed coalitions consolidating cookie pools have bubbled up this year to stave off Google, Facebook and Amazon running away with the market with their own scaled identity assets. And trends like Safari’s ITP cookie restrictions shift the advantage further toward the walled gardens with daily active users. AdExchanger looked at a […]
Remember that consortium led by LiveRamp, MediaMath and AppNexus to develop a cookie-based identifier that could be used consistently across the open exchange? While live tests are still set for October, ad tech vendors are hesitant to buy in due to LiveRamp’s exclusive role as a cross-device option. MediaMath is already out, said John Slocum, […]
Mindshare launched a service on Thursday designed to let programmatic planners automate targeting, which lets them create lots of segments quickly. The system, called ANNA, is still in beta and uses AppNexus’ demand-side platform (DSP) and a new API from dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform Jivox. “Physically, you wouldn’t have time to sit in a […]
AppNexus and Index Exchange have the broadest adoption of their adapters and wrappers, according to the first-ever Header Bidding Index – a report from ServerBid, an Adzerk spinoff that builds wrappers for the demand side. Seventy percent of the top 1,000 publishers running programmatic advertising use header bidding, according to the report, which ServerBid created […]
For the independent demand-side platform (DSP) market, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. On the one hand, it’s unlikely any new scaled DSPs will enter the market. The costs to build a competitive platform – nine digits off the bat and another eight digits per year in operational costs […]
As its sell-side business takes off due to the success of its Prebid open source wrapper, AppNexus’ buy-side operation is treading water relative to rivals such as The Trade Desk. Now the company is considering downplaying it further. In recent months, AppNexus executives have pondered using parts of its buy-side business as a bargaining chip […]
Seven independent ad tech companies debuted a programmatic consortium on Thursday that pools their supply- and demand-side cookie IDs into one shared identity asset. The consortium is helmed by AppNexus, MediaMath and LiveRamp, which provides the data matching. Other launch partners include Index Exchange, Rocket Fuel, LiveIntent and OpenX. And it’s a shot across the […]
AppNexus wants in on connected TV ad budgets. The ad tech company has doubled down on the infrastructure to support connected TV buying and selling by integrating the forecasting from its Yieldex acquisition with its video ad server. It also has added support for newer connected TV ad formats and long-form content. These developments should […]
The demand-side platform (DSP) category underwent expected consolidation in the past year, with The Trade Desk’s IPO and formerly independent players like TubeMogul, Turn and Adelphic gobbled up by Adobe, Singtel and Time Inc., respectively. But just because the DSP space has matured doesn’t mean it can’t surprise you. This year, that surprise comes from […]
Publishers contemplating a switch to server-side header bidding now have two more options. They can use AppNexus’ Prebid server-side wrapper, which will tap into Index Exchange’s demand. Or they can put Index Exchange’s wrapper on their page, which will make a server-side call out to AppNexus. “We are giving publishers choice, and a flexible, transparent solution,” […]
Lauren Nemeth, former head of sales for AppNexus, has joined Turn as chief revenue officer. She arrives from a stint at Pinterest-owned mobile search engine URX, and will oversee sales, client services and consulting. Prior to her role at AppNexus, she helped build Google’s programmatic business alongside Bruce Falck, Turn’s CEO. “We’re selling a complicated, […]
AppNexus has filed confidentially for its IPO, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. AdExchanger reported in June that its IPO filing was imminent. The company is seeking a valuation in the $1.5 billion to $2 billion range, according to the Journal, which would put it in line with its 2015 round of […]
AppNexus has banned right-wing publisher Breitbart from selling on its exchange for violating its policy on hate speech – an order endorsed by CEO Brian O’Kelley, and depending on who you ask, also instigated by him. The ban was first reported by Bloomberg. According to an internal source, at some point last week O’Kelley demanded that his ad quality team […]
AppNexus laid off 150 of its 1,125 employees on Thursday and Friday, a 13% reduction of its workforce. Internally, the company is telling employees the cuts are part of a reorg that will unify its buy-side and sell-side product groups, which have operated separately until now with distinct engineering, sales and service teams. The company’s […]
