chatbots

Why did Walmart buy Vizio? What happens when a CTV campaign turns on the S&P500+? Is Google losing its search engine edge?

In today’s newsletter: Meta’s black box optimization features gobble ad budgets once again; Google’s DV360 also overcharges for impressions; and Apple disables progressive web apps in Europe.

Why is there so much misinformation circulating online? Because, unfortunately, “it’s a great business,” says L. Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of NewsGuard, which estimates that advertisers are funneling as much as $2.6 billion a year programmatically to misinformation websites.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Poncho wants to “own the bed.” The weather app aims to start engaging with its core user base of millennials the moment they wake up. Around 90% of people 18-30 use smartphones as alarm clocks, according to Cisco, making the lock screen the first thing they see when they crack an eye. But there’s a […]

National Geographic isn’t obsessing over the metrics for its Albert Einstein Facebook Messenger bot. “We want this to be fun – and if you try to measure ROI on something like this, you’re just setting yourself up to fail,” said Dennis Camlek, EVP of strategy and consumer marketing at National Geographic. Nat Geo launched the bot […]

Facebook’s big bet on messenger bots was an oversell from the start. What’s shaking out now is a more reserved and perhaps more useful idea of what a bot can be and how a business can use it. “Rather than having chatbots be ‘the star of the show,’ as was the implication last year, Facebook […]

Designer fashion retailer Monton is trying on messenger bots for size. On Thursday, the brand, which targets the trendy millennial aged 25 to 30, exited beta on a product discovery tool that allows Facebook Messenger users to chat with the brand and scroll through recommendations based on previously selected items. The images link directly to […]

The messenger app Kik, a chat service catering to teens, debuted its Bot Shop on Monday. The shop lets Kik users download chatbots – automated apps meant to simulate real conversation. The shop currently features 16 bots from companies like Vine, H&M, Funny or Die, The Weather Channel and J-14 (a celebrity mag geared toward […]