Chris Kane

Equativ is now blocking made-for-advertising content from all exchange activity, marking a larger trend of pushing to eliminate MFA sites.

Most sell-side curation deals appear in line with typical SSP take rates, according to Jounce Media. In fact, some of these fee structures resemble how publishers have long done business with supply-side partners.

Why is programmatic media buying so dang complicated? That question was an ever-present topic at the 2025 ANA Media Conference in Orlando, Florida this week.

AdExchanger reached out to a number of major DSPs to gauge the current state of adoption of the IAB Tech Lab’s new video ad standard.

CTV transparency remains a flashpoint between advertisers who want it and broadcasters who won’t provide it. Our special guest, Jounce Media’s Chris Kane, weighs in. Plus, we examine a persistent issue in ad tech: the chronic mislabeling of instream video.

DSPs have been slow to adopt the Tech Lab’s new signal for classifying online video, causing confusion about which placement signal should be prioritized.

In response to shifting ad industry trends, A360 Media abandoned its made-for-advertising model four years ago and streamlined its site design to court programmatic demand.

Freestar adopted a new approach to curation developed by Audigent that gives buyers a priority lane to publisher inventory with higher viewability and attention scores than most open-auction inventory.

Publishers are initiating more and more auctions – but doesn’t mean DSPs are listening to more bids, according to Chris Kane.

The partnership makes MFA-blocking tools more accessible to mid-size buyers. Plus, AdLib can block MFA regardless of whether a DSP is willing to proactively filter it.

The average CTV platform now authorizes 30 SSPs to sell its inventory. And one of the most noticeable effects of increased SSP saturation in CTV has been higher costs due to SSP reselling.

Despite the backlash against MFA websites, there is still no industry standard to define MFA. So the 4A’s is hosting monthly meetings between buyers and sellers to nail down more explicit criteria for what constitutes MFA.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. OurTube Neal Mohan published his annual letter this week – although, this time he’s chief of YouTube, following Susan Wojcicki’s exit last year. Mohan shares an interesting peek at YouTube’s long-term priorities. For example, although he talks about YouTube Shorts, the format isn’t as […]

2023 saw SPO become further cemented in the strategies of DSPs and SSPs for capturing market share. But the long-term trend might see SPO become the default for programmatic advertisers.

Publishers’ deals with Taboola and Outbrain might be helping divert more revenue to shady MFA sites than they generate for legit publishers.

On Thursday, OpenX announced a twofold initiative called TV+, which reserves the CTV label for what the company deems premium inventory while booting resellers from the supply pool.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Rare Wares TV inventory is on track to become an even scarcer resource. US television (linear and streaming combined) will likely lose almost a quarter of its ad inventory volume over the next four years, according to media prognosticator Brian Wieser, writing at […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Is Free Social A ZIRP? Social media is free. Well, it’s supposed to be, anyway. That’s the point. All your friends join, it’s free fun, and rather than paying money you get served with ads.  But that could change. On Monday, Android Authority […]

By the middle of this year, MFA sites were gobbling up 30% of ad auctions, and this “gradual boil” now has the entire industry in a state of emergency, says Chris Kane, president and founder of Jounce Media.

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

Connected TV may be online advertising’s go-to golden child – but buyers beware. CTV buys can be risky, says Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media.

In addition to buy-side integrations, content curation, proprietary ad formats and flexible pricing models are also helping set SSPs apart.

Domain blocking, the industry’s go-to approach for demonetizing sites that host pirated content, is set up to fail.

Whereas brands and DSPs are whittling down the number of supply paths they use to purchase ad inventory, publishers are financially incentivized to work with as many partners as possible. But there are changes afoot that could alter the economics for publishers.

What exactly does “premium” mean? It seems the definition varies depending on who’s using it – that “premium” is in the eye of the beholder. But there are some areas of agreement. And the industry isn’t setting the premium bar as high as you might think.

The complexity and lack of transparency in the programmatic ad buying ecosystem makes it hard to understand who you’re buying from and how big of a bite they’re taking out of a buyer’s ad spend. Hence the need for supply path optimization (SPO). Simply put, SPO is about buyers identifying the most efficient connections and using them to transact with sellers. The goal is to stop buying through inefficient or expensive paths to supply.

Last week, a federal judge unsealed previously redacted portions of an antitrust lawsuit poking into Google’s allegedly monopolistic ad practices. Will these revelations actually change the way publishers and advertisers spend with Google, or is Google too entrenched? And how much ammunition do these disclosures give regulators in their quest to rein in Google? We asked the experts.

With the massive shift to streaming throughout the past year, connected TV (CTV) represents the next wave of growth in programmatic buying. In 2021, $9.5 billion of television advertising is going to be traded through programmatic auctions powered by DSPs and ad exchanges. The open internet, by contrast, will be a $56 billion category this […]

“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 Chris Kane, founder at Jounce Media. Depending on when you start the clock, we’re now two to three years into the first wave of supply path optimization (SPO). Here’s what we’ve learned […]

At long last, Google released its sellers.json file. And the world was 5% grateful, in line with the level of completeness of Google’s file. This week on The Big Story, the AdExchanger team welcomes Jounce Media founder Chris Kane to talk about what’s missing in Google’s seller.json file. And senior editor Sarah Sluis, who spoke […]