Cloudflare

WPP’s earnings were less bad than expected; Versant’s, meanwhile, weren’t great either; and Cloudflare gets into the AEO game.

Historically, non-human traffic was viewed on a spectrum from benign to intentional fraud. But AI agents represent a legitimate audience that brands will have to understand and engage.

Criteo has two potential buyers; publishers consider blocking Google’s joint AI-scraping/search-indexing bot; and Microsoft’s billion-player gaming goal might make sense for mobile.

OpenAI’s hiring priorities hint at the nascent ad platform’s future direction. Plus: Cloudflare unveils tools to categorize crawlers.

Retail media ramps up CTV partnerships to extend ecommerce audiences off-site; LaLiga’s piracy crackdown hits legit sites in Spain; and OpenAI mulls third-party ad measurement.

After pulling back on moderation, Instagram gets flooded with antisemites; BidSwitch builds a programmatic way for AI bots to pay to crawl websites; and nearly half of Gen Z dislikes AI content.

Cloudflare restricts how bots can scrape content; TiVo’s customer base stays loyal, even as TiVo leaves the DVR business; and Nestlé announces a stark reduction in headcount.

Google’s SSP tries to cut out its DSP ahead of a possible ad tech breakup; Perplexity’s head of ads skips town; and Amazon’s search ad pause flooded the market with big spenders.

Publishers like News Corp are walking a fine line—suing AI companies for scraping their work while cutting multimillion‑dollar licensing deals with others.

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur didn’t mince his words when declaring unauthorized generative AI scraping of publisher content “theft, full stop.”

Google’s former SSP practices are the legal gift that keeps giving; Perplexity has been disregarding robots.txt files; and ads prop up a large chunk of the US economy.

As the quality of answer engines improves, people will click through to publisher websites less often. The solution isn’t to wage war against AI. It’s time to build a sustainable future for all stakeholders.

From one perspective, publishers are up a creek thanks to the rise of generative AI search; the impact on discoverability and traffic is palpable. But that doesn’t mean publishers can’t adapt and find new ways to make money, says Mediavine CRO Amanda Martin.

Amazon’s DSP enjoys many advantages; More on the Cloudflare controversy; the European Commission moves forward with its age verification laws.

The IAB Tech Lab’s new initiative suggests regulations for how AI bots can access content, ensuring that publishers are fairly compensated.

Generative AI tech is hurting publisher search traffic, but it’s also helping pubs optimize their ad sales efforts. The head of publisher ad tech solutions for AWS explains how AI is transforming how advertisers value media and the implications for publishers large and small.

YouTube accounts are uploading recent Hollywood movies, racking up views while advertisers (and sometimes creators) remain in the dark. Plus: Could Cloudflare’s AI bot blockers provide a salve for digital media’s traffic declines?

Google challenges Cloudflare’s anti-scraping tech; are dupes plagiarism?; and web traffic is careening off a cliff.

Have agency holdcos put too many eggs in the AI basket?; Temu has come back to us now at the turn of the tariff tide; and Cloudflare wants to help sites from getting scraped.

For companies testing the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, another delay was starting to feel inevitable, even before Google shifted its deprecation deadline.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Floor Plan The Trade Desk will start undercutting SSP price floors in its bids starting next month, Insider reports. Publishers often set minimum asking prices for their ad inventory. But their SSPs then typically tack on their own costs on top of these […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Contextual Seed The contextual ad tech startup Seedtag raised $40 million, Business Insider reports. The Spanish company plans to add 30 employees and expand its US footprint. Before this round, Seedtag had raised $6 million to date. But contextual targeting is a buzzy category, […]