Gaming is growing like gangbusters in a socially distanced world, but it’s not immune to macroeconomic trends. Take Activision Blizzard’s mobile gaming arm, King, home to the wildly popular Candy Crush franchise. Activision Blizzard, which also owns the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft franchises, reported its Q1 earnings on Tuesday after market close. […]
A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…
The story of Twitter’s first quarter is familiar: a strong start to the year … and then a rapid ad revenue decline in March as COVID-19 began to take hold. Twitter posted modest growth in Q1, a 3% YoY increase to $808 million, while total ad revenue was $682 million, up $3 million compared to […]
Facebook is far from immune to the economic effects of the coronavirus – but it’s doing fairly well, all things considered. The stock spiked more than 18% after hours on Wednesday on news that ad revenue grew 17% in the quarter YoY to $17.44 billion, which was better than expected. Still, ad revenue cratered over the […]
With no live sports on the schedule, AT&T lost nearly 900,000 paid subscribers across its premium TV business, which includes DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV. That’s nearly double the number of Q1 2019 paid subscriber losses, which were around 544,000. Total pay TV revenue was $10.5 billion, down 7.2%. Sports have long been considered paid […]
News flash to no one: The economy is going up in flames … but Netflix is on fire. Millions of people around the world are under stay-at-home orders, and lots of them are signing up for Netflix, which had its biggest quarter for user growth in Q1 with the addition of 15.77 million new paid […]
Direct response and improving its revenue products are top priorities for Twitter in 2020. Twitter, which reported more than respectable Q4 earnings on Thursday, plans to finally finish rebuilding its ad server – codename: Project Tao – during the first half of 2020, and roll out a revamped version of its mobile application promotion product (MAP). Last […]
Snap is super focused on improving its average revenue per user (ARPU) this year. Snap’s ARPU for North America is growing – up 31% year over year (YoY) in the fourth quarter of 2019 – but at $4.42, it still significantly lags Facebook’s, which topped $41 in Q4. On Tuesday, chief business officer Jeremi Gorman outlined […]
YouTube drove $15 billion in ad revenue in fiscal 2019, according to Alphabet’s Q4 and FY results, released Monday. Read the release. This is the first time Google has disclosed YouTube’s revenues, which have grown briskly over the past three years – from $8.2 billion in 2017 and $11.2 billion in 2018. Alphabet will now […]
Remember those “ad targeting-related headwinds” Facebook keeps talking about every quarter? They’re finally going to hit this year. Facebook experienced some effects in 2019 from global privacy regulations, privacy-focused changes made by mobile operating systems and browsers (Google did a thing) and its own privacy product rollouts. However, “the majority of the impact lies in […]
Seriously, folks, Netflix has no intention of monetizing with ads, ever. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings even referred to advertising as a form of exploitation on the company’s full year 2019 earnings call on Tuesday. “We want to be the safe respite where you can explore, you can get stimulated, have fun and enjoy – and […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Strong Cards Cardlytics shares jumped almost 40% on Wednesday, pushing its market cap above $1 billion. The company partners with banks to create cash-back offers – so banking app users can be served promotional deals, and the discount is credited by the bank when […]
Facebook’s ongoing PR nightmare didn’t impact its quarterly earnings – yet again. On Wednesday, Facebook reported $17.7 billion in revenue for the third quarter, up 28.6% year over year, beating the consensus by a cool $300 million. The company’s stock rose nearly 5% in after-hours trading. Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the earnings call with a […]
WPP has struggled to grow in recent years, as key clients in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) reduce spend and its traditional creative agencies underperform. While the tech vertical and its media business are relative bright spots, they aren’t big enough to buttress the entire holding company. WPP’s Q3 performance, which the company reported Friday, […]
Twitter’s stock fell like a lead balloon Thursday morning – down as much as 20% in pre-market trading – after reporting an anemic third quarter. According to Twitter, revenue took a hit in Q3 thanks to a bit of seasonality in July and August and a few ad product-related “bugs” that it’s working to fix. […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Welcome To The Jungle Safari introduced a new private browsing mode that disables the now-common tactic among news companies of blocking incognito traffic, which they do because readers use private browsing to avoid paywalls. “This will lead to a hard paywall for all readers […]
The streaming wars are heating up, and Roku is on a tear. On Wednesday, Roku posted its best second quarter results since going public, with overall revenue up 59% year over year to $250.1 million, and 1.4 million new subscribers since last quarter. Active accounts now stand at 30.5 million. Average revenue per user was […]
You haven’t seen any marketing for Disney+ yet, but you’re about to. Disney is on the verge of a marketing blitz for its direct-to-consumer streaming service. The campaign will kick off in late August and run across traditional, digital and Disney owned-and-operated channels leading up to the service’s planned launch date on Nov. 12. It’s […]
Pinterest had a great second quarter – which is also only its second quarter as a public company – but don’t expect the sort of numbers you see from Google, Facebook or even Snapchat. “When will we be as mature as Google and Facebook? I think it’s a long road ahead,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann told investors […]
Device sales overall are still on the decline at Apple, but services revenue is starting to grow like gangbusters. Apple generated $11.45 billion in revenue from services during its fiscal third quarter, which ended in June, the company told investors on Tuesday. That’s a 13% year-over-year increase. Services accounted for 21% of Apple’s overall revenue, which […]
Twitter is super focused on direct response advertising, the company told investors Friday on its second quarter earnings call. To that end, it’s in the process of deprecating legacy formats, including carousel ads, and investing in more DR-focused ad offerings, such as its mobile app promotion (MAP) product. Twitter plans to also retire other formats […]
Uncertainty around government regulation or challenges around monitoring user-generated content didn’t slow down Google as its ad revenue hit $32.6 billion in Q2, up 16% YoY. (Its parent company Alphabet’s revenue rose 19% YoY to $38.9 billion in Q2.) YouTube was the No. 2 driver of revenue growth in both Q2 and Q1, CFO Ruth […]
Facebook’s stock dipped slightly on Wednesday morning after the Federal Trade Commission formally announced its $5 billion dollar fine over privacy violations. But by the time Facebook reported its second quarter earnings after the bell, the stock had recovered and then some. Facebook is up 3.2% after beating expectations and raking in the ad revenue. […]
Turns out people really like those Snapchat baby face and gender swap filters. The app’s daily active users hit 203 million in Q2, up 8% year over year, and revenue was far better than expected at $388 million, a 48% increase from this time last year, according to the company’s Q2 earnings disclosure. This is […]
Publicis Groupe grew 0.1% to $2.5 billion in Q2, returning to positive growth after a rocky first quarter. Organic growth was down 0.7% for the first half of the year. Despite the positive quarter, investors were skeptical of Publicis’ $4.4 billion acquisition of Epsilon, which closed in July. Many wondered why the company has such […]
Holding your breath on ads coming to Netflix? Time to let it out. There will be no advertising on Netflix anytime soon if ever, the company said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday in advance of its second quarter earnings call. “We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our […]
Nearly everything Disney does these days seems to be for the love of DTC. CEO Bob Iger told investors on Wednesday that acquiring 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets for $71 billion will create synergies for Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming vision. “I feel really confident in our plans and the plans we’ve announced, because of what we […]
It’s out with the old and in with the new at Nielsen. Revenue for Nielsen’s Watch segment decreased 3.5% to $881 million in Q4, while Buy segment revenue declined 8.4% to $777 million. But freshly minted CEO David Kenny has a plan. Kenny, who joined Nielsen from IBM Watson in November 2018, wants to bring Nielsen’s […]
Meredith’s overall Q2 ad revenue grew like gangbusters, but digital ad revenue performance was draggy – and will likely be the same next quarter, the company told investors Monday. Advertising-related revenue nearly doubled year over year to $488.9 million – a 111% increase – and digital represents more than $400 million of Meredith’s revenue for its national media […]
Facebook is getting beaten up by a punishing news cycle – but, for its part, it’s beating the street. The stock surged more than 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Revenue for the fourth quarter clocked in at $16.91 billion, a 30.4% year-over-year (YoY) increase. Nearly all of that – $16.64 billion – was thanks […]
