In Netflix’s original film “Like Father,” the cruise line Royal Caribbean literally sets the stage for the movie – the brand is actually part of the story. While this sort of product placement isn’t new, it’s coming at a time when content providers are trying to decrease their ad loads and experimenting with new ways […]
Major brands and global holding companies are preparing for a world without the Google ad ID. A month before GDPR, Google announced that in Europe it would no longer distribute the Google ID, an identifier attached to its ad server log files used to measure campaigns across the web. Any measurement of Google audiences in […]
Television advertising is turning gray, but TV data is here to brush in the color. At least that’s the take from Combe, the grooming and hair care product company that runs the Just for Men hair coloring brand. In the past couple of years, Just for Men’s media mix shifted from primarily TV to a […]
Few Hollywood icons have had a career as illustrious as Mickey Mouse, who made his silver screen debut in “Steamboat Willie” back in 1928. Now, his bosses at Disney-ABC have become more tech-savvy, reorganizing the company’s ad sales strategy to make magic in advanced TV advertising. About a year ago, Disney-ABC unified its ad sales […]
Just a few years ago, Roku focused on getting devices into as many households as possible. But at a certain point, Roku realized it had to do more to innovate and stay relevant in the over-the-top (OTT) battleground for ad dollars. Since then Roku has become an advertising titan. In its Q2 earnings call last […]
The Trade Desk recorded revenue of $112.3 million in Q2 2018, a 54% increase from the same period last year, according to the company’s earnings report released Thursday. That growth rate is identical to 2017’s annual growth rate, and the company’s retention rate topped 95% for the 18th consecutive quarter. On the company’s earnings call, […]
Blockchain advertising technology has been surfing a hype cycle that’s brought blockchain and cryptocurrencies to mainstream attention. But are blockchain companies ready for the spotlight? And what work needs to be done before marketers or publishers can begin buying and selling media on blockchain-based platforms? “It reminds me of early days of programmatic when different […]
Procter & Gamble’s overall advertising budget is still decreasing as the company pulls back on agency fees and services, but the world’s biggest ad spender has begun to return spend to working media, CEO David Taylor told investors during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. P&G has spent more than a year pushing new digital […]
Snapchat took a short-term revenue hit last year when it pivoted from its original direct branding business to a self-serve ad platform. But the low inventory prices and data and user-tracking features that have accompanied Snapchat’s programmatic transition are making the company more competitive with Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat’s improved measurability come as Facebook’s platform […]
The 2018 World Cup has featured an exciting range of upsets and contenders, but some World Cup marketers see early signs of trouble thanks to GDPR throwing a wrench into digital advertising and the absence of the US team. GDPR, which became law less than a month before the soccer tournament, is especially painful for […]
Facebook and Twitter each released new political advertising transparency tools on Thursday in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections, as the social platforms try to forestall the malicious electoral interference they enabled during the 2016 election. Facebook began archiving electoral and issue-based ads in May, so any ad by an active candidate or featuring […]
Google is reversing its policy for its consent management platform (CMP) that initially capped at 12 the number of vendors a publisher can list in opt-in messages, following critical feedback from publishers and the ad tech industry. The platform now has no limit. “The change being made now is in line with our priority of […]
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 […]
Google soon expects to join the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, which transmits consent across the ad tech ecosystem to serve data-driven ads under GDPR. Google said it will join once it has resolved technical and policy details so parts of its ad tech can operate with the framework. “We absolutely want to be […]
Acxiom intends to sell its marketing solutions division before moving to a potential sale of LiveRamp, because it believes selling them separately will drive more shareholder value, said sources close to the company. Interest in Acxiom and LiveRamp in particular heated up in March, after Salesforce bought the middleware tech company MuleSoft for $6.5 billion, […]
Google disclosed how it will help publishers obtain tracking consent from users during a call last week with the IAB Europe GDPR Transparency and Consent steering committee, and its approach could spell trouble for media and ad tech companies. The consent gathering tool, called “Funding Choices,” is in beta with some DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) […]
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 […]
The IAB Tech Lab, the research and development arm affiliated with the trade group, has acquired the nonprofit online identity consortium DigiTrust. Terms of the deal are unknown, though a key feature is the acqui-hire of Jordan Mitchell, DigiTrust’s founder and CEO, as the Tech Lab’s senior VP of members and operations. The Tech Lab […]
After Democrats won an unexpected cascade of seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday, liberal technologists and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are hoping to scale the programs behind those successful bids to other state races in 2018. Many of the data and technology products used by candidates in Virginia were backed by […]
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 […]
Safari may represent a relatively low share of browser traffic, but Apple browser’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) could have an outsized effect if it redefines which technology companies can access cookie data. ITP, a cross-site tracking restriction feature with the new iOS 11, builds on Apple’s pre-existing rejection of third-party cookies with a machine-learning-based algorithm […]
A year ago, the Democratic Party data-driven ecosystem, a network of consultants, liberal digital media agencies and campaign tech vendors, was confident it would hold the White House, flip the Supreme Court and maybe even reclaim a Senate majority. Now, there is a sense of urgency as Democrats up and down ballots seek to reclaim […]
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands are threatening steep investment pullbacks if higher standards aren’t met on marketing measurement and transparency. And those Fortune 500 CPGs, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Mondelez, Nestlé and Kraft, seem to be holding to their lines in the sand. In the past few weeks, holding companies like IPG, WPP and […]
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 […]
Ad tech isn’t the investment free-for-all it used to be, but that doesn’t mean the category is dead. True, some types of ad tech have lost their luster. In April, the ad tech investment firm Luma Partners, for the first time since it started doing Lumascapes five years ago, registered fewer new DSPs, SSPs and […]
Location policy changes for Apple’s iOS 11 update coming in September and Android O, which is still in developer preview, will alter the way consumers dole out location data and have ripple effects for mobile marketing. The most consequential new policy will be on iPhones and iPads, where a blue bar at the top of […]
Blockchain, an unmodifiable and unbreachable digital ledger, was conceived 10 years ago to support the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But it has since seeped into new categories, jumping from finance to health care and, more recently, digital advertising. It’s doing so with the backing of big companies like IBM and Comcast, as well as smaller startups like […]
The slang phrase “I’ve got the receipts” has become a way to declare oneself the indisputable winner of an argument. Mobile shopping and analytics companies are learning to love the term as well. As image scanning and recognition software improves and the value of shopper data shoots up, a growing industry is devoted to accessing […]
While political news drives traffic and engagement, many DC-focused publishers are taking a hit as ad budgets fail to materialize. “There’s a real seasonal cycle for political advertising,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics and public affairs lead at the ad targeting firm Audience Partners. “But the legislative calendar is so messed up, it’s not leaving time for […]
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 […]
