“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 Alastair Boyle, global client partner and head of strategy at Essence. Although artificial intelligence (AI) can help advertisers be more compassionate, it isn’t without potential pitfalls. I have previously argued […]
Programmatic wasn’t to Apple’s taste, but advertising isn’t so bad if you’re the one driving the bus. After killing off iAd in January, Apple on Wednesday shared its plans, notably in advance of its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, to completely change the way its App Store operates – namely with the introduction of paid search […]
Kim Kardashian and pop star Taylor Swift are the only people with more social followers than Ellen DeGeneres. The popular talk show host’s brand transcends demographics and geographies, which has spurred a deeper shift into digital despite Ellen’s TV ratings strength. In May, Ellen Digital Ventures and Warner Bros. Television launched the Ellen Digital Network […]
Media rebates and other nontransparent business practices by US agencies are pervasive, according to a long-awaited study from investigative firm K2 Intelligence that was released Tuesday. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) commissioned the study last year in light of mounting marketer concerns about undisclosed media agency revenues. Read the full report. Of the 117 […]
HookLogic, which places ads on its retail clients’ ecommerce sites, on Tuesday released two products that expand the reach of its ad-serving capabilities. The company will place ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook, and has introduced the attribution tool HookLogic 360 to measure within its retail network. It also revealed a unique way […]
With additional reporting by Sarah Sluis. Mobile app marketing platform Fiksu was quietly acquired last Wednesday by an obscure holding company for an undisclosed sum. But it’s a fate that could have been avoided. Fiksu’s cautionary tale has multiple chapters. It’s the story of what happens when a company pegs its future to the dynamics […]
Intent data for a hotel might look very different than it does for a shampoo manufacturer. Whereas luxury and travel marketers have direct access to transaction data that can be used to target and upsell customers, CPG manufacturers often sell at the SKU level through retailers, which retain the purchase data. CPG advertisers need granular […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Bryan Noguchi, senior vice president and media director at R2C Group. The recent acquisition of TiVo by the company Rovi triggered an odd memory for me. There was an off-leash beach near our apartment […]
Boasting about double- or triple-digit mobile growth is a staple of every ad platform earnings report. But peer deeper and actual mobile revenues for advertising companies differ widely, ranging from 20% to nearly 90% of total revenue. But mobile revenue – and revenue growth – doesn’t neatly correlate to success. Sometimes mobile revenue growth reflects […]
Salesforce dropped $2.8 billion on ecommerce platform Demandware on Wednesday, which will underpin the creation of Salesforce’s latest business line: Commerce Cloud. The deal catapults Salesforce into the ecommerce space – a tech category largely dominated by enterprise competitors like SAP/hybris and IBM/WebSphere, though Salesforce first dabbled in ecommerce in 2012, when it acquired site […]
Data figured centrally in Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign operations. Hillary Clinton is running a similar playbook. Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz both leaned heavily on technology-enabled voter analysis. But Donald Trump isn’t interested in the data-gathering infrastructure many see as a necessary piece of modern presidential campaigning. “I’ve always felt it was overrated,” […]
Kelly Liyakasa contributed. What a month for Facebook’s ad business. Late Thursday and early Friday, Facebook signaled plans to serve more ads to nonusers on its Facebook Audience Network (FAN). The company also moved to shutter two other ad tech components: its LiveRail exchange (parts of which had already been sunsetted) and its Facebook Exchange […]
Google is cracking open the gates on its AdWords demand. Its giant pool of search buyers will be able to dip into other exchanges when they need to find a user for retargeting campaigns. The move was buried in a blog post about mobile innovation Tuesday. The change makes Google far more open, benefiting buyers, […]
Ari Bluman, a highly-regarded digital media exec whose passion was only rivaled by his bluntness, has passed away after a long fight with cancer. He was 44. To those who knew him, Bluman was a “man of conviction” who “lived his beliefs” and practiced “radical candor” in order to “improve the industry he loved and […]
The long-rumored demise of Facebook’s desktop FBX will finally arrive. The social media giant will shut off its desktop retargeting tool Nov. 1. Partners buying through the FBX API will have to use a different one, said Matt Idema, Facebook’s VP of product monetization. Current partners include AppNexus, Criteo, AdRoll and MediaMath, among others. “FBX […]
The dander was up at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads IO in New York on Tuesday as the CEOs of two ad blockers engaged in a contentious debate with two prominent adversaries about the rock-and-hard-place situation publishers presently find themselves in. “It might be ironic that an ad blocker can really play a very important role in […]
A new Snapchat campaign from 20th Century Fox for “X-Men: Apocalypse” will drive awareness and ticket sales for the movie’s Friday premier. Snapchat has run plenty of branding-oriented campaigns, but this new effort is one of very few forays that include a direct-response component (in the form of a Fandango e-commerce call to action), a […]
It’s hard to scroll through Facebook without encountering some short-form video from NowThis (like Donald Trump “awkwardly sort of apologizing” to Fox News host Megyn Kelly) in your news feed, and the socially distributed media company wants it that way. Founded four years ago by BuzzFeed and HuffPo execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau, NowThis […]
After decades of specializing in hardware and on-premise servers, IBM is emphasizing its new-wave agency IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX), a mashup of design, systems integration, analytics and the Internet of Things, with billings in the billions. IBM iX made three digital, design and brand agency acquisitions in a single week this winter when it snapped […]
Publishers are still working out journalism on mobile devices. While basic responsive design is usually a given today, mobile article formats haven’t dramatically changed. Most innovation happens on platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover – not on owned-and-operated sites. Which is why Quartz’s app, a conversational news app launched in February, is a […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) took the wraps off of its anti-fraud certification program on Monday, the culmination of more than a year and a half of foundation and coalition building. The program allows members of the digital supply chain – buyers, sellers and third parties – to earn a seal in exchange for proving […]
The web gets surfed and apps get downloaded. That’s the way it generally works. But Android Instant Apps – the ability to stream apps without having to install them – changes the math on that equation. Google trotted out its new app regime at its I/O developers conference on Wednesday amongst other flashier fare – everything from […]
Viacom and American Express on Tuesday announced Vantage Intent – a Viacom product powered by AmEx – to help advertisers use purchase intent to find audiences across TV, digital and social. As a premium offering within the data and audience platform Viacom Vantage, Vantage Intent is designed to analyze roughly $1 trillion worth of AmEx’s […]
SAP entered the digital advertising market this week, creating a DSP and DMP from scratch it’s dubbing SAP Exchange Media (XM). Wolfgang Faisst, co-founder and head of SAP XM, acknowledged that despite an ecosystem of “thousands of ad tech companies,” SAP decided to step up because of demand for end-to-end integration. Because SAP XM connects […]
As some industry insiders speculated, IBM is starting to merge its Weather Co. asset with its cognitive supercomputer Watson, a move that will benefit its marketing cloud and commerce businesses. “Everyone wondered why an IT company like IBM would make such an acquisition, a company that produces forecasts for 2.2 billion locations every 15 minutes,” […]
Facebook’s head of ad tech, David Jakubowski, will participate in a panel discussion on sell-side impressions at the May 24 CLEAN ADS I/O conference in New York. As Facebook expands its Audience Network, it faces a number of challenges. Keeping out fraud. Achieving high viewability. Ensuring off-site placements still drive performance. By directly integrating with publishers versus […]
Since its split from PayPal – and the $925 million divesture of its enterprise technology business last summer – eBay has been relatively silent. But judging by its latest quarterly earnings in late April, eBay is busy rethinking its business strategy. The ecommerce marketplace surpassed some analysts’ expectations when it posted a 6% revenue increase […]
Eliza Nevers, Christian Calderon and Michael Oiknine will participate in a panel discussion on mobile fraud at the May 24 CLEAN ADS I/O conference in New York. AdExchanger: What’s the single biggest thing marketers contending with mobile ad fraud should be focused on? MICHAEL OIKNINE, CEO of Apsalar: Fraud has become such a problem in large part […]
Andy Kauffman, Marriott’s VP of digital marketing, loves running tests. “We’re very comfortable failing as long as we learn from that and iterate going forward,” said Kauffman, who oversees product and digital brand strategy for Marriott.com. “It may be an overused term, but we really do embrace a test-and-learn approach.” There are dozens of multivariate […]
Activision Blizzard, the gaming and interactive entertainment brand behind the “Call of Duty” franchise, and which acquired Major League Gaming (MLG.tv) for $46 million in January, is betting that e-sports will go mainstream. Its media imprint, Activision Blizzard Media Networks, aims to build the “ESPN of e-sports,” spearheaded by former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein. On […]
