If you’ve heard enough about publishers launching their own first-party media platforms … stop reading. And maybe take a vacation for the next year or two. Warner Music Group (WMG) is the latest to throw its hat in the ring, with the launch on Thursday of a rebranded agency and ad tech business geared specifically […]
The identity data market is heating up as companies collect more first-party data and marketers do their damnedest to maintain addressable advertising without cookies or mobile ad IDs. The category already includes the incumbent LiveRamp, major agency holding companies – Dentsu’s Merkle, IPG and Acxiom and Publicis plus Epsilon – and startups, such as Zeotap […]
The retail data revolution is constrained by its laser-focus on advertising, if you ask Brian Archey, Conagra Brand’s sr. director of data science and analytics. Clean room data environments are the playgrounds of digital marketers, who use them for audience extension and analytics. But these cloud-based services hold more promise as business intelligence tools, Archey […]
Unified ID 2.0 testing could hit a serious snag in Europe. Although beta testing of UID2 in the US and Canada is already well underway, multiple sources tell AdExchanger that The Trade Desk is having trouble lining up an independent administrator to govern and police the use of UID2 in territories where GDPR is the […]
Wall Street prognosticator Dan Salmon said last month at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO conference that “every consumer-facing company will become an advertising company.” And here’s the latest example: On Wednesday, Nu Skin, a publicly traded multilevel marketing (MLM) company that sells skincare products and supplements, acquired mobile commerce startup Mavely. Terms of the deal were not […]
At a critical time for the digital advertising industry – and with lawmakers keeping a close eye on ad tech – the IAB currently has no public policy presence in Washington, DC. AdExchanger has learned that the team’s head, Dave Grimaldi, EVP for public policy at the IAB for nearly six years, stepped down in […]
AMEX is tuning into “shoppertainment.” On Tuesday, American Express Ventures, the credit card company’s venture capital group, invested in Firework, a live shopping and video ad tech company that works with brands and merchants to create TikTok-style videos featuring products with direct sales and add-to-cart functionality. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Firework was […]
The twentieth century saw very little disruption for category-leading brands. Del Monte fruit, Nabisco biscuits, Gold Medal flour, Sherwin-Williams paint, Gillette razors, Lipton tea, Ivory soap – across practically every consumer business, America’s top brands in 1923 were the same category leaders 60 years later. But nearly one century on, those rankings are starting to […]
Pokémon Oreos, limited edition Sour Patch Kids, Heinz Halloween outfits and McDonald’s BTS meals. As brands go all-in on ecommerce and digital data, there’s been a notable recent uptick in their efforts to acquire first-party ecom data by dangling personalized or limited-edition products. Savvy kids might even call them thirsty, even as they enter their […]
Gartner’s fourth annual Magic Quadrant for buy-side ad tech in a nutshell: Keep your eye on Amazon. Amazon is ascending into the stratosphere, where it’s now rubbing shoulders in the “leader” category alongside Google and The Trade Desk. Rounding out the leader quadrant you’ll find Adobe, Amobee, Adform and Mediaocean. MediaMath, Criteo, Verizon Media (ahem, […]
The Trade Desk spent the last year and a half signing up a host of partners to support the Unified ID 2.0 program – but none of that means much without getting brand marketers involved. Most of UID2’s supporters so far have been ad tech companies and online publishers, which makes sense. Ad tech players don’t […]
The market for first-party cloud data services has exploded. InfoSum raised $65 million in August at a valuation of $300 million, up from $100 million after a funding round last year. Brian Lesser left AT&T-owned Xandr last December to serve as InfoSum’s CEO. And then there’s Snowflake, the cloud data company that went public last […]
“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 Allison Schiff, managing editor at AdExchanger. It’s part of a series of perspectives from AdExchanger’s editorial team. A vortex of bad news is swirling around Facebook. First, there was last month’s […]
Get your mop and vacuum ready, because the clean room craze is only getting started. Amazon on Tuesday launched the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), its cloud-based clean room product, from beta. Marketers can now integrate AMC with the Amazon demand-side platform (DSP) for campaign measurement and analytics. AMC is built on the Amazon Web Services […]
On Friday, a New York judge unsealed most of the Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google – and the devil is in the unredacted details. According to the judge, P. Kevin Castel, Google’s argument that the filing needed to be redacted for privacy reasons didn’t hold water. The multistate suit alleges anticompetitive ad tech policies and […]
It’s a post-ATT world, and Facebook is still figuring out how to live in it. On Wednesday, Facebook shared an update about what it’s doing to triage its data signal losses due to Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework, including the release of several new measurement-focused products. Facebook needs to make moves like these pronto. Formerly immutable truths […]
Snowflake, the cloud data services company, launched a Media Cloud on Tuesday, bringing together customers and businesses with specific needs related to media and advertising. The new Media Cloud is a suite of data products and integrations for services such as measurement and attribution, identity resolution, profile enrichment and advertising activations. Experian’s identity data and […]
In the wake of Nielsen losing its National and Local TV accreditation from the Media Rating Council, networks are eyeing alternative measurement companies. Sitting within many of these data sets is automated content recognition (ACR) tech. ACR tech captures and interprets audio and video snippets on a TV, helping data companies understand the totality of […]
Developers have been reporting allegedly strange behavior from AppLovin’s MAX Unity SDK. At least one developer discovered that MAX, AppLovin’s in-app monetization solution, appears to have been capturing iOS 15 postbacks for installs generated by other ad networks automatically and without permission. The tip was shared anonymously with the mobile ad industry forum Mobile Dev […]
Let us help you serve yourself. That’s the accelerating trend in fast-food chains, car dealerships, remote work life and, yes, in ad tech. The ascendancy of the self-serve DSP is here, according to the latest Advertiser Perceptions DSP wave. The report is based on a survey of 336 brand and agency advertisers who spend at […]
This is part one of a two-part deep dive series on the changing face of attribution. Facebook’s had a tough time of it recently. There was the explosive Wall Street Journal Facebook exposé, whistleblowing on Capitol Hill and the stock market’s reaction, which shaved tens of billions off Facebook’s valuation in a single day. But […]
First-price auctions are coming to Google AdSense. The change will go into effect later this year, Google shared in a blog post on Thursday. Google Ad Manager and AdMob have already switched to a first-price auction. Though not nearly as momentous as when Google flipped the switch for Ad Manager, the AdSense change signals that […]
Sustainable digital media business models exist – just look at Dotdash. Dotdash acquired Meredith at a $2.7 billion valuation Wednesday to form a new media business to be called Dotdash Meredith. At first glance, the two entities coming together feels like a marriage of opposites: a century-old magazine media company and a digital native. But […]
Mobile ad platform AppLovin loves acquiring companies. On Wednesday, AppLovin entered into a definitive agreement to buy MoPub from Twitter for $1.05 billion in cash. The move makes a lot of sense. Recently-public company AppLovin has been on a mobile ad tech buying spree, with more than a half-dozen acquisitions under its belt in the […]
What if all the privacy-safe, transparent, opt-in and consent-based digital advertising initiatives of the past few years turn out, a few years hence, to have been an entire waste of time? It’s not such a far-flung possibility. Privacy and consumer data solutions in the market have “hinged on the principles of notice and choice” for […]
Zeta Global acquired the digital survey technology company Apptness for $41 million, with up to $20 million in additional incentive-based payouts, according to an SEC filing on Monday. Apptness is a tool for publishers to create surveys and gather responses (and those golden email opt-ins) from users. Its main business is working with sites and […]
CivicScience, an online polling and survey data firm, took its first official step into the media arena on Monday with the launch of Rulo, an ad-buying and programmatic data business. CivicScience had considered an advertising business for years. Brand and publisher clients clamored for a data service, said Rulo CEO Doug Lauretano. Marketers and publishers […]
The internet is filled with newsletters, endless Twitter threads, white papers and SEO-based blog posts that claim to be resources for marketers and organizations investing in content and subscription businesses. But, at heart, most advice for how to create content isn’t authored by a respected writer in the space. And that content is often […]
Inmar Intelligence is adding mobile to its cart. On Thursday, the retailer-focused tech and data platform reached an agreement to acquire mobile ad platform Aki Technologies to take advantage of the high-growth retail media category. Aaron Kechley, Inmar’s GM of media and SVP of strategy, declined to share a deal price. But he did elaborate […]
Is this truly the end of last-click attribution? Google will no longer use last-click attribution as the default conversion model in Google Ads, its buy-side ad network, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The change will mean that, going forward, the default attribution method for any conversion touchpoint – a new product […]
