While ad tech companies have been accumulating VC funds and growing their stacks – and sales orgs – for a while, many took pains to rightsize over the past year or so. For some, the intent was to recapitalize or to prep for a sale if an IPO was a no-go. For others, it was […]
With Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to take effect in a few short months, smart publishers are leaving nothing to chance. Everyone in the supply chain could be held accountable if they aren’t compliant by May 25, and stakeholders at every level are in a frenzy to renegotiate contracts that protect themselves in […]
The past year was a tough one for agency holding companies. WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis Network and Havas posted little to no growth in 2017. The agency business has been in flux for years, but 2017 offered the “perfect storm” of challenges that caused growth to stutter, said Greg Paull, principal analyst […]
In 2017, five industry developments caused the ad tech industry to rethink how auction dynamics and quality controls should work in programmatic. These factors, detailed below, stem partly from header bidding, which made it harder for exchanges to win auctions and created a huge burden on DSPs to listen to more impressions. Supply chain issues […]
With the explosion of cross-screen TV, publishers and advertisers are clamoring for better discovery, personalization and cataloging of video content, and metadata is answering that call. Metadata, put simply, adds more context to data. Metadata in video can range from the contents of that video (e.g., colors, products, characters) to the way it’s classified (e.g., […]
Brand safety and transparency were top-of-the-agenda items for advertisers in 2017. But if this was the year of faux pas, mea culpas and the start of a move toward better controls, 2018 will be about buckling down. “The billions of ad dollars pulled off platforms in 2017 was a clarion wake-up call,” said Bill Marino, […]
In India, the media company behind its biggest news websites – Times of India, The Economic Times and the Mumbai Mirror – also offers apps and sites where users can make restaurant reservations, study for a test, stream music, buy stocks or track cricket scores. By building its own ad tech stack and developing mobile-heavy […]
Facebook and Google are no longer the ad tech acquirers they once were, and yet, the M&A landscape of 2017 is littered with their fingerprints. Media companies swallowed one other to add scale and massive amounts of content to stave off the duopoly’s dominance. Just look at Meredith-Time, AT&T-Time Warner and Disney-Fox. AT&T’s bid for […]
What interested AdExchanger readers most in 2017? The most popular stories of the year show that header bidding’s evolution remained a hot topic – server-to-server integrations, in-app header bidding and supply-path optimization. But 2017 was also a year of upheaval. Fallout from Apple’s Safari changes and Google’s YouTube changes concerned many readers. And there was […]
In 2017, many online publications realized that data and revenue diversification could drive success. And not being diversified enough could hurt their business. While many publishers tout their branded content businesses, programmatic provides a reliable, easily scalable revenue stream. Publishers that were programmatic holdouts, avoiding the main way advertisers do data-driven buying, course-corrected this year […]
AdColony’s Q4 revenue is expected to drop 5-10% more than it did last quarter and CEO Will Kassoy is out, effective immediately. The news caps off a “disappointing” year for AdColony, according to a release late Thursday from parent company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software, which rebranded to Otello on Monday). Kassoy, who joined Otello/Opera […]
Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. 2018 will see the same amount of deal activity as 2017 as the field of potential buyers expands, predicts Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen. The ad tech acquirers are much different from when Andersen joined […]
Twitter is gunning to become publishers’ platform partner of choice, and it’s leveraging live video as a way to capture content – and dollars – currently flowing to the duopoly. This week, Bloomberg debuted its 24/7 global news network TicToc on Twitter after reaching nearly 8 million people during Bloomberg TV’s live stream of three […]
Is enabling age targeting for online recruitment ads a form of discrimination? Facebook, called out by ProPublica and The New York Times on Wednesday for the practice, says no. “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason,” Rob Goldman, Facebook’s VP of ads, responded in a blog […]
Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Jonathan Suarez-Davis will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17-18. In the wake of several big acquisitions, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue. In this week’s episode we talk with its chief strategy officer, Jon Suarez-Davis, who joined the […]
Digital ad revenue continues to rise at the expense of traditional media. In the first half of 2017, digital advertising revenue grew 23% to $40 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCooper’s Internet Advertising Revenue report, released Wednesday. Read it. Digital’s growth represents a 22.6% increase from last year, and it’s the largest […]
The May deadline to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is swiftly approaching, and ad tech and security startups are forming a new industry: privacy tech. Companies like PageFair, Evidon, Prifender, Tealium and Segment hope to capitalize with GDPR compliance solutions for brands, publishers and even other ad tech vendors. The International Association […]
Dentsu-Aegis Network is buying its agency Merkle an early Christmas gift: San Francisco-based B2B media agency DWA. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. All DWA’s 150 employees will join Merkle, and the agency will operate as a Merkle company. “There’s a growing group of enterprise level, B-to-B and technology businesses, all moving at […]
For agencies, managing and optimizing campaigns across walled gardens is no easy task. Because Facebook, Google, Snap, Twitter and Amazon each have their own ways of defining audiences and processes for optimizing spend, buyers have to launch campaigns multiple times across each of them for every client, without getting consistent insight into what’s working and […]
More marketers are moving programmatic strategy in-house, pushing agencies into an executional role, according to a study released by the Association of National Advertisers on Monday. Most marketers approach in-housing in a hybrid fashion, splitting responsibilities between their internal team and an external agency partner. Marketers increasingly are taking responsibility for strategy while agencies serve […]
Podcast publishers, rejoice: At long last, Apple has released the beta version of its podcast analytics tool. In June, Apple said it would share with podcast publishers aggregate online and offline listening behavior for episodes downloaded through iTunes and its Podcast player app. Previously Apple, which captures over half of all podcast listening, didn’t share […]
Since it began delivering makeup product lines in 2015, the London-based beauty startup Wunder2 demonstrates how savvy ecommerce companies can use Facebook targeting and video campaigns to push into retail distribution. Wunder2 follows in the footsteps of Facebook-centric startup brands like the mattress-in-a-box manufacturer Purple, which landed its first retail distribution deal last month, and […]
After weeks of buildup, Disney has finally pulled the trigger and will acquire several major assets from 21st Century Fox in a $52.4 billion all stock deal, announced Thursday. Those assets include 20th Century Fox’s film and TV studios, cable networks like FX and National Geographic, stake in foreign networks Star India and UK-based pay […]
Rubicon’s CEO Michael Barrett will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on January 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. Rubicon Project is in the midst of a risky move – one that CEO Michael Barrett thought he could avoid when he joined nine months ago. Because of customer outcry, the company stopped charging […]
Many digital publishers have had nothing but bad news to share this Q4 – from golden child BuzzFeed laying off staff to Mashable being sold for a bargain-basement price. But The New York Times is telling an upbeat story about its business with a new storyteller at the helm: Sebastian Tomich. Tomich, the company’s former […]
Smart-TV manufacturer Vizio is back in action following February’s settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over its lack of a consumer opt-out for data collection. Since then, Vizio’s data division, Inscape, has been busy courting vendor and agency clients after Vizio revised its privacy policy, said Jodie McAfee, SVP of sales and marketing for Inscape. […]
Champagne used to be reserved for special occasions, but Moet Hennessy USA wants consumers to see its luxury products as more of an everyday utility. The company teamed up with its creative agency, Rehab, and Amazon’s voice-activated service, Alexa, to create Bottles and Bubbles, a customized “skill” or application. Once users command Alexa to “open […]
By Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis and Kelly Liyakasa Programmatic has transformed the role of the media agency. When programmatic was new, trading desks formed within agencies and holding companies to incubate expertise. As the buying method matured and the trading desk business model came under scrutiny, clients demanded that talent be integrated with their […]
Publishers are getting ensnared in the filters used by many advertisers to combat the YouTube brand safety crisis. Earlier this year, many brands found their ads running next to offensive content on the video platform, prompting marketers and their agencies to enlist third-party monitoring. Now publishers as a whole are feeling the effects. The filters […]
Want to tap News Corp.’s first-party data to target ads across all of its properties? As of Tuesday, you can, thanks to the release of News IQ, which is a managed service (for now) ad platform owned and operated by News Corp. News IQ unifies inventory from publications as varied as The Wall Street Journal, […]
