The video player ad-serving interface definition (VPAID) standard, which was supposed to improve the delivery of digital video ads but struggled to hit its stride, will be sunsetted. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab revealed Thursday (read the blog post) that the unpopular nine-year-old video ad spec will be retired and replaced with two […]
AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley has been waiting 10 years for ad tech to become transparent. Less than a week after Rubicon Project slashed its take rate in half, to 10% to 12%, by doing away with buy-side fees, AppNexus said its fees are even lower. The company revealed it charges an 8.5% average to the […]
The push for ad tech fee transparency is in full swing. Last week, Rubicon Project got rid of its buy-side fees, which will cut its take rate in half. While removing buy-side fees will help Rubicon’s reputation with publishers (The Guardian sued Rubicon over the fees) and buyers, the real drive for transparency comes from […]
Snap said during its Q3 earnings call Tuesday that pricing pressure caused its CPMs to sink 60% year-over-year and 20% sequentially, as more advertisers switched from direct buys to using its self-serve programmatic platform. “The auction transition continued to impact Snap ad pricing during the quarter,” said chief financial officer Drew Vollero. “Most of [the […]
American Express on Tuesday launched a data-driven business division called Amex Advance. Along with it Amex is debuting a data platform designed to let marketers run custom audience segmentation and predictive modeling against Amex’s own first-party data. Amex Advance lets marketers and merchant partners use American Express’ database of deidentified cardholders to extrapolate insights about […]
Do ads for STD self-testing kits count as sexual content? If medical and recreational marijuana use is legal in California, why can’t a cannabis advertiser geotarget Californians over the age of 21 on the large social platforms? These are the gray areas that certain categories of advertisers have to navigate on a daily basis, and […]
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 […]
The ad buyers who will be hurt by the adoption of Ads.txt aren’t giving up without a fight. Publishers are being deluged with emails from “agencies” and “digital marketing solutions” companies threatening to stop buying inventory unless they’re added to the Ads.txt file. The New York Times, Wenner Media, Intermarkets and LittleThings all confirmed to […]
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 […]
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a looming reality set to take effect on May 25, 2018 – and the digital advertising industry is just starting to get woke. But misconceptions about the regulation are pervasive. And despite the substantial amount of work that companies need to do in order to prepare for and […]
One of the many pressures facing holding companies is increased competition from management and IT consultancies like Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers. While consulting firms may not be their biggest threat today, tomorrow could be another story. Holding companies tend to work from the bottom up, focusing on marketing initiatives like creative or media strategy […]
The longtime CEO of TV ad platform Extreme Reach is surrendering that role, AdExchanger has learned. CEO John Roland is “stepping down” from the company he has helmed for more than a decade, the company said in a statement. According to an AdExchanger source with knowledge of the situation, the Extreme Reach board voted to […]
This is the second in a series on demystifying the best practices in media today. Read the first on audience suppression. Frequency management, which first emerged when advertisers tried to calculate reach and media impact of their traditional TV buys, is tricky even for the most sophisticated marketers. And it’s gotten trickier with the advent […]
Thanks to its smart TVs, LG Electronics controls a channel that can bring the granularity of digital advertising into the world of connected TV. But LG is a consumer electronics manufacturer, not an advertising company, and in recent years it has learned how to accommodate a new business practice. Its first foray into ad monetization […]
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 […]
Publicis Groupe on Wednesday launched Publicis Spine, a technology and data platform that gives its agencies access to a universal ID and a centralized team of engineers, analysts and strategists. Led by former Starcom Global Brand President Lisa Donohue, Spine is the backbone of Publicis’ goal to make business transformation a core service for clients. […]
KFC had lost its way. While the fast-food chain was growing internationally, by 2013, it had faced seven straight years of quarterly store traffic declines in the US, causing it to lose 40% of its business. Fueling the struggle was an out-of-touch brand, said CMO Kevin Hochman at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in […]
Since launching a proprietary YouTube measurement system last January (and later expanding it to DoubleClick and the Google Display Network), Google has been pretty buttoned up about its Ads Data Hub. However, Google VP of Product Management Brad Bender tells AdExchanger that adoption of the audience management tool is strong. Google claims Ads Data Hub […]
Agency holding company stocks are down. Many of the biggest advertisers are struggling. Omnicom agency Hearts & Science thinks it’s found the solution to serve clients in an era of disruption. “It’s a highly commoditized media marketplace, and will only get more so because of automation,” said Frances Ralston-Good, UK CEO of Hearts & Science. […]
The changes that Facebook is making in response to its ongoing Russia-linked ads predicament will impact every advertiser on the platform, not just political advertisers. For one, Facebook’s effort to introduce more transparency into political advertising could start bubbling up information that brands can use as competitive intel to track trends and make suppositions about […]
When The Clorox Company made its first big investment in programmatic a few years ago, it helped the CPG double its market share in the cleaning category in just a few months. But a heavy focus on bottom-funnel, promotional ads caused its brand to deteriorate, said Eric Reynolds, CMO of Clorox at the ANA Masters […]
Despite a year marred by brand safety blunders, measurement errors and targeting missteps, marketers are mending ties with Facebook and Google as they place blame for the industry’s many issues on its ad tech underbelly. “Just 25% of CMOs’ digital media investment reaches target audiences,” said ANA CEO Bob Liodice during his opening remarks at […]
Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard is pleased overall with the response to his tough talk of the past year. And he’s optimistic that Facebook, Google and others will meet P&G’s deadline to align on third-party measurement standards and have their methods audited by the Media Ratings Council by the end of this […]
Around this time last year, the chatter around artificial intelligence (AI) was escalating as Salesforce and IBM unveiled splashy programs to help advertisers make sense of massive and complex reams of data, in order to enable more personalized marketing. Oracle, too, announced the creation of Adaptive Intelligence Apps at the time, and at its annual […]
Google is swooping in for TV advertising dollars with a slate of TV-related product releases and updates. While Google revealed these products on Tuesday during its Publisher Leadership Summit in Chicago, it will formally announce them during TV Week in mid-October. First up are TV Content Explorer and TV Modeled Forecasting, both of which are […]
Amazon is winning a growing share of CPG media dollars, and its September announcement that it would open an office in New York City to house a major expansion of its advertising platform business means the competition will only heat up. It comes as CPG brands pulling back on digital media undercut global agencies, marketing […]
Pinterest wants to own the moment when consumers have an idea of what they want, but haven’t committed to a specific product or brand. “People use Pinterest to plan their lives, from the everyday, like what am I going to cook tonight or wear to a party on Saturday, to milestones like weddings, kids’ birthday […]
Salesforce has set up a market of second-party data so advertisers can buy data directly from publishers. The subscription-based Salesforce Data Studio, which debuted on Wednesday, evolved out of the product Krux Link, a data-sharing platform Salesforce inherited when it bought the data management platform Krux. Salesforce’s goal is to give advertisers more validated data […]
Nielsen entered into a definitive agreement on Wednesday to acquire indie attribution company Visual IQ. Terms of the deal, expected to close in October, were not disclosed. The 10-year-old Visual IQ should enhance Nielsen’s measurement offering with deeper multitouch attribution. The goal is to give “advertisers, publishers and agencies a holistic platform that offers the […]
Megan Pagliuca, former boss of Omnicom-owned Accuen, has become the first-ever chief data officer of Hearts & Science, where she will lead the agency’s charge toward identity-based media buying. Pagliuca will oversee Hearts & Science’s tools and strategy that will put individual identities at the center of not just media execution, but brand strategy and […]
