Both Publicis Groupe’s Zenith and WPP’s GroupM have lowered their 2017 ad spend forecasts, due to cost-cutting clients and slow economic growth in global markets. Zenith projects 4% growth for the global ad market by the end of the year, down from its original forecast of 4.2%. GroupM revised its 4.4% forecast down to 3%, […]
The podcast industry is about to take a bite out of a formerly forbidden fruit when Apple shares its podcast listener data with publishers this fall, and it’s sure to be a hot topic at the IAB’s annual podcast upfront in New York City on Thursday. In June, Apple said it would share aggregated online […]
At agencies, “centers of excellence” are on the outs. Instead, holding companies are moving the specialists who once powered their analytics hubs and trading desks closer to client work by embedding them in account teams at their operating agencies. “The idea is to infuse a data-driven philosophy and culture within agencies and support [them] not […]
LinkedIn on Wednesday launched the LinkedIn Audience Network, a platform enabling advertisers to serve sponsored content on sites and apps beyond its own feed. These properties include desktop placements on parent Microsoft’s properties like MSN and Outlook.com, as well as on third-party publishers through integrations to exchanges like MoPub, Google’s AdX, Rubicon and Sharethrough. LinkedIn […]
Location-based apps are getting an unexpected reprieve from Apple’s blue bar mandate, an overlay at the top of the phone screen designed to tell users how and when apps are using their location data. In the fifth beta of iOS 11 (the mobile operating system is set to ship Sept. 13), Apple reversed course on […]
The second-price auction is crumbling. All the major exchanges/SSPs – with the exception of Google AdX – are rolling out or are deep in experiments with first-price header bidding auctions. The tests vary in aggressiveness and scope from exchange to exchange, with AppNexus, Index Exchange and OpenX leading the charge, and with visions of much […]
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 […]
Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. After graduating Stanford in 2010 with a degree in math and computational sciences, Anneka Gupta took her first software engineering job with a company called Rapleaf. That was seven years ago, and she’s still there – though the company and its positioning have changed utterly. […]
Many advertisers want reach, but when Canada Dry executed a campaign with Spotify and Adobe, it optimized against a softer metric: mindset. “We don’t think of consumers as just 18-49-year-olds or young millennials,” said Brit Sundberg, programmatic media and data strategy manager for Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which owns Canada Dry. “We think of our […]
In April, Verizon joined the ranks of Apple, Samsung, Citi and other enterprises when it hired its first chief customer experience officer. For the role, it tapped Disney and Capital One alum Scott Zimmer to help connect the dots between all channels that Verizon consumers come across. Unlike CRM, which originated in the late ’90s […]
Engaged readers make for loyal subscribers. The New York Times’ mobile app, which the publisher once feared would cannibalize its desktop subscriber rate, has proven to be the watering hole where many of the Times’ young, engaged readers hang out. Readers within the app rank among the most loyal and committed, in terms of the […]
Google’s latest anti-fraud measure aims to stamp out ad fraud by clawing back money from the exchanges where its DSP purchased fraudulent inventory. In Q4, DoubleClick Bid Manager will give advertisers the option to buy only from exchanges that will refund media spend for fraudulent inventory. Over the past month, Google’s DSP has issued advertisers […]
There’s been no shortage of ad tech M&A lately, and video’s been one of the biggest drivers of deal activity. “Thirty-six months ago, YouTube MCNs [multichannel networks] were the video solution of choice to reach audiences with compelling content,” said Elgin Thompson, managing director for investment bank Digital Capital Advisors. “Now, solutions intended to monetize […]
While Google claimed advertisers are returning to YouTube, new data from Standard Media Index reveals advertisers really did tighten their purse strings after the video platform’s brand safety scare. YouTube ad spend declined about 26% YoY in Q2, while ad spend spread across digital video platforms such as Hulu or network-owned video services, in comparison, […]
WPP cut its growth outlook from 2% to between flat growth and 1% during its Q2 2017 earnings call on Wednesday as clients, particularly CPGs, squeeze their marketing budgets. WPP pegged 2017 growth at 3% at the beginning of the year and reduced it to 2% in Q1. “The key factors here were the trifecta […]
DoubleVerify said Wednesday that private equity firm Providence Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. AdExchanger reported in July that DoubleVerify was exploring a sale that would have valued the company in the $350 million range. The exact size of the Providence stake was not disclosed in the deal announcement, but The […]
Media agencies know how to find the right person at the right time, thanks to the growth of programmatic. But they’re still trying to pin down how to send the right message. “You want the media to recognize where they were, but you also want to recognize where they were in the conversation,” said Zimm […]
Although the Video Player Ad-Serving Interface (VPAID) was meant to create better measurement in online video, it’s not that compatible with mobile video or OTT. “Everyone wants to measure [viewability] and they’re giving us VPAID tags, but VPAID doesn’t work in all environments,” said Soo Jin Oh, VP of client strategy for Cox Media’s digital […]
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 […]
WPP’s media-buying unit GroupM on Thursday unveiled its own global viewability standard for display and video ads on social media feeds. Display ads must be 100% in view for one second before a user scrolls past to count as viewable. Video ads still have to be 100% in view, but can be initiated as autoplay […]
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 […]
As with matrimony, the road to acquisition is paved with dalliances – some serious and some … less so. For evidence, look no further than the DSP Rocket Fuel’s impending sale to Sizmek for $145 million, announced on July 18. That deal is expected to finalize in days, after Rocket Fuel’s 30-day “go-shop” deadline, during […]
It’s been a tough year for SoundCloud. In July, the music streaming and discovery platform cut 40% of its workforce, or 173 employees, to keep the company afloat – for just another quarter. The company has long faced battles with music rights holders, an expensive problem that makes the streaming business tough to monetize. SoundCloud, […]
Snap again came in below analysts’ expectations for its Q2 earnings announced on Thursday. Year-over-year, revenue grew 153% to $181.7 million in Q2 and 200% to $331 million for the half year. Quarter-over-quarter, revenue was up roughly 21%. Analysts expected Q2 revenue to clock in at $186 million. Daily active users (DAUs) grew 21% year-over-year […]
Genesis Media revealed Thursday that it has merged with video ad platform Altitude Digital. The combined entity will do business as Genesis Media. Details of the transaction were not disclosed. The merger comes months after Altitude’s former CEO stepped down. The company, which started out as an ad net, was seeking to reposition itself as […]
Brands often have a long list of people they don’t want to show ads to: customers who just bought a product, current subscribers, non-subscribers or a group of people in their CRM database they know won’t qualify or be interested in a product. To avoid showing ads to people – a technique called audience suppression […]
As its sell-side business takes off due to the success of its Prebid open source wrapper, AppNexus’ buy-side operation is treading water relative to rivals such as The Trade Desk. Now the company is considering downplaying it further. In recent months, AppNexus executives have pondered using parts of its buy-side business as a bargaining chip […]
Tremor Video, one of the earliest video ad nets, has sold its demand-side business to the Israeli mobile ad platform Taptica for $50 million, the company revealed Monday. Tremor’s buy-side assets will be housed under an independent business division within Taptica called Tremor Video DSP. All of Tremor’s buy-side employees, led by longtime Tremor exec […]
It’s been six months since GroupM launched mPlatform to unify its agencies’ access to data and technology. Since its inception, the organization has rolled out a data repository containing insights tied to known consumer IDs and now agencies across GroupM and WPP are “building it into the fabric of their networks,” said mPlatform CEO Brian […]
Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, will leave the company for a role at AT&T, the WPP-owned media buying giant announced on Friday. “Brian has been a key contributor to 24/7, Xaxis and most recently GroupM, and we are sorry to see him go, but wish him every success in his new role,” GroupM […]
