For Vice Media, an edgy, youth-oriented publisher rooted in eccentricity, being brand-safe means giving advertisers enough control over their ad placements to keep the briefs coming. “There’s certain content brands would like to be associated with and certain content they would not,” said Andrew Smith, VP of digital for Vice Media. He noted that much of […]
8 p.m. Katy Perry. That’s all. 7:40 p.m. Google Preferred FTW Google Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl claimed Google Preferred (translation: Google’s top tier videos) has tripled its number of advertisers. Kyncl credited YouTube for turning publishers like BuzzFeed, Vice and AwesomenessTV into “daily destinations of can’t-miss programming.” Consumers watch over 1 billion of hours […]
Destination marketers get tripped up on attribution. A tourism board, like the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau (PMVB), for example, spans four counties across northeastern Pennsylvania and represents a consortium of hotels, restaurants and activity providers, which makes it difficult to gather real-time metrics on visitation. “Someone might click on an ad and visit our website, […]
Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]
Rumors that Google is considering adding a built-in ad-blocking feature to its Chrome browser elicited a mix of shouts and shrugs across the digital advertising landscape. The potential Chrome ad-blocking extension, first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, would block ad formats deemed unacceptable by the Coalition for Better Ads (CFBA), a cross-industry trade […]
Google rolled out a machine learning-powered display product called Smart display campaigns on Thursday. The product is now generally available to all advertisers buying native, image or text ads across the Google Display Network (GDN). Smart display campaigns are accessible via AdWords and reach more than 3 million GDN sites and apps on GDN now. […]
Burger King’s stunt to activate Google’s Home device with a 15-second TV spot is the first deliberate attempt by a brand to tie paid media with voice-activated search, raising questions about how brands should approach advertising on smart home devices. On Wednesday, the quick-serve restaurant ran a commercial in which an employee asks, “Okay, Google, […]
After its merger with Starwood, Marriott is doubling down on paid media to drive awareness for some of its new portfolio brands. One ad campaign, “Go Beyond,” which launched this week, commemorates Sheraton Hotels’ 80th year in business. “We are trying a lot of new things in digital including people-based marketing and sequential messaging with […]
The “last-look” advantage Google’s ad server gave to Google’s ad exchange so bothered publishers and exchanges that it gave rise to header bidding. As of this week, that advantage is no more, AdExchanger has learned. Google just reworked its auction so it no longer favors itself in the allocation of bids. A support document this […]
Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]
By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]
Ad-supported brand-unsafe content is on the rise. DoubleVerify, which validates tens of billions of advertiser impressions per month, has blocked 8 million ads from appearing on content pages classified as hate speech – up threefold since January. And according to keyword targeting tech platform Grapeshot, the amount of terrorism-related content it sees flowing through its systems […]
Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]
Adobe has rolled out an Advertising Cloud, a merger between its Adobe Media Optimizer products and the acquisition of video DSP TubeMogul, the company revealed Tuesday at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. Adobe Media Optimizer previously was housed under the Adobe Marketing Cloud and consisted mostly of search, dynamic creative and somewhat limited display […]
by Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis, James Hercher, Kelly Liyakasa and Ryan Joe Programmatic advertising comes in many flavors. A handful of brands load up to take their buying fully in-house. Many give their agency partners carte blanche. Other brands take ownership of the tech contracts and segmentation, while letting their agencies pull the […]
This is the second of three stories in a mini-series on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work that agencies do. The next installment will publish on Friday. Read the first story about Xaxis. As marketer interest in artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, Publicis.Sapient sees opportunity to provide guidance. It has a dedicated unit that provides AI-related advice […]
The Media Rating Council (MRC) will audit YouTube’s third-party measurement partners, Moat, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, Google revealed Tuesday in a blog post. While the MRC has audited several parts of Google’s ad-serving and search functions for years, YouTube wasn’t historically included, said George Ivie, the council’s CEO: “This will be a first-time audit […]
Since iCrossing entered the market as a search agency in 1998, digital spend has expanded to social, display and mobile, all of which are table stakes. As a result, iCrossing expanded into a full-service agency, eventually getting acquired by Hearst in 2010. Since then, it’s snagged AOR accounts for clients like Bayer, Church and Dwight and […]
The Association of National Advertisers voted “transparency” as 2016’s marketing word of the year. Although this year is still young, “crap” is shaping up to be 2017’s word. “The reason why so much of digital marketing doesn’t work is because it’s basically crap optimized on crap,” Rishad Tobaccowala, strategy and growth officer at Publicis, said […]
As the United States ushered in its 45th president on Friday, Google quietly ushered in a number of updates to its ad platforms. But it was Google’s reduction of third-party cookies and pixels on YouTube, as well as the release of a cloud-based YouTube measurement system called Google Ads Data Hub, that had industry insiders […]
Google identified 1.7 billion ads last year that violated its policies by deceiving users, containing malware or forcibly redirecting users to app stores. That amount is double the number it flagged in 2015. “Five years ago, we were a lot more analog in terms of how to capture bad traffic,” said John Brown, head of […]
Google is enabling YouTube targeting based on search data, and will also release a proprietary YouTube measurement system. The company discussed the first development in a Friday blog post that went live just minutes before the US presidential inauguration. “Now, information from activity associated with users’ Google accounts may be used to influence the ads […]
The Super Bowl used to be the one day when, thanks to the commercials, non-football fans would willingly watch the sport. Today, you can watch those spots well before the big game even airs, as the number of pre-Super Bowl ads on YouTube grew 200% since 2008, said Google. And the growing importance of online […]
Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon, will take the stage Jan. 19 to share Cadreon’s full vision for the future at Industry Preview in New York City. Walled gardens are cropping up across the digital ecosystem. “It’s just the way the world is going to be for the foreseeable future,” said Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon. […]
For YouTube, the recent election cycle was the best of times and the worst of times. Multiple campaign sources think the Google-owned video network remained the single largest platform for political video dollars (aside from TV networks), despite Facebook’s meteoric rise. “YouTube is the second most trafficked site in the US, so it played a […]
While private marketplaces (PMPs) and preferred deals are predicted to outpace open exchange buys by 2018, their rate of adoption has been inconsistent – especially when it comes to video advertising. Some ad buyers have avoided PMPs out of concerns over reach, leaving some publishers twisting in the wind to accurately forecast their fill rate. […]
Lauren Nemeth, former head of sales for AppNexus, has joined Turn as chief revenue officer. She arrives from a stint at Pinterest-owned mobile search engine URX, and will oversee sales, client services and consulting. Prior to her role at AppNexus, she helped build Google’s programmatic business alongside Bruce Falck, Turn’s CEO. “We’re selling a complicated, […]
Since launching “programmatic guaranteed” at the 2015 DoubleClick Leadership summit, Google says demand for programmatic execution of direct deals has skyrocketed. In the last 10 months alone it has quadrupled the number of video impressions served on a programmatic guaranteed basis. More recently, it opened this mode of buying to a wider set of customers, […]
Google is sticking with the script of “openness” in its publisher roadmap, citing a flurry of product updates designed to maximize publisher revenue, access to inventory and the user experience on mobile. There is an uptick in publishers, including USA Today Network, The New York Times and Time Inc., that are structuring direct deals programmatically, Google […]
Criteo says it is beta testing a product that would allow it to directly integrate – and give it priority access – within publishers’ header bidding wrappers. Wrappers help publishers organize tags from multiple header bidding partners and are commonly billed as a way to manage latency and other complexities, like ensuring bid requests are properly […]
