Microsoft Advertising

Ad platforms are nixing credit card payments; LLMs are getting really good at unmasking online users; and McDonald’s offers a case study in how not to do organic social media.

Big Tech seems overconfident their ad revenue growth isn’t tied to the economy; Microsoft AI launches a publisher licensing program; and the unique security vulnerabilities of Moltbook’s social media for AI bots.

Most publishers have no idea that a major part of their video ad delivery will stop working on April 30, shortly after Microsoft shuts down the Xandr DSP.

Paul Longo, GM of AI in ads at Microsoft Advertising, breaks down what it means to bring ads into conversational experiences and how AI-powered tools are changing the way advertisers work. Plus: Microsoft may be shutting down the Xandr DSP next year, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft is getting out of the ad tech game.

CleanTap, an ad tech startup launched by the founder of Method Media Intelligence, wants to separate the wheat from the chaff in CTV by serving as a curation layer between DSPs and SSPs.

Microsoft is deprioritizing ad tech; Google wants to get back into publishers’ good graces; and Meta has been quietly developing proactive chatbots.

The demise in recent years of legacy DSPs is not a glitch in the matrix; it’s a business model failure, leaving SSPs and publishers to pick up the pieces. 

In an omnichannel environment, managing and selling ads is becoming too complex for humans to handle alone. That’s why many are turning to AI tools to maximize ad inventory

The era of fragmented, adversarial ad tech is winding down. A new paradigm is emerging defined by AI-first, end-to-end platforms and collaboration among buyers and sellers.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it will shut down Microsoft Invest by March next year, to be replaced by a chatbot-style ad-buying product powered by Copilot.

Despite a 3% uptick in Q1 revenue to $451 million, Criteo’s stock fell by roughly 15% on Friday after news of a pullback by a major retail media client and tepid guidance.

An Adalytics report released Friday details numerous instances of brands serving ads to known bots that appear on the IAB Tech Lab’s International Spiders and Bots list and TAG’s Data Center IP List.

AdExchanger reached out to a number of major DSPs to gauge the current state of adoption of the IAB Tech Lab’s new video ad standard.

Forrester released its first SSP wave since 2014 last week, and there’s a surprise. The research firm ranked Google – whose sell-side ad tech platform is facing federal antitrust charges – as a mere challenger.

Retracing DPG Media’s journey to disentangle itself from the influence of Google’s ad platform and compete for direct ad budgets.

Chalice integrated with Index Exchange, and it’s not a typical partnership. Plus, Microsoft will be moving on from its retail media platform Promote IQ.

With an approved list of sites and contextually segmented content, publishers don’t risk getting caught up in automated keyword blocklists, which consistently demonetize the news.

It’s no secret that there are a lot of people watching connected TV (CTV) these days. And where the audiences go, advertisers follow.

In today’s newsletter: Ampla suspends loans to DTC brands, putting their ad budgets at risk; why Sony is investing in IP rather than a streaming platform; and Netflix will move on from Microsoft in favor of in-house ad tech by 2025.

The phaseout of third-party cookies kicked off the sell-side curation trend. But it’s also being driven by advertiser concerns about open web media quality and the need to enhance publisher contextual signals with audience data.

Curation’s shift to the sell side is giving DSPs less control over how advertisers curate audiences, which is creating new tensions in the programmatic ecosystem.

In today’s newsletter: Performance Max has many imitators, but Google’s still ahead of the pack; France’s competition authority fines Google for using news content to train its Bard AI model without their knowledge of consent; and Apollo Global Management offers to acquire Paramount Global for $11 billion.

In today’s newsletter: could an open-source website template fix programmatic advertising?; The Trade Desk’s new tool for targeting only the top 500 sites; and some of Apple and Microsoft’s services won’t fall under DMA regulation.

Now that Google has deprecated 1% of cookies, the clock is ticking for advertisers and agencies to future-proof their media buying strategies. Cookies offered precision and scale in ad tech, and their deprecation leaves trading teams with more fragmentation and complexity to manage than ever before.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pod Patrol The CTV ad experience is a hot topic at CES this week. Streamers and brands are exploring interactive ad units, while platforms are still trying to determine the optimal streaming ad load. But no matter how advertisers prefer to engage viewers, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Watch Party Advertisers and creators have dinged Netflix in the past for its lack of transparency into streaming ratings. Netflix answered critics this week with a surprise data dump – its first real viewership report. The report, which Netflix will release twice a […]

Advertisers and agencies are recognizing the importance of SPO to select strategic SSPs that reduce the number of intermediaries, offer more control and align on better financial incentives and greater cost savings.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. UGC Meets AI-GC, And It’s Awkward In September, Google announced what it calls a “helpful content update” – aka a search algorithm change to favor sites with superior user experiences.  One part of the update was that Google will target AI-generated content, particularly […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. CMax, LOL Criteo reported earnings on Wednesday. It wasn’t a blockbuster – gross revenue ticked down from $495 million in Q2 2022 to $469 million this year – but Criteo clawed back to about even in terms of profitability after dipping into the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Unboxed The Chrome Privacy Sandbox is sorta-kinda-finally ramping up to testable scale. And Google is signaling more clearly that the training wheels are almost ready to come off. Chrome 115 went live for Android on Wednesday and will be available to all users […]