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Daily Mail’s ad-light subscription soars; YouTube Shorts takes another cue from TikTok; and MAGNA predicts an ad spend slump due to tariff-induced uncertainty.

Canadian tech investment firm Redbrick has acquired Paved, a programmatic newsletter platform for publishers that specializes in native ad formats.

Now that Teads and Outbrain are one, the vision, explained CEO David Kostman when the deal was first announced, is to become an “end-to-end, full-funnel platform for the open internet.” But what does that mean in plain English?

For many advertisers and agencies, returning to TikTok this week felt a bit like remote working through a natural disaster: Business as usual, except not really.

Why the agency pivot to alternative payment models is good for M&A; Zeta Global responds to a short-seller’s explosive claims; and X sees a mass exodus after the election.

Outbrain is trying to shed its chumbox rep by bringing social media-style vertical video to mobile publishers on the open web.

The rumors are true: Outbrain will acquire Teads, the SSP and video monetization company owned by European telco Altice. The acquisition ends advanced talks, first reported in July, between the two companies.

AdGPT, a startup that uses AI to automatically create hundreds of ads across Facebook, Instagram, Taboola, Outbrain, Google, LinkedIn and X, came out of stealth mode on Wednesday.

In today’s newsletter: Adalytics reveals Forbes was running a separate MFA sub-domain; The New York Times seeks to use attention benchmarking to validate its premium publisher status; and Google is reportedly looking to buy HubSpot.

Inside the Nubai Ventures lawsuit against Outbrain over alleged bot traffic. Plus: The broadcaster-backed Joint Industry Committee and the Media Rating Council clarify their complementary roles.

Nubai claims that if buyers don’t shell out for premium placements like on CNN and Fox News, Outbrain instead places their links on less-reputable sites that have been found to attract a high degree of sophisticated invalid traffic – aka bots.

In today’s newsletter: Sensor Tower acquires mobile marketing analytics and benchmarking rival Data.ai; Minute Media will distribute Sports Illustrated; Apple fields questions at a DMA compliance workshop.

Despite the backlash against MFA websites, there is still no industry standard to define MFA. So the 4A’s is hosting monthly meetings between buyers and sellers to nail down more explicit criteria for what constitutes MFA.

In today’s newsletter: Big Tech may be best positioned to take advantage of generative AI’s ad tech uses; ad tech leaders waffle on investing in Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox; Google faces an innovator’s dilemma.

Native advertising needs a redefinition, not just for the sake of advertisers and publishers but also for consumers. Here’s how recent advancements in AI can help native advertising meet its potential.

Publishers’ deals with Taboola and Outbrain might be helping divert more revenue to shady MFA sites than they generate for legit publishers.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Nessie Lives The FTC is accusing Amazon of using Project Nessie, a secret algorithm, to fix prices in its favor and monopolize the retail market, Ars Technica reports. Amazon matched discount prices from rivals, spurring other retailers to slash their prices, too. This […]

After years of courting lower-funnel performance budgets – and charging on a cost-per-click basis – Outbrain foresees further growth in attracting upper-funnel spend. It’s doing so by giving brands a way to measure their return on investment in awareness campaigns by tracking whether people are actually paying attention to their ads.

Success in the first-party web is based first and foremost on relationships, quality and trust, neither of which are improved by most content currently provided by recommendation engines, writes audience and data strategy consultant Alessandro De Zanche.

Google Ad Manager (GAM) was out of commission for about three hours Thursday evening across web, app and video inventory. Any ad placement served through GAM, even ads monetized by a non-Google SSP, went dark, leading to lost revenue for publishers of all sizes at a time when they can least afford to lose out on revenue.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Who Wants To Play Monopsony? This week, a US judge blocked a merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, two major publishing houses.  You may ask, why is a print publishing merger relevant?  Partly because it’s another example of legacy businesses […]

What exactly does “premium” mean? It seems the definition varies depending on who’s using it – that “premium” is in the eye of the beholder. But there are some areas of agreement. And the industry isn’t setting the premium bar as high as you might think.

Ad tech companies are looking to expand beyond the content recommendation box to run display ads across the open web. Taboola and Outbrain have been closing acquisitions to make it happen – but other public companies like Google, Apple and Amazon are financially poised to compete, writes Alon Rosenthal, CEO & Founder of WhizzCo.

By Stephanie Himoff, VP of global publishers and platforms at Outbrain This article is sponsored by Outbrain. Already battered by years of marginalization from walled gardens, media owners on the open web are looking over a cliff. The deprecation of third-party cookies promises to hamper targeting on their sites, threatening to wipe out 52% of […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disrupting Who?  Warby Parker and Allbirds, two DTC standouts, filed their pre-IPO S-1s last week. It was a reminder of the challenges facing digitally native vertical brands (DNVBs). Each company had its best sales year in 2020, with strong growth rates and retail businesses. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The InfoSum Of Its Parts The data onboarding startup InfoSum raised $65 million at a valuation of $300 million, up from a $100 million tag a year ago when the company landed a $15 million investment. Ad tech companies have been capitalizing in investor […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. IPOs Popping The ad tech party is raging after a slew of companies went public in recent weeks. AcuityAds, Taboola and Integral Ad Science went public in June. Not to be outdone, content recommendation company Outbrain announced plans to IPO a day before rival […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Taboola Roll Call Taboola began trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. It raised more than $500 million with the IPO, and reported a net income of $18 million on total revenue of $303 million in Q1, CNBC reports. “I think of Taboola as a […]

It’s been a whirlwind year of acquisitions, near mergers, SPACs and pre-IPO filings for companies in the content recommendation space. In September 2020, the proposed mega merger between Outbrain and Taboola fell apart. In January, Taboola announced plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company. Three months later, Outbrain filed confidential S-1 paperwork […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Correction Streaming giant Netflix slipped a bit after riding high when demand surged at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. CNBC reports that Netflix shares dropped more than 10% in after-hours trading on Tuesday night following an earnings report with fewer-than-expected subscribers. Netflix gained […]