Russia

What exactly are joint business partnerships? Plus, AI chatbot responses may be susceptible to Russian propaganda.

NewsGuard created a whitelist of publishers based in Ukraine, where the news media market has been in decline since the Russian invasion began in February 2022.

Mobile behavior is telling: How is Trump’s Truth Social really doing? How is app usage trending in Russia and Ukraine? Did all those crypto ads during the Super Bowl actually get people to download crypto apps? On this week’s episode, we dive into the trends with Jonathan Kay, CEO of app store intelligence platform Apptopia.

Content moderation policies sound good on paper. But policies are tested in practice. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine is yet another example that content moderation will never be perfect. Then again, that’s not a reason to let perfect get in the way of good.

A blog post by Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer on Wednesday detailed restrictions on data access for a number of its APIs, including events, groups and pages. Read it. (The blog also revealed in that post that Cambridge Analytica had harvested 87 million profiles, rather than 50 million, as was originally widely reported.) Developer […]

The tech titans have testified about Russian election meddling. And after two days and multiple hours of questioning by members of Congress aimed at top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s clear that Russian operatives continue to spread propaganda and sow social discontent using social media platforms and that said […]

Facebook and Twitter both took steps last week to provide more transparent paid political advertising on their platforms. But although political ads will be clearly labeled and users will be able to access more information on who purchased the ads and how much the buyer is spending on electioneering, it’s primarily up to the advertisers […]

If lawmakers have anything to do with it, political ads on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other online platforms may soon be subject to the same disclosure requirements as traditional political advertising. Senators introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to do just that, prompted by revelations of Russian meddling before and during the 2016 US presidential […]

Google is the latest walled garden to be sucked down the Russian rabbit hole. The Washington Post reported Monday that Google has uncovered evidence of ads linked to Russia that were used to spread propaganda via YouTube, Gmail, Google Search and its DoubleClick ad network. Google’s revelations follow similar disclosures by Facebook and Twitter, which […]

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 […]

Facebook said Monday it will add 1,000 employees to its global ads review teams over the next year to put the kibosh on foreign state-sponsored ads. The company will examine not just the content of the ad, but also the context in which it was bought and the targeting parameters used. Facebook’s ads review system […]

The latest fire at Facebook has been lit by Russia, which allegedly bought ads to destabilize the US, and the fallout might force Facebook to change the way it does business. “If Facebook really wants to respond to the public outcry, it’s going to have to leave money on the table,” said David Carroll, a […]

Mail.ru, the Russian internet company, today launched a mobile ad platform called myTarget, opening up the Russian mobile audience to advertisers within Russia as well as internationally. The Russian online advertising market has historically been very insular, which is an issue that Mail.ru wanted to tackle, according to CEO Dmitry Grishin. “It’s usually local advertising […]

In Russia, programmatic and RTB practices are still in an early stage and make up less than 10% of the digital display advertising market. Yet despite that, or maybe because of it, demand-side platforms seem to be saturating the market – each seeking to distance itself from the competition. “The market is getting new DSPs every month,” Vladimir […]

Early in September, Russian search engine Yandex acquired ad tech company ADFOX, generating a bit of buzz around the relatively early stage programmatic buying market in Russia. Yandex only entered the RTB market in 2012 and ADFOX, a Moscow-based sell-side platform, was originally founded in 2005 but also introduced its RTB offerings in 2012. “We expect […]

This is part of a series on companies advancing programmatic buying in Russia. Read our recent Q&As with Yandex, ADFOX, AiData, HubRus, Between Digital and RuTarget. For Segmento co-founder and CEO Roman Nester, imitation is truly the highest form of flattery. He goes so far as to describe his company as a Rocket Fuel “clone.” “Not many people would say that they are […]

This is part of a series on companies advancing programmatic buying in Russia. Read our recent Q&As with Yandex, ADFOX, AiData, HubRus and Between Digital. Even with a growing Russian programmatic market, RuTarget’s founder and CEO Eugene Legkiy claims its greatest competition comes from without – from global players like IPONWEB, OpenX and AppNexus. Global companies trying to make […]

This is part of a series on companies advancing programmatic buying in Russia. Read our recent Q&As with Yandex, ADFOX, AiData and HubRus. Between Digital covers both the buy and sell side in the programmatic space in Russia. Its Between sell-side platform launched in 2012 and its Intensity demand-side platform in 2013, and the company employs approximately 20 people with a headquarters […]

This is part of a series on companies advancing programmatic buying in Russia. Read our recent Q&As with Yandex, ADFOX and AiData. Many international DSPs follow and learn from companies in more mature programmatic markets. But the team behind HubRus, a Moscow-based DSP founded in 2012, admits that the decision to introduce a local DSP […]

This is the third in a series on companies advancing programmatic buying in Russia. Read our recent Q&As with Yandex and ADFOX.  As programmatic buying starts to take off in certain countries, finding and analyzing audience data can be a major challenge to getting it off the ground. In Russia, at least one company has been tackling this […]

The Russian advertising market is one of marked interest for ad tech companies. Certainly Western mainstays like Google are working their way in. But it’s the local players that dominate. Consider Google’s recent partnership with Yandex to expand its inventory offered by Russian publishers. One such local player is ADFOX, a Moscow-based sell-side platform founded in 2005 […]

The online ecosystem is different in Russia. Yandex is the search leader over Google; VK.com (originally VKontakte) and Odnoklassniki.ru are more popular social networks than Facebook. But when it comes to programmatic buying, the country looks similar to the US RTB circa 2011, thanks in part to the participation of Russia’s major internet players. The […]