“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view. Today’s column is written by Emily Ketchen, head of Americas marketing at HP. Despite criticism that it is just a marketing gimmick, brand transparency is more relevant and meaningful than ever. It is becoming fundamental to how companies engage with customers. By […]
Facebook is trying to make it easier for people to get information about the ads running on its platform. Ad transparency – political ad transparency, in particular – has been a top priority at Facebook since it became clear that bad actors were running amok in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election. Starting Thursday, […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Alysia Borsa, chief marketing and data officer at Meredith Corp. As the industry clamors for more transparency in the supply chain, publishers should take the lead. Publishers are sitting on high-quality, proprietary data sets. Their […]
How Questionable Data-Sharing Practices And A Healthy Dose Of Hubris Helped Bring Down One Of The Most Well-Known Players In Ad Tech The Rocket Fuel brand is dead and buried, the founders long gone, its tech sold off to Sizmek for a song and the code completely rewritten. An ad tech unicorn that courted top […]
On Thursday, Facebook alerted advertisers, agencies and its marketing partners that starting in November, they’ll need to confirm the nature of their relationships to each other before they’re allowed to share Facebook data amongst themselves. Some businesses are in the habit of sharing data from using Facebook’s ad products with their partners to help with […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has contacted the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), requesting cooperation from the trade group and its members in a criminal investigation into US media buying practices. The ANA detailed the FBI’s probe in a statement to members and validated recent unsourced reports from The Wall Street Journal and The […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is by Paul Bannister, co-founder and executive vice president at CafeMedia. It’s unquestionable that brands need to use brand safety platforms to ensure their ads run in safe and appropriate environments. While these platforms were developed with positive intent, they also created […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. SaaSy Publisher Vox Media will license its digital publishing software Chorus to other publishers, The Wall Street Journal reports. Twenty media companies are in talks to license Chorus already, which allows publishers to create, monetize and distribute articles for a recurring fee. In the […]
A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…
Canned audiences are as stale as cigarette smoke in an old casino. That’s why MGM Resorts International is looking for alternatives to what Kelly Smith, MGM’s SVP and chief digital officer, calls “black-box syndicated segments.” In its quest for custom audience activation, MGM is kicking the tires on a new self-serve data marketplace offering from […]
Rubicon’s CEO Michael Barrett will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on January 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. Rubicon Project is in the midst of a risky move – one that CEO Michael Barrett thought he could avoid when he joined nine months ago. Because of customer outcry, the company stopped charging […]
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 […]
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 […]
Most marketers don’t trust the data they’re using and they have no simple way to assess its quality. Of the 80% of advertisers that use audience insights, only 33% say they “completely trust them,” according to a study released Wednesday by research firm Advertiser Perceptions, which surveyed roughly 200 advertisers. Just one-third of advertisers fully […]
Marketers across the globe are adapting their relationships with agency trading desks to gain greater transparency into programmatic buys, according to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). Ninety percent of members belonging to the European trade body are reviewing their contracts with agency trading desks to gain more control and transparency, the organization said in […]
On Tuesday, White Ops exposed a sophisticated browser-based botnet called Methbot that was reportedly stealing somewhere between $3 million and $5 million of US-based video ad spend a day. The story developed quickly after that. Some large, well-known exchanges have come out to say they’ve had little or no exposure to Methbot. And a few […]
Drawbridge is letting brands get their hands dirty with cross-device data. On Monday, the cross-device company launched self-serve functionality that lets ad buyers see how their buying choices affect what sort of identity graph they get on the other side. The goal is to give advertisers more control so “they can really see how this […]
Aside from some fiery rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) transparency report, the overall response of agencies to the trade group’s findings has been fairly muted. But independent agencies Mediasmith and Empower MediaMarketing have taken a stand by ending their memberships with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) […]
Agencies that don’t comply with the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ (4As) Transparency Guiding Principles of Conduct (TGPC) will risk losing their memberships. Under the new rule, which the agency trade body blogged about on Monday, anyone (from marketers to executives from other agencies) who finds an agency is not compliant with the 4As’ guidelines […]
When Dentsu Aegis Network bought programmatic shop Accordant Media on Thursday, it was the Japanese holding company’s second major tech acquisition in less than a month, following the majority stake Dentsu took in CRM agency Merkle. “Programmatic is the way of working in the future and we’ll continue to invest in people who have the […]
While media bartering isn’t commonly discussed, the ANA’s two reports on agency transparency referenced the practice 49 times. Here’s how it works: A barter agency might agree to buy an advertiser’s surplus product, such as an airline’s unsold flight tickets at full price, which it would give to employees for business travel. In return, the […]
K2 Intelligence spent eight months investigating questionable agency business practices for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), culminating in a critical, groundbreaking report. Now the firm will help advertisers enforce and monitor transparency with their media-buying agencies through a new business unit. The practice, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, will use […]
If a brand is able to handle its own growth hacking, user acquisition, audience creation, tracking, measurement and testing, then fair enough – there’s no real reason to work with a digital agency. “But if you’re not Machine Zone or Supercell with a 50-person team that’s really good at that, then you do need us,” […]
To maintain transparent relationships with their agencies, brands must consider significantly investing in things like staffing, continuing media education and legal counsel, according to ANA and Ebiquity. In their most recent report, ANA and Ebiquity issued a long list of recommendations that also included hiring a “chief media officer” to manage agency relationships. It’s a […]
The Association of National Advertisers’ crusade for greater agency transparency entered phase two on Monday, when marketing analytics firm Ebiquity and its subsidiary, FirmDecisions, released an anticipated set of guidelines for advertisers on how to maintain transparent relationships with their agencies. The overarching message: Agencies may have crossed a few lines, but the onus is […]
The fallout from the Association of National Advertisers’ report on media agency transparency has taken an unexpected twist. WPP’s media buying unit, GroupM, is suing Ebiquity’s media auditing arm, FirmDecisions, claiming it violated an NDA and misused classified information that GroupM accidentally sent to FirmDecisions. Campaign first reported the story. According to the complaint, GroupM […]
In its critical agency report, The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) didnt touch on the complexities of the modern media-buying landscape, said Rob Norman, chief digital officer of WPP’s media-buying arm GroupM, in a blog post Tuesday. Norman’s response comes after the ANA mic-dropped its investigative report into agency transparency, criticizing agencies for taking rebates and a […]
Almighty, an independent digital agency in Boston, revealed on Wednesday the launch of a division called Almighty(X), designed to help clients evaluate their technology stacks from budget and optimization standpoints. The goal is to provide more transparency in the agency-client relationship. Almighty(X) will be headed up by Rob Griffin, a former senior executive at French media giant […]
It’s been about three years since Zipcar left its digital ad agency in the rearview mirror, and the brand hasn’t looked back. The car-sharing company shifted all of its online ad buying to programmatic channels, turning to Accordant Media, whose stack includes a demand-side platform, an audience-buying platform, analytics, cross-channel attribution and a dynamic creative […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is going to help the ad industry check IDs at the door. On Thursday, the fraud-fighting coalition announced the launch of a verification program designed to enable legit companies to demonstrate that they are, in fact, legit. Agencies, advertisers, ad platforms and publishers will be able to apply to the TAG […]
