Xandr CEO Brian Lesser has resigned, Reuters reported. Xandr did not respond to AdExchanger’s request for comment. There’d been rumblings within the advertising community about Xandr not living up to expectations. AT&T’s ad unit missed internal revenue projections and was off-pace to meet goals it set for later this year, multiple sources told AdExchanger. The […]
Might the TV buyer’s dream of purchasing inventory across networks using the same audience definition finally be coming true? AMC Networks, Disney and WarnerMedia said Wednesday their linear TV inventory will be available through Xandr Invest. Starting mid-April, buyers will be able to log into Xandr Invest, Xandr’s programmatic buying platform, to access linear TV […]
Walmart Media Group (WMG), the retailer’s advertising business, is running a bake-off between Xandr and The Trade Desk to be its DSP partner for off-site advertising. Xandr and The Trade Desk each supported sponsored product campaigns for Walmart in Q4 last year, with the goal to drive site traffic at the lowest cost per click […]
Corporate siblings WarnerMedia and Xandr are full steam ahead on data-driven TV sales. Just look at this year’s upfront, where the AT&T subsidiaries will go to market together for the first time. The companies have been inching their way toward a joint offering over the past year and a half in an effort to sell […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Safari’s Google Assist Apple cranked up its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) controls yet again, this time in ways that make it harder to classify users based on web content and site data. Read the WebKit blog post about the updates. All cross-site tracking requests […]
Xandr on Friday acquired the linear TV supply-side platform Clypd, its second acquisition since AT&T bought AppNexus and launched the data-driven advertising group last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clypd had raised about $31 million since it was founded in 2012, and the German broadcaster RTL Group is a lead investor. Even […]
Despite Xandr’s positioning as the TV platform of the future during its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara last week, agency buyers want to see more progress toward that goal. Certainly, Xandr has the right assets and strategy to create a programmatic marketplace for TV. Over the past year, Xandr launched a publisher network called Community, […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Move Over Rick Welday is stepping out of his shoes as Xandr president and likely right into a position at either AT&T or WarnerMedia. The change comes as AT&T begins to bring the three pillars of its new media empire – communications, advertising and […]
Xandr’s Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara might be a celebration of data-driven TV’s potential, but legacy business models and competitive interests are preventing advertisers and TV networks from reaching it. Advertisers want to efficiently reach audiences on digital and OTT channels, but the scale just isn’t there without a cross-network measurement or buying platform. “Uniformity, […]
Longtime AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein will leave the business at the end of the year. Rubenstein is the latest top executive at AppNexus to leave since the company was acquired by AT&T under its Xandr unit for $2 billion in June 2018. Founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley left the company in October 2018. Rubenstein joined […]
Goodbye AppNexus SSP, hello Xandr Monetize. One year after its acquisition by AT&T, AppNexus is rebranding its exchange to Xandr Monetize. It’s also adding a slew of new features to support its vision of offering a full programmatic stack for video-heavy publishers. Xandr Monetize is the third Xandr-branded product to launch, after Xandr Community and […]
This post is sponsored by Xandr. As the fragmentation of media viewing habits continues unabated, technology platforms must help evolve buying practices to reach interested consumers however they access content. In order to ensure buyers’ unique objectives are met across screens, customization and flexibility are paramount. This summer, AT&T’s Xandr unit introduced Xandr Invest, a […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is researching the privacy practices of AppNexus, Oath and other advertising subsidiaries owned by broadband companies. The agency is in the midst of examining the privacy policies, procedures and practices of broadband providers as part of an overarching study into how telecom companies are morphing into vertically integrated behemoths that […]
There’s yet another content streaming service joining the fray: AT&T TV will enter beta testing in Q3, offering viewers an internet delivered TV option, the company said during its Q2 earnings call today. If AT&T TV’s service takes off, it will open up a new pool of OTT inventory for buyers. IP TV services can […]
WarnerMedia’s announcement Wednesday that three of its top sales executives would leave as part of a reorg reflects changing times in the business of network TV. Donna Speciale, president of ad sales, Dan Riess, EVP of Turner Ignite, and Frank Sgrizzi, EVP of portfolio sales and client partnerships, are leaving WarnerMedia one year after its […]
Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic […]
Xandr is making AT&T data available to buyers across all media types through AppNexus’s demand-side platform (DSP), which it has rebranded as Xandr Invest. Xandr Invest launched Monday and allows advertisers to layer AT&T’s first-party data when buying inventory available through the AppNexus exchange as well as inventory from Xandr’s premium video network, Community. Advertisers […]
AT&T’s ad unit Xandr on Tuesday unveiled a publisher network called Community, which lets advertisers use Xandr data on video inventory across WarnerMedia’s O&O properties as well as a selection of outside publishers. The WarnerMedia properties include CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, B/R Live, Otter Media and Warner Brothers, and the video partner publishers include VICE, […]
The two minutes of television inventory sold by multichannel video players (MVPDs) – which can be made addressable by targeting through the set-top box – has historically been fragmented across providers, making it complex for a national advertiser to run addressable campaigns at scale. Today, MVPDs are jockeying to sell each other’s addressable TV supply, […]
This week on AdExchanger Talks, 614 Group CEO and Founder Rob Rasko graces the studio for a discussion of the changing nature of programmatic and entrepreneurship. 2018 was a year of change in programmatic, exemplified by Xandr’s acquisition of AppNexus. The deal has created uncertainty: Where will networks that used to transact on the AppNexus […]
Xandr just can’t deal right now, according to sources. When AT&T hired Brian Lesser to run its new targeted advertising business and acquired AppNexus as its anchor asset, the company signaled it might move quickly on more acquisitions. But the appetite for mergers has faded since then, and the company now plans to hold off […]
If Xandr wants to live up to its promise and create a programmatic marketplace for the TV industry, it’s going to have to convince agencies to buy what it’s offering. The AT&T-owned company recently hired Jay Askinasi for the job, and he joined Xandr in early February as VP, head of digital and agency partnerships. […]
AT&T is juggling a lot of business units at the crossroads of media, advertising and communications. Here are three takeaways from the company’s Q4 2018 earnings call on Wednesday that you can bring to the water cooler. DirecTV Now lost subscribers … but it’s all part of the plan? When AT&T scaled back on promotions […]
When AT&T bought Time Warner in June to create a programmatic exchange for the TV industry, many looked to Verizon’s purchases of AOL and Yahoo as a comparison. But the two telco’s strategies “could not be any more different,” said Xandr CEO Brian Lesser on stage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview last Thursday. “Oath, I think, […]
Turner will activate first-party data from AT&T’s 40 million set-top boxes to improve targeting and attribution for its linear TV offering, the company said Tuesday. The capability will be generally available Q1. AT&T’s set-top data, available through the Xandr ad unit, could already be applied to Turner’s digital properties, as of Q4 2018. These data […]
AT&T’s ad tech unit Xandr has big hopes for TV advertising, but the company said Thursday during an analyst call that it’s also going to be heavily involved in powering online ads. “You will continue to see Xandr media business outpace the television market in 2019,” Xandr CEO Brian Lesser told investors. “And now what […]
Despite AT&T missing its projected Q3 earnings, the telecom giant’s new data-driven ad unit Xandr had “strong growth,” executives told investors Wednesday. Xandr’s ad revenue grew 34% YOY, fueled by AT&T’s acquisition of AppNexus. Excluding AppNexus, revenue was still up 22%. Xandr’s Q3 revenues were $445 million, and its operating margin was 74.8%. In Q3 2017, […]
Brian O’Kelley’s departure as CEO of AppNexus surprised few in the industry who know him. His sharp opinions and independent mindset made him an ad tech provocateur and a fearless leader. But that same personality seemed incompatible with taking a subservient role to Xandr CEO Brian Lesser within the AT&T mega-corporation. After all, this is […]
The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Two big tech and media players held their extravaganzas this week. The Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara was a coming-out party for Xandr – […]
Two multibillion-dollar acquisitions and one Justice Department lawsuit later, AT&T’s advertising and analytics unit finally has a name: Xandr. AT&T revealed the brand at its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., Tuesday, a debutante ball for the new unit that gathered 300 top advertising and media executives at the lavish Ritz-Carlton Bacara. The name pays […]
