xaxis

In today’s newsletter: The “user agent” concept is dead; principal-based buying is just arbitrage by another name; and a deep dive into BuzzFeed’s doomed acquisition of Complex.

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.

In 2022, top players in digital advertising finally started taking gaming seriously, and the groundwork was laid for programmatic in-game advertising to grow thanks to a long overdue update to the IAB’s and MRC’s in-game ad standards. The scene is also set for in-game advertising to expand into console gaming, and we might even see the debut of the first sell-side platform dedicated to gaming.

Advertisers are starting to gravitate toward attention as a way to measure a campaign’s impact on the lower funnel, including conversion rate. Luxury car manufacturer Audi recently experimented with using attention metrics to algorithmically adjust programmatic bidding on ad inventory based on the amount of attention those ad placements are likely to draw. Audi then measured the impact high-attention placements had on post-click conversions.

Getting cozy with agencies wasn’t always a priority for Criteo, which has direct relationships with more than 20,000 clients. But now that Criteo has commerce and retail media aspirations, it needs to strike agency partnerships, says its CRO Brian Gleason.

Two years of sweeping disruptions – supply-chain shortages, staffing challenges, fluctuating COVID regulations and looming inflation – were tough on consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers and retailers. But consumers are eager to shop in stores again. As data across touch points converge, marketers have the power to elevate customer experience and increase conversions, writes Gila Wilensky, president of Xaxis US.

In the days after the Jan. 6 mob attack on the US Capitol – fueled in large part by former President Trump’s false claims of election fraud – advertisers quickly paused their ad spending amid the heightened sensitivity. By most accounts, the ads were pulled back for 24 to 48 hours by brands and agencies, […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.   Today’s column is written by Daniel Macdonald, VP investments and partnerships at Xaxis. The trend toward CTV has accelerated in recent months as more people consume ad-supported streaming content at home. Yet, advertisers trying to reach those viewers can […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. WPP Bouncing Back? Advertising giant WPP is showing signs of recovery in Q3 after clients cut spending in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Wall Street Journal. WPP reported $3.84 billion in sales in the third quarter, beating expectations, according to […]

And that’s a wrap. Thanks to everyone who attended AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO digital conference this month. Over six days in October, more than 45 speakers took to the virtual stage (ahem, their sofas and kitchen tables) to drop knowledge bombs, including deep dives on the future of identity in addressable advertising. Here’s your rundown. Focus […]

Nicolas Bidon, global CEO of Xaxis, GroupM’s programmatic arm, is on a Duolingo streak. When stay-at-home orders were instituted, Nicolas started using the language app on a daily basis to brush up on his Spanish – and stay sane. He’s completed more than 100 days of lessons in a row so far and counting. “Throughout the […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Nish Desai, senior director of technology, operations and partnerships at Xaxis. Marketers have ever-growing streams of data and signals they can use to activate and optimize their advertising campaigns. But […]

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 […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Nishant Desai, director of technology and partnerships at Xaxis. Major advertising and media platforms are responding to privacy regulations in ways that threaten to make it harder for marketers to […]

The cookie-based identity regime that fueled the first 25 years of the digital advertising is dying. What will replace it? David Moore, ad tech veteran and CEO of fledgling startup BritePool, says he has an answer. Moore is one of a handful of early ad tech entrepreneurs who are still actively building companies today. As […]

WPP Group’s programmatic platform subsidiary Xaxis has navigated several seasons of change in programmatic. “When Xaxis was started it was very much around this concept of leveraging programmatic to help advertisers reach audiences,” Global CEO Nicolas Bidon says in this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. But over time that old definition of programmatic has become […]

Xaxis technology and partnerships director Nishant Desai will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO San Francisco conference on April 29-30, 2019. Agencies aren’t first-party data owners, cookie trackers or data processors, but they must still keep a handle on online identity while the tech ecosystem shifts underfoot. “The notion of how advertisers identify audiences and what identity […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Clear Your Desk The buy-side push for ad tech transparency has changed Xaxis, the GroupM trading desk with a black box ad-buying model. The business has made some concessions, like offering self-service products and disclosing its margins, reports Digiday. Xaxis has also embraced outcome-based […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Mike Bevans, global vice president of product solutions, marketing and partnerships, at Xaxis. In the age of media fragmentation, securing the appropriate level of reach and frequency in video can feel overwhelming. Just picture […]

As holding companies distribute programmatic knowledge to their operating agencies, trading desks are repositioning to stay relevant to clients. Xaxis, GroupM’s trading desk that pioneered the model of selling media to clients at a mark-up on a guaranteed CPM, will now buy for clients on guaranteed metrics that impact business performance, such as viewability and […]

Triad Retail Media promoted its chief customer officer, Sherry Smith, to the CEO position on Tuesday. Roger Berdusco, Triad’s former CEO, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Triad manages ad sales on major retailers’ ecom sites including Walmart, Sam’s Club, eBay, Stubhub, Staples, Toys R Us, and most recently, Barnes & Noble. But […]

Brands want to spend more on native, and plista, the native arm of WPP’s Xaxis, is hoping to oblige through a partnership with dynamic creative optimization platform Jivox. After several months of testing, the duo rolled out a solution on Tuesday to help plista and GroupM clients create and buy native ads programmatically and personalize […]

Programmatic native is cleaning up its act. Content recommendation engines like Taboola and Outbrain provide an easy incremental revenue stream for publishers. But their cost-per-click model, which favors performance over quality, enables traffic arbitrage and creates brand safety risks. To account for those concerns, native exchanges like TripleLift, Connatix, Nativo and Sharethrough have leveraged direct […]

On May 10, eBay will part ways with its longtime ad rep firm, Triad Retail Media, which was acquired by Xaxis last October. Recode first reported the separation. EBay will move its ad sales team in-house, claiming this migration will allow it to take more direct ownership of its brand partnerships. “This is much more […]

This is the first story in a trilogy on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work agencies do. The next installments will publish on Wednesday and Friday. Xaxis, a partner of dynamic creative platform Jivox, is leveraging the latter company’s newest product, released on Monday: an AI-based dynamic creative content recommendation engine. Xaxis will layer […]

Holding company trading desks this year are putting the focus on data and the ability to identify a customer across screens and platforms. That focus made owning data mission critical, and it’s shifted the focus away from programmatic as a silo and toward data management and activation across the board. As a result, “trading desk” […]

For the big six holding companies, 2016 was a year of acquisitions, restructures, reviews and leadership shakeups, centering expertise around data and digital. But they also engaged in strategies at odds with best practices and client interests. Faced with shrinking margins and rising technology costs, holding companies found new ways to eke revenue – methods […]

A few weeks ago, WPP initiated [m]Platform, a unit designed to consolidate data and tech expertise throughout the GroupM media agency families. Most of [m]Platforms’ executive leadership came from Xaxis. But where does that leave Xaxis? With global CEO Brian Gleason leaving to oversee [m]Platform, EMEA CEO Nicolas Bidon became Xaxis’ top dog – as […]

WPP-owned GroupM said Tuesday it will centralize its tech and data expertise worldwide into a unit called [m]Platform. The division will be helmed by Xaxis CEO Brian Gleason with key executives drawn from Xaxis and across GroupM. “The collective mission of [m]Platform revolves around technology, data and expertise,” Gleason told AdExchanger. “The mission is how […]

Despite being one of the world’s largest commercial real estate firms, CBRE has a low profile in digital media. Until 2014, all of the 110-year-old company’s marketing was executed through traditional media. Then it hired Paul Suchman as chief marketing officer. An agency vet with a history at Young & Rubicam, OgilvyOne and BBDO, Suchman […]