Technology

Unity Technologies raised more than $1.3 billion during its IPO in September at a $13.6 billion valuation, proof positive that the gaming industry isn’t playing around. Roughly 750,000 creators, mainly game developers, use the Unity platform to build their apps, and Unity’s game engine powers game titles played on billions of devices around the world, […]

At the start of 2020, video streaming giant Roku’s upfront deck predicted consumer time spent viewing streaming TV would surpass traditional linear over a period of five years. Instead they did so in a year, fueled in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is a fundamental shift in viewership,” said Alison Levin, Roku’s VP […]

“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 Francesco Petruzzelli, CTO of Bidstack. In a year defined by indoor and solo activities, gaming offered entertainment and social connection for millions of people. Now, one of gaming’s most defining […]

This week, in the spirit of holiday generosity and giving, we’ll talk about the “friendship” between Google and Facebook. Although there are a few Scrooges out there – for example, the 10 state attorneys general suing Google over antitrust concerns related to its online ads business – who might call this friendship “collusion.” Because maybe it […]

“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 Jay Friedman, president and partner at Goodway Group. Three government lawsuits have now been filed against Google in the span of two months with the two most recent being filed by states’ […]

The COVID payload devastated any business that involved people being in contact with other people. So it was not the most fortuitous timing when Wyndham Hotels kicked off a massive customer data platform (CDP) implementation in late February, about two weeks before the pandemic shut down the United States. Or maybe it was. One of […]

You didn’t think 2020 would end without at least one more Unified ID 2.0 announcement, did you? IRIS.TV, a video data platform with its own contextual video marketplace, is joining the Unified ID 2.0 initiative, the company said on Wednesday. UID 2.0 is an open source identifier based on email addresses that’s part of the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Jedi Mind Trick? More details are coming out about Google and Facebook’s alleged sweetheart deal to rig Google’s ad auction. The tech giants agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact, according to an unredacted version […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. White Hot The Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs is leading a deal to buy bot detection and anti-fraud company White Ops, Business Insider scoops. Goldman is being joined in the deal by VC firm ClearSky Security and investment firm NightDragon. The trio will […]

Retail media networks are having a moment, because they’re positioned to add relevance in a cookieless world, says Luke Kigel, VP of Walgreens integrated media and head of the Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG). Walgreens put a bow on its retail media network, dubbed WAG, in early December. But the launch is part of a larger […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Refriended Unilever will resume advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the United States after withdrawing last summer amid a wide scale brand protest over misinformation, The Wall Street Journal reports. The owner of Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and other CPG brands said Thursday that […]

After slipping in the DSP rankings to Google earlier this year, Amazon has reasserted its no. 1 status as advertisers’ preferred platform. Bolstered by the last few months’ ecommerce surge, Amazon has reclaimed the top spot after having slipped behind Google and The Trade Desk in Q1 2020 – based on the Q4 2020 Advertiser Perceptions […]

Enterprise tech giant Oracle said it shut down the largest ad fraud scam in the connected TV space that bilked advertisers and publishers out of $14.5 million in ad spending. Oracle Moat – the company’s business that provides measurement and ad verification solutions across digital and TV – said the fraudsters exploited flaws in CTV […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Breaking Big Tech? A set of strict new EU privacy laws now under discussion could be the basis for breaking up the big tech platforms, Business Insider reports. The first drafts of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) were unveiled […]

Holy collusion, Batman! This week on The Big Story, we’ll consider the double whammy facing Facebook with lawsuits from both the FTC and 48 state attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James. Or maybe you can call it a triple whammy (is that even a thing?) when we toss in the lawsuit Google faces […]

The multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google that dropped on Wednesday evening is so squarely focused on ad tech that the term “header bidding” shows up more than 110 times. The suit details alleged anticompetitive sins related to the way in which Google runs its multibillion-dollar online advertising business, including the claim that Google colluded with […]

The DSP Beeswax, founded in 2014 by ad tech gadfly Ari Paparo, is off the market. Comcast’s video ad tech company FreeWheel said Thursday it will acquire the “bidder-as-a-service” for undisclosed terms. Over the last couple of years, FreeWheel has increased its buy-side capabilities, building out a more advanced exchange, hosting upfronts and integrating with […]

The Washington Post said Wednesday that it will adopt the Unified ID 2.0 framework – the first publisher to do so after a string of ad tech companies have tossed their hats into the ring over the past few months. The Post will allow advertisers to transact using the ID on its own site and will […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The People Vs. Google’s Ad Stack The AGs of 10 states have filed a suit against Google, accusing it of monopolistic behavior in its ad business, The New York Times reports. In a Twitter video announcing the legal action, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton […]

Third-party cookies are going away, mobile ad IDs will soon be harder to come by – and the advertising ecosystem is responding with a flurry of deterministic identifiers of its own. LiveRamp has an ID, Nielsen’s got one, the industry is starting to coalesce around Unified ID 2.0 and, on Wednesday, Neustar launched Fabrick ID. Fabrick […]

“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 Orchid Richardson, VP of global partnerships and product marketing at the IAB. 2020’s messy complexity gave new meaning to words that previously felt benign – “corona” and “virus,” or “shutdown” – […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Optimism … And Concern A half full glass … is also half empty. The IAB’s newly released market outlook report for 2021 is both optimistic about digital advertising in the year ahead and concerned about the loss of identifiers and how the industry will […]

Samsung Ads released Tuesday its new TV measurement solution designed to help advertisers to measure the combined impact of linear and streaming TV ad campaigns, as opposed to viewing the data in different silos. General Motors is the first advertiser to use the tool as part of a pilot program, which includes an integration with […]

“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 Ramsey McGrory, CCO at Mediaocean. Closed ecosystems such as Facebook, Amazon and Google are likely the prevailing structure for media in the next decade, due to privacy-centric regulatory and policy shifts. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Reining In Big Tech Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google continue to be in the antitrust crosshairs of regulators at home and abroad. According to Business Insider, European legislators were set to unveil a raft of new policy proposals Tuesday designed to curb the influence […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Absolute power Google has been steamrolling ahead with its privacy sandbox proposals, where progress is incremental – perhaps too incremental. And according to Adweek sources, Google’s ideas are too conceptual as well. Non-Googlers playing in the sandbox “want more concrete examples of how the […]

Ever since MeritDirect partnered with private equity firm Mountaingate Capital in 2019, it’s aggressively expanded its data and service offerings in the B2B space. In November, the Rye Brooke, NY-based company purchased 180byTwo – terms were undisclosed – marking its second acquisition deal this year; it bought Compass Marketing Solutions in January. “Putting these companies […]

Neustar has a call to action for members of the W3C’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group: Don’t forget about measurement. In early December, Neustar added a proposal to the Privacy Sandbox with the aim of triggering a conversation about how privacy-safe measurement could be done on Chrome without third-party cookies. The proposal is named after […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Avengers Assemble (Please!) Google and the IAB are once again under the EU’s gimlet eye. A group of human rights orgs sent coordinated privacy complaints to regulators on Thursday in six European countries. At issue is whether the practice of real-time bidding is a […]