Technology

Amazon has become the indisputable number three digital ad platform, after Google and Facebook. But while the possibility of Amazon’s advertising business unseating the duopoly has been percolating, can it really surpass either Google or Facebook as an ad industry titan? The numbers are … discouraging, at least in the short term. Google is just […]

“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 Joseph Ranzenbach, director of product management, mobile and video, at Integral Ad Science. The Open Measurement initiative was created to solve for an industry-level challenge: Consumer attention had gone mobile […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Politics Google’s and Facebook’s political advertising policies have been at the center of a heated debate over election ads. Smaller platforms like Twitter and Pinterest have said they will block political ads, but have discovered how complicated political ad policies can be. Twitter […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Chicken With TV The success of Popeyes’ recent chicken sandwich launch, which started with a runaway viral Twitter thread, manifested itself in the form of a 10.2% sales boost in its restaurants. The company let that social media wave ride out organically, pulling […]

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

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. Outside of search and social, the adoption of programmatic advertising has been slower than some expected. In many corners, manual processes have stubbornly held on and gummed up the long-heralded automation of the media buy. What’s going on? […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tough Cookie Mozilla, operator of the Firefox web browser, will block the IAB’s DigiTrust ID, an anonymized, cookie-based identifier used by ad tech and media companies, Digiday reports. Firefox has single-digit share in the browser market – just 4% – but it’s a blow to […]

Google is officially getting out of the managed services business in the United States, the company said earlier this month. The company shared the news at its Google Marketing Partners summit, an event that caters to agencies, consultants and other service providers. Google has long offered managed services across Google Display & Video 360, Search […]

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is crowning a new leader. Longtime Salesforce vet Adam Blitzer will take the CEO reins from Bob Stutz this month. But the business strategy will remain the same: customer data platform (CDP) all the way. Salesforce introduced its CDP service, called “Customer 360,” in June, and Blitzer colored in more detail […]

Regulation and an increased demand for user privacy has slowed the flood of money into programmatic advertising globally. Sixty-nine percent of all dollars spent on digital advertising will be transacted programmatically by 2020, up from 65% in 2019, Zenith predicts. And programmatic spend will surpass $100 billion globally for the first time this year. But […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Retail Wags The Dog A couple of seemingly pessimistic updates for Walmart and Target might actually demonstrate how those retailers are forming more mature strategies for taking on ecommerce … which mainly means Amazon. Target+, the store chain’s third-party marketplace – aka, an […]

Ever fall down the YouTube rabbit hole or mindlessly scroll through the news feed and then suddenly wake up 30 minutes later with no idea where the time went? Of course you have – and so has Tim Armstrong, former CEO of Oath (now Verizon Media) and AOL. The current business model of the internet is […]

Google will allow sites and apps to disable personalized ad serving across its ad products to help partners comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The CCPA goes into effect in less than six weeks. Here’s how it works: Advertisers and publishers will be able to restrict how data is processed through Google Ads, […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Chip Schenck, senior vice president of data and programmatic solutions at Meredith Corp. In the ad tech supply chain, supply-side platforms (SSPs) have traditionally served as a proxy for the publisher, helping manage ad […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disinformation Wars Facebook is under new pressure to secure its ad platform against electoral shenanigans, following Google’s move to restrict targeting options in political ads and Twitter’s outright ban on such ads in October. One option on the table is to prevent advertisers from […]

Programmatic auction dynamics can be arcane, even for the most technical among us. Google has Open Bidding (nee Exchange Bidding), Amazon’s got Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) and Prebid predates them both, not to mention a host of other wrappers on the scene. But what do buyers, exchanges and publishers have to say – and, more […]

Most agencies are myopic in their approach to Amazon. They might only focus on retail optimization or just concentrate on search. But Amazon also offers an array of opportunities across OTT, audio, social and branding, said Travis Johnson, global CEO of Amazon consultancy Podean. “What Amazon is doing is very broad, [and] nobody is thinking […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. All In Context  Integral Ad Science acquired European contextual targeting company ADmantX for an undisclosed amount. Using natural language processing and machine learning, ADmantX identifies the context of an article and whether a piece of content is positive or negative, The Wall Street Journal […]

Google’s $3 billion acquisition of the DoubleClick ad server business in 2007 was a massive home run. But today, privacy regulations and changes to digital advertising have transformed Google’s ad tech unit. Google’s original vision for DoubleClick, to combine tech with automation, is still a recipe for scale, because it minimizes hands-on service, said Clint Tasset, […]

The IAB Tech Lab released the first version of technical specs on Monday that publishers and ad tech companies can use to start complying with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) while transacting via real-time bidding. The Interactive Advertising Bureau sought public comments for a draft of the compliance framework over a two-week period from […]

Kinesso, the data and technology unit IPG launched in October, announced the formation of a Digital Responsibility Practice on Monday. The group will be led by Sheila Colclasure, a 20-year Acxiom vet who was most recently SVP of global public policy at LiveRamp. In her new role, Colclasure will help Kinesso technologists, data scientists and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. MPlatform No More GroupM is disbanding mPlatform, the unit it launched in 2016 to centralize client access to data and technology across its agencies. Newly minted CEO Christian Juhl wants to create more consistency across the group’s four media agencies, and the mPlatform brand […]

Amazon introduced a new way for its cloud customers to buy and use third-party data with the launch of the AWS Data Exchange on Thursday. There are about 90 data companies as launch partners, including PlaceIQ, Epsilon, Acxiom and Foursquare. Unlike data marketplaces such as those operated by The Trade Desk, Oracle or LiveRamp, the […]

Beginning in February, Google will no longer include contextual content categories – content identifiers such as “sports,” “news” or “weather” – in bid requests to ad buyers, the company said Thursday. Google cited privacy concerns as the reason for the change, since contextual categories exposed in a bid request can be appended to individual profiles, […]

The B2B marketing platform Octane11, the first company incubated by MathCapital, a venture fund backed by MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki and ad tech vet Eric Franchi, launched on Thursday. Dan Rosenberg, Octane11 founder and CEO, developed strong feelings about B2B mar tech vendors and where there were unmet needs in the market from his time […]

You can’t swing a cat these days without hitting a customer data platform. On Thursday, Adobe made the CDP capabilities within Adobe Experience Platform generally available after a roughly five-month beta period. Earlier this week, Microsoft got vocal about its new CDP offering, and Salesforce, whose CDP is still in beta, has multiple CDP-related sessions […]

MDC Partners is the latest holding company to place its programmatic, search and social talent into a team that spans across its media network, MDC Media Partners. The group, which doesn’t have a name, was announced internally on Thursday and contains roughly 100 experts across biddable media and digital planning from agencies Assembly, Unique Influence […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Strong Cards Cardlytics shares jumped almost 40% on Wednesday, pushing its market cap above $1 billion. The company partners with banks to create cash-back offers – so banking app users can be served promotional deals, and the discount is credited by the bank when […]

Nestlé has launched a team of media and tech experts to improve its programmatic supply and analytics. The new hybrid unit, called the Global Digital Media Center of Competencies (DCoC), consists of internal media talent and executives from Nestlé’s holding company vendors, WPP, Publicis, IPG and Dentsu. The team focuses on six core competencies: supply […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Raise The Roof Vice, Refinery29, Mashable, Mic and BuzzFeed are just a few of the VC-backed digital media companies that faced painful revenue shortfalls and setbacks over the past year. But newer news startups are starting to gain traction, typically in narrow categories – […]