Technology

Ghostery aims to help users block the trackers it has been helping them monitor… for a price. The company has developed a VPN and blocking tool that will shut down trackers embedded in desktop applications. The tools, which entered an invite-only beta on Thursday, will be grouped together under the name Ghostery Midnight and sold […]

Privacy regulations have the potential to consolidate market share among large technology platforms. Aka, when publishers reduce the number of ad tech, audience measurement and other web technology vendors they work with, Google and Facebook win, according to new academic research examining the unintended consequences of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The skittishness with […]

Megan Clarken, previously Nielsen’s chief commercial officer, will take over as Criteo CEO in November, the company said Wednesday. Clarken will continue Criteo’s transformation program, which began last year when founder JB Rudelle returned as chief executive in April 2018. Her 15 years at Nielsen have given her strong visibility and esteem in the ad […]

AT&T rolled out the red carpet for investors Tuesday in true Hollywood fashion – with a flashy event at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, to unveil its HBO Max streaming service. In a presentation resembling the upfronts, AT&T revealed that HBO Max will launch in the United States in May 2020 with 10,000 hours […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. On The Side Of The Angels Many early ad tech companies were founded and backed by a loose cadre of “investorpreneurs,” including Brian O’Kelley, Joe Zawadzki, Auren Hoffman and Jonah and Noah Goodhart. “There definitely is an ad tech cabal,” as O’Kelley put it […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Political Unrest There’s dissent brewing in Menlo Park. The New York Times reports that more than 250 Facebook employees recently signed a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg slamming the company’s decision to let politicians lie in ads on its platform. The impassioned letter pleads […]

Alphabet continued its long run of revenue growth, earning $40.5 billion in Q3, up from $33.7 billion in the same period last year. But its profitability dropped by almost a quarter to $7.1 billion as the company’s expenses increased, according to its quarterly report. The biggest cost center is headcount growth. The company has added […]

Advertising technology acquisitions are back in vogue. There were 86 ad tech deals during the first three quarters of 2019, almost double the M&A activity last year, according to a report published Monday by Results International Group, an investment advisory firm. Results International typically doesn’t break out ad tech for its overall marketing technology and […]

Amazon stock dropped after the company reported a profitability decline in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday, with net income dropping from $2.9 billion in Q3 2018 to $2.1 billion this year. Amazon’s profitability slowed in the previous quarter as well, following a strong growth streak going back almost two years. And again Amazon executives […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Good Job LinkedIn is growing like gangbusters. The Microsoft-owned job platform saw “record levels of engagement” this quarter, CEO Satya Nadella told investors during the company’s earnings call this week. Read the transcript. Microsoft reported a 25% YoY revenue increase for LinkedIn, but didn’t […]

As marketers seek more transparency into their programmatic buys, they’re bypassing their demand-side platforms and going straight to exchanges and publishers to ask for log-level data about the bids they’ve won and lost. More than a dozen of the most hands-on, sophisticated marketers – including P&G, L’Oréal, T-Mobile and Bayer – are leading the charge. […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act wants to make opting out of data collection as easy as clicking a button. But for publishers, advertisers and ad tech companies, it’s not so simple. On Tuesday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the IAB Tech Lab released the first draft of a compliance framework to help companies handle the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Power In Numbers Attorneys general from 31 additional states have joined New York AG Letitia James’s probe into Facebook, bringing the number of states involved to 46 (not including the territory of Guam, which is also hopping aboard). James first launched the probe, which […]

OTT giant Roku will acquire the demand-side platform (DSP) dataxu for $150 million, the companies said Tuesday. The deal, which is a mix of cash and stock, will strengthen Roku’s self-serve ad buying capabilities, the company said in a press release. Roku has 30.5 million active accounts on its platform and a growing programmatic advertising […]

Transparency, notice and choice are good for privacy, right? Not if people are overloaded with too much information, according to Firefox, which released a Ghostery-like tool on Tuesday as part of Firefox 70 that shows users how many trackers are tracking them. Overdoing it on transparency actually creates opacity that puts the onus on users […]

Consolidation is the name of the game in the demand-side platform (DSP) industry. Google, Amazon and The Trade Desk have grown relentlessly. And DSP rivals such as Zeta Global, Adobe and SingTel’s Amobee have hoovered up market share with acquisitions of small, unprofitable DSP businesses. But don’t count out the independent DSP category, said Ari […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Stream Team Nielsen now offers Amazon Prime Video audience measurement in its Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) Content Ratings. Nielsen launched SVOD ratings about two years ago with broadcast customers that wanted credit for streaming content, including NBCUniversal, Disney and A+E Networks. But […]

Digital is still growing faster than any other advertising medium in the United States, but the segment is starting to show signs of maturing. US digital advertising revenues grew 17% YoY in the first half of 2019, reaching $58 billion, according to the IAB’s internet advertising revenue report, released Monday. While that’s the highest first-half […]

WebKit, the open source browser engine that powers Apple’s Safari, is in the very early stages of testing an API that would give browser operators the ability to see whether users are logged in to a website or not. Steven Francolla, head of global publisher strategy at LiveRamp, recently came across a reference to the […]

Rubicon Project acquired header bidding management and analytics platform RTK.io for $11 million in cash on Monday. The plan is to integrate RTK.io’s tech and analytics functionality into Rubicon Project’s Demand Manager product by the first half of next year. “This will accelerate our vision to be a leader in the Prebid managed service business,” […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. RIP Mark Hurd Mark Hurd, former co-chief of Oracle and CEO of Hewlett Packard, died Friday at age 62. Hurd and co-CEO Safra Catz were put in charge of Oracle about five years ago, during which time the company’s stock grew 37%, CNBC reports. […]

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 […]

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CMO of Firefox parent company Mozilla, has fiery opinions about technology companies that use privacy as “nothing more than a communications ploy.” “Most organizations aren’t taking the right steps to treat people like human beings, and that’s a big problem,” said Kaykas-Wolff, who’s been with Mozilla for more than four and a half […]

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week on AdExchanger Talks, product veteran Bridget Bidlack tackles big questions: Is ad tech mature? How do creative types tap into programmatic? And is the industry moving fast enough on gender equality? On the maturity of ad tech, the SVP of product at […]

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

Neal Richter, has been elected chairman of the IAB Tech Lab, the industry group said Thursday. Richter has been a leader within the Tech Lab for years, helping develop IAB openRTB specs since their first iteration, and helming recent initiatives like Ads.txt and Sellers.json. It’s been a productive year for Richter, since he took on […]

Google is still by far the dominant player in search advertising, but Amazon is quickly stealing share as it grows in the number two spot. Amazon’s search business will grow 30% in 2019 to $7 billion, making up 13% of the total US search market, according to a forecast released Tuesday by eMarketer. That’s peanuts […]

Hey, CCPA-heads, the moment you’ve been waiting months for has arrived. The California attorney general’s office on Thursday published the first draft of its implementation regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act. [Click here to read the full text.] The purpose of the regulations is to operationalize the law and provide practical guidance. It’s the […]

The podcast industry is ripe for influencer marketing. That’s the view of Agnes Kozera and David Kierzkowski, co-founders of self-serve influencer marketing platform FameBit, which Google acquired in 2016. The pair has since left Google and is developing an analogous platform for the podcast industry, which has plenty in common with the video influencer market, […]

Publicis reported Q3 earnings on a last-minute call with investors Thursday after results came in worse than expected, causing the holding company to lower its guidance through 2020. Organic growth was down 2.7% to $2.86 billion in Q3, and down 1.4% to $7.6 billion in the first nine months of the year. So Publicis lowered […]