Technology

NBCUniversal opened more of its inventory to programmatic platforms on Monday, with a new product integration through FreeWheel and The Trade Desk. FreeWheel, a sister-company of Comcast’s NBCU, is coming out of beta with its “unified decisioning” platform, which operates an auction where programmatic demand is considered alongside direct-sold campaigns for OTT inventory and video […]

  Although the coronavirus pandemic has caused CPMs to plummet, the news isn’t all bad for publishers. How sites have been affected by the coronavirus’s economic impact vary, depending on the type of content they produce and the type of advertisers they attract. Freestar handles the advertising for 300 publishers – from sports (Barstool Sports) […]

  The advertising industry faces “imminent upheaval” as their tracking-heavy approach to digital advertising is being rejected by browsers, regulators and consumers. “Change is no longer a nice idea. It has become a requirement,” said Forrester VP and principal analyst Joanna O’Connell, who authored a report last week about how marketers need to address this […]

“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 Martin Kihn, senior vice president of marketing strategy, Salesforce Marketing Cloud.  NASA director: This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever experienced. Gene Kranz: With all due respect, sir, I believe this […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Movie Night (On The Couch) TV networks hope nostalgia will win over home-bound viewers. NBCU launched a franchise last week called “Stay-In Theater,” simulcasting family movies across its family of networks. NBCU will cut national commercial time for the broadcast from 35 minutes to […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Erik Requidan, founder and CEO at Media Tradecraft. As Chrome sunsets third-party cookies and data privacy laws roll out globally, the only happy publishers are the select few with lots of first-party data. Mid- […]

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

“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 Kacie McKee, head of ecommerce at Wavemaker US. Marketers may have missed the new features Amazon added to their site around the end of 2019 to help boost brands more […]

It’s been a big week for location data-related deals. PlaceIQ acquired location data and measurement company Freckle IoT on Tuesday. And a day before, Foursquare said it would merge with Factual. Together, Foursquare and Factual have more than $150 million in combined revenue, data derived from over 500 million devices worldwide and 400+ employees. The […]

MediaMath reduced its workforce by 8% through a combination of layoffs and furloughs due to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remaining employees will take a 10% pay cut and MediaMath paused 401(k) matching. “We are preparing our businesses to weather these uncertain times and taking actions that will strengthen our position for the […]

On Tuesday, PlaceIQ announced its acquisition of Toronto-based location data and measurement company Freckle IoT. Terms were not disclosed. Foot traffic may be way down during the pandemic, but consolidation in the location data space is heating up. The day before, Foursquare revealed merger plans with location data provider Factual less than a year after […]

Mediaocean CRO Ramsey McGrory has seen some turbulent times, from serving in an Army combat hospital during the Persian Gulf War, to working as an executive at Right Media during the 2008 recession. He knows how to operate through chaos. “I tend to get very focused and even more productive because I’m so focused,” he […]

Venture capital is venturing carefully during the coronavirus crisis. But raising money is possible, economic uncertainty aside, for companies with differentiated technology and a healthy customer base, especially if they’re focused on digital transformation. On Tuesday, Glassbox, an Israeli startup with offices in London and New York that offers customer experience analytics for sites and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sub-Prime Amazon will delay Prime Day until at least August, Reuters reports. Amazon hasn’t confirmed the postponement, but it’s mentioned in a memo obtained by Vice News last week. The delay would mean $100 million to $300 million in losses on excess devices Amazon […]

Amazon has removed third-party vendors from its affiliate program. Starting at the beginning of this month, affiliate networks such as Skimlinks and Sovrn (which acquired VigLink) can no longer send traffic to Amazon and get a cut of transactions, according to sources at many affiliate networks and publishers. Removing third-party affiliate networks frees up significant […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Unblocked Google and Twitter lifted their bans on coronavirus-related advertising. Twitter will allow marketers to feature their pandemic responses in paid tweets, Ad Age reports. Twitter initially banned COVID terms to forestall misinformation, but now feels that “the messaging that brands and businesses can […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. How To Finnish The Job In Finland, social media influencers join jobs like doctors, bus drivers and grocery store workers as “critical operators” who continue working during a crisis. It seems like a strange designation (especially in the United States, where some influencers have […]

Ecommerce is all about planning. It’s a carefully choreographed dance between manufacturing, warehousing and selling. But what happens when Amazon – and the world in general – has gone off the rails? It’s the nature of ecommerce and Amazon that tactics constantly change, said Sarah LaVallee, VP of client success at the ecommerce agency Channel […]

What happens when everybody in a global organization suddenly has to work from home? Integral Ad Science chief Lisa Utzschneider speaks about leadership – across multiple time zones – during a pandemic. “When you looked at the data early on, you could see it coming,” she says. “The team in Tokyo, they were the first […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pretty Good, Eh? File this one under, “Not an April Fools’ joke.” Postmedia, one of the largest Canadian news media conglomerates, is making all of its online content free this month, thanks to a partnership with Mary Brown’s, a fried chicken chain based in […]

M&A is at an all-time low due to coronavirus fears, but some deals are getting done even in challenged sectors. On Tuesday, Bain Capital divested itself of SRDS, a 101-year-old business within Kantar that compiles contact info, audience insights and ad rates for more than 6,700 B2B and consumer-facing US-based traditional media sources. The acquirer […]

The economic volatility caused by the coronavirus pandemic will stress ad tech and accelerate consolidation. Companies that aren’t financially sound won’t be able to handle decreased cash flow caused by a contraction in advertising spend. They’ll also be affected by delayed payments from upstream companies. “There’s going to be a culling. This will expose ad […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sorry, Not Sorry Apologies, ad industry, it looks like enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act will kick off as planned on July 1. Trade orgs, including the Association of National Advertisers, requested that the attorney general hold off on enforcing the law until […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hold The Phone The smartphone industry took a beating this month, and Apple in particular has to rethink its plans for the long term. Thirty-eight percent fewer total smartphones were shipped last month, as consumer spending fell and manufacturing shuttered in China. Apple will […]

Sorry, folks. Google isn’t going to extend the deadline for the phase out of third-party cookies in Chrome. In an email sent Thursday afternoon to members of the W3C’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group, Marshall Vale, a Chrome product manager and a member of the group himself, wrote that “a discussion around adjusting timelines is […]

Between March and June, brands said they’re spending 33% less on digital media, and 39% less on traditional media, as the vast majority adjust spending for the first half of the year. The IAB surveyed nearly 400 senior decision-makers at brands and agencies in the past week. Seventy-four percent of them anticipated a coronavirus-related downturn […]

When the second version of IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) for GDPR compliance comes out of beta on March 31, it still won’t integrate with Google. But that’s because IAB Europe has decided to give companies until June 30 before the previous version of the TCF is deprecated and TCF 2.0 becomes the […]

The ad tech industry is pressing Google, Facebook and Amazon to offer more flexible payment terms during the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus crisis. An industry petition on Change.org, whose author prefers to remain anonymous due to business conflicts, asks Facebook, Google and Amazon to offer more flexible payment terms during this crisis. The […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The COVID Freebies There’s a lot of gambling going on among media and subscription-based companies trying to hedge short-term revenue losses with potential new – and hopefully loyal – users. Dish, for example, announced Thursday that it’s offering free trials for Sling TV, while […]

Google’s Ads Data Hub (ADH) started as a pure analytics and measurement service. But Google has been testing audience activation with a beta program for the past six months, according to AdExchanger sources who are in the program. The beta program includes large brands and agencies, and is currently only open to select clients that […]