Technology

Sometimes it seems impossible to reconcile the demands of users, publishers and advertisers, the three main stakeholders of the ad-supported internet. “It’s really important that all three of these constituencies can benefit from digital advertising,” said Brad Bender, VP of product management for Google’s buy and sell-side advertising technology. On topics like privacy, web-tracking cookies […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jean-François Bernard, co-founder and chief product officer at Adomik. Google’s move to a first-price auction will change the dynamics of the publisher stack and redistribute revenue for publishers across all the channels they use. […]

Criteo’s revenues totaled $558 million in Q1 2019, a 1% decline from last year, though net profitability increased 1% to $21 million, the company said in its quarterly earnings on Tuesday. The core retargeting business outperformed forecasts, helping to keep revenue at a relative plateau, but Criteo’s non-retargeting businesses, like in-app advertising and audience onboarding, […]

Despite Alphabet bringing in total revenues of $36.3 billion for Q1 – up 17% from last year – investors are skittish. For one, Alphabet’s revenue would have been higher if not for a $1.7 billion fine levied by the European Union last month on Google’s AdSense business. But analysts were more concerned about the slowdown […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Agent Amazon Amazon is on a charm offensive to bring in more agencies and non-endemic brands, like financial services companies or auto manufacturers that don’t sell on its platform today. Amazon is doing a roadshow pitching its data and OTT chops to help create […]

Amazon reported slower than usual revenue growth in its earnings report, with overall sales of $59.7 billion in Q1 2019, a 17% increase compared to the year before. Amazon’s annual growth rate dropped, but it is more profitable and its business has a higher profit margin than ever. The company’s operating profit reached $4.4 billion […]

The IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab on Thursday released a second version of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), which publishers and technology companies use to pass consent data for online advertising while still complying with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The TCF update will be in a public comment period for […]

With its $4.4 billion acquisition of Epsilon/Conversant, Publicis Groupe becomes a data controller – and that ups the regulatory ante under the General Data Protection Regulation and, likely, any other privacy legislation that comes down the pike. Controllers, in GDPR parlance, determine how and why personal data is processed. Controllers are also required to establish a […]

On Tuesday, the IAB Tech Lab explained how it would start phasing out the decade-old Video Player Ad-Serving Interface (VPAID) spec in favor of a new specification – snappily dubbed Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition (SIMID) – that specifically supports interactive video ads. The IAB Tech Lab, which has been working on a VPAID replacement since 2017, […]

The two minutes of television inventory sold by multichannel video players (MVPDs) – which can be made addressable by targeting through the set-top box – has historically been fragmented across providers, making it complex for a national advertiser to run addressable campaigns at scale. Today, MVPDs are jockeying to sell each other’s addressable TV supply, […]

Publicis acquired Epsilon on Sunday primarily for the latter’s expertise in working with first-party client data. But Publicis got a lot more with Epsilon’s hefty $4.4 billion price tag. Epsilon is best known for its services related to data management, email marketing and loyalty platforms. But Epsilon also gives Publicis an affiliate marketing network (Commission […]

Google held a meeting Thursday with its top publisher partners to discuss numerous new product changes, collectively called “unified pricing,” that could upend publisher strategy and leave them with less control over their ad inventory. It soon got heated. Multiple publishers in the group, whose attendees included The New York Times, News Corp, Dotdash, Watson […]

Television advertising is getting smarter. And the smartest companies in digital advertising are coming for TV. That means a royal rumble is playing out over who controls the ad serving for data-driven TV campaigns. AdExchanger looked at the TV and video ad serving landscape, where broadcasters and digital ad platforms like Google and Amazon fiercely […]

When Publicis acquired Epsilon for $4.4 billion on Sunday, it put a big emphasis on the value the company brings to the group around first-party data. But while Epsilon has deep experience working with its clients’ first-party data and managing their CRM databases and loyalty programs, it doesn’t actually own first-party data – depending on […]

A+E Networks said Wednesday that it will work with Comcast-owned FreeWheel to unify demand across its direct sold and programmatic ad buyers. When viewers stream shows via an OTT device, phone or computer, A+E has to balance programmatic bids with direct sold buys sold through cable channels, like A&E, History and Viceland, said Jason DeMarco, […]

While most DSPs let marketers increase or decrease bids based on factors like time of day, Beeswax is upgrading that idea with a product that lets buyers optimize bids based on up to 40 factors from the bid requests. Bid Models, which graduated from beta Wednesday, uses multivariate bidding algorithms to help marketers find “pockets” […]

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 […]

One of the most pressing concerns from Sizmek’s bankruptcy comes from SSPs, which must reconsider how they think about risk and credit with their longtime partners. Brands and agencies often pay DSPs on 90-day or even 120-day cycles. But DSPs pay SSPs between 30 to 60 days. There’s a separate contract between an SSP and […]

Publicis Groupe’s $4.4 billion purchase of email marketing and data company Epsilon on Sunday comes down to three words: first-party data. “What is really important for our clients is to build their first-party data,” said Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun on an investor call Monday. “If not, they will be killed by direct to consumer […]

BuzzFeed thrives on using data to inform its advertising programs, social strategy and editorial. But its cookie-dependent data-management platform (DMP) had too many holes in how it collected data. So the publisher switched to Permutive, a next-gen DMP that uses a browser’s local storage to find patterns in how its users engage with content and […]

First there was Ads.txt, then there was App-ads.txt. Now there are Sellers.json and OpenRTB SupplyChain Object Specifications. The two new specs, released for public comment by the IAB Tech Lab on Thursday, are both meant to help advertisers get a better understanding of whether the inventory they’re buying is legit and where it’s coming from. […]

LiveRamp has acquired the consent management platform (CMP) Faktor, the company said Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But LiveRamp will take on Faktor’s 11-person team in Amsterdam. Faktor was founded in 2017, in the run-up to the European Union’s implementation of GDPR, when publishers reevaluated their data collection and privacy policies. LiveRamp […]

Dentsu Aegis Network launched Sellwin, an Amazon-focused consultancy, on Wednesday. The business is made up of six consultants, with access to another 130 specialists across Dentsu’s US agencies for things like ecommerce search, creating product page content and Amazon voice skills, said Sellwin President Travis Johnson. The consultancy model is new for Dentsu, Johnson said, […]

Waze is navigating toward programmatic. The traffic and navigation app owned by Google said Wednesday it has made its Zero-speed Takeover ad unit available programmatically in Display & Video 360 (formerly known as DoubleClick Bid Manager). The unit shows up as a banner ad at the bottom of the screen when a driver stops their […]

This week on AdExchanger Talks, 614 Group CEO and Founder Rob Rasko graces the studio for a discussion of the changing nature of programmatic and entrepreneurship. 2018 was a year of change in programmatic, exemplified by Xandr’s acquisition of AppNexus. The deal has created uncertainty: Where will networks that used to transact on the AppNexus […]

Q1 2019 in a nutshell: Ad tech isn’t doing as poorly as you’d think (all things considered), TV and data are colliding, DTC is sizzling, private equity is still gung-ho on M&A, and so are the marketing clouds. It’s not a bad report card, despite a general sense of caution and trepidation about macro factors […]

Pinterest’s valuation in its amended S-1 released today is lower than the $12 billion it was gunning for last year. With price per share ranging from $15 to $17, Pinterest is valued between $10 billion and $11.3 billion. Could this lower-than-expected valuation indicate skepticism about Pinterest’s core business? Elgin Thompson, managing director of Digital Capital […]

It’s a good time to be in the first-party data biz. Jebbit, a Boston-based startup that helps marketers collect data directly from consumers, announced its $12 million Series B on Monday led by K1 Investment Management. Previous angel investors include ad tech big wigs, such as Jonah Goodhart (currently of Oracle Data Cloud) and Eric […]

Sizmek regained access to its cash this week after Cerberus, the investment firm that owns Sizmek’s debt and now owns its equity, seized its holdings and pushed the company into bankruptcy last Friday. Sizmek has resumed business operations and is covering payroll and employee benefits, after missing the previous pay period. The next two to […]

“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 John Slocum, vice president, DMP, at MediaMath. Two years ago, MediaMath partnered to find a way for open and independent digital marketing platforms to rival the scale of walled gardens […]