Technology

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Political Ad Firestorm Google is considering changes to its political advertising policy, according to The Wall Street Journal and Axios. The reports come as Facebook is under pressure from users, issue groups and regulators to block some (or even all) political advertising. Twitter banned […]

The Trade Desk brought in $164 million in Q3 revenue, up 38% from Q3 2018, according to its earnings report Thursday. The company’s profitability ticked down from $20.3 million to $19.4 million in the quarter because of large investments in areas like connected TV (CTV) that will maximize profitability over the long term, The Trade […]

“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 Sarah Sluis, senior editor at AdExchanger. It’s the first in a series of perspectives from AdExchanger’s editorial team.  There’s a question in ad tech that’s been surprisingly difficult to get […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Privacy As Product Who reads privacy policies? Maybe lawyers, definitely not users. Apple wants to change that, Engadget reports. On Wednesday, Apple revamped the privacy page on its website to make it easier to understand. The policies themselves haven’t changed, though, just the way […]

The New York Times is removing open marketplace programmatic ads from its mobile app starting in January 2020, because their slow loading times detract from the user experience. The decision will result in a single-digit millions loss of revenue. “We believe that this will be more than made up by gains in engagement and a […]

Google is taking advantage of all the product discovery happening on YouTube. The company said on Tuesday that advertisers buying Shopping Ads can extend their campaigns so those ads show up on YouTube’s home page and search feed. Google first let marketers use its search data to inform YouTube targeting back in 2017. User behavior, […]

Here comes the customer data platform consolidation: Amperity is buying customer analytics platform Custora to help clients do more with their data in a merger announced on Tuesday. Kabir Shahani, Amperity’s CEO and co-founder, declined to share a deal price. The companies will spend the first 100 days following the acquisition focused on fully integrating […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hiding In Plain Sight Facebook and Twitter have opened up a very public debate about political ads, but where is Google? The internet giant was still working on its pitch to lure political ad buyers away from Facebook and onto YouTube with new tools […]

Monday’s Links: Algo Secrets A bipartisan group of senators filed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act on Thursday, a bill that would require large internet and search providers (those with more than 1 million users, at least $50 million in revenue and 500 employees) to disclose how and why users see certain personalized content, as well […]

Google is acquiring Fitbit for $2.1 billion, or $7.35 per share, the companies revealed today. With the purchase, Google gets access to a wearables business that is largely dominated by Apple Watch. Apple, for example, made $2.1 billion from wearables last quarter (a segment that includes both its watch and AirPods). Google will use Fitbit’s […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Distribution Dilemma AT&T is leaning into its 34 million HBO subscribers to drive sign-ups for its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. But it may face roadblocks in working with competitive cable providers on distribution, Digiday reports. AT&T has yet to sign on any distribution […]

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 […]