Technology

LiveRamp has added connected TV IDs to IdentityLink, its cross-device identity graph, the company said during its Monday Q4 2018 earnings report. Connected TV IDs are tied to a home IP address, and are used to distinguish households by companies that serve ads over smart TVs or OTT services, including some smart TV manufacturers, multichannel […]

As marketers spend more with Amazon, they’re spawning a cottage industry of Amazon-focused ad tech vendors and service partners. Brands need specialists to guide them across Amazon’s sprawling marketing empire – a brand may deal separately with Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP), Amazon’s Alexa voice group, Amazon Fresh groceries, Twitch and the company’s packaging and shipment […]

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

Supply-path optimization (SPO) lets buyers find the best way to access the inventory they want. But the next stage of SPO is emerging, where buyers will negotiate with exchanges to create their own low-fee paths to supply. In that spirit, the agency Goodway Group and the exchange PubMatic inked a deal Wednesday where PubMatic will […]

Zeotap is launching a global identity graph to try and beat LiveRamp to the punch across the pond. On Tuesday, the Berlin-based mobile data platform announced the global rollout of Connect, an identity solution that deterministically links offline data to anonymized online identifiers based on exclusive relationships with telco operators in markets across Europe, India […]

Since GDPR came into effect last year, Google has been at the center of two connected issues around resolving identity in digital marketing. First, it planned to remove the DoubleClick ID (now the Google ID) from its log files, preventing ad tech and analytics companies from using the ID to track campaigns across the web. […]

Google still brings in the big bucks, but its costs are skyrocketing as well as the digital media giant pushes its way into TV advertising. First, the basics. Alphabet brought in $39.3 billion in Q4 2018, up 23% from the same period the year before, the company disclosed in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. […]

Taptica will acquire RhythmOne for $176 million in an all-stock deal, the companies said Monday. The mobile ad tech firm also gets a matryoshka doll of assets along with RhythmOne, including assets from the latter’s previous acquisitions of YuMe, Burst Media and parts of RadiumOne. Taptica characterized the deal as a bid for connected televison […]

Amazon’s “Other” category, its miscellaneous revenue segment that consists primarily of advertising, made $3.4 billion in Q4 2018, almost doubling from Q4 2017. The “Other” category also grew by about $900 million from the prior quarter, for the first time outpacing the growth of Amazon Web Services, the cloud infrastructure business, which added $700 million, […]

Attention: Attorney General, State of California Re: California Consumer Privacy Act You’re killing us here. Thanks, The advertising industry The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is set to take effect in 2020 and the advertising community is desperate for some clarification. On Tuesday, a coalition of ad trade orgs sent a joint letter to the […]

Google has maintained its dominant share of the ad server market because switching ad servers is a hellacious process that requires a hard reset on media plans, analytics, creative and billing. But Google’s announcement last May that it would remove the Google ID from its ad-server log files, thus prohibiting marketers from tracking or measuring […]

AT&T is juggling a lot of business units at the crossroads of media, advertising and communications. Here are three takeaways from the company’s Q4 2018 earnings call on Wednesday that you can bring to the water cooler. DirecTV Now lost subscribers … but it’s all part of the plan? When AT&T scaled back on promotions […]

Traditional broadcasters might soon bridge linear and digital ad buying. But first, baby steps. Before anyone reaches that holy grail, it helps if the ad inventory is trafficked through the same system. So in the spirit of unification, the video ad server FreeWheel said Wednesday that it will handle decisioning for NBCUniversal’s digital and linear […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Down, But Still Substantial Verizon’s media biz dropped 5.8% YoY in Q4 2018 – bringing it to “only” $2.1 billion in the quarter. Verizon Media (née Oath) has disappointed this year. “Certainly, when you see -6.9% revenue growth in 3Q and -5.8% in 4Q, […]

Apple actually mentioned the word “advertising” on its earnings call. Although hardware isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s services business, which includes search ads in the App Store, is becoming increasingly meaningful to the company’s bottom line. “Services are scaling quickly,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri told investors on Tuesday. Although iPhone sales were weak during the holiday […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Amazon Vs. Williams-Sonoma A lawsuit filed by Williams-Sonoma against Amazon in December demonstrates the ecommerce platform’s ability to replicate and overwhelm rival product lines. Williams-Sonoma is relatively strong online, with ecommerce accounting for the majority of sales, and its furniture business West Elm is […]

When AT&T bought Time Warner in June to create a programmatic exchange for the TV industry, many looked to Verizon’s purchases of AOL and Yahoo as a comparison. But the two telco’s strategies “could not be any more different,” said Xandr CEO Brian Lesser on stage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview last Thursday. “Oath, I think, […]

Paris-based analytics platform Contentsquare said Monday that it’s raised a $60 million Series C just one year after announcing its $42 million Series B. The fresh round, led by French private equity firm Eurazeo, brings the company’s total funding to $120 million since 2016. This raise, like the last, is going toward research and development […]

Investors are well over their brief love affair with independent ad tech, but other categories –namely mar tech, customer data platforms (CDPs) and advanced TV technology – are now catching their eye. Why? In a word: growth. “Growth is still what commands exit premiums – growth is what people pay for,” said Deborah Farrington, founder and […]

Marketers have a lot to contend with in 2019. Heads are spinning with thoughts of consumer-driven privacy concerns, different regulations in different regions, Apple blocking third-party tracking on Safari and how to buy TV in a world of digital delivery. At AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference Thursday, Google’s vice president of ad platforms Sean Downey considered […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Up The Funnel Amazon is giving marketers buying its Sponsored Brand Ads on its platform more insight into the consumers purchasing their products. Amazon released metrics this month that allow marketers to see how many Amazon purchases were made by people who had never […]

Salesforce expanded integrations between its marketing cloud platform and Datorama, the customer data platform it acquired for $800 million last year, the company announced Wednesday at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview in New York City. The new features allow Datorama customers to centralize marketing data from email and social media campaigns for analytics or ad campaign management. […]

Google got dinged by France’s data protection watchdog on Monday for failing to properly collect user consent under the General Data Protection Regulation. It was only a scratch but the ruling could signal a rough road ahead for the industry’s consent framework. The 50 million euro fine levied by the CNIL (the Commission nationale de […]

If you live in the United States, chances are you live in one of Nextdoor’s 190,000 active neighborhoods, which cover 90% of the country. But many in the advertising business haven’t yet worked with Nextdoor, which started selling ads less than two years ago. Leading that advertising push is Lauren Nemeth, a Google, AppNexus and […]

Beeswax raised $15 million in Series B funding which it will use to support connected TV and win marketer clients. As it expands to achieve these initiatives, Beeswax will  double its current headcount of 65 by the end of this year. The software-as-a-service DSP last raised funds in 2016. The new round brings total funding […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brand Safe Enough AT&T is advertising on YouTube again after a two-year hiatus. The telco, one of the world’s largest advertisers, pulled spend from the video platform at the height of its 2017 brand safety scandal with a promise not to return until major […]

France’s data protection authority issued a 50 million euro fine against Google on Monday for failing to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. Not only was Google found not to have the proper consents in place from its users to collect and process data for personalization and ad targeting, it may not even have […]

Like the New England Patriots, Verizon will pick up where it left off at last year’s Super Bowl. Though in Verizon’s case, that means honoring first responders. This year’s campaign is titled “The Team That Wouldn’t Be Here.” Verizon CMO Diego Scotti said the company will start rolling out spots two weeks before the big […]

After 14 years at Google and DoubleClick, ads vet Jonathan Bellack has joined Alphabet-owned Jigsaw as its first-ever director of product. Google created Jigsaw as a technology incubator with the mission of using technology to make the internet safer. Jigsaw’s projects have protected news organizations from toxic comments, gave readers uncensored access to sites and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Jockeys Amazon has a monster ad business, but it’s missing one piece: video inventory. The Amazon Prime video library has the audience, but like Netflix, it’s ad-free. Some recent moves show how Amazon will broaden its video supply. At CES last week, Amazon […]