Technology

Sovrn’s acquisition of VigLink last week will make 2019 Sovrn’s first year when subscription software services outearn its traditional advertising exchange. Sovrn began in 2014 as an SSP offering scale and analytics on its aggregated publishing data, growing to be one of the largest ad networks with tens of thousands of blogs and publisher clients. […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is written by Lindsey Harju, co-founder at Blinc Digital Group. 2018 may look similar to years past, with cross-channel acquisitions a seemingly regular occurrence. But for me, 2018 will stand out in the history of advanced TV […]

Federal Trade Commission Chair Joseph Simons is in favor of a national privacy regime – but beware the potential unintended consequences, he said. “Depending on how you do privacy legislation, you could have an adverse impact on competition, potentially by entrenching the major digital platforms,” Simons told lawmakers during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Adapting Accenture Interactive will acquire Adaptly, an ad tech and programmatic services company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Adaptly has 150 employees and has raised $13 million in funding. Adaptly should help Accenture Interactive “enable workflow, improve quality assurance and really […]

On Jan. 1, 2019, Hulu will release an automated private marketplace that will allow advertisers to bid on Hulu inventory without going through the additional steps of working with Hulu’s sales team. Instead, advertisers can use their own DSPs or trading desks to plug into the marketplace. The PMP will initially house standard 30-second spots, […]

Integral Ad Science named Lisa Utzschneider as CEO Wednesday. She will start in January by performing a strategic analysis of the business and creating a growth plan for the verification company. After mulling an IPO, Integral Ad Science went the private equity route this summer when Vista Equity Partners bought a majority stake in the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No More Safety Net Netflix shares are down more than a third over the past six months as investors worry about its debt and high costs. Netflix built its position in OTT with few competitors (HBO and Amazon Prime were pretty much it) – but […]

After around a year of avoiding the spotlight, Google CEO Sundar Pichai spent nearly four hours fielding a grab bag of questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, discussing everything from the scope of Google’s data collection practices to alleged political bias in search results. The problem, as is often the case […]

Verizon will take a $4.6 billion goodwill impairment charge in the fourth quarter, acknowledging that its Oath business unit has underperformed, the company said Tuesday. The hit nearly eliminates the $4.8 billion goodwill balance Verizon carried after it acquired and merged Yahoo and AOL and assorted technology holdings into its Oath business unit back in […]

AppOnboard is onboarding VC cash hand over fist. On Wednesday, the mobile app demo and analytics startup with a platform allows users to try an application before downloading it, announced its second funding round – $15 million – in less than eight months. AppOnboard’s Series A round in April totaled $15 million. That’s $30 million for the […]

You may have received a news alert from The New York Times Wednesday morning about the latest Facebook data-related misstep as you sipped on your cup of joe. What’s Facebook accused of this time? Providing special pay-for-play access to user data for whitelisted advertisers, including Airbnb, Lyft and Netflix, while penalizing others by cutting them […]

The United States and United Kingdom are dominating in programmatic innovation, but Germany could be the next big player in the space, according to a study released Thursday from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). The WFA analyzed 13 countries with significant ad markets. The group looked at programmatic spend per capita, amount of private […]

From 7 pm to 7:45 pm on Tuesday, publishers saw mysterious yellow 300×250 ads blanket their sites. Paying CPMs north of $20, the yellow square ad elbowed out other buyers with its big spending. Hourly revenue spiked many times over publishers’ normal averages. Then it disappeared. Turns out, the yellow ad appeared across the United […]

Forrester tried to acquire SiriusDecisions, a B2B market research and analytics firm, five years ago, so closing a $245 million deal for the company last week felt like a natural step. But SiriusDecisions was the third acquisition in the past half-year for Forrester, which historically buys a company every three years or so, said founder […]

About seven years ago, DSPs that pitched marketers directly risked losing massive agency contracts. But today, as more marketers influence technology decisions and take programmatic contracts in-house, DSPs are freer to go after brands directly. Even The Trade Desk, which built a $6 billion business by pledging its allegiance to agencies, has signed more than […]

Shorting Ads Verizon is inching away from the grand advertising ambitions it once had for Oath. The ad unit has a new chief, Guru Gowrappan, following Tim Armstrong’s departure in September, and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, who took over in August, is more interested in network infrastructure than media. And after failing to meet ad […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Ryan Christiansen, co-founder and CEO at Ntooitive Digital. The ability to track and effectively target consumer actions has never been more essential to marketers seeking to unleash the power of cross-platform digital advertising. With […]

After a protracted, year-long alpha period, the IAB Tech Lab has released the specs in beta for the app version of its Ads.txt initiative to reduce counterfeit ad inventory. The App-ads.txt hold-up was caused by app stores dragging their heels on providing support for the Tech Lab’s preferred solution of using metadata tags – essentially […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Erik Requidan, vice president of programmatic strategy at Intermarkets. In a recent podcast, Chris Kane explained three ways that buyers navigate the complex programmatic supply landscape. The hardest: direct-to-publisher integrations. Some of the biggest names in media […]

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sell Me A Story YouTube is expanding its Stories feature to all creators with over 10,000 followers. YouTube Stories launched last year as “Reels” and was only available to select creators. Now, in an effort to capture some of the traffic that its creators […]

AT&T’s ad tech unit Xandr has big hopes for TV advertising, but the company said Thursday during an analyst call that it’s also going to be heavily involved in powering online ads. “You will continue to see Xandr media business outpace the television market in 2019,” Xandr CEO Brian Lesser told investors. “And now what […]

LiveRamp, dataxu and Index Exchange launched the first commercial proof of concept for the Advertising ID Consortium on Thursday. The product places LiveRamp’s IdentityLink directly in the bidstream, skipping the cookie syncs typically required for a DSP and SSP to match against LiveRamp in a campaign. Additionally, Bill Simmons, dataxu’s co-founder and CTO, is joining […]

Until now, if an ad fraud scam was uncovered, the criminals behind it would usually fade back into the shadows with impunity, and shortly thereafter, they’d be back at it again – the seemingly eternal game of Whac-A-Mole. This time, there’s accountability. Two global botnets, Methbot and 3ve, are no more, and there are real people […]

New York Media is putting programmatic front and center. The publication has long serviced programmatic deals yet didn’t tout them in market. But as programmatic becomes the dominant way to transact, New York Media hired Jeremy Fass in July to head its programmatic revenue operation. His mandate? Be proactive about programmatic, not reactive. “Due to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Accredit Where Due Facebook got a little much-needed positive news on Tuesday when it cleared a major hurdle in its effort to gain MRC accreditation for third-party viewability measurement. Facebook completed the first of its three-part accreditation process in April, which was an inspection […]

The Walt Disney Company has found its happily ever after with Google, not Comcast-owned FreeWheel. After months of speculation, Google said in a blog post that Disney would implement its ad platform across its brands, including Disney, ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. The relationship will span all of Disney’s video and display inventory. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Collective Sigh Visto, the company formerly known as Collective, filed for bankruptcy protection and has reached a “stalking horse” deal to sell its assets to largest investor Zeta in a $15 million all-stock deal. The court filing gives a glimpse of just how tough […]

Stories. It seems like everybody’s got ‘em, from Snap and LinkedIn to Instagram and Facebook – and now Google. But while AMP Stories might look like a knockoff of the other guys, it’s actually quite a different animal. What’s the story? The main difference: AMP Stories are specifically designed for publishers to create full-screen experiences for […]

Nielsen’s hire of IBM Watson honcho David Kenny as CEO, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is a major bet for the measurement company as it rises to meet new competitive challenges and prepares for a possible sale of the business. Kenny oversaw IBM’s artificial intelligence initiatives, using machine learning to support enterprise […]