Technology

When Snap reported disappointing earnings on Tuesday, it said revenue was constrained by its shift from a direct sales model to a programmatic, auction-based model. Snap’s excuse mimics one that publishers used in the early days of programmatic to explain their revenue shortfalls, and it doesn’t fully take into account immaturities and nuances in Snap’s […]

The video player ad-serving interface definition (VPAID) standard, which was supposed to improve the delivery of digital video ads but struggled to hit its stride, will be sunsetted. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab revealed Thursday (read the blog post) that the unpopular nine-year-old video ad spec will be retired and replaced with two […]

AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley has been waiting 10 years for ad tech to become transparent. Less than a week after Rubicon Project slashed its take rate in half, to 10% to 12%, by doing away with buy-side fees, AppNexus said its fees are even lower. The company revealed it charges an 8.5% average to the […]

The French video platform Dailymotion is a fraction of Google’s size – YouTube’s 1.5 billion-plus monthly viewers dwarf Dailymotion’s 300 million. But scale isn’t stopping the company from repositioning its platform to woo US advertisers and publishers from the dominant video-sharing site. Breaking into a video market ruled by streaming video services such as Netflix […]

Leanplum is leaning into machine learning and mobile marketing automation with $47 million in Series D funding, announced Wednesday. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with pinch-hitting from existing investors, including Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Shasta Ventures, and brings the company’s total funding to just over $93 million since […]

Messenger hopes to insinuate itself deeper within the customer journey. On Tuesday, Facebook released a closed beta test of a customer chat plugin as part of Messenger 2.2 that allows businesses to continue a single conversation thread across multiple channels, including Messenger and an advertiser’s own mobile and desktop sites. Businesses that integrate the customer […]

Nestle Canada is exercising more control over its programmatic and first-party data practices, said Melissa Savage, the food and drink company’s programmatic activation manager in the country. But unlike within an ad agency holding company, which tries to centralize programmatic knowledge, brand transformation must occur regionally. Take the company’s plan to ramp up native video […]

A number of ad tech-backed coalitions consolidating cookie pools have bubbled up this year to stave off Google, Facebook and Amazon running away with the market with their own scaled identity assets. And trends like Safari’s ITP cookie restrictions shift the advantage further toward the walled gardens with daily active users. AdExchanger looked at a […]

The tech titans have testified about Russian election meddling. And after two days and multiple hours of questioning by members of Congress aimed at top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s clear that Russian operatives continue to spread propaganda and sow social discontent using social media platforms and that said […]

There’s a storm cloud darkening Criteo’s sunny Q3 earnings (33% YoY growth ex-TAC to $234 million), in the form of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature, which went into effect Sept. 19. [More AdExchanger coverage.] ITP cost Criteo a little less than $1 million in Q3, but that number is expected to grow as iOS 11 […]

Safari may represent a relatively low share of browser traffic, but Apple browser’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) could have an outsized effect if it redefines which technology companies can access cookie data. ITP, a cross-site tracking restriction feature with the new iOS 11, builds on Apple’s pre-existing rejection of third-party cookies with a machine-learning-based algorithm […]

Facebook and Twitter both took steps last week to provide more transparent paid political advertising on their platforms. But although political ads will be clearly labeled and users will be able to access more information on who purchased the ads and how much the buyer is spending on electioneering, it’s primarily up to the advertisers […]

Brands, agencies, publishers and vendors agree that while the industry is rife with ad quality issues, programmatic isn’t the culprit. “Programmatic is not the problem,” said Shaune Kolber, programmatic creative and ad fraud manager at Dell, at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York City on Thursday. “It’s a way of buying. It’s not supposed […]

Alphabet’s headlong revenue growth continues to prove durable in spite of brand safety concerns, EU regulatory pressure, Russian election meddling and other controversies. The company reported total Q3 revenue of $27.7 billion, a 24% increase from the same period last year and beating analyst expectations by around $500 million. But the raw revenue growth is […]

The Trade Desk on Wednesday made its first-ever acquisition when it bought the cross-device identity graph company Adbrain, adding a data set of cross-device IDs to its own demand-side platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the acquisition isn’t expected to materially impact The Trade Desk’s earning report and adds a 20-person team […]

Publishers still struggle to make enough video content and inventory. Text-to-video platform Wibbitz, which announced its $20 million Series C on Tuesday, aims to help them meet that need with technology that automates creation. The round, led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments with participation from The Weather Channel TV network, the Associated Press, existing investor […]

Unlike at a traditional agency, which typically services the brand marketer, IBM Interactive Experience (iX) has a direct inroad to CEOs. Clients undergoing massive transformation will often hire IBM to rethink commerce or marketing – and those conversations trickle down to IMB iX to put into practice, said Robert Schwartz, global head of agency services […]

If lawmakers have anything to do with it, political ads on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other online platforms may soon be subject to the same disclosure requirements as traditional political advertising. Senators introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to do just that, prompted by revelations of Russian meddling before and during the 2016 US presidential […]

“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 Matt Keiser, founder and CEO at LiveIntent. While WPP’s Martin Sorrell has sounded the alarm, the rest of the industry is just catching on: Amazon is racing ahead to own […]

Although Netflix’s audience is large (and growing), it’s notoriously hard to measure. Nielsen hopes to remove some of the difficulty gauging audience viewership in ad-free environments like Netflix with its launch Wednesday of a syndicated measurement service called Nielsen Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) Content Ratings. Eight networks and studios, including A&E, Disney-ABC, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal […]

About a year and a half ago, global beauty manufacturer Coty realized it needed to get a grip on its own data. The company was about to complete a merger with several P&G specialty beauty brands and become a $9 billion global business. And since Coty was expanding its portfolio, pressure was mounting because each […]

As the global COO of Merkle, Michael Komasinski keeps the proverbial engines running both internally and in the agency’s services business. After joining Merkle in 2015 from his post as COO of Razorfish North America, Komasinski helped drive 30% revenue growth across the business in 2016. Komasinski also was largely responsible for leading the integration […]

TruSignal is striking out on its own with $5 million in Series A funding and a plan: to help demand-side platforms and data providers use offline data to build people-based lookalike audiences for online targeting. On Thursday, TruSignal completed its spin-off from sister company eBureau, an offline data and predictive analytics platform which itself was […]

As Facebook grabs more mobile and video dollars from the ecosystem, premium publishers are looking for viable ways to compete. For storied publisher Time Inc., one solution is to bring its own mobile-optimized video solutions to market. Using Google’s native framework, Time created a mobile, in-feed video solution dubbed Adapt that is customized to its […]

Since launching a proprietary YouTube measurement system last January (and later expanding it to DoubleClick and the Google Display Network), Google has been pretty buttoned up about its Ads Data Hub. However, Google VP of Product Management Brad Bender tells AdExchanger that adoption of the audience management tool is strong. Google claims Ads Data Hub […]

Google is the latest walled garden to be sucked down the Russian rabbit hole. The Washington Post reported Monday that Google has uncovered evidence of ads linked to Russia that were used to spread propaganda via YouTube, Gmail, Google Search and its DoubleClick ad network. Google’s revelations follow similar disclosures by Facebook and Twitter, which […]

Criteo on Friday released a suite of products, including audience matching and customer prospecting, as well as a new policy beginning in the fourth quarter to give buyers and DSPs impression-level transparency into every unit of inventory. At the heart of Criteo’s string of product releases this year is a newfound willingness among retailers and […]

Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard is pleased overall with the response to his tough talk of the past year. And he’s optimistic that Facebook, Google and others will meet P&G’s deadline to align on third-party measurement standards and have their methods audited by the Media Ratings Council by the end of this […]

Around this time last year, the chatter around artificial intelligence (AI) was escalating as Salesforce and IBM unveiled splashy programs to help advertisers make sense of massive and complex reams of data, in order to enable more personalized marketing. Oracle, too, announced the creation of Adaptive Intelligence Apps at the time, and at its annual […]

Marni Walden, EVP and president of global media and the highest-ranking female executive at Verizon, will step down and move into an advisory position as of Dec. 31. She will leave the company in February, according to a Verizon SEC filing dated Sept. 28. CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed the news late Wednesday, stating that Walden […]