Technology

Apple’s announcement on Monday that its Safari desktop browser would block third-party tracking information by default worries the ad tech industry – even though Safari represents less than 5% of paid search clicks, according to data from performance marketing agency Merkle. But not everyone is alarmed. The change is likely just another stepping stone in […]

Kelly Liyakasa contributed The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will become law in May 2018. Think it won’t affect you? Think again. “This kind of legislation impacts every company in the world,” said Acxiom CEO Scott Howe. “Very few companies aren’t collecting or utilizing information to improve their decision making.” But how the […]

Procter & Gamble has anointed MediaMath as the next demand-side platform in its growing DSP roster. P&G is also working with The Trade Desk, and with Neustar as its global data management platform. On Tuesday, MediaMath revealed that it had received a $175 million credit facility led by Goldman Sachs with participation from Santander Bank. […]

Multichannel ad revenue may be the real moneymaker for traditional TV companies in the near future. While the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for total US TV ad revenues between 2016 and 2021 will increase a modest 1.3% to $75.2 billion, most growth will come from multichannel ad revenue, like IP-based streaming content or online […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Eric Berry, CEO at TripleLift. Header bidding increases yield. This dogma is unquestioned and largely unassailable as the revenue increases are quantitative and provable. But despite the tangible gains, questions linger about why, beyond […]

You gotta give credit to MediaMath. At least, Goldman Sachs did. MediaMath said Tuesday that it had received a $175 million credit facility led by the finance giant. Santander Bank also partnered. CFO Stacey Bain said MediaMath’s previous debt facility was coming due, and the company will use its new line of credit to refinance […]

Marketers spend a lot of time and money testing their digital campaigns across channels, creative formats and audience targets. Marketing research and development platform Quantifi aims to ease that strain by automating the process. The company launched on Tuesday with $2 million from a number of strategic investors including High Alpha Capital, a VC firm […]

Apple is rolling out products to cut down on autoplay video and retargeting. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose on Thursday, Apple said it’s planning two features in the next version of Safari, dubbed High Sierra, that will cut down on ads that stalk you around the internet and videos that play uninvited. […]

Forrester’s latest evaluation of standalone data management platforms (DMPs), released Thursday, arrives one week after its assessment of demand-side platforms (DSPs). While DMPs originated as audience segmentation tools to enhance media buying, the value prop of a standalone DMP is very different from one tied to a DSP, said Forrester’s senior analyst Susan Bidel. Forrester reviewed […]

SheKnows built its own header bidding wrapper, which is now used by the 1,500 blogger sites it represents as well as its flagship property, SheKnows.com. Most publishers don’t build their own tech, instead using wrappers built and maintained by their ad tech partners. But Phil Bohn, VP of programmatic sales at SheKnows Media, said having […]

Keary Phillips spearheaded the tech stack behind Allstate’s programmatic in-house strategy. Now he’s at it again at Angie’s List – the digital reviews site for local service providers he joined as senior director of digital marketing last August. Although Angie’s List was founded in the mid-’90s during the peak of web 1.0 portals, ironically it […]

Forrester’s 2017 DSP Wave ranking placed six platforms as market “leaders”: MediaMath, DataXu, Trade Desk, Turn, Adobe and Rocket Fuel. Three others straddled the line between “leaders” and “strong performers”: Google, AppNexus and AOL. AdForm fell into the “strong performers” category. Time Inc.-owned Viant, including Adelphic, trailed the rest of the group with a placement […]

If you work in ad tech, you’ve probably crossed paths with Eric Franchi, co-founder of early ad-net-turned-creative-ad-platform Undertone, somewhere on the conference circuit. Franchi has set his sights on new endeavors, as the longtime investor and startup adviser revealed late Thursday his last day at Undertone will be June 1. Franchi helped carry Undertone through […]

Businesses spend around $40 billion a year on digital content marketing, and Demandbase, which announced a $65 million financing round on Thursday, is looking to cut itself a slice of the pie. Led by existing investor Sageview Capital with participation by a smorgasbord of others, including Adobe Systems, Altos Ventures and Sigma Partners, the financing […]

Google’s YouTube measurement system, Ads Data Hub, now works with media bought through DoubleClick and the Google Display Network (GDN). Ads Data Hub is designed to provide insights into ad spend and campaign performance across Google properties while respecting user privacy. It is meant to solve inconsistencies in measurement that have emerged (especially in mobile) […]

As Amazon’s commerce and advertising revenues continue to skyrocket, the company’s enigmatic policies remain a core feature of the platform. While leading digital ad platforms like Google and Facebook churn out regular product updates and constantly brief media and customers on policy nuances, Amazon keeps even its closest partners in the dark, according to several […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Yoav Naveh, vice president of video at Taboola. The concept of online advertising has long been associated with the standard banner ad – the square unit that consumers breeze past as they scroll down […]

Facebook is ramping up its publisher-centric strategy by testing a self-serve product powering programmatic direct deals called Audience Direct. In its first iteration, Audience Direct helps publishers sell their video inventory, giving them more control over how they structure direct deals and, eventually, how they guarantee delivery against them. “This enables them to create direct […]

Disused phone booths in New York could soon go programmatic. Nine-year MediaMath vet Ari Buchalter is stepping in as CEO of Alphabet-backed smart cities startup Intersection, best known for its interactive LinkNYC kiosks replacing neglected phone booths with Wi-Fi hotspots across New York City – and he’s bringing his data-driven sensibilities with him. “When people talk […]

By Ryan Joe and Tilde Herrera If you’re looking for one takeaway from all of the announcements Google is flinging around at its Marketing Next event on Tuesday, it’s that the internet giant really wants to account for marketing spend in as many channels as possible. Google is powering up its attribution product, connecting local […]

With the dynamics of header bidding changing, Criteo created a new version of its header bidding product Direct Bidder with more controls and added transparency and flexibility. Direct Bidder, which Criteo first started developing in October, can be plugged directly into the ad server, or work within header bidding wrappers from Prebid or Index Exchange. […]

While header bidding can increase publisher CPMs and revenue, the growing complexity of the implementations makes it harder to differentiate vendor partners. Ancient History Encyclopedia, for instance, saw CPMs rise 75% after adding header bidding a year ago. The online encyclopedia operates as a nonprofit and relies on advertising for the majority of its revenue. […]

Before he tried on agency life, Babs Rangaiah was a bit of a star on the CPG circuit. After more than a decade driving media innovation for global CPG Unilever, a shakeup in Unilever’s marketing org last spring led Rangaiah agency-side. Now, as a partner leading global marketing solutions for IBM’s in-house agency, Interactive Experience […]

Twitter has hired former Turn CEO Bruce Falck to lead its Revenue Product team, according to a tweet Thursday by company co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Falck has earned a reputation as an ad tech turnaround artist, stepping in as COO at BrightRoll a year prior to its $640 million sale to Yahoo and then […]

Bots are to web traffic what broken turnstiles are to amusement parks – they make it impossible to get an accurate read on how many people are coming through the door, and that messes with optimization. But at least in the case of a physical location, the visitors are human. On Thursday, bot detection company Distil […]

Programmatic buyers on the open exchange who think they’re purchasing inventory from ESPN or The New York Times often end up buying from imposter sites instead. At times, the amount of misrepresented inventory in the marketplace can dwarf the legitimate inventory sold by brand-name publishers. The practice, domain spoofing, will become much harder to carry […]

Acxiom’s 2017 Q4 performance was better than expected, as CEO Scott Howe’s plans to turn the company into a data infrastructure provider started to take form. Read the release. That transformation was evident in the company’s 2017 Q4 and full-year earnings report, released Tuesday. Acxiom earned $225 million in quarterly revenue, which was flat compared […]

Major ad platforms like Facebook and Google are soaking up the local and small-business market at an eye-popping rate. And it’s taking business away from smaller platforms like Yelp, whose stock has dropped almost 30% after local advertisers moved spend to Facebook and Google. Facebook, for instance, announced March of last year that it had […]

NBCUniversal’s chairman of advertising sales, Linda Yaccarino, went straight for Google’s jugular at the network’s Monday upfront presentation. “At NBCUniversal, you never have to worry about showing up next to something objectionable,” Yaccarino said at the New York City event, alluding to the online giant’s brand safety struggles. “But, let’s be honest: Brand safety is […]

Programmatic native is cleaning up its act. Content recommendation engines like Taboola and Outbrain provide an easy incremental revenue stream for publishers. But their cost-per-click model, which favors performance over quality, enables traffic arbitrage and creates brand safety risks. To account for those concerns, native exchanges like TripleLift, Connatix, Nativo and Sharethrough have leveraged direct […]