Technology

Seven years after first embracing programmatic buying at scale through its secretive Project Hawkeye initiative, Procter & Gamble is saying goodbye to long-time ad tech partner AudienceScience. In its place the company will install Neustar as its data management platform alongside an assortment of demand-side platforms, including The Trade Desk. Ad Age first reported the […]

Seven independent ad tech companies debuted a programmatic consortium on Thursday that pools their supply- and demand-side cookie IDs into one shared identity asset. The consortium is helmed by AppNexus, MediaMath and LiveRamp, which provides the data matching. Other launch partners include Index Exchange, Rocket Fuel, LiveIntent and OpenX. And it’s a shot across the […]

AppNexus wants in on connected TV ad budgets. The ad tech company has doubled down on the infrastructure to support connected TV buying and selling by integrating the forecasting from its Yieldex acquisition with its video ad server. It also has added support for newer connected TV ad formats and long-form content. These developments should […]

Criteo welcomed Twitter’s revelation last week that it would stop investing in its retargeting platform TellApart due to direct-response headwinds. Criteo’s CEO said these changes could help its own business. “TellApart was a strong competitor for us in the US, so it was good news for us that they’re winding down that business, and [it] […]

Amazon’s ad revenue may be way higher than previously thought. Like, three and a half times higher. According to new analysis from Dan Salmon, managing director for media and Internet equity research at BMO Capital Markets, the company could generate $3.5 billion in ad revenue in 2017. And he expects that figure to grow 63% […]

Destination marketers get tripped up on attribution. A tourism board, like the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau (PMVB), for example, spans four counties across northeastern Pennsylvania and represents a consortium of hotels, restaurants and activity providers, which makes it difficult to gather real-time metrics on visitation. “Someone might click on an ad and visit our website, […]

Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]

Oracle Data Cloud has become a big business driver for Oracle’s CX Cloud Suite, which includes software for marketing, sales, commerce, social and customer service. In the past 18 months, Data Cloud has also become a big acquirer, with deals for Moat, Crosswise and AddThis. And it has a strong presence even in announcements about […]

Hulu is moving into phase two of its advanced TV strategy almost two years after launching its private exchange. But the market has changed since then, and Hulu has evolved its own ad technology stack in lockstep. For starters, Facebook shuttered the LiveRail supply-side platform (SSP) and ad server last year, so Hulu migrated to Tremor’s video SSP. Rather than entering a drawn-out RFP […]

While the big story from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) 2016 digital ad revenue report is that mobile accounted for over half of digital ad spend, digital audio spend was finally significant enough to merit its own category. The biannual report, released Wednesday, shows digital audio spend hit $1.1 billion in 2016, “passing the threshold […]

MGM Resorts International needed to revamp its go-to-market strategy. The hospitality company, which owns hotels along the Las Vegas Strip such as the Bellagio, MGM Grand, The Mirage and Mandalay Bay, as well as properties across the globe, was operating competing media plans for each hotel brand. “We’ve always gone to market as individual resorts,” […]

LinkedIn on Monday launched its version of a CRM-matching and retargeting tool called Matched Audiences. Matched Audiences encompasses site retargeting and account-based and contact targeting, which lets advertisers upload their CRM files to target specific segments or groups of IDs. Customers have two ways to bring first-party data into LinkedIn. First is through a direct […]

Google is adding advanced TV buying capabilities to its demand-side platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM). For the first time, Google will connect its ad tech to addressable TV inventory through its broadband and TV service, Google Fiber. Google will also support local market TV buys in DBM through a partnership with WideOrbit, as well as […]

As header bidding grows, ad exchanges are sending more ad impressions per second and DSPs must evaluate more impressions than ever. The massive uptick in volume, which far outpaces programmatic revenue growth, is straining ad tech infrastructure. With more queries to sift through, it costs more to buy the same ads. And as a result, […]

Rumors that Google is considering adding a built-in ad-blocking feature to its Chrome browser elicited a mix of shouts and shrugs across the digital advertising landscape. The potential Chrome ad-blocking extension, first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, would block ad formats deemed unacceptable by the Coalition for Better Ads (CFBA), a cross-industry trade […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. When the news dropped that Oracle would acquire Moat, DataXu CEO Mike Baker’s first thought was not that Oracle had made a big move in measurement, but that it had bought a piece of the walled garden action. “At some level you can look […]

Many New York City-based ad tech leaders saw Tuesday’s acquisition of Moat by the Silicon Valley titan Oracle as a testament to the city’s distinct startup ecosystem. The Moat deal was a victory for the city and “a validation of the tech scene here,” said DataXu CEO Mike Baker, a prolific ad tech angel investor, […]

AdRoll has a new president: Toby Gabriner, former CEO of Adap.TV (now AOL/Oath) and an early CEO of [x+1], now owned by Rocket Fuel. Gabriner, who joined AdRoll as a strategic adviser in October, succeeds longtime president, CMO and founding team member Adam Berke, who will move into a strategic advisory role at AdRoll. Transitioning […]

Google rolled out a machine learning-powered display product called Smart display campaigns on Thursday. The product is now generally available to all advertisers buying native, image or text ads across the Google Display Network (GDN). Smart display campaigns are accessible via AdWords and reach more than 3 million GDN sites and apps on GDN now. […]

Oracle’s acquisition of digital ad measurement firm Moat late Tuesday could put pressure on Nielsen to snap up one of the remaining independent measurement companies like Integral Ad Science or DoubleVerify. “How this will impact media currency folks like Nielsen is a bit hard to say,” said Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, a TV platform […]

Tom Edwards is different from most of the other people flowing through the halls of the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose at Facebook’s F8 developers conference this week. Because Edwards isn’t a developer. He’s the chief digital officer at marketing services firm Epsilon. “There aren’t a lot of agency folks here,” Edwards said. “I’m […]

Oracle will acquire digital measurement firm Moat extending its marketing and data clouds’ abilities to provide digital advertising analytics to advertising clients and publishers, the company revealed Tuesday. [Read the release]. Deal terms were not disclosed. Moat will join the Oracle Data Cloud, which houses its Datalogix and BlueKai acquisitions. “Moat has grown its attention […]

Marketing may be a trillion-dollar industry, but its supply chain needs a makeover, says Microsoft’s CMO. “What makes marketing such a unique case is that the labor component is much higher than any other industry,” said CMO Grad Conn. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity to optimize the way we’re working in marketing and […]

When it comes to how buyers perceive the data management platform (DMP) market, it’s Oracle BlueKai’s game to lose, according to a new Advertiser Perceptions report. The research firm’s Programmatic Intelligence Report for Q1 2017 surveyed more than 1,000 decision-makers from agencies, advertisers, publishers and tech providers. Oracle BlueKai led the pack in brand recognition: […]

Dr. Martens, the iconic British boot maker popularized in ’80s and ’90s subculture, is adding a new sheen to its customer data strategy. Although each of Dr. Martens’ regional businesses in the UK, Americas, Europe/Africa and Asia is responsible for its own marketing, development and IP, the company’s digital efforts are converging as it eyes […]

On the heels of Google’s ongoing brand safety headache, MediaMath is trying to add a few safety bumpers to the sharp edges of the digital ad ecosystem. The programmatic buying platform took the wraps off a product on Thursday that aims to help advertisers find addressable audiences on brand-safe sites at scale. MediaMath vets a […]

Burger King’s stunt to activate Google’s Home device with a 15-second TV spot is the first deliberate attempt by a brand to tie paid media with voice-activated search, raising questions about how brands should approach advertising on smart home devices. On Wednesday, the quick-serve restaurant ran a commercial in which an employee asks, “Okay, Google, […]

As consumers went mobile, cookie-based data management platforms (DMP) like BlueKai – now Oracle Data Cloud – had to figure out a new data strategy. Oracle Data Cloud, which employs 1,000 people, hooks into multiple digital and TV platforms to differentiate its DMP offering. “We’ve really worked to have reach and meaningful scale through partnerships […]

The Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA), an industry trade group spanning out-of-home media and advertising technology, on Monday released its first programmatic standards for digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns. The DPAA hopes these standards, which are like existing openRTB guidelines from the IAB, will facilitate digital out-of-home buys. The DPAA’s standards outline video ad formats […]

The agency-client relationship is ailing, and fixing what’s broken will involve deep organizational changes on both sides of the table – starting with the marketer. “The brand has to start with itself,” said Brigitte Majewski, Forrester analyst and author of a report released Thursday calling for a new agency operating model. “If you aren’t asking […]