Last week, WPP launched the “marketing foresight” consultancy Gain Theory, housed within GroupM. Gain Theory, which has 200 people and a new office in New York City, rolls together two existing WPP agencies: the London-based marketing effectiveness agency Ohal and the Bangalore-based data analytics firm Meritus. Jason Harrison, previously CIO at Maxus, has been appointed […]
On April 21, Google will begin instituting a change to its mobile search algorithm that will take a site’s mobile-friendliness into account when ranking results. Indexed apps will also start showing up among organic search results. The update applies to mobile search only. In somewhat un-Google-like fashion, Google, which normally makes its search algorithm changes […]
Programmatic ad tech companies aren’t properly estimating their total addressable market, said BMO Capital Markets equity research analyst Dan Salmon. Salmon presented a report Thursday at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco that pointed to two areas where these estimates tend to get thrown off. First, most ad tech vendors don’t factor in take rates – the […]
The rumors were true. Google’s skippable and click-to-play YouTube ad format TrueView will be available programmatically, the company announced Thursday at the Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco. The 5-year-old format, priced on a cost-per-view basis, represents more than 85% of in-stream ads on YouTube, according to Rany Ng, product management director for Google. TrueView […]
The ad tech funding scene is getting a little unfriendly – but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the video guys. On Thursday, Altitude Digital announced a $30 million cash injection from financial tech firm FastPay, bringing the video SSP’s total funding to $45 million. The Denver-based company has direct relationships with 500 […]
The European Commission hit Google with a Statement of Objections on Wednesday, claiming the tech giant prioritizes its shopping comparison service in search results, featuring Google Shopping results more prominently on screens, thereby abusing its dominance. The Commission claims this policy artificially diverts traffic, hinders market competition and violates EU antitrust rules, which ultimately harms […]
Partner, build or buy? WPP Group has decided on the last in the case of Medialets. The global holding company said Wednesday it will acquire the mobile ad platform as a wholly owned subsidiary. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clients across the breadth of WPP’s holdings will have the option to use Medialets’ tech. Medialets CEO […]
Banners weren’t cutting it for Vaibhav Gupta, CEO and founder of Bidstalk, a Singapore-based company that provides a white-label mobile and video DSP platform for advertisers and publishers. But the alternative – native – presented its own attendant complications. “Marketers are ready to experiment with newer mobile-focused ad formats, but such traffic is still limited,” Gupta said. […]
Buffering video isn’t a great experience, but what is its impact on ads? Networks still face challenges when placing ads against over-the-top (OTT) content, which is one of the reasons why Adobe Primetime and content delivery network Akamai are partnering on a new tool to link Adobe’s ad-insertion technology directly to Akamai’s server-side plug-in, announced […]
Consider it AOL ONE’s coming-out party. A year after AOL first outlined a vision to unify its programmatic technologies for both advertisers and publishers under a single platform, Tuesday marks the day the product officially ships. AOL has also renamed each of its technologies to more accurately reflect their capabilities. For instance, Adap.tv is now […]
When Rich Sutton became Reader’s Digest Association’s CRO in January, his top priority was to extract more revenue from the advertisers accessing its audience of 53 million monthly uniques. “We’re moving to a mix that’s more video, native and high-impact, because those are the formats that are commanding the high CPMs,” Sutton said. “I’m not […]
Google is slowly revealing the fruits of its cross-screen TV efforts. “We’re introducing new ways for broadcasters to forecast in DoubleClick for Publishers by enabling them to forecast available Internet TV inventory with greater precision, insights and impact from patterns in commercial breaks,” wrote Rany Ng, director of product management for video, in a blog […]
Google’s plan to rival Netflix and Hulu by introducing its own ad-free subscription service has left some questioning as to whether it will restrict content creators enough to move elsewhere. Although YouTube creators will receive a 55% cut of paid subscription revenue for their videos, which is equal to the percentage they earn for pre-roll […]
You can’t un-ring a bell, but you might be able to un-hash an email, depending on whom you ask. In order for marketers to safely use hashes for targeted advertising, they must stay abreast of the latest hashing formats. Email hashing involves converting an email address to a hexadecimal string. Each time an email address […]
The Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) will be the inaugural media company to trial WideOrbit’s programmatic radio beta program, released Friday. SBS is the largest publicly traded, Hispanic-controlled media company in the US. Through the alliance with WideOrbit, a broadcast technology provider and a cross-channel SSP, the SBS will make its digital radio inventory available to brands, […]
Data is part of the foundation at L’Oreal Canada – but that wasn’t always the case. “L’Oreal is a marketing company, not an IT company – yet,” said Khoi Truong, director of media and data optimization at L’Oreal Canada. “But for the last year, we’ve been setting up our CRM and thinking about what we could do […]
Six months after it came to light that AppNexus has a problem with invalid inventory, the New York-based company is imposing more transparency on ad networks and websites that use its platform to sell media. AppNexus confirmed to AdExchanger that it has started inserting a new snippet of JavaScript into its ad tag in order to […]
Boom and pop. One is the sound of VC money pouring into the ad tech industry. The other is the sound a bubble makes when it bursts. Ad tech has been notorious for heavyweight funding rounds and even larger, some might say bloated, valuations. And companies that were flying high before they went public – Rocket […]
Microsoft has reversed its approach to Do Not Track (DNT) and will no longer make it the default setting on the Internet Explorer browser and IE’s eventual replacement, Spartan. In a Good Friday blog post, Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch said the decision was made in order to comply with the World Wide Web […]
Although Oracle’s acquisition of Datalogix hasn’t officially closed yet, some industry insiders have speculated the deal underscored Oracle’s interest in identity-based marketing. Marketers need richer audience profiles that include known and anonymous attributes, meaning platforms should include, but also go beyond, cookie syncing, Kevin Akeroyd, SVP and GM of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, told AdExchanger. “The CMO […]
“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 Eric Picard, vice president of strategic partnerships at MediaMath. Media buying and selling have been on a slow evolutionary course since the late 1990s. With real-time bidding at the forefront, […]
M&A activity in marketing services and tech declined in Q1 2015, compared to the same period last year, in volume and value. Investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc. (JEGI), which released its Q1 2015 M&A Overview on Thursday, noted 128 deals in Q1 2015, compared to 154 in Q1 2014 (a 17% decline). Value of […]
Many publishers don’t know – or don’t want to know – what kind of fraud occurs on their sites. But it’s a reaction not dissimilar to how brands approached fraud before shocking numbers – like the 17% of programmatic ads and 23% of video ads determined fraudulent in the ANA/White Ops study last year – […]
Oracle is rallying behind a product called Oracle ID Graph, announced Wednesday at Oracle Modern Marketing Experience in Las Vegas. It’s not a cross-device ID – the enterprise cloud company recognizes big consumer platforms like Facebook, Google and Apple are up to the task. Instead, ID Graph is designed to make the “unique identifiers” associated […]
Facebook violates EU law by tracking users for targeted advertising, a European privacy panel said Tuesday. The report was commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission, which sits under the EU’s European Commission, and is an updated version of an initial draft that surfaced in February. A key development of the update claims that Facebook cookies […]
After Oracle bought data-management platform and exchange BlueKai last February, it essentially split the company in two. The Oracle Marketing Cloud reaped the benefits of BlueKai’s DMP while BlueKai’s Audience Data Marketplace formed the basis of the Oracle Data Cloud. Still, there’s overlap. “We have a very rich history with these two lines of business working […]
For a holding company, WPP is an aggressive buyer of ad tech – most of which winds up within its GroupM unit Xaxis. Since Xaxis absorbed 24/7 Media in December 2013, the programmatic media company’s investments in tech, most of which are acquisitions, have been methodical. The most recent occurred Monday, when Xaxis revealed it […]
“Limited opportunities for creativity” – 44% of marketers surveyed by the IAB and research firm Ovum cite it as one of the key challenges they face when it comes to mobile advertising. That may be the perception, but it’s not the reality, as Showtime demonstrated at the IAB’s Mobile Marketplace conference in New York City on Monday. […]
With digital audio consumption on the rise, advertiser expectations about targeting and buying advertisements are also growing fast. These concerns surfaced Thursday during Mediaocean’s “Radio Reinvented” panel in Manhattan. Panelists included executives from Pandora, Spotify and Triton Digital. The panelists revealed there are 143 million monthly online radio listeners in the US, representing 53% of […]
Rubicon Project hopes a partnership with video ad platform Virool, unveiled Wednesday, will help shore up more video supply. Rubicon will exclusively sell Virool’s new InLine format through all business lines, including auction-based and guaranteed and non-guaranteed orders. It’s difficult for third-party sellers and marketplaces like Rubicon to access more video inventory, since most premium […]
Google announced new features and ad types for AI Max, its AI-based bidding product for search and shopping or sponsored product ads. The company also touted “hundreds of thousands” of advertisers using AI Max.
Meta’s Q1 call sounded like an AI and hardware pitch, but under the hood it was still about one thing: investing in AI to squeeze more money out of its ads business.
Alphabet earned $109.9 billion in Q1 this year, up from $90.2 billion a year ago. And that’s not even the truly gobsmacking number.
Omnicom is rebuilding its media machine around Acxiom and agentic AI in a bid to push more spend to publishers and sidestep the “messy middle.”
The two longest-standing names in the affiliate and partnership marketing category, Rakuten and Impact.com, have decided to stop fighting each other and will instead fight together.
The Trade Desk announced that it will begin allowing mutual clients to use its DSP within the Pacvue or Skai platforms.
