Technology

PMax has joined Search as what Google dubs “the power pair.”  Plus, TikTok usage and ad spend are still dropping.

Programmatic algorithms optimize for performance, which can leave digital media companies floundering. Inside programmatic’s pursuit of “premium.” Plus: an ad tech acquisition forged on matchmaking buy-side and sell-side IDs.

Publicis Groupe continued its years-long streak of acquiring non-agency ad tech and data sales companies with the announcement on Thursday that it has bought Lotame, a data management system for advertisers and publishers.

If we’re to leave behind the third-party cookie era, the rest of the ecosystem must reassert the role it plays in setting the agenda.

Amazon’s ad tech ambitions are crowding out Amazon specialists; EU regulators have concerns about Apple ATT; and Google says breaking it up could threaten national security.

GDPR may not be perfect, but it forced European companies to adopt a privacy-by-default position. For US companies, this is a clear signal: Change is inevitable.

T-Mobile may be considering an acquisition in the mobile data market; Google’s glitch shuts down ads for a weekend; and ad tech’s old guard is salivating over AI startups.

To zero in on premium inventory, The Trade Desk is analyzing metadata signals about ad placements and pushing adoption of its alternative ID. It’s also betting the farm on CTV.

Google has been spotted triple serving ads to search pages. Plus, good luck getting ads next to Oscars content this year.

Viant announced that it acquired Lockr, a consumer and business service for managing email inboxes and data opt-ins, during its Q4 earnings call Monday.

The Brand Safety Institute released a new tool that lets publishers check whether their site domains have been flagged as MFA by third-party verification vendors.

Integral Ad Science broke a streak of punishing quarterly earnings reports for public ad tech companies when it announced better-than-expected Q4 results on Friday morning.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

WPP shares dipped to a four-year low on after posting its 2024 earnings results. Plus: How brands are courting virality.

Today’s roundup deals with an uncomfortable topic that, at some point, retail media companies must reckon with. It’s not transparency, or MFA, or standardization. It is the issue of rising return rates.

DoubleVerify adds Rockerbox to its attribution stack; Taboola courts performance marketers with a new ad platform; and the end of the MLB/ESPN deal spells opportunity for sports streamers.

Magnite ended up with a scrappy 4% year-over-year growth rate in Q4 2024, after a sudden, unexpected drop in display and online video CPMs during November and December, which caused the company to miss its revenue guidance.

To solve ad tech’s intractable problems, there’s a solution that the advertising industry could borrow from the hacker world: bug bounties.

YouTube advertisers prefer long-form videos to Shorts; Microsoft tests an ad-supported version of its Office suite; and Chegg sues Google over lost traffic from gen AI search.

Forget ramping up. Maybe it’s time for the online advertising industry to ramp down. That’s the idea behind a guerrilla marketing campaign by InfoSum, timed to coincide with LiveRamp’s RampUp event in San Francisco this week.

Amazon is still lowering its Prime Video ad rates across the board. Plus, there are disadvantages to being a big tech giant.

A concept known as data minimization – the practice of limiting data collection and retention to only what’s strictly necessary to achieve a specific purpose – is becoming a key tenet of privacy legislation around the world.

Streaming TV advertisers are still unsatisfied with the level of transparency from publishers in the ad buying process. So Rain the Growth Agency created its own way to get more transparency into CTV buys.

Curation is amazing – for SSPs. The question publishers continually ask is, “Is curation good for us?” That’s the wrong question. 

YouTube is adding a new tier with a “light” ad load. Plus, remember Facebook?

When The Trade Desk, the ad tech darling of Wall Street, missed its earnings forecast for the first time, ad tech insiders paid attention. Plus: Reddit, fueled by Google Search, sputters after an algorithmic adjustment.

The last five years saw our industry’s conventional models of ad targeting and measurement evaporate with the regulatory and cultural shift toward privacy. But out of these ashes, the advance of clean room architecture is enabling a deeper level of measurement and insights, which is moving us toward something much better than ever before.

Not every retailer has a solid handle on emerging AI tech. While some thrived, others stumbled – sometimes spectacularly. Here are some lessons to learn from Q4 campaigns.

Why Google Demand Gen is struggling to grow; embattled web browser extensions test the limits of last-click attribution; and the State Department demands diplomats cancel their news subscriptions.

Spotify faces obstacles in its ticket sales aspirations; Apple switches to view-through attribution; and The Washington Post and Meta remove ads that were critical of Elon Musk.