Technology

Commerce media just went shopping. On Thursday, ecommerce marketing company Rokt acquired customer data platform mParticle for $300 million.

Google says it plans to stop restricting fingerprinting because of two shifts in the advertising ecosystem: the rise of connected TV and the rise of privacy-enhancing technologies.

AI chatbots entice users into subscriptions with free trials; non-pornographic content creators are raking in ad bucks on PornHub; and the US TikTok ban has Americans flocking to other China-based apps.

The Trade Desk has said it will buy Sincera, a startup that aggregates and supplies metadata to ad tech companies. This is TTD’s second-ever public acquisition.

Mohegan and LiveRamp partner on a “casino media network;” Criteo hires its new CEO from the agency side; and Publicis Groupe consolidates

Pinterest’s main focus is making it easier for users to buy through its platform. “We’re all in on shopping,” CRO Bill Watkins told AdExchanger.

Would the internet be a better place if it weren’t run by billionaires? Plus, more brands are cutting out the ad tech middlemen.

On Monday, T-Mobile announced plans to acquire Vistar Media, an ad platform that specializes in digital out-of-home for roughly $600 million in cash.

Tom Pachys, Co-founder and CEO of EX.CO, discusses the company’s new expanded ad server, and how it sets the offering sets them apart from other ad tech companies.

Starting on February 16, Google said it will no longer prohibit fingerprinting for companies that use its advertising products. Oh, how times have changed.

What is the future of curation in 2025? On the CES conference floor, PubMatic Chief Revenue Officer Kyle Dozeman talks about why curation is such a hot topic in ad tech.

Helen Havlak, publisher at The Verge, chats with AdExchanger at CES about how publishers should pivot in response to the dropoff in traffic from Google search.

Ad tech is headed to the stratosphere. As in, on the way to becoming part of the cloud infrastructure technology.

At CES on Tuesday, media and ad tech veteran Kris Johns unveiled AdGood, a nonprofit with a connected TV ad platform and a mission to help other nonprofits access streaming media.

Three years after launching its own data clean room, Roku is trying to bring something new to the table. On Monday, the company announced the launch of a new offering, the Roku Data Cloud, which allows marketers access to more granular streaming TV data via ad tech and agency API partners.

Meta recently revisited its goal to create AI-generated “characters” — which backfired. Plus, Apple’s trying to avoid a class-action lawsuit.

As the new year begins, expect CTV growth to continue blasting along with a vengeance. Experts are “bullish” on the channel and believe that many of 2024’s biggest CTV trends will continue well into 2025.

Dealmaking and AI (and blackjack) are top of mind for those heading to CES. Plus, don’t expect brands to reengage with hard news in 2025.

Every week, we publish an original comic creation inspired by trends in the online advertising industry. These are the stories – and the highly specific double entendres – behind AdExchanger’s top 10 comics of 2024.

What captured our readers’ attention this year was both a continuation of and a departure from years past. Our top 10 stories in the past year coalesce around two themes: kookies and kwality. Ahem, cookies and quality.

2024’s most popular guest columns offer a snapshot of an industry in flux – and one that’s grown cynical due to repeated promises of unrealized change.

As the ad industry awaits Judge Leonie Brinkema’s decision in US v. Google (ad tech edition), get up to speed quick with AdExchanger’s in-depth coverage.

But cookies aside – and don’t forget to leave a few real ones out for Santa – there were lots of other big privacy developments in 2024. Here are some of the highlights.

Google plans to create an “AI Mode” for its web search engine users. Plus, the social media vultures now circling the air above TikTok.

For all intents and purposes, 2024 is already over. Which means now is a fine time to see how far CTV advertising has come by looking back at some of this year’s most-read stories on AdExchanger.

The IAB gave us new retail media standards for Christmas. But will the industry actually adopt them? Plus: how AI will be used in advertising in 2025.

Publisher C-suite drama has been making headlines recently. Plus, there are now 27 different active lawsuits against various AI content generation companies.

In response to shifting ad industry trends, A360 Media abandoned its made-for-advertising model four years ago and streamlined its site design to court programmatic demand.

Achieving consensus on the definitions for even baseline retail media metrics required a tough 18-month slog. Unfortunately, this was the easy part.

The in-game advertising market’s stagnation is both unsurprising and frustrating. The onus is on the gaming industry to make gaming an essential channel for advertisers, rather than a nice-to-have.