Technology

Bending Spoons bets on the old web; more publishers start blocking bot scrapers by default; and Apple introduces app bundles.

By partnering with GrowthLoop, GoPuff has beefed up its retail media offering with more specific audience targeting.

Communications leaders are reshaping the C-suite; Executive turnover continues at The Trade Desk; TikTok Shop earns dedicated RFP budgets.

Nowadays, programmatic vendors, and SSPs in particular, are carving new paths of differentiation based on their type of adoption of cloud infrastructure.

The pitch for dynamic take rates is reasonable. Total volume goes up, and the publisher sees more impressions clearing. But the problem is where the extra volume comes from. 

Roblox is making its under-13 audience available to advertisers for the first time. And it named youth-focused ad marketplace SuperAwesome as its exclusive advertising partner for under-13 users.

Amazon has third parties selling some of its ad inventory; Scope3 selling Adloox to Peer39 suggests sustainability is out; and “fabric” is the new AI-related buzzword for ad tech.

The programmatic intelligence layer is owned by the same parties that are extracting margin from it. That structure is now being dismantled by an AI-underpinned protocol that moves the intelligence layer into the open.

Amazon Publisher Services released a host of tools, such as Signal IQ, to help publishers see which bidstream signals drive demand. Pinpointing which signals drive higher revenue is key for publishers.

The IAB filed an amicus brief in Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital, which is currently before the Washington Supreme Court. The case likens modern advertising practices to deceptive phone wiretapping cases in the 1960’s.

The IAB Tech Lab’s new guidance for bot management encourages content owners to figure out which bots are worth their time.

Email targeting in CTV has a credibility problem as buyers and sellers question whether one-to-one identity even fits a channel built for broader reach.

Meta wants to own online communities; Ecommerce brands face old-school advertising scrutiny; Omnicom wants fewer ad tech middlemen.

Rather than fighting the rising tide of AI search engines and agentic tools, Microsoft AI’s Nikhil Kolar says publishers and retailers should license access to their sites and create content that speaks directly to AI crawlers.

Agentic shopping is the next big thing. At least that’s the message from Google’s big annual conference for ad product updates.

Recorded live in Las Vegas at Prog AI, the AdExchanger team tackles a tricky question: As AI floods the feed with chaotic, addictive content and people engage with it, what does “premium” even mean anymore?

For all the AI-in-ad-ops talk, plenty of publisher teams are still trapped in the grind of pulling GAM reports by hand and trying to reverse engineer why revenue dropped. But publishers can use AI to speed up their ad ops tasks.

Two decades after the first RTB auction, programmatic is more complex than ever – and that’s before you even consider generative AI.

Consumer trust in AI search is growing; “containerization” is the new ad industry buzzword; and publisher collectives fight back against AI.

Tale of Two Webs As AI answer engines reshape how audiences discover journalism, The Economist is quietly preparing for what Josh Muncke, VP of generative AI calls “two versions of the web.” The publisher is testing stripped-down, agent readable content built for ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, Digiday reports.  “We want our marketing content to be […]

Hundreds of exasperated and unexpected ad industry phone calls were made on Sunday, as agencies and ad tech vendors discussed the fallout of Publicis Groupe’s $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp over the weekend.

Meet Kovva, a new AI ad tech startup tackling the unglamorous gruntwork that programmatic has never fully automated.

Podcasts are becoming broadcasts; your kid’s college scholarship might be a data mining venture; and states are getting wise to false advertising from non-profits.

This year’s TV Upfronts buzzwords are in: performance, dynamic, AI and fandom We explain why this quartet of phrases wove their way through the presentations.

Keywords, Kinda The tabs, they are a-changin’. As in, campaign analytics tabs and what they’re meant to show advertisers.  The biggest shift has been the move from “analytics” to “insights.” “Analytics” used to mean detailed, exportable data that brands could plug into their own systems. “Insights,” by contrast, are curated summaries and useful-sounding takeaways about […]

The DOJ targets another Google Search ad scam; ICE relies on “advertising intelligence” and support from Palantir to ramp up deportations; and TikTok now lets you book vacations in its app.

Agentic media buying may cut middlemen or add more chaos; Grocers are remodeling for retail media amid rising costs; Peacock is betting on the booming microdrama trend.

Amazon Ads expects this year’s television upfronts to be an outcomes-focused affair. That may explain why the company preempted its Monday evening presentation by announcing the launch of a new ad product called Dynamic TV Creative.

For companies like Shopify, Criteo and Instacart – and even for giants like Amazon and Walmart – figuring out if the agentic oasis is real or a mirage is their priority No. 1.

Marketers must become memelords now; Yahoo has incurred the wrath of Apollo; and AppLovin is going hybrid.