Technology

While programmatic advertising has its faults, it is still evolving. And as it has matured it has become a powerful, efficient and effective tool for brands to surgically disseminate their commercial messages to highly targeted consumers. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to be done, writes Eric Warburton, SVP of technical account management and platform partnership success at Horizon Media.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hungry For More The movie “Minions: The Rise of Gru” would be a box office hit even without swarms of TikTok-obsessed users – aka “Gentleminions” – showing up to screenings dressed in suits. That’s organic. But the Minions marketing team is also going to […]

What happens when your main monetization partner starts flagging your content as spam? Freecycle turned to header bidding to reduce its reliance on Google AdSense, but the company’s one-person engineering team had trouble managing the header-bidding system and the constant stream of Prebid updates on top of web development duties. So, after a 70% drop in ad revenue, Freecycle handed its digital ad business over to PubWise’s managed service.

For years now, the digital advertising industry has been talking about the premature death of the ad network, writes Omri Argaman, chief growth officer at Zoomd. But there’s a reason why ad networks have survived for so long – they have standardization and massive reach, and are primed to become major growth engines for certain channels (such as in-app and mobile gaming) compared with programmatic exchanges.

Keyword blocklists are blunt instruments, and yet they persist in programmatic media buying. It’s time to kick blocklists to the curb and start curating keywords by campaign, says contextual pioneer John Snyder, who sold his company, Grapeshot, to Oracle in 2018.

Verve Group, the ad tech subsidiary of German ad software holding company MGI, has struck again with the acquisition of mobile DSP Dataseat. Terms of the deal were note disclosed.

Video games can support intrinsic or native in-game ads, as well as ads that are delivered alongside gameplay but exist outside the game itself, like pause-menu display ads and rewarded video. Marketers can also sponsor and advertise on channels related to gaming, such as at esports events and across online streaming platforms, particularly Twitch and YouTube. And we can’t forget about the metaverse.

Why wouldn’t DSPs want to secure the best possible access to OTT inventory through programmatic while accessing the impression commitments and set pricing provided by direct deals? If DSPs want to compete with more traditional advertising platforms, they will need to do just that, writes Doug Huntington, CEO of FatTail.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Paid Upfront NBCUniversal says this year’s upfronts was its highest-grossing since Comcast acquired the programmer in 2013.  Unsurprisingly, streaming media helped break the record. Of NBCU’s $7 billion in ad commitments, per a release, $1 billion is earmarked for its AVOD service Peacock […]

Google has tried – and so far mostly failed – to get its customers on board with major new migrations for its online advertising platform. But Google means business this time, with the migration to the new GA4 analytics solution. You’ve got one year. Also: Tech layoffs are on the rise.

Google’s decision to delay third-party cookie deprecation until 2023 came the day before Salon CRO Justin Wohl’s wedding. Salon had converted its ad business to an open-web programmatic model a few years earlier, so the brief reprieve from signal loss came as a huge relief and another reason to pop some champagne. Since then, Wohl has been laying the groundwork for effective post-cookie monetization on the open web.

With more eyes on consumer privacy than ever before, data clean rooms have become one of the hottest technologies in marketing when it comes to secure, modern data collection. But as clean rooms come to the forefront, many brands are finding that building and working with this technology requires a little acumen and a lot of planning. St.Clair McLean, VP of infrastructure and security at Alliant, shares three clean room approaches to consider as brands look to align the right capabilities with their needs.

Adjust and its parent company AppLovin laid off roughly 12% of their combined staff on Monday. The layoffs come as many tech firms announce hiring freezes, hiring slowdowns and general belt tightening against a backdrop of recession fears, economic uncertainty and public market volatility.

Comcast-owned FreeWheel announced new identity integrations to bring the buy and sell sides of the TV ecosystem together. Its platform now supports ID solutions from Blockgraph, LiveRamp, TransUnion, Experian, Merkle and OpenAP, which can be overlaid with publishers’ and advertisers’ first- and third-party data sets for more accurate cross-screen targeting and measurement.

The Trade Desk keeps adding new partners to the Unified ID 2.0 roster, but it’s still looking for someone to fill the administrator role after the IAB Tech Lab backed out earlier this year.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get Connected The coveted prizes in programmatic right now are exclusive CTV contracts.  In Cannes, the crème de la crème for handshakers and lunch-takers is Netflix. Google is meeting with Netflix there, Ad Age reports, and is an obvious choice as Netflix purportedly […]

Marketers who are curious about the bias in their campaign targeting can put their media plans to the test by running them through a free open-source toolkit built by IBM. The idea behind using the tool, dubbed the Advertising Toolkit for AI Fairness 360, is to stay a step ahead of regulation by making sure the ad industry roots out bias in campaign planning, especially the invisible kind that can be amplified by a reliance on data segments (even a marketer’s first-party data) and black box algorithms.

The platforms taketh away – but sometimes regulators can giveth back. Google is seriously flirting with the idea of reopening YouTube inventory to appease European regulators and Criteo just won its 2019 case against Meta over being booted from the Facebook Marketing Partner program.

The Trade Desk’s OpenPath gives advertisers a direct link with premium publishers, collapsing the supply chain from the DSP directly to the publisher’s inventory. While a win under the guise of supply path optimization, it also spells danger for SSPs, the traditional guardians of publisher inventory who now risk being squeezed out entirely, writes Joseph Lospalluto, US Country Manager of ShowHeroes Group.

Google may open up YouTube to outside programmatic demand as a bargaining chip to EU regulators. And a looming recession won’t deflate digital advertising – although don’t expect pandemic-level growth.

The IAB, in collaboration with the IAB Tech Lab and the Media Rating Council (MRC), released its first update to in-game ad measurement standards since 2009. The new standards reexamine the metrics for counting a valid in-game ad impression and add criteria for measuring ad placements in 3D and virtual environments. They also define in-game measurement terms in alignment with cross-channel measurement efforts.

Two years of sweeping disruptions – supply-chain shortages, staffing challenges, fluctuating COVID regulations and looming inflation – were tough on consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers and retailers. But consumers are eager to shop in stores again. As data across touch points converge, marketers have the power to elevate customer experience and increase conversions, writes Gila Wilensky, president of Xaxis US.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google’s $18 Billion Offer Almost exactly one year ago, the EU began an antitrust inquiry into whether Google restricts access to the cross-site web and app data it uses to benefit its own products. Specifically, the European Commission examined how Google forces advertisers […]

The market is not being kind to digital media companies. The nearly 40% drop in BuzzFeed’s stock price on Monday and the decline of its valuation from $1.5 billion when it went public in December to roughly $300 million now is no doubt causing other digital-native publishers to rethink their IPO plans. But any doom and gloom about the long-term viability of digital publishers in public markets is likely overblown.

After Apple’s WWDC, the company’s next step will be to clamp down on fingerprinting … the question is, when? Plus, industry orgs struggle to build a path forward with new signals.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. All Systems Ro’ Roku insiders are abuzz about a potential acquisition by Netflix, Insider reports.  There’s no firm reporting of a deal, or even of negotiations. But two employees say Roku abruptly closed the trading window to sell vested stock. That kind of trading […]

As clients look for alternatives to third-party cookies, ad agency Dentsu can steer them to its in-house Contextual Intelligence tool, which launched today. Although contextual targeting is often considered inferior to demographic or behavioral targeting, it can drive performance. Jewelry retailer Pandora piloted the tool during the 2022 Valentine’s Day season. Ads placed using the solution represented 2% of campaign spend, but drove 36% of revenue, a 24x return on investment.

Three web standards organizations tasked with the online ad industry overhaul, the W3C, the IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org, called out for help this week during a series of presentations and a joint panel at the AdMonsters Ops conference in New York City.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brick By Brick-And-Mortar The march of the retail media networks cannot be stopped.  Dollar General on Tuesday announced a rebrand of its advertising business, now DGMN (for Dollar General Media Network), to extend its data to ad-buying across the web. According to the […]