Technology

Vibenomics announced a $12.3 million Series B round on Tuesday, led by Panoramic Ventures, bringing its total funding to just over $30 million. Vibenomics expects to grow its roster of 6,000 retail locations (just over half of which are grocery stores like Hy-Vee, QuikTrip, Kroger and GetGo) to more than 20,000 locations by the end of 2023.

The programmatic market continues to boom as marketers shift more of their budgets to digital channels. But despite the incredible scale of this ecosystem, the market is still maturing – and true price discovery and price setting at a level of granularity that reflects true marketplace dynamics can help fill some of those gaps, writes Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Since You Asked … When the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) asked what tech companies thought of Apple, Meta happily chimed in.  Meta, which has lost billions of dollars due to Apple’s new tracking prompt, says its ability to innovate has been […]

At Programmatic I/O in Las Vegas, CafeMedia’s Paul Bannister, Tinuiti’s Nirish Parsad and Insider’s Jana Meron weighed in on the ad industry’s worsening signal-loss problem due to the deprecation of device identifiers and third-party cookies.

The word “cookieless” crops up in virtually every conversation about the future of online identity. But what exactly do people mean when they say “cookieless”? Although the definition seems simple enough – the absence of cookies – it lacks the nuance to encompass the true complexity of signal loss. It’s also a misnomer.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Oh, Snap Snap warned investors this week that it will miss its one-month-old revenue target, tumbling shares by more than 40% in what may be a harbinger for the industry, CNBC reports.  “Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has […]

Taking the “room” metaphor literally, the current clean room system is akin to a collection of stand-alone rooms existing outside the form and function of a house. That’s why the next level must look beyond clean rooms. It’s time to build a clean house using a method called distributed analytics, writes Marc Rossen, SVP investment and activation analytics at Omnicom Media Group.

The IAB’s Podcast Upfronts in May touted advancements in dynamic ad insertion, measurement and attribution and brand safety and suitability, as well as the rise of podcast networks. But ad agencies say the technology powering podcast-based marketing is not sufficiently developed to deliver what advertisers need to effectively target impressions and measure campaign effectiveness. And they believe the industry should do more to address brand safety concerns around podcast content.

Netflix plans to introduce ads … and ad tech vet (and mayor of ad tech Twitter) Ari Paparo is rolling out an SVOD service of sorts. Weird world. On Monday, Paparo, who sold his last company, Beeswax, to Comcast in early 2020, launched Marketecture.tv, a startup to help prospective technology buyers understand and evaluate the technology they buy before they buy it.

As audiences across all demographics continue to shift from linear viewing toward long- and short-form digital video, the continued growth of streaming was front and center during this year’s upfront presentations. And major subscription-based platforms announced their plans to add an AVOD version to their offering.

Even if third-party cookies weren’t on Chrome’s chopping block, brands would need a strategy to navigate signal loss, says Spiceology CEO Chip Overstreet. Spiceology is working with digital identity management company Parrable and MediaMath to retarget users in environments where third-party cookies aren’t available.

Even the experts at companies whose future depends on explaining the value exchange of personalized advertising to consumers struggle to make a convincing argument. Part of the problem is that the ad industry’s MO has been to “overcomplicate” matters, said Lauren Wetzel, chief operating officer at InfoSum, speaking at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit earlier this week.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Vibe Wars TikTok has launched an ad product called Branded Mission, which identifies potential influencers and puts paid media behind content even if it isn’t part of a campaign.  “Turn top-performing videos into ads,” is how TikTok puts it in a release. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Four-Minute Mile Details of the new Disney+ ad-supported tier are leaking as Disney lays the groundwork for its upfronts sales pitch.  For one thing, Disney+ will carry about four minutes of commercials per hour, with zero ads for preschooler-aged accounts, The Wall […]

Apple’s ATT rollout triggered an industry-wide freakout among mobile ad tech companies. But surprisingly, over the past year Apple has gotten “more accessible,” says Omer Kaplan, CRO and co-founder of ironSource. Also in this episode: Being a newly public ad tech company in a tricky market.

The potential of data-driven marketing is entering a brave new world. But as complexity increases, marketers must look toward a solution that simplifies data-driven marketing: agile intelligence, writes Neej Gore, chief data officer of Zeta Global.

Jay Glogovsky, vice president of revenue operations and analytics for The New York Times, talked to AdExchanger about how The Times relies on direct partnerships to create a positive ad experience for its readers, why open-web programmatic is the wrong choice for a privacy-centric in-app experience and why publishers should double down on close partnerships rather than worry about who will control the keys to monetization.

AVOD is the same thing as FAST … right? Not so fast. Despite dozens of streamers, programmers and publishers crowding the space, AVOD and FAST are the only two ways to watch ad-supported TV beyond the set-top box, and the core difference between them comes down to content distribution.

As brands build out their first-party data strategies and work to assemble post-cookie capabilities, many are “in-housing” to remain in control of their data. But to ensure success, they need to accomplish a few important tasks, writes Nancy Marzouk, CEO of MediaWallah.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Titans Are Tired So many entertainment hubs – Netflix, Amazon Prime and Freevee, Paramount+ and sister app Pluto TV, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Discovery+ and the Disney triumvirate of Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ – so little time. Which means there just isn’t […]

AppLovin is looking at software as its main cash cow. Going forward, the company told investors that plans to prioritize its software platform and focus less on its apps business. Software is now responsible for 40% of AppLovin’s revenue compared with 14% when the company went public in April of last year.

Despite what you may have heard, artificial intelligence (AI) is not a magic solution for every problem facing the ad industry. But AI can help advertisers optimize the performance of their campaigns. Luxury beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury, for example, recently tested a custom integration with Scibids, a company that specializes in AI-based marketing solutions for the demand side. Over the course of two months, the brand was able to reduce its average cost per acquisition (CPA) by 29%.

Jeff Green, Founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, has been spiking the football lately in earnings reports, as some of his long-held predictions have come to fruition. First, there was Google’s delay of third-party cookie deprecation, which seemed like a bold bet when he first predicted Google wouldn’t remove third-party cookies by the initial deadline. This quarter, it was Netflix who delivered.

On Wednesday, AppLovin-owned mobile measurement platform Adjust launched a product called CTV AdVision that attributes cross-device app install conversions tied to CTV ads, whether that’s CTV to mobile or CTV to CTV. Connected TV isn’t always the superhero – sometimes, it’s the sidekick.

We need to find a balance between privacy and sustaining an ad-supported digital media ecosystem, writes Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab. But no one will tolerate half measures going forward. To that end, IAB Tech Lab and its members are developing a portfolio of practical technical standards meant to help the ad industry adapt to evolving consumer expectations, regulations and related browser and OS changes.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Shipshape Shop Late last year, Shopify began testing a prospecting product called Shopify Audiences, and it just graduated to a general release.  The product uses Shopify’s “unique perspective on purchasing intent from supporting merchants and their buyers,” according to a release. That’s hardly […]

It’s chilly out there, but PubMatic had a decent quarter. Organic revenue for Q1 totaled $54.6 million, up 25% year-over-year, representing PubMatic’s seventh consecutive quarter of 20% revenue growth or more. PubMatic’s stock was up a smidge, about .5%, in after-hours trading.

Podcast ad revenue in the US cracked $1 billion for the first time last year, due in large part to the rise of dynamic ad insertion (DAI). At $1.4 billion – up 72% from roughly $840 million in 2020 – podcasting is now one of the fastest-growing digital media channels, and it’s growing twice as fast as the internet advertising market as a whole, according to a report on podcast ad revenue released by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers on Monday.

Criteo is still using third-party cookies while it can. Why not? But “if tomorrow we don’t have access to them, then we’ll have to use something else,” said CEO Megan Clarken. What sort of “something else?” Criteo has been testing what it refers to as “more privacy-enabled, controllable and reliable signals.”

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