Technology

Mike Hauptman, co-founder of AdLib, discusses the company’s evolution and how AI is changing the future of both AdLib and ad tech as a whole.

Delivery apps are launching social networks now; Google is the latest Big Tech company to write a huge check to Trump; and ad agencies of all sizes apparently aren’t big enough.

In the Google search case, a forced spin-off of Chrome was never gonna happen, but a court-ordered divestiture of GAM isn’t beyond the pale in the ad tech case, says Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics.

Principal-based buying isn’t inherently bad. When incentives are aligned, clients get more precision and speed than traditional agency models often allow. The issue isn’t the mechanism; it’s the incentives.

Marketing films is one battle after another; AI gets stymied by the cloud; and bots are causing brand backlash.

Where the DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial stands after one week’s worth of remedies arguments.

Will Google need to spin off its ad exchange and ad server? Court is in session in Virgina, with the DOJ and Google advocating for completely different remedies to Google’s sell-side ad tech monopoly.

Swish, a startup that partners with retailers to provide product full-size CPG samples to people doing their grocery shopping online, announces $2.3 million in seed funding.

Private equity firm Novacap acquires IAS; many large online retailers are seeing an uptick in referral traffic from ChatGPT; and the IAB downgraded its US ad spend projection for the rest of the year.

AI-enabled advertising could reduce ad loads on pages; Jimmy Kimmel is (still) causing a stir; and Microsoft is building an AI marketplace to ensure fair compensation for publishers.

Day Two of the remedies phase of the Google ad tech antitrust trial was a grueling back-and-forth about the future of Google Ad Manager.

The fundamental shift from traditional search to AI chatbots has major implications for the entire marketing organization, says Bluefish CEO Alex Sherman. If brands want control over how they appear in AI search results, they must think about the content they feed to large language models.

Agencies that dismiss in-house development are limiting their potential for differentiation. Here are five questions to ask yourself before committing to in-house tech.

YouTube backpedals on banning COVID and political misinfo; Tylenol pushes back against Trump’s claims that it causes autism; and Disney doubles down on linear TV and raises Disney+ prices after its Kimmel boycott threat.

Long-time ad tech exec Jeffrey Hirsch takes the reins of QuantumPath, a media-buying platform that uses AI to help with planning and campaign creation.

Court is back in session. And the fate of  the open internet is in the balance.

The Trade Desk and Acxiom have a new product that plugs into Kokai to create a live feedback loop between UID2 IDs and real-world outcomes.

Kimmel’s back, baybee; would ads make Wikipedia better, actually?; and Amazon gets accused of dark patterns.

SSPs are staring at their own demise. And it’s because, for over a decade, SSPs have positioned themselves as agnostic platforms.

The Google trial remedy phase is about to begin; not all of YouTube’s AI plans are hitting; and The Trade Desk’s Kokai pitch decks leave something to be desired.

Jimmy Kimmel Live has been suspended due to comments on Charlie Kirk; Samsung is bringing ads to your fridge; and TTD eliminates the Programmatic Table.

Rather than sharing universal TIDs that any DSP or curator can access, Raptive says publishers should instead share encrypted TIDs with an encryption key provided only to trusted demand-side partners.

Clear Channel will provide advertisers weekly, mid-flight reports on outcomes driven by its inventory in order to bring OOH measurement closer to the speed of digital.

Pinterest’s CEO doesn’t want Google divested; most consumer spending comes from the rich; and the “Sephora kids” aren’t alright.

On Wednesday, Amazon introduced an agentic AI tool that brings all the image, video and audio generation capabilities of the company’s Creative Studio into its ad platform creative setup.

Meta’s sparse settlement payout ends the Cambridge Analytica scandal with a whimper; Google brings dynamic host-read ads to YouTube; and HUMAN uncovers IVT hiding in mobile app downloads.

Another day, another Google lawsuit; AI can’t be held accountable for its crimes; and the US and China have (maybe) reached a TikTok deal.

From a $637 million PE acquisition of healthcare of a DSP to acquisitions of freshly minted startups, there’s been a flurry of ad tech deals this month. And they have one thing in common: AI.

Rembrand announced that it’s merging with creative automation startup Spaceback to build a unified AI-powered platform for “content-based” CTV, digital video and display.

The FTC probes Google and Amazon over transparency in their search businesses; Walmart will only allow authorized sellers; and Perplexity’s ad business garners criticism.