Technology

Mergers and acquisitions, the industry’s slow-motion pivot away from third-party data and the expansion of commerce-based business dominated the headlines for media and sell-side ad tech in 2021. What does the industry predict for 2022? More of the same as these trends continue to play out in the year ahead. First-party first In 2022 and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Double Dutch Salesforce and Oracle got a holiday gift from the Court of Amsterdam in the Netherlands last week, which dismissed a lawsuit brought against them by The Privacy Collective (TPC), a data privacy advocacy group.  TPC alleged that the companies breached the […]

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

The biggest US tech companies – Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – are often lumped together. But their ad platform businesses have distinct dynamics, and each was affected by the trials and tribulations of 2021 in very different ways. Although Apple’s privacy changes took a knife to Facebook and a hammer to Google, for example, […]

The past year may have seemed like 2020 redux. But in programmatic media, 2021 has brought a world of change. Ad tech and mobile marketing companies flooded the stock exchange, and already-public companies, including Magnite, Digital Turbine and Media and Games Invest (MGI), which owns the ad tech business Verve Group, have become active consolidators. […]

The ripple effects of Google’s decisions dominated AdExchanger’s top story list in 2021.

Magnite acquired connected TV ad server SpringServe in July for $31 million as part of its ongoing ambition to go big in CTV. But SpringServe continues to operate largely independently, and that’s by design, said Joe Hirsch, general manager of SpringServe.

2021 brought both bounty (IPOs) and challenges (targeting). As ad tech surfed the wave of IPOs, it also weathered attacks on targeting and measurement, as online privacy increasingly became a priority for governments, platforms and people.

Keeping Track Third-party trackers were hosed by GDPR, right?  Perhaps not.  A University of Oxford study found that third-party trackers in Google Play and Apple iOS apps remain relatively unchanged. “The same handful of third-party tracking companies have similar prevalence and prominence,” according to the Internet Policy Review journal. The number of apps with zero […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Romain Job, Chief Strategy Officer, Smart AdServer.  With our programmatic marketplace becoming increasingly unwieldy, the challenge of identity resolution in a privacy-first, consent-based marketplace has made curation essential. What is curation? Simply put, it’s […]

AT&T has sold its ad tech business Xandr to Microsoft. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition marks the end of a painful and unsuccessful run for the one-time leader of the programmatic industry, AppNexus, which was rebranded Xandr but never found a home within the AT&T organization. Former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson […]

The customer data platform (CDP) market might be crowded, but savvy brands are to sifting through the category to fit their specific needs, says Cory Munchbach, chief operating officer at CDP BlueConic, on this episode of AdExchanger Talks.

The “Big Tent” Backlash The IAB announced last week that advertising and media agencies will now be able to join the industry trade association as members. All the big agencies are already partners out of the gate.  The IAB makes the case that online advertising must span many categories to work effectively, and the industry […]

Kinesso, IPG’s marketing intelligence brand, has developed nine APIs for its Kanvas Developer Toolset, the agency announced Thursday. The APIs offered through Kanvas unify the various software tools used to manage advertising campaigns. For example, an advertiser using the Trade Desk and IPG-owned Acxiom would be able to see insights from Acxiom audiences from within […]

Vox Media buying Group Nine Media is the latest media mega merger to watch. Plus, Criteo buys IPONWEB. Both acquisitions are part of a strategy to find space unoccupied by Big Tech (and impervious to the demise of third-party cookies).

Nothing in ad tech is ever easy. Despite previously signaling interest in serving as an administrator for Unified ID 2.0 earlier this year, the IAB Tech Lab is still on the fence about taking on this role for the open-source initiative to replace third-party cookies with email-based IDs.

The Vox Media/Group Nine deal is only the most recent example of the consolidation trend in digital media. Publishers have been turning to M&A as a method to grow their audiences and increase their ad revenue, in addition to boosting their valuation for further deals down the road.

Privacy tech is booming. As of December, there were 230 privacy and security companies listed on Crunchbase – up from 207 in April. Two such startups are Qonsent, a data privacy platform that raised its $5 million seed round on Wednesday and Optable, a clean room and data collaboration platform that released a differential privacy feature this week.

Another Cook In The Kitchen The ecommerce-focused publisher Food52 has acquired Schoolhouse, a lighting and home goods company, for $48 million, Forbes reports. The deal was funded by Food52’s private equity owner, TCG. To coincide with the deal, TCG also contributed an incremental round of funding.  The capital will be used to back Food52’s expansion […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Joshua Koran, EVP of data and policy at Criteo. While it’s easy for marketers to fixate on Google’s threatened “cookiepocolypse,” being too hyper-focused on engagement tactics misses the big picture. […]

The Last Place You Search ​​Mozilla, which reported its earnings on Monday, expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year. That’s up from roughly $465 million last year and around the same the year before. Where’s the money coming from? Historically, Mozilla’s revenue has been very reliant on its Google search licensing deal […]

Is Criteo building an “anti-Google machine” with its proposed $380 million acquisition of IPONWEB? Criteo CEO Megan Clarken and Todd Parsons, chief product officer, weigh in and explain the vision. In short: the open web needs a hero.

Criteo is buying IPONWEB, the engineering company that built most of the underlying infrastructure for the ad tech ecosystem. The deal represents a huge chess move on the part of Criteo. So, what does Criteo get from acquiring the company responsible for building the foundation of programmatic advertising as it exists today?

Play Nice Will they? Won’t they?  They will.  Roku is bringing YouTube TV back onto its devices after a monthslong clash with Google that spilled over into Congress. Roku and Google finally agreed on a multiyear extension for Roku distribution of the YouTube and YouTube TV apps, Axios reported. In April, Roku warned customers that […]

Retailers and big retail brands typically embark on Q4 with their plan firmly in place. Pricing and promotions, inventory deliveries and expected sales are all known factors. Companies test, learn and implement during the first nine months of the year and by the holidays they should be riding on rails. And tech providers oblige. The […]

Investors are all about in-game advertising startups. On Wednesday, Frameplay, a company that has an SDK for incorporating ads into video, console and mobile games, announced its $8 million Series A led by Hiro Capital, a VC fund focused on games and esports. The round includes participation from gamer hardware brand Razer’s venture division zVentures, […]

Amazon The Impervious Google and Facebook are reeling from data privacy changes. Tim Cook warned investors that Apple underestimated part shortages and would not meet demand until next year. Macy’s slimmed its store inventory. Disney’s production schedules are delayed by months and even years. And Amazon is – doing great. The ongoing supply-chain drama, COVID-19 fallout […]

Google Fails To Deliver In 2014, Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt raised eyebrows when he referred to Amazon as Google’s primary search opponent, rather than Yahoo or Bing.  Fast-forward eight years, and Amazon is now its obvious challenger, and Google has utterly failed to address its own ecommerce vulnerabilities, according to a LinkedIn post by Faisal […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Sergey Shprints, head of analytics operations at Hearts & Science. For the last two decades, advertisers, publishers and data/tech providers have relied on “centralized identity.” They’ve gotten used to finding, […]

By Samuel Seljan, Senior Director, Data Science, Xandr Digital and television advertising – once culturally and technologically divergent ecosystems – are finally converging to improve how marketers target and reach consumers. As viewership habits shifted away from traditional linear television to internet-enabled connected TV (CTV) or other video-on-demand options, advertisers struggled to reach audiences at scale. Interestingly, […]