The Big Story features a roundtable discussion with the AdExchanger editorial team on the week’s top news stories. New and previously published episodes are available on this page and on your preferred podcast app.
It’s the beginning of the end of the Android Ad ID. What Google’s mobile privacy sandbox announcements means. Plus: Why Facebook’s ad approval process irritates telehealth company, wisp.
Activision-Blizzard, ZeniMax Media, Bungie, Zynga, MoPub, Adjust, Glu Mobile: Each multi-billion acquisition happened in the past year, as creative game developers and the ad tech businesses that monetize their apps come together. Plus: What’s new in the SSP market? Google’s iron grip on the category is strong as ever, but there’s room for growth.
Audio advertising is maturing (or going through puberty?): Spotify is the latest platform to weather a content controversy (over Joe Rogan’s misinformation). Meanwhile, competitor SiriusXM is building first-party identifiers. Plus: the quiet Olympics, and why B2B advertisers love the Super Bowl.
Google tells its side of the story in a motion to dismiss the antitrust case it’s facing – but where does the truth lie? Also: Google unveils its cookie-free Topics API, a rundown on California’s follow-up privacy law (CPRA) and a quick explainer on the latest privacy bill to hit the Hill: the ominously named Banning Surveillance Advertising Act.
More than a year after 17 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, the hits keep coming. A newly unredacted version of the suit – now ballooned to 242 pages – dropped on Friday and provides quite the scratch-off surprise. AdExchanger has been busy polling the industry and reading up on the latest allegations about how Google […]
A sneak peek at ad tech IPOs that might happen in 2022, along with a deep dive into Instacart’s advertising ambitions and why T-Mobile bought rideshare advertising company Octopus Interactive.
The ad verification space is full of green fields to expand into. Case in point: 2022 immediately kicked off with an acquisition by IAS and $100 million in funding for Human. Plus, interoperability and first-party data come together in NBCU’s first-party data platform.
One of the most compelling soap operas of 2021 was the TV measurement debate. As the year ends, here’s one of our best reruns: the moment Nielsen lost its MRC accreditation.
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.
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).
BuzzFeed’s debut on the public market disappointed, but its advertising business is growing (and it’s planning more acquisitions). Plus, digital advertising in 2021 grew faster than it has in the history of advertising. We explain why.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the tentpoles that kick off that final stretch of Q4 spanning Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this Black Friday/Cyber Monday combo was not as record-setting as in years past, according to Adobe and others who track sales data. There are many reasons behind this change. Not only has the pandemic […]
Netflix has finally put to rest rumors (hopes and dreams) that it would one day monetize with advertising – but now Zoom is stepping up to the plate. The Zoom CEO rejected the idea of monetizing its free video conferencing during the beginning of the pandemic. But the company is now changing course with plans to […]
Brands need first-party data, and they’re solving for that need through a mix of creativity, personalized products and the power of good old-fashioned celebrity endorsements. Which is why everyone in ad tech and digital media should take note of these initiatives, which span everything from personalized Oreos (dubbed the Oreo ID) to celebrity endorsements designed […]
The direct-to-consumer cookware company Made In noticed its social media dashboards went a bit screwy after Apple tightened its privacy controls this year. Luckily, Made In uses all of its own dashboards – which didn’t go haywire – and tracks identity changes closely, CEO Chip Malt shares as special guest on this week’s The Big […]
The business practices of both Facebook and Google came to light in unflattering ways over the past week. Last Friday, a judge unsealed the 173-page antitrust complaint against Google – and there was a lot of interesting info underneath those black squares. Many of the details allege that Google manipulated the auction to ensure market share […]
Mobile advertising companies are being snapped up at eye-popping valuations. But wait … isn’t Apple torpedoing the ability to target and measure app advertising with its AppTrackingTransparency framework, SKAdNetwork and other privacy-focused policies? We untangle that contradiction on this week’s episode of The Big Story, where the editorial team is joined by special guest John […]
Attribution on Facebook ain’t what it used to be. The Facebook that enabled hundreds of creative versions, targeting variations and near-instantaneous optimization – all fed by data – is changing. Apple took a big bite out of Facebook’s attribution capabilities when its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) required apps to collect a user opt-in to track their account […]
Facebook weathered two storms this week: a whistleblower and a sweeping outage across multiple platforms. First, the Facebook whistleblower revealed herself as Frances Haugen, who spoke with 60 Minutes about how platform changes like a 2018 decision to prioritize posts that “spark conversation” amped up divisiveness on the platform. Then, on Monday, Facebook, Instagram and […]
The technology of marketing is always evolving, and that lifecycle is especially evident on this week’s episode of The Big Story. The use of customer data platforms (CDPs) – the trendy software category taking over where DMPs left off and building on CRMs and marketing automation – is on the rise. Special guest Stuart Schneiderman, SVP […]
From Instacart to Uber, a wide variety of digital businesses are realizing that they can spin up advertising businesses. Their inspiration? Amazon’s “other” revenue category. Composed mostly of advertising revenue, it’s proven to a slew of digital companies that they can gain profitability by pursuing the sky-high margins in advertising. On this week’s Big Story, […]
The $3.1 billion deal on AdExchanger’s radar this week? TransUnion’s acquisition of Neustar. The deal brings together an identity resolution company with a credit reporting agency. But why is identity being tied together through these two companies? And should this raise privacy red flags? To answer those questions, we bring on former Neustar executive Steven […]
As connected TV takes off, Amazon is making a bold move: It’s making its own TVs. Amazon – which already sells the Fire TV Stick and operates a CTV app store and an AVOD and SVOD service – is branching out into TV manufacturing, according to a report by Insider. What’s in it for the […]
China’s new privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), is no GDPR – but it’s close. PIPL requires an opt-in and aims to help Chinese citizens get better control over their personal data. But the law exists alongside other more surveillance-focused policies, such as China’s recent requirement that video game companies collect the real […]
The field of public ad tech and digital media companies is growing large – both in number of companies and their market value. To help us untangle all of the M&A, IPOs and SPACs, Progress Partners Chief Operating Officer Domenic Venuto explains how investors approach the digital media and advertising sector. One important tell for […]
It must be sweeps week, because TV drama is through the roof. Nielsen lost its Media Ratings Council accreditation for National TV Ratings. The TV currency company calls the loss of the MRC seal of approval a hiatus while it focuses instead on Nielsen ONE, the cross-channel metric expected to launch late next year. Broadcasters […]
Wall Street can’t get enough of ad tech – creating a hot market for stocks and making quarterly earnings a who’s who of ad tech companies. Not so long ago, the ad tech bellwethers were The Trade Desk and Magnite, but earnings season now features a parade of companies young and old: PubMatic, DoubleVerify, Viant, […]
Getting online shoppers to click and add a product to their cart – and then have that product ship cost-effectively to a customer – is the latest challenge for CPG companies. During earnings calls over the past week, leaders of CPG companies had to answer to investors about their ecommerce strategies, which have accelerated thanks […]
Connected TV has arrived – a bit earlier than programmers may have expected. The pandemic-related boom in streaming, along with record TV upfronts, means there’s going to be a “wild Q4” ahead as programmatic buyers scramble for access to streaming inventory. One key issue is that CTV measurement capabilities aren’t developed enough yet, noted Kelly […]
Will Xandr find a home with InMobi? As InMobi prepares for an IPO, we talk about the Axios report that the company is in talks to acquire Xandr. AT&T has been shopping the company formerly known as AppNexus around for months – so when will a buyer materialize? Ad tech’s stratospheric public market valuations should […]
