The in-housing trend continues to reshape agency and ad tech relationships. CPG giant Unilever announced on Wednesday that along with WPP it will invest $15 million in mobile creative management platform Celtra. The move aligns with Unilever CMO Keith Weed’s rather blunt approach to marketing strategy. “Get out of marketing if you’re not going to […]
Leo Burnett, one of the most iconic advertising agencies in the game, is evolving the way it thinks about creative. “I’ve been focused on infusing technology, data and analytics to make creative more relevant, personalized and effective,” said Andrew Swinand, CEO at Leo Burnett. For Swinand, who spent time on the media side as president […]
It’s never a surprise to hear a high-end digital publisher lampoon the chaotic digital ad environment, but a sharp invective delivered yesterday by Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times, went beyond the usual sniping. “The world of digital advertising is a nightmarish joke,” he said during a panel hosted by Omnicom Group agency […]
There’s no more US presidential election or splashy Summer Olympics to prop up ad spend, but there is still growth to be found – especially on the mobile front. Although the growth rate in total ad spend has slowed, global mobile advertising is on pace to reach $110 billion this year, surpassing the $100 billion mark […]
The duopoly isn’t a duo when it comes to brand safety. The nuances of how their respective platforms operate mean that Facebook and Google face their own particular challenges to ensure brand safety. While the primary risk on YouTube is adjacency – ads appearing within or beside unsavory or questionable content – the personal nature of […]
The convergence of retail and ecommerce accelerated with a blockbuster Friday when it was announced that Amazon would buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion and Wal-Mart is snapping up ecommerce men’s clothing company Bonobos for $310 million. The market response to the deals was clear, particularly to Amazon’s 11-digit investment in a brick-and-mortar footprint. The […]
The 2017 Cannes Lions festival will be a first for MediaLink – though not in the sense of its presence. After all, the consultancy has been nearly ubiquitous for a number of years, with its sponsorships, the events it hosts like Daily Dose and Tech Talks and its suppers with an invite list full of […]
The slang phrase “I’ve got the receipts” has become a way to declare oneself the indisputable winner of an argument. Mobile shopping and analytics companies are learning to love the term as well. As image scanning and recognition software improves and the value of shopper data shoots up, a growing industry is devoted to accessing […]
Facebook made several overtures to openness on Wednesday with tools designed to give advertisers more control over where and how their ads appear across in-stream video on Facebook, Instant Articles and the Audience Network. “Advertisers want separate controls for inside the news feed environment and outside the news feed environment where ads are more deeply […]
Microsoft is beta testing a feature on its Bing search engine called Custom Audiences. It is designed to improve targeting by letting advertisers upload first-party files like CRM, purchase history and subscription data. If advertisers want to participate in the beta test, which has been underway for several months, advertisers must upload their data via […]
As Chemistry Communications’ clients created more content and more ambitious distribution plans, manually distributing that content to dozens of native and social platforms became untenable. Chemistry turned to Story by PulsePoint to make content distribution more cost- and time-efficient. The agency serves clients not only in content marketing, but through media buys across digital, video […]
By Allison Schiff and Zach Rodgers Less than a month after Procter & Gamble pulled its business from the platform, AudienceScience has ceased operations and gone into receivership. CEO Bill Gossman confirmed to AdExchanger on Thursday that AudienceScience has suspended worldwide operations. The news was first reported by Business Insider. Gossman declined to comment further on […]
Wait, there’s good news in the fight against ad fraud? The global monetary impact of ad fraud is expected to go down this year, the amount of mobile fraud happening in the ecosystem is much lower than feared and programmatic can be just as safe as direct-sold if buyers implement the right security measures. The […]
The Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) inquisition against nontransparent programmatic media buying rages on. The ANA on Thursday released a study illuminating the often murky fees taken throughout the messy programmatic supply chain, from advertiser, to agency, to trading desk, demand-side platform (DSP), exchange, supply-side platform (SSP) and publisher. Read the study. The survey, conducted […]
Unlike the NBC upfront, which touted TV’s edge over digital, Turner Broadcasting took a different approach at its upfront Wednesday by emphasizing the “omnichannel experience.” “We reach 125 million viewers now across linear, OTT and mobile devices every month,” said Kevin Reilly, president of TBS and TNT, and chief creative officer for Turner Entertainment. “We’re […]
For years, Intel’s five-note jingle was one of the most recognizable sounds on TV and helped build solid brand awareness for its consumer-facing PC business. But a jingle isn’t going to encourage network administrators at a telco to embrace Intel’s open architecture or get senior decision-makers to consider Intel’s hybrid cloud platform. “In the past, […]
NBCUniversal’s chairman of advertising sales, Linda Yaccarino, went straight for Google’s jugular at the network’s Monday upfront presentation. “At NBCUniversal, you never have to worry about showing up next to something objectionable,” Yaccarino said at the New York City event, alluding to the online giant’s brand safety struggles. “But, let’s be honest: Brand safety is […]
When the largest advertiser in the world wants to take you to prom, but you’re not allowed to tell anyone – that was the situation facing AudienceScience. Although AudienceScience provided the technology backbone for Procter & Gamble’s internal trading desk, Hawkeye, for the past seven years, P&G explicitly acknowledged its alliance with the ad tech platform […]
For Vice Media, an edgy, youth-oriented publisher rooted in eccentricity, being brand-safe means giving advertisers enough control over their ad placements to keep the briefs coming. “There’s certain content brands would like to be associated with and certain content they would not,” said Andrew Smith, VP of digital for Vice Media. He noted that much of […]
Whisper, an app that lets its anonymous users post what’s on their mind, is still going strong after five years – even after other secret-sharing social apps like Yik Yak have closed shop. One reason for its longevity is that it is making money through programmatic advertising. Demand partners include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, OpenX […]
8 p.m. Katy Perry. That’s all. 7:40 p.m. Google Preferred FTW Google Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl claimed Google Preferred (translation: Google’s top tier videos) has tripled its number of advertisers. Kyncl credited YouTube for turning publishers like BuzzFeed, Vice and AwesomenessTV into “daily destinations of can’t-miss programming.” Consumers watch over 1 billion of hours […]
Seven years after first embracing programmatic buying at scale through its secretive Project Hawkeye initiative, Procter & Gamble is saying goodbye to long-time ad tech partner AudienceScience. In its place the company will install Neustar as its data management platform alongside an assortment of demand-side platforms, including The Trade Desk. Ad Age first reported the […]
When a public company is having performance issues, it needs an excuse. For Twitter, TellApart is shaping up to be that boogeyman. After barely a mention of TellApart on its earnings calls for several quarters, last week Twitter CFO and COO Anthony Noto implied that the remarketing platform will hurt revenue through the rest of […]
America’s most data-driven retailers and product manufacturers increasingly use mobile channels to drive shoppers to a store. Take the big kahuna. Walmart two weeks ago began offering discounts for products selected online and then picked up at a store. Walmart clears the margin on those discounts because the retailer can push products through its stores […]
Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]
Procter & Gamble will slash $1.5 billion from its marketing budget over the next five years, the CPG giant said during its Q1 earnings call Wednesday. At least $1 billion will come from media, specifically by lowering rates and getting rid of supply chain waste, said Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller. P&G wants to save […]
Chocolate eggs are big business for Hershey’s, the company behind Reese’s peanut butter cups and Cadbury eggs. The candymaker generates $550 million in sales of Easter candies, making it the second-biggest holiday after Halloween. The beloved Reese’s Eggs fill up Easter baskets everywhere. But this year, the Easter candy market became more competitive as other […]
On the heels of Google’s ongoing brand safety headache, MediaMath is trying to add a few safety bumpers to the sharp edges of the digital ad ecosystem. The programmatic buying platform took the wraps off a product on Thursday that aims to help advertisers find addressable audiences on brand-safe sites at scale. MediaMath vets a […]
Black Angus Steakhouse operates 45 restaurants in six states. And it’s just hired its first chief marketing officer, Liz Geavaras, to bring a fresh approach to the 53-year-old restaurant group’s marketing. Geavaras will dial back Black Angus’ heavy print expenditures, replacing them with digital. She also plans to segment customers and customize messages to address […]
Publishers are learning to love influencer marketing as a way to grow broader advertising and sponsorship deals. “An advertiser might come with a traditional sponsorship package, and to complement that, they want a programmatic component,” said Rachel Parkin, SVP of strategy and sales at digital media company CafeMedia. CafeMedia owns a network of women’s interest […]
Inside how Jones Road Beauty is trying to turn messy, conflicting measurement signals into a single testing roadmap for its media mix.
IAPP’s Global Summit in DC was a reminder that AI is moving fast – and judges, privacy lawyers and practitioner are racing to keep up.
An upcoming paper from CIMM doesn’t just demonstrate that differences in media quality can be measured. It also argues that tying media value to short-term outcomes has perpetuated longstanding industry challenges.
Not unlike last year, the mood during TikTok’s NewFronts presentation last week felt like cautious optimism, if not outright relief.
Can a good sales presentation offset the impact of a very bad news week? That’s a question for Meta, which collected two guilty verdicts in court this week for failing to protect children and creating additive products.
Meet Clamor, a new social listening product that pulls cultural insights from online conversations in real time. Clamor helped Manscaped freshen up its marketing, including for this year’s Super Bowl.
