Michael Kassan

Expect more ad agency holdco consolidation in the next year; people are starting to talk like ChatGPT; inside the weirdness of matching political funds.

Adelaide used this latest cash injection to boost its valuation to $60 million ahead of an all-stock acquisition of Rita, an Amsterdam-based data marketplace with a focus on the EU.

The acquisition puts Reddit in a better position to compete with Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok, which all built or expanded their AI creative generation and optimization tools within the past year.

In today’s newsletter: To boost its ads biz, Walmart will show in-store ads for non-endemic brands; Hyve Group buys Possible; and the Senate advances KOSA and COPPA 2.0, but the bills face obstacles in the House.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. BeReal Gets Real French photo-sharing app BeReal was a sensation in 2021 and 2022. But even when its organic growth was through the roof, the app – which is free to use and has no ads – faced the question of how it would eventually […]

Despite forceful calls for a shakeup of the digital ad business from the main stage at the Possible conference in Miami this week, the online ad industry remains locked in a harmful holding pattern.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Not-So-Sweet Deal A campaign without reporting is like an undressed salad. But Sweetgreen has to eat it anyway. “I’ve been pushing my Google reps,” the brand’s director of media and growth Jeff Lin declared during a panel at the Possible conference in Miami, Adweek […]

In today’s newsletter: Google PAIR snags a CTV partnership with NBCU; why Madison Avenue and Hollywood will never make their relationship official; and TV buyers explain why they aren’t all-in on alternative currencies just yet.

In today’s newsletter: MiQ’s Lara Koenig takes the stage at CTV Connect to talk about what’s next for programmatic CTV; Snap can’t compete because it lacks scale; and TikTok faces a potential ban (again).

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Europe? More Like ‘You’re Out’ In 2018, a handful of American ad tech startups abandoned the EU when their services became (more likely than not) verboten. Drawbridge, for instance, left Europe when it became clear that regulators had cross-device graphs in their crosshairs. […]

Michael Kassan was Mr. Cannes even before he sold MediaLink to the festival’s parent company, Ascential. This week, with Cannes Lions 2019 kicking off, Kassan spins tales of Cannes past, present and yet to come. He also talks about the evolution of MediaLink two years after the acquisition. (Spoiler: It’s going well. Kassan just extended […]

It’s a transformational time for Cannes Lions. After industry leaders this year criticized the festival for becoming too bloated, the company announced a set of changes last month to streamline the event and bring the focus back to creativity. Last Friday, Chairman Terry Savage stepped down after leading the festival for more than three decades. […]

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 […]

MediaLink, long a dabbler in ad tech, has now jumped in with both feet. The strategic advisory firm tapped agency and startup veteran Matt Spiegel to ramp up its consulting work in the marketing technology area. That work will include advising marketers, publishers and tech companies on how to capitalize on the data-driven media automation […]