Advertising Perspectives

Welcome and welcome back to the AdExchanger Commerce Media Newsletter. I’m James Hercher, your guide through this messy terrain. For this week’s edition, I caught up with Julio Loredo, senior director of media at Shipt, ... read more

Pinterest’s CEO doesn’t want Google divested; most consumer spending comes from the rich; and the “Sephora kids” aren’t alright. The post Ready To Stick With Google; Banking On High Earners appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

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. The post Amazon Ads Introduces Agentic ... read more

Kids are being shaped by the technology around them. It’s happening almost imperceptibly and at all times. Just try and find a teen in the US who doesn’t use the internet “almost constantly,” according to ... read more

For a long time, marketers have gotten away with flying blind. Campaigns have been run on a patchwork of incomplete inputs across various platforms, missing key fields and rarely aligned goals. Brands didn’t question performance. ... read more

Cambridge To Nowhere This week, Meta paid out a $725 million class action settlement related to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, The Verge reports. One Verge reporter received a $38.36 payout from the case. ... read more

Best Buy has decided to get its hands dirty by digging deeper into the ad tech ecosystem. Best Buy Ads, the consumer electronics chain’s retail media arm, on Tuesday announced a slate of new partnerships ... read more

Long before Michigan-born Amy Marentic got into marketing – today she’s the CMO of Genesis Motor America – she wanted to be an astronaut. After graduating from high school, she went to the University of Michigan to ... read more

Amazon is getting serious about streaming audio. Or, to be more specific, it’s getting Sirius. On Tuesday, Amazon DSP announced an expanded integration with satellite radio company SiriusXM. The relationship will enable more programmatic capabilities, ... read more

The TV landscape is changing under our feet. Streaming has finally surpassed broadcast viewership, and it’s unlikely the wheel will ever turn back. Amid this shift, advertisers have gotten loads of advice on how to ... read more

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. The post The Penske And the Sword; Agents Of Chaos appeared ... read more

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. ... read more

For too long, marketers have been stuck in a false dilemma: Do you want reach or relevance? Mass exposure or accurate targeting? That trade-off made sense in a world dominated by cookies and basic demographics. ... read more

Rembrand, the virtual product placement startup helmed by ad tech vet Omar Tawakol, and creative automation startup Spaceback share a similar a schtick, which is to create ads that don’t look like ads. Now they’re ... read more

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. The post Endless Antitrust; Third-Party Sellers Lose Their Party Invites appeared ... read more

On Tuesday, Magnite announced it had acquired Streamr.ai, which specializes in developing AI-generated assets for small businesses to use in their CTV campaigns. The post What’s Next for Streamr.ai Now That It’s Been Acquired By ... read more

At the most recent NewFronts, TV manufacturers Samsung and LG and Fox-owned streaming service Tubi all talked about integrating QR codes into their ad offerings. The technology, which grew in prominence to provide menus and ... read more

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …  The post Comic: Grading Your Own Homework appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

Morgan Stanley downgrades The Trade Desk; Warner Bros. Discovery and Nielsen announce a new deal; and brands aren't sold on virtual influencers. The post The Trade Desk Gets A Downgrade; WBD Shakes Hands With Nielsen ... read more

Retail media is entering what might be called its Socratic phase. The closer we to get to understanding an ad campaign’s real impact and business results, the clearer it is that we have no idea ... read more

When Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce made it official last month with a joint post on Instagram, brands hopped on the announcement like it was the last train leaving engagement station. Within 24 hours, the ... read more

Transaction IDs (TIDs) have been the topic du jour on LinkedIn and Twitter – and for good reason. These OpenRTB identifiers let buyers deduplicate the cluttered bidstream.  The entire TID debate has a clear subtitle: ... read more

SSPs aren't thrilled by TTD characterizing them as "resellers"; Amazon DSP just announced a new partnership to sell Netflix inventory; and pharma brands will be subject to stricter regulations, per the FDA. The post For ... read more

HyphaMetrics had barely taken its first steps as a new startup before drawing the ire of measurement juggernaut Nielsen. Four years and several lawsuits later (including one jury trial win for HyphaMetrics), CEO Joanna Drews ... read more

A dose of private equity is apparently just what the doctor ordered. On Tuesday, UK-based PE firm Vitruvian Partners made a $637 million strategic investment in DeepIntent, a health care-focused demand-side platform that specializes in ... read more

If someone says they’re about to drop a bomb, it could mean that it’s time to run for cover. But it could also mean they’re about to share a piece of juicy gossip. Context is, ... read more

Retail media can make for strange bedfellows. And none perhaps are so strange a pair as Google and Criteo. But there you have it. On Wednesday, Criteo announced a partnership with Google Search Ads 360 ... read more

Take Your Medicine District Court Judge Amit Mehta, speaking at a conference in Brussels yesterday, defended the remedies he recently handed down following Google’s guilty conviction in the DOJ’s search antitrust case. Google rivals and ... read more

On Tuesday, video advertising platform Pixability launched its own agentic product, which will help marketers more quickly identify and target scalable audience segments on YouTube. The post Pixability Introduces Agentic AI Audience Tools To Its ... read more

In a tough market for digital publishers, sports content remains an ad revenue MVP. And while website display ads have lost their shine for many advertisers, short-form video is still in demand. The increasing demand ... read more

Agencies are being rocked by the rise of AI. The solution? Bring on more humans. No, seriously. On Tuesday, digital agency Incubeta announced its acquisition of RocketSource, a consultancy that helps advertisers understand what drives ... read more

What even is the difference between a DSP and SSP anymore? Google Ad Manager (GAM), which is Google’s sell-side business, is reportedly pursuing direct deals with the buy side – the implication being that demand-side platforms, ... read more

Why is Publicis still winning?; The Dollar Shave Club gets into influencer marketing; and publishers are tossing their cultural critics aside. The post French For “Sour Grapes”; The In-House From Out Of House appeared ... read more

On Monday, PubMatic became the second sell-side platform to file a follow-on antitrust lawsuit against Google. The post PubMatic Is Suing Google For Monopolistic Behavior, The Second Such SSP Case appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

The ad industry is still smarting from last week’s news of a laissez-faire set of court-ordered remedies after Google was found guilty of operating a monopoly in the search ad market. Well, the frustrated masses ... read more

After a seed round last June, Josh Walsh wasn’t looking to raise more funding this year for BranchLab, the data science startup for health care marketers that he co-founded in early 2024. But then he ... read more

When Ours, a telehealth service for couples counseling, launched in 2020, it wasn’t planning to eventually pivot to a health care-focused customer data and privacy compliance platform. But that’s exactly what happened – and it ... read more

With the razzle-dazzle portion of the upfronts long over, the ad industry is now learning the impact of those presentations. Early indications forecast softer upfront deals than in years past, but what we’re seeing is ... read more

Google can’t stop catching fines in Europe; Roblox game developers might finally get a cut of a revenue; and eBay is getting into the AI game. The post Antitrusts Across The Atlantic; Measuring Ad Revenue ... read more

Retail media is on fire. And it seems like every company wants to fan the flames. For several years, Marriott dipped only a cautious toe in the commerce and retail media space. “It’s an attractive ... read more

There’s bigger fish to fry before broadcasters and streamers get bogged down in questions about QR codes and remote controls. Namely: How do TV studios guarantee that the products featured in these new made-for-TV shoppable ... read more

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …  The post Comic: Revenge Of The Data Nerds appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

Nike revamps its iconic slogan; CBS is on its way to becoming a conservative news outlet; and software company Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company for $610 million. The post Cut Out The Tag; Of ... read more

Google is running a search monopoly, but the remedies are light. How will this decision affect advertisers and competitors? Plus, Google Ad Manager is acting like a standalone SSP, a move that appears connected to ... read more

Remedies in the federal search antitrust case against Google landed with a thud earlier this week. Most publishers and ad industry pundits were sorely disappointed. “United States. v. Google LLC turned out to be pretty mid,” ... read more

Commerce media is booming, and everyone wants a piece of it. For commerce media networks, servicing the growing pool of media buyers brings many new opportunities and new challenges. In the short history of commerce ... read more

The AIs are here. Now they need an ad network. In all seriousness, last month saw the public release of ZeroClick, an ad network for AI chatbot products launched by a group of familiar faces ... read more

Google's penalties were pretty lenient; brand crossovers may have gone too far; and why so many ad tech leaders are founding startups. The post Chrome Is Both Too Important And Too Unimportant; The Brand Collabos ... read more

When Google reversed its decision to deprecate third-party cookies, the first word in ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche’s mind was an expletive. But it doesn’t really matter what happens with cookies on Chrome anymore. “Most of ... read more

Accommodating the demands of consumer privacy and data-driven ad targeting can feel like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of the marketing world: The more attuned you are to one, the less attuned you can be to ... read more

You know the old adage “garbage in, garbage out”? Well, it applies to the walled gardens, too, even with all of their access to first-party data. The big ad platforms have been investing more in ... read more

In the 31 years since the first banner ad appeared, ad tech has become essential to global commerce, directly employing 1.54 million people and generating $974 billion in revenue in the United States. This contributes ... read more

Breaking news: Google doesn’t need to break itself up to resolve its search monopoly, CNN reports. Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Tuesday that Google must share search results and some other data with “qualified competitors,” ... read more

On Tuesday, Roqad, a company that now describes itself as “the LiveRamp of Europe,” announced its acquisition of Zeotap-Data, the third-party data division of Zeotap, a startup that once wanted to be the LiveRamp of ... read more

Imagine if your favorite restaurant didn’t just know your usual but how many times you’ve ordered it, your spending habits at that establishment and what you’ve looked at on its website. A little creepy? Perhaps. ... read more

Get Out Of Jail Free? We’re in the age of spinoffs. “Young Sheldon,” “How I Met Your Father,” “House of the Dragon” and maybe Google Ad Manager (GAM). Google has spent the past several months ... read more

Pause ads are going programmatic, as connected TV ad buying becomes more automated. Plus: how publishers are proposing to be compensated by AI companies – and the odds that they’ll receive what they are asking ... read more

Back when the Pure app first launched in 2012, it was a completely anonymous hookup app. Now, it’s using CTV as a way to explain its rebranded vibe to prospective new users. The post Dating ... read more

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …  The post Comic: Ad Tech BBQ appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

In observance of Labor Day, AdExchanger is taking the day off on Monday, September 1. Our Daily News Roundup will return on Tuesday, September 2. A Dented Outlook Dentsu is struggling to keep up with ... read more

Peppa Pig is everywhere. Whether or not you have children, you likely know the little girl pig from the kid’s cartoon show. But the Peppa media franchise is just getting started. The program was acquired ... read more

Publishers are walking a tightrope. They need to protect their content from unauthorized use by large-language models, but they also need to figure out how to work with new AI technologies. It’s a tricky balance, ... read more

Redefining Reselling As far as TTD’s new Kokai DSP interface is concerned, all supply-side platforms are resellers, Digiday reports. Put another way, SSPs are being cut out of deals as much as possible in the ... read more

“Back to school” is often a dreaded phrase for students. It signifies the end of summer and a return to long days of classes and hours spent studying and writing essays. But it’s also crunch ... read more

2026 will be a massive year in sports, and the race is on for advertisers to reach sports viewers. There’s no shortage of sports programming options, with everything from major global tentpole events like the ... read more

Building a career in social media marketing while raising kids has been a unique, dichotomous experience.  From 9 am to 5 pm, I’m heads-down, focused on maximizing audience growth and engagement while crafting content designed ... read more

Amazon gets a taste of its own AI medicine; LinkedIn continues its pivot to video; and YouTube and Fox are on a fight. The post Amazon Gets Scraped, Too; LinkedIn Loves Video appeared first ... read more

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York, NY — [August 25, 2025] — Chief Marketer Network’s AdExchanger, has announced a strategic partnership with The Women in Programmatic Network (TWIPN) for Programmatic I/O New York 2025, taking place ... read more

Magnite is making a play for pause ads. On Tuesday, the advertising platform announced the introduction of pause ads into its SSP. The post Magnite Is Making Pause Ads Available To Buy Programmatically appeared first ... read more

Seriously, guys. Enough with the ROAS (return on ad spend) obsession. It’s time for a smarter approach to measurement that focuses on more than short-term outcomes, says Melanie Babcock-Brown, VP of media and monetization for ... read more

Since ChatGPT exploded into public consciousness, the conversation in ad tech has centered around AI. Generative tools, predictive models, attention algorithms: AI now touches nearly every part of the ecosystem, from media planning and creative ... read more

Sillicon valley bigwigs are getting into SuperPACS; turns out, shaming AI companies sorta works; and UK publishers are going “consent or pay.” The post Artificial Intelligence Goes To Washington; Perplexity Learns That Sharing Is Caring ... read more

Search and ye shall … most likely be tracked. But a growing number of people want to search without leaving a trail, which is why privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave Search are gaining ... read more

It used to be enough for brands to just track what their human customers were saying about them. Now they need to know what LLMs are saying about them, too. At the same time, the rise ... read more

Everything seems to get better and last longer. Remember when it was recommended to change your oil every 3,000 miles? Now it is 5,000 miles. Remember when milk used to go sour in the fridge ... read more

Meta’s AI vibes have been very different lately; times are tough for The Trade Desk; and fingerprinting has a bad reputation. The post Publisher Payment Plans; The Details Of Retail Data Deals appeared first ... read more

A post on Reddit’s r/adops forum has prompted more questions from the buy side about The Trade Desk’s transition to its new DSP interface, Kokai. Last week, an anonymous Redditor who claims to be an ... read more

We’ve got the witness list for the remedy phase of the Google antitrust trial, which starts in September. How might Google be forced to change its ad server and exchange to make this corner of ... read more

CTV advertising platforms often try to sell small businesses on how closely the channel resembles the digital marketing avenues they’re used to working with, like paid social. For Wildgrain, a DTC subscription service for artisan ... read more

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …  The post Comic: Retail Media Walled Gardeners appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

The Mart Gets Smart Walmart had a rocky second quarter, with lower gross margins than investors expected, per its earnings report on Thursday.  However, ad revenue was a bright spot, up 50% from Q2 2024, ... read more

For major consumer brands, it has long been true that product prices and marketing budgets are flip sides of the same coin. How do you move something off the shelf? Most likely, spend another dollar ... read more

For all of Ad Tech Land’s excitement about new and emerging CTV-specific ad formats, many commercial brands are still hesitant to try some of these new formats for themselves. The post How Kargo And The ... read more

In a market increasingly dominated by premium streaming environments and evolving measurement standards, some marketers believe they’re still getting the full value from online video (OLV). But they’re not. As buying behavior shifts to match ... read more

Shopped Out A former product manager on Meta’s Shops ads team named Samujjal Purkayastha filed a whistleblower complaint against his former employer with the London employment tribunal for reporting illegal business practices, Adweek reports.  According ... read more

Digital publishers are in a losing battle against Big Tech and AI for traffic and ad revenue. But the IAB Tech Lab has a plan to swing the momentum back in pubs’ favor. On Tuesday, ... read more

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! “Oyez” means “hear ye” in French. Town criers and court officers traditionally use it to call for silence before a judge enters the courtroom and proceedings officially begin. In the courtroom of ... read more

On Wednesday, Bluefish, an AI marketing platform that helps advertisers understand and refine how they’re showing up in AI queries, announced $20 million in series A funding. The round, which brings Bluefish’s total funding to ... read more

Workers’ CoMP Web publishers are seeing revenue and traffic evaporate in lockstep with the rise of new AI-generated search habits. What’s a pub to do? A growing number are shifting their focus from data licensing ... read more

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media has always flown outside the advertising mainstream. A four-letter acronym? It’s almost unimaginable. However, DOOH ad platforms are working hard to make the channel more accessible to advertisers who need simplicity ... read more

Whether it’s sponsored content, advertorials, content recommendation widgets, branded content or product placement, native advertising has been around for a long time. But for a supply-side platform to deliver native ads on the open web ... read more

Audio advertising presents a paradox: It’s an increasingly popular form of media, making up between 20% and 30% of consumption time in the US, depending on the source, but it’s woefully underrepresented in terms of ... read more

Walmart has some new rules for third-party sellers; WPP wins Mastercard; and marketers should get into VTubers. The post Walmart’s Brand-to-Seller Balance; For Everything Else, There’s WPP appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

What’s the point of a market research survey that could take weeks, when consumer sentiment is rollercoasting up and down every day? That’s the problem MX8 Labs aims to tackle. The new startup is trying ... read more

It’s been a decade since Spotify introduced podcasts to its app. Now, Spotify hosts millions of podcasts and, according to Edison Research, 26% of US podcast listeners use Spotify as their preferred service. And last ... read more

In ad tech, group thinking is the silent killer.  It convinces great companies to keep playing the same game long after the rules have changed. Too many leaders keep reaching for the same playbook that ... read more

Perplexity didn’t just try to buy Chrome; product placement in TV and film is on the rise; and the FCC is on one again. The post Less Perplexing Offers; Product Displacement Deals appeared first ... read more

Investors use The Trade Desk as a proxy for the health of the entire open web advertising ecosystem, which means TTD’s recent run of concerning earnings is devaluing the entire ad tech sector. Doubts about ... read more

According to Adam Paul, executive director of media alliances at LiveRamp, the old-school programmatic ads – the ones bought across multiple platforms without regard to context or audience – are underperforming on CTV these days. ... read more

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …  The post Comic: AI Slop appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more