Senior Editor
James covers the intersection of commerce, media and advertising technology.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
James Hercher
Articles By James
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Financial Services Advertisers In The UK Just Got Over A Frightful Meta Bug
Call it a Glitchmas miracle. Maybe. Meta finally appears to have resolved a glitch in its ad platform that prevented new financial services advertisers from running campaigns.
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Firestone Walker Brewing’s CMO On Billboards, Non-Alcoholic Beers And Digital Shelves
Dustin Hinz is CMO of Firestone Walker Brewing, which just launched its first non-alcoholic beer line. Now comes the marketing challenge.
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Meet Upright Analytics, A Leader Among New Short-Seller Activist Investors
There is a new breed of financial investor – or dis-investor, perhaps – that targets publicly traded companies with allegedly incriminating reports, while taking short seller positions on the company.
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Integral Ad Science Goes Big On Social Media As Retail Ad Spend Softens In Q3
Integral Ad Science shares dropped more than 10% on Wednesday, after the company reported lackluster revenue growth and softened its guidance for the Q4 season.
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Meet Evertune, A Gen-AI Analytics Startup Founded By Trade Desk Vets
Meet Evertune AI, a startup that helps advertisers understand how their brands and products appear in generative AI search responses.
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The Trade Desk Maintains Its High Growth Rate And Touts New Channels
“It’s hard not to be bullish about CTV when it’s both our largest channel and our fastest growing,” said The Trade Desk Founder and CEO Green during the company’s earnings report on Thursday.
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LiveRamp Outperforms On Earnings And Lays Out Its Data Network Ambitions
LiveRamp reported an unexpected boost to Q3 revenue, from $160 million last year to $185 million in 2024, during its quarterly call with investors on Wednesday.
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Why Old-School CPGs Are Getting Back To Basics
Brands are getting back to basics. They’re rethinking their packaging and trying to figure out how they fit into the new world of retail store shelves. And while they are getting more data-driven, the data is not necessarily for advertising.
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Meta Advertisers Prepare For A Holiday Season Of Gifts And Glitches
In the world of online advertising on big walled-garden platforms – Meta in particular – October through November truly is the season of giving. Of giving advertisers ulcers and panic attacks, that is.
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Based On Its Q3 Earnings, Maybe AIphabet Should Just Change Its Name To AI-phabet
Google hit some impressive revenue benchmarks in Q3. But investors seemed to only have eyes for AI.
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PODCAST: AdExchanger TalksTalking Shop With Mike Ryan, The PMax Whisperer
Just in time for holiday shopping, AdExchanger Talks is taking a dive into the world of ecommerce with Mike Ryan, the head of ecommerce insights at search and commerce consultancy Smarter Ecommerce.
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IAB Tech Lab Made Moves To Acquire Prebid In 2021 – And Prebid Said No
The story of how Prebid.org came to be – and almost didn’t – is an important one for the industry.
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Learning To Love And Let Go Of Attribution Models
Here’s an uncomfortable question for any data-driven advertiser: Is there a good way to measure and attribute marketing campaigns?
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Amazon Lays Out Its Next $50 Billion Opportunity In Advertising
In its sales pitches, hands-on-keyboard sessions and during conversations with ad tech vendors and Amazon sellers, Amazon consistently combined its content fortress with AWS and its investments in AI and machine learning.
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Why Mondelez Piloted A Shopper Marketing Test Between Albertsons And Fetch
“I always said, I think we need to change our title, because it’s not the old school shopper marketing,” said Anne Martin, director of shopper marketing for Mondelez International, which owns Oreo, Ritz, and a variety of other snacks.
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Mid-Tier Ecommerce Marketplaces Are Trying – And Failing – To Make The Numbers Work
Perhaps you’ve noticed – How could you not? – that there is massive competition among the largest ecommerce retailers to be the quickest, cheapest option online. But the mid-tier of ecommerce marketplaces are suffering.
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TikTok Shop’s Biggest Strength Is Its Biggest Weakness
Legislative drama notwithstanding, it’s time to look at TikTok Shop as a first potential sign that live online shopping in the US can be, well, a thing.
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Intent IQ Has Patents For Ad Tech’s Most Basic Functions – And It’s Not Afraid To Use Them
An unusual dilemma has programmatic vendors and ad tech platforms worried about a flurry of potential patent infringement suits.
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Perry Ellis Enlists Wunderkind To Revitalize Its Email Game
For fashion company Perry Ellis, the development of a strong first-party data strategy has also meant a ground-up rethinking of the company’s email marketing.
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Retailers Are Opening Themselves To Programmatic – But Will They Regret It?
Most retailers are long past withholding their shopper data from programmatic tech. They prefer the low-hanging fruit. But was that a good decision?
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Buried DOJ Evidence Reveals How Google Dealt With The Trade Desk
In the process of the investigation into Google, the Department of Justice unearthed a vast trove of separate evidence. Some of these findings paint a whole new picture of how Google interacts and competes with its main DSP rival, The Trade Desk.
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Pacvue Enters The Next Chapter Of Retail Media With New CEO Rahul Choraria
Pacvue has promoted COO Rahul Choraria to chief executive.
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The Wonderful Brand Discusses Testing OOH And Online Snack Competition
Wonderful hadn’t done an out-of-home (OOH) marketing push in more than 15 years. That is, until a week ago, when it began a campaign across six major markets to promote its new no-shell pistachio packs.
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Google Ads, Analytics And Merchant Center Are Glitching Out Of Control. Here’s Why
Over the past month alone, there was a major Google Search ranking bug, a calamitous data breach involving Google Ads and Google Merchant Center and outages across Google Ads, the Analytics API outages and Google Merchant Center.
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How Incrementality Tests Helped Newton Baby Ditch Branded Search
In the past year, Baby product and mattress brand Newton Baby has put all its media channels through a new testing regime for incrementality. It was a revelatory experience.
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Can E.L.F. Cosmetics Become A Consumer Destination, Not Just A Brand?
History can be a burden for a brand, if it means that company is too set in its ways to pivot and try new things. Just consider e.l.f. Cosmetics, the digitial-first, social-native brand that made good.
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DTC Brands Are Learning The Hard Way That Winning In Retail Can Be A Losing Bet
Digital-native brands need to figure out how to win in retail shelves. They’re finding it difficult, to say the least.
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TikTok Wants To Win All The Screens, Not Just Your Smartphone
“There are billions of additional screens outside of mobile phones,” says Dan Page, TikTok’s global head of partnerships and new screens. “We want to be in all of them.”
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The Trade Desk Says UID2 Has Now Reached ‘Critical Mass’
The Trade Desk delivered another smash earnings report. Meanwhile, Unified ID 2.0, the open-source identity initiative, has “reached a critical mass of adoption,” CEO Jeff Green told investors.
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Publicis Acquired Retail Tech With Agency Clients – And Now Those Agencies Want Out
Many of Publicis’ fastest-growing and most strategic business units – including CitrusAd, Profitero, Epsilon and Conversant – earn a large chunk of their revenue from other agencies. Is that a problem?