Horizon Media

If any single event can be considered the jumping-off point for TV upfronts, it’s the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES), which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What does it feel like to be a media buyer and planner in 2025? That question launched a fascinating “Ask Me Anything”-style discussion at Cynopsis ScreenShift in New York City on Tuesday.

Delivery apps are launching social networks now; Google is the latest Big Tech company to write a huge check to Trump; and ad agencies of all sizes apparently aren’t big enough.

As the newly appointed president of Horizon Media Holdings, Bob Lord is dubious that megamergers between holding companies are actually good for the client. “Bigger is not always better,” Lord says.

ADT tracks a bespoke metric called “marketing cost per installation” that measures the impact of media on what ADT cares most about: the roughly 1 million alarms its technicians install every year.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

How big of a deal is The Trade Desk’s top 100 list? AdExchanger spoke to industry experts for their reactions and bounced some of their hot takes off The Trade Desk.

In today’s newsletter: Publishers fear they’ll be excluded from The Trade Desk’s “premium internet”; buyers weigh in on Netflix’s plans to offer an ad server; and PayPal launches an ad network and data brokerage.

Fixating on ROAS makes it harder to figure out how certain parts of a campaign perform, especially now that retail media buys often include other, less performance-focused channels like display and CTV as audience extension.

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.

Agencies will keep testing cookie alternatives, devising first-party data strategies and exploring commerce media in 2024.

TV programmers and agencies say they’re ready to transact their ad buys using a measurement provider other than Nielsen. But panel-based currency is proving more difficult to dethrone than anticipated.

Ampersand has a new self-service tool within AND, its TV ad buying platform, that turns linear campaign reporting around in 24 hours so buyers can optimize campaigns quickly based on a short list of priority metrics.

As third-party cookies disappear, advertisers can rely on retail data to target consumers, said The Trade Desk’s Ben Sylvan at Night Market’s eCommFronts event in New York City last week.

Dentsu launched a set of identity solutions for Merkury, its identity resolution platform, on Tuesday. The identity solutions try to create a single customer view for marketers.

It may look as if there hasn’t been much progress with alternative currencies – at least not commensurate with the hype. Just because alt currencies didn’t take over the upfronts this year doesn’t mean there hasn’t been movement.

Claritas acquired AI-driven marketing automation platform ArtsAI to strengthen its personalization, measurement and AI capabilities.

Magnite’s still enamored of CTV. CTV’s contribution to Magnite’s revenue was up 8% YOY, from $52 million to $56 million.

In its Q4 earnings report Tuesday, PubMatic highlighted how SSP consolidation is an opportunity for the company to pursue its goal of capturing a fifth of the SSP market.

The integration is the latest sign that agencies are getting serious about supply-path optimization (SPO) by forging direct relationships with SSPs. It also illustrates the need for SSPs to differentiate themselves from their peers by providing publishers and broadcasters with unique connections to demand sources.

In 2022, SPO solutions largely revolved around creating direct connections to so-called premium publishers. But machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) also took on a bigger role in SPO this year. And 2022 was the year the ad industry began touting SPO as the solution of choice for sustainability-focused marketers.

As part of a plan to consolidate its SSP partners, Horizon Media struck a deal with PubMatic Monday. Horizon’s clients who purchase open-auction inventory through its HX trade desk will be able to use PubMatic’s SPO products to automatically optimize their bidding depending on which KPIs they want to boost, whether the deal is open auction, programmatic guaranteed or a private marketplace.

While programmatic advertising has its faults, it is still evolving. And as it has matured it has become a powerful, efficient and effective tool for brands to surgically disseminate their commercial messages to highly targeted consumers. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to be done, writes Eric Warburton, SVP of technical account management and platform partnership success at Horizon Media.

The IAB’s Podcast Upfronts in May touted advancements in dynamic ad insertion, measurement and attribution and brand safety and suitability, as well as the rise of podcast networks. But ad agencies say the technology powering podcast-based marketing is not sufficiently developed to deliver what advertisers need to effectively target impressions and measure campaign effectiveness. And they believe the industry should do more to address brand safety concerns around podcast content.

Paula Connard, chief personalization officer at Horizon Media, on why third-party data is disappointing, why testing proposals in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox isn’t a top priority, why the indie agency decided to build rather than buy a data platform and the questions she’s getting from clients as they deal with signal loss.

Contextual targeting vendor Peer39 is capitalizing on the craze for all things cookieless with the rollout of a contextual data marketplace that aggregates data from atypical sources to apply against programmatic buys. The marketplace, which came out of beta on Tuesday after more than a year, includes cookie-free data sets from suppliers such as Hotspex […]

Amobee is making its suite of tools for TV and connected TV planning, targeting and measurement available on a self-serve basis starting Wednesday. The solution, called TV Amplifier, was first released as a managed service last year. Automation is needed in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, particularly with streaming consumption rising during the pandemic, said […]

Horizon Media said Thursday it has partnered with TransUnion to provide the people-based identity layer for its data platform, Blu. TransUnion’s deterministic identity graph covers all US adult individuals with privacy compliant, PII-based data spanning names, addresses, emails, mobile IDs and home IP addresses. Clients can append first- and third-party data sets to TransUnion’s identity […]

  Is COVID-19 the beginning of the end for upfronts? Buyers and sellers have long questioned the necessity of flashy presentations, especially as the broadcast TV business declines. Disney chairman Bob Iger recently predicted an end to the antiquated upfront process altogether as a result of the economic crisis. Ad buyers have been pushing to […]

Horizon Media is the first agency to use Nielsen Advanced Audience, a linear TV product designed to make measuring granular audience segments like “new parents” as easy as measuring age and gender with C3 and C7 ratings. Advanced Audience allows agencies to find viewers in narrower segments than age and demographic and do post-campaign measurement. […]