transparency

This year, programmatic companies faced tough decisions about privacy, awkward acquisitions and the cookie die-off that never quite happened.

In today’s digital advertising landscape, speed, scale and sophistication have become both a promise and a problem. Innovation has accelerated – but so too has fragmentation. Marketers are expected to drive performance across an ever-expanding universe of platforms, formats and data streams – often without the clarity or confidence they need to succeed.

When an ad shows up next to illegal content, there is often not a single point of failure. Adalytics Krzysztof Franaszek walks us through why he found ads showing up next to the worst kind of criminal content — and the simple and complex solutions to this problem.

Meta and Mozilla’s new browser-based attribution system for web ads appears to solve an interesting math problem. But if applied to real-world advertising, it will increase privacy risks for users, writes Raptive’s Don Marti.

What captured our readers’ attention this year was both a continuation of and a departure from years past. Our top 10 stories in the past year coalesce around two themes: kookies and kwality. Ahem, cookies and quality.

Open social platforms need established content policy that is underpinned by transparency, advanced technology and feedback loops for constant improvement, writes Zefr’s Cameron Cramer.

Marketers are wasting 25% of their ad spend on made-for-advertising websites and inefficiencies. And the ANA thinks consolidation and education are the solutions. Plus: 2024 ad spend will grow, but at a slower rate. And streamers will grapple with CTV’s rising ad spend and linear TV’s accelerating decline.

“What frustrates me most about this situation is how easily it can be remedied in a way that will benefit all parties,” writes Lou Paskalis about the Google Search Partner network brand safety debacle.

Google search ads appear on a host of unsavory and offensive sites, according to recent Adalytics research. And without any transparent reporting from Google, marketers can’t do anything about it.

Armed with Ads.txt and Sellers.json files, Nandini Jammi, co-founder of Check My Ads Institute, spends her days exposing how money flows through the twisted pipes of the programmatic supply chain. Her goal? To defund disinformation, toxic content and hate online.

The second round of ad fraud (and worse) alleged by Adalytics on the part of Google/YouTube provides yet another definitive example of the problem with mega walled gardens.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem… Have a safe and happy July 4 holiday! And please enjoy this classic comic, which first ran in July 2019.

Why retail media is going in-house. Plus, Prebid.org’s latest update addresses three biggies: SPO, data privacy and the end of third-party cookies.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Retail Wagging The Dog Retail media networks are advertising businesses. Usually. Sort of. For many retailers, the data-driven ad practice serves different purposes. Lowe’s announced new digital products for contractors and other professionals, reports Retail Dive.

“You don’t have to know everything” as a DEI expert, said Femi Olu-Lafe, a 2022 Top Women honoree in the DEI Champions category. As Kinesso’s SVP of global culture and culture, Olu-Lafe stays curious and open to learning from others.

Transparency. Privacy. Signal Loss. Coming out of Programmatic IO New York, the full editorial team debriefs on the hottest topics driving ad tech conversations in 2022.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Oh, Snap Snap warned investors this week that it will miss its one-month-old revenue target, tumbling shares by more than 40% in what may be a harbinger for the industry, CNBC reports.  “Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has […]

Mobile ad platform LifeStreet released a new version of its DSP on Tuesday that shows developers what’s happening behind the scenes when they make a programmatic buy. “Supply transparency is table stakes,” said CEO Levi Matkins. “The question isn’t just what are you bidding on; it’s why are you bidding on it?”

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Ian Trider, VP of RTB platform operations at Centro. If there are at least 80 companies purporting to offer identity solutions, surely the ad tech industry is set, right? Nope. I would argue that most […]

The transformation of the way TV advertising is transacted will be a major theme in 2021. Everyone – both buy- and sell-sides – seems to be talking about addressability these days. Traditional broadcasters have reorganized around streaming and TV-related acquisitions have accelerated – one of the most notable being Roku’s $150 million acquisition of dataxu. […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by John Clyman, vice president of engineering, marketplace quality and security, at Magnite. It’s time to provide sellers with transparency into the buy side of the industry, just as buyers have rightfully demanded transparency from […]

Mobile app advertisers have been slower than their web counterparts to embrace programmatic-style RTB auctions. That’s starting to change as more app publishers test in-app bidding and see significant lifts in ARPDAU (average revenue per daily user). “Publishers are pushing their ad networks to get into bidding, and we’re beginning to see a snowball effect,” […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Danilo Tauro, global director of media, tech and data at Procter & Gamble. Is advertising waste being driven by lack of technology, incentives, capabilities or all of the above? To […]

After a nearly three-month-long standoff, video analytics and brand safety measurement company OpenSlate said on Tuesday that it’s back in the YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP). Google and OpenSlate were at loggerheads since April, which is when YouTube relaunched the program with a handful of new partners and an updated organizational structure. OpenSlate had been a […]

This article is sponsored by Verizon Media. Up until recently, brands looking to break through the heavily saturated digital advertising ecosystem adopted third-party cookies as the anchor for behavioral and interest-based targeting. Even two years ago, spend on third-party data was still rapidly increasing – by 17.5% to $19.2 billion, according to a 2018 study […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Checks For Quibi  Quibi, the short-form mobile video app set to launch in April, closed a $750 million round of financing, bringing its total funding to $1.75 billion. The company raised $1 billion in its first funding round in 2018 and planned to […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Lucie Laurendon, senior product marketing manager at Smart. Google’s surprising move to a first-price unified auction was met with cautious optimism and doses of skepticism. Dropping last-look advantage in Google Ad Manager’s second-price auction […]

Monday’s Links: Algo Secrets A bipartisan group of senators filed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act on Thursday, a bill that would require large internet and search providers (those with more than 1 million users, at least $50 million in revenue and 500 employees) to disclose how and why users see certain personalized content, as well […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Rebate Redux Media agencies are paying settlements to clients as a result of contract audits sparked by the ANA’s 2016 transparency report, AdAge reports. Nearly 100 audits have taken place, but it’s not clear which clients or agencies are involved or if any money […]

Ad tech startup Ad/Fin saw an opportunity to build a business by partnering with the ANA and Ebiquity on a programmatic study. Here’s the story of how it made enemies of agency holding companies – and got caught up in the industry’s transparency reckoning. In early 2016, Ad/Fin met with leadership at Ebiquity and the […]