Technology

When The Trade Desk sneezes, ad tech catches a cold.

Alphonso co-founder Lampros Kalampoukas is suing Kroll for allegedly undervaluing the company by nearly $100 million to aid LG Electronics in a shareholder dispute.

Data brokers de-index their opt-outs; Meta is still the go-to for influencer ads; and Perplexity offers to buy Chrome.

Television advertising has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years, with connected TV (CTV) emerging as a powerful channel for marketers seeking the impact of traditional television with the precision of digital targeting.

Product review site HouseFresh bounced back from losing 91% of its Google traffic last year. Here’s how it’s pivoting in response to stiffer affiliate marketing competition and zero-click AI search.

The ad tech startup Vaudit, founded last year by Mike Hahn, aims to automate the process of campaign reconciliation atop major ad platforms.

Sometimes, price can itself be promotional marketing; Reddit is no longer playing nice; and AI scrapers are reshaping the web in another way.

The Trade Desk continued its shaky 2025 earnings schedule when it reported Q2 results on Thursday.

The pivot to AI has led to a gap in many SaaS and ad tech companies’ payment models; AppLovin bounces back in Q2; and Grok might be your newest media planner.

OpenX filed a lawsuit against Google over its anticompetitive practices. And HyphaMetrics claimed victory against Nielsen in court over a patent lawsuit.

PetSmart adopted Hightouch’s AI decisioning tool in 2023 to better reach its customers on a one-to-one basis through nuanced insights into campaign results.

The SSP is betting on the DOJ’s antitrust remedies, plus closer relationships with agencies, DSPs and mid-sized advertisers, to help it eat some of Google’s lunch.

Almost a decade ago, running multiple retargeters across the same user base was a recipe for inefficiency. But the landscape shifted, and the data makes that clear.

RE/MAX gets into the retail media game; Meta loses a class-action lawsuit over how it handled period-tracking data; and the IAB Tech Lab unveils its ad delivery playbook for live events.

Newton Research announced its $9 million Series A raise on Tuesday. The funds will go toward hiring as demand for Newton’s specialized AI agents grows.

“I tried to write it so it’s not exclusively for ad tech nerds,” Ari Paparo told AdExchanger of his new book, about Google’s advertising dominance. “And I mean that affectionately.”

CleanTap, an ad tech startup launched by the founder of Method Media Intelligence, wants to separate the wheat from the chaff in CTV by serving as a curation layer between DSPs and SSPs.

As the quality of answer engines improves, people will click through to publisher websites less often. The solution isn’t to wage war against AI. It’s time to build a sustainable future for all stakeholders.

Change can be bumpy. From The Trade Desk’s Solimar-to-Kokai transition to Nielsen’s transition to its Big Data + Panel offering, we go inside customers’ challenges with these two transforming platforms.

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

Dotdash Meredith is People now; brands love influencers again; and Apple’s gonna finally help you with all those spam calls.

While Reddit’s ad business is ascendent, it’s still working on a strategy for getting the most out of its generative AI deals.

Criteo’s Q2 earnings report on Wednesday was marked by flatness.

X will begin scoring ads according to Elon Musk’s aesthetic preferences; what those Sydney Sweeney jeans ads say about how brands capture attention online; and a Google exploit lets sites be deleted from search results.

DSPs are building tools to bypass SSPs, and SSPs are trying to cut out the buy side. But the real question in the noise is whether the technology improves effectiveness, says Kara Puccinelli, chief customer officer at Nexxen, which just so happens to describe itself as an end-to-end platform.

DCG’s new tool analyzes the given moment – culturally, politically and economically – to understand how to best target its audience.

With over $200 billion in programmatic spending on the table next year, maximizing yield is the name of the game for publishers in 2026. Capturing that opportunity demands maximum optionality across demand paths and signals. And with AI reshaping the landscape (referrals from ChatGPT to news publishers saw a 25x increase from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, while traditional search traffic heads in the other direction) it is more important than ever for publishers to optimize their monetizable inventory.

SaaS companies are abandoning interoperability in search of more revenue; Spotify’s ad business is growing slower than expected; and sports is an upfronts winner for Disney and NBCU.

Ride-hailing app company Curb Mobility is bringing TikTok’s user-generated content to Taxi TV, its network of more than 15,000 in-taxi screens across 65 US markets.

Google’s AI search tools are creating a paradox; Amazon pulled its Google ad budgets; and now’s a great time for indie commerce ad tech startups.