AdTech

At a dinner party the other night, a very accomplished business person told a story about how he and his wife were certain that their devices were listening to their conversations. “I was talking to my wife about a pair of designer shoes that she wanted to purchase, and not 10 minutes later while she was doing some online research for work, she saw an ad for that exact pair of shoes. She hadn’t searched for the shoes; the ad just appeared. Clearly, our computers or our phones are listening.” Some people nodded in agreement, and others began to chime in. Continue Reading →

The founders of Taiv had an idea: What if a sports bar owner could make an extra $500 every month by using technology to replace the commercials in TV broadcasts with commercials they sold themselves? It is an awesome idea. It is also a blatant theft of services. Continue Reading →

The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act was introduced Thursday by a group of key senators on the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust: the ranking member and chair, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. If passed, the bipartisan bill would force Google to break up its ad business. Continue Reading →

As you know, there are only three business models: I pay, you pay, or someone else pays. While everyone says they hate commercials, ad-supported business models simply refuse to die. Why? "Free" (aka "someone else pays") is very compelling for both consumers and shareholders. So compelling, in fact, that our friends at Netflix are looking to introduce their lower-priced ad-supported tier by the end of the year. Continue Reading →

Have you ever been talking about a particular pair of shoes or handbag with a friend, only to suddenly see ads for that exact product pop up on Facebook and on Google? It must mean your phone is spying on you! Right? Wrong! Shelly Palmer talks with Bianca Peters and Raegan Medgie about predictive analytics and what's really happening. Continue Reading →

The big star of the television upfronts, an ancient artifact of a marketplace where big television networks pre-sell advertising to big advertisers, was… wait for it… ad-supported streaming services. You say you like your ad-free streams, you can keep them. If you want "free" streams, try AVOD (advertising video on demand). Continue Reading →

Facebook was quite vocal about its opposition to Apple's ATT (AppTracking Technology). The social media giant feared that its implementation in iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5 would significantly damage its Facebook Audience Network business. They were right. Very, very right. Continue Reading →

A new iOS update has Facebook fuming. Shelly Palmer talks with Kayla Mamelak and Raegan Medgie about what Apple's doing (and why Facebook is so upset) on Fox 5 NY's Good Day Wake Up. Continue Reading →

iOS 14.5 featuring "App Tracking Transparency" is rolling out across the Apple universe and, wait… hear that? That's Facebook screaming in pain. Why? Because now, on iOS and iPadOS 14.5, whenever anyone (including Facebook) wants to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, they will have to get your permission. Continue Reading →

With the full understanding that killing 3rd-party cookies in its very popular Chrome browser would impact practically every advertiser, Google, the world's largest seller of advertising, offered its idea of a replacement: FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). To make a long story short, practically everyone but Google hates the idea. Continue Reading →