Blog
Opinion, commentary, interviews, year-in-review.
Netflix Tests Ads: Here's What You Need to Know
Netflix began running tests for promotional content displayed between episodes, and the news spread quickly — triggering outrage among a vocal segment of its subscriber base. Most of that anger stems from a fundamental…
The Vicious Cycle Plaguing AdTech and MarTech Vendors
Despite the efficiencies, automation, and scale that advertising and marketing technology bring to the online world, there's no shortage of problems in these industries. Ad fraud, a lack of transparency around fees and…
In a Post-GDPR World, Who Will Be the Emissions Cheaters of AdTech?
You may remember the Volkswagen emissions scandal that made headlines worldwide in 2015. The German automaker had intentionally programmed its turbocharged-direct-injection (TDI) engines to activate emission controls…
Chrome's Built-In Ad Filter: What It Blocks, How It Works, and Why It Matters
As of February 15, Chrome on both desktop and mobile stopped displaying certain intrusive ad formats — and Google has been careful about how it frames this. The official Google and Chromium blogs refer to the feature as…
Top AdTech & MarTech Topics That Defined 2017
2017 was a remarkably busy year for the AdTech and MarTech industries. Headlines were dominated by AI, acquisitions, consolidation, and header bidding — but by far the most discussed and shared topics were the European…
Three AdTech Stories of 2017 That Almost Nobody Predicted
When industry observers assembled their 2017 predictions at the close of 2016, the consensus forecast centred on mergers and acquisitions, header bidding, AI and machine learning, and the continued rise of mobile. Those…
Don't Fret – the GDPR Is a Good Thing for AdTech
In the early days of online advertising, the data available to advertisers was limited to whatever came through in the HTTP header of a browser request: the user's language setting, the URL of the page loading the ad,…
The History of the Advertising Agency: From Print to the Internet
Advertising has changed dramatically over the past few decades, largely driven by the shift from traditional print to the internet — a transition that introduced new technologies for delivering ads more efficiently and…
The Case for Custom AdTech and MarTech Platforms
The AdTech and MarTech landscape has become remarkably dense. The sheer volume of solutions on the market is staggering — and that abundance creates its own problem: it's increasingly difficult for companies to harness…
Non-Compliance with GDPR Will Cost AdTech Companies More Than 4% of Revenue
Given the volume of coverage the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) received in the lead-up to its enforcement, it would be easy to assume the regulation emerged from nowhere. In reality, it supersedes an…
GDPR Will Drain the AdTech Cookie Pool
The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its companion the ePrivacy Regulation may be dense with ambiguous language and legal jargon, but one thing is unambiguous: if your business collects data from EU…
Insider's View: Ad Tech & Multicultural Marketing Q&A with Niklas Nikolaidis
Multiculturalism brings with it a number of opportunities — access to specific skills and knowledge, economic growth, and a chance to discover other cultures, to name a few. For advertisers and marketers, it also opens…
2017 MarTech Stackies and Hackies Awards: A Look at the Entries
For the second year running, one AdTech development shop entered The Stackies — the competition held in the lead-up to the annual MarTech conference. In 2017, they also threw their hat into a brand-new companion…
Insider's View: A Q&A with Frans Riemersma on MarTech Strategy and Execution
Marketing campaigns fail for a number of reasons — poor targeting, weak content, misaligned messaging — but one of the most common and least discussed culprits is poor strategy implementation, or the absence of any…
16 Most Popular Ad Tech & MarTech Articles of 2016
2016 was a busy year for the Ad Tech and MarTech industries — acquisitions and mergers, new players entering the market, and no shortage of innovation across the board. It was also a year that generated a lot of sharp…
5 Ad Tech & MarTech Trends for 2017: What Industry Insiders Predicted
Over the course of 2016, a series of interviews with executives, analysts, journalists, and founders across Ad Tech and MarTech surfaced a consistent set of expectations for the year ahead. Five themes came up…
Insider's View: Ad Tech & MarTech Q&A with Robert Brill
Robert Brill of BrillMedia.co brings more than 13 years of digital advertising experience to every conversation — spanning the birth of social media, the rise of programmatic, and the ongoing consolidation reshaping the…
Programmatic Direct for Publishers: The Advantages and the Trade-offs
It goes by several names — "automated guaranteed," "automated direct," "automated reserved" — but the concept is the same: direct buying and selling of digital media between the demand and supply sides. Whatever you…
Industry Insider Q&A: Ari Paparo on RTB, Programmatic Disruption, and What's Next for Ad Tech
Ari Paparo is CEO and co-founder of Beeswax, and one of the more credentialed voices in programmatic advertising. His career spans DoubleClick (before and after Google's acquisition), Nielsen, and AppNexus — nearly a…
AdTech & MarTech Convergence: A Practitioner's View on Custom Technology, DMPs, and the Cloud Debate
The following is a Q&A originally published by MarTech Advisor, featuring a senior marketing practitioner with deep roots in AdTech and MarTech development. --- My involvement in online marketing spans roughly eight…
Ad Tech & MarTech Industry Trends: A Q&A With Analyst Seth Ulinski
Seth Ulinski is a Senior Analyst at Technology Business Research, Inc. (TBR), a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic insight and market intelligence to technology companies. With over a decade of…
Native Ads vs. Content Marketing: Are They Really Equals?
Native advertising and content marketing both stake a claim to one of marketing's most enduring mantras: "Content is king." And both are riding that claim to impressive adoption numbers. Forbes reports that 76% of B2C…
What New Ad Formats Mean for Advertisers and Publishers
New technology, new platforms — and new ad formats. The AdTech landscape keeps shifting, and the next generation of online users, growing up immersed in content and advertising, is becoming increasingly immune — and…
AdTech & MarTech Perspectives: A Q&A With Scott Brinker
If there's one name that functions as a true landmark on the marketing technology scene, it's Scott Brinker. His yearly Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic is a genuine industry event, and the annual MarTech…