IAB Annual Leadership Meeting

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Perhaps it’s because the creator economy is so unlike traditional forms of media that it’s still not quite seen as “essential” by advertisers as much as consumers do. But that appears to be changing, as brands shift from tacking creators onto campaigns to building storytelling with influencers at the center. “About […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Excessive artificial intelligence disclosure labeling could be too much of a well-intentioned thing. Aside from stoking  consumer burnout on one hand, the impact could potentially harm advertisers by highlighting AI usage that splits audience perceptions between creativity and inauthenticity. “The risk of transparency is if you over label everything, consumers will […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Marketers and agencies are still just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding how generative artificial intelligence tools like large language models are changing the way brands develop their content strategies. For example, brands are now rethinking the role their own websites play in informing AI programs that consumers increasingly […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Ad success in using artificial intelligence depends on strong first-party data signals combined with consumer permission to operate reputably as the world shifts from recognition-based to permission-based systems. “How do you feel about a nameless, faceless algorithm making decisions about what offer you get, what credit score you have, even what […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Buy-side decisions are moving closer to publishers. The shift, enabled by the IAB’s artificial intelligence maintenance “containerization project,” brings greater focus to where ad impressions actually originate rather than sending requests to distant infrastructure and waiting for responses. “Historically, the sell side operated at great lengths to the buy side. We […]

PHOENIX — If Maggie Zhang could choose a tagline for this year it would be “prove incremental value.” Because while it’s a given that digital and television advertising works, “altogether we need to understand how each channel, each different tactic actually works and contributes to the final outcome in order to advise or inform advertisers […]

PHOENIX – Between legacy data warehouses and other consumer information, marketers are “drowning in massive amounts of data,” says Art Muldoon of Amnet Group US. Given that some 80% of data is unstructured, “What that means is we’re really trying as marketers to find what are the best sources of data that’s most actionable to […]

PHOENIX – Converge and you will find convergence seems like an apt metaphor to describe the combination of Amobee and Videology. Easing the way forward is the ability to “make sure that connected TV starts to look like linear,” says Amobee’s John Rogers. Six months ago, multichannel video demand-side platform Amobee acquired Videology. Now the […]

PHOENIX – The demand for artificial intelligence in identity marketing seems to be outrunning figuring out how to mix personally identifiable data with various other data sources. “When you think about what a customer needs for overall data strategy, it is all different data points, not just any one specific form of data,” says the […]

PHOENIX – Account-based marketing services provider Instinctive is shepherding BtoB companies into the national television space, but with more precise targeting and at a fraction of the cost for traditional BtoC TV advertisers, says Co-Founder Henry Lau. “Traditionally, TV for BtoB audiences is extremely expensive,” Lau says in this interview with Beet.TV at the IAB […]

PHOENIX – Just as someone clicking on an ad doesn’t necessarily lead to a sale, someone visiting a web page doesn’t necessarily lead to a new customer. Such metrics must yield to better indicators of potential business outcomes, according to Xaxis North America CEO Matt Sweeney. “The reality is even in 2019, we still have […]

PHOENIX – When it comes to advertising, screen size matters and it all starts with the big TV. The first exposure to a brand message begins the storytelling, which then leads to finding “that same user, same household, same viewer on other screens either for down-funnel messaging in web video, mobile video or even display,” […]

PHOENIX – The two main attributes of connected television and OTT for advertisers are transparency and speed, says Adam Lowy, who’s witnessed the growth of convergence on the publisher side and now at software platform Telaria. Lowy joined Telaria in the fall of 2018 from Dish and its Sling TV service, where he had been […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Imagine an advertising agency that creates its own data and technology, produces video content and sells ad inventory in that content and you’ve got IBM Watson Advertising. So it’s in a unique position to actually help clean up the digital ecosystem. Like many in the industry, Watson Advertising believes there are […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – After acquiring greater scale by purchasing Rodale’s global content business, Hearst still has to compete in an era when “everyone’s a content publisher” and some digital platforms are easier for advertisers to engage with than others. It’s against this backdrop that Troy Young, Global President, Hearst Digital Media, views the ever-evolving […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif — Gone are the days since MSN was Microsoft’s only horse in the advertising race. Nowadays, the company’s ad offering encompasses Xbox, Outlook and a whole lot more. So Microsoft enlisted AppNexus to be its supply-side platform (SSP), the software ued to automate the sale of a publisher’s ads at scale. In […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – An “embarrassment of riches” in the adtech space is an understatement when it pertains to the melding of Yahoo and AOL under Verizon’s Oath. This includes multiple demand-side platforms  that Oath is “aggressively consolidating down” to a single platform,” says CRO John DeVine. As Oath sorts out the DSP solution, “We’re […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – With the demand for digital transparency and brand safety only getting stronger, Hulu is taking a “very direct” approach to making its inventory available to advertisers via programmatic transactions. “We’re writing our own rules for our own game when it comes to automation and programmatic,” says SVP of Advertising Sales Peter […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Having spent about seven years on the client side at Microsoft, it’s quite natural for Meredith Brace to don her “brand hat” when it comes to the issue of safe advertising environments. “I still look at it through that point of view,” says Brace, who is SVP, Digital Sales, Fox Networks […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Like many adtech companies, AppNexus had long supported video. Two years ago, it decided to lean hard into the winds of change roiling the television industry by investing in its own video demand-side platform, supply-side platform and ad server. “The cool thing is it’s working,” says CEO Brian O’Kelley. That turns […]