One of ad tech’s chief promises was that it would finally fix advertising. The advent of real-time bidding (RTB) in the late aughts ushered in ad tech’s “Age of Easy Answers” where the frustrating ambiguities of marketing and advertising would steadily be rooted out and obliterated by data and algorithms.…
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It's been a turbulent year for digital media and advertising. But this industry is a resilient one. As each new issue comes lobbing toward us, we manage to smash that sucker over the net. This year has been no different. But of course, some things are still up in the…
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It should be the first commandment in Internet publishing: Respect thy user. Instead, publishers barrage audiences with annoying and disruptive ads while quietly mooching their data... that's ironically supposed to fuel better, more relevant advertising. (Narrator: Actually, it doesn't.) As the digital privacy revolution grows stronger with the awakening of…
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It's that time of year again. The time of year when we at AdMonsters take a moment to reflect on everything that's happened in the past year in the world of digital media and advertising. What's that saying again, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it?"…
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As the main feeder exchanges settles at three—GAM, Amazon's Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM), and Prebid—there’s a great deal more murkiness in the middle; even more cross-pollination as SSPs pine for advertiser spend and DSPs tighten their bonds with premium publishers. The question of “how many intermediaries are actually necessary?” is…
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Ops is sexy. Ops is people. Ops is community. If you ever attended an AdMonsters Publisher Forum, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't—sorry for ya 😢. The 3.5 days brings together a small select group of publishers, data professionals and other digital media stars (the unsung…
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Why aren’t the systems we use in ad ops a lot more like video games? Wouldn’t that make ad ops fun? As smart as we are in this industry, why do we settle for the same data entry screens that someone in banking or insurance might use? Here are some…
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The IAB’s CCPA Compliance Framework provides a much-needed industry-standard to pass along crucial information about a consumer’s sold PI and the consumer’s journey with respect to what the CCPA requires. Its weaknesses and strengths come from the same source—it is not meant to provide a definitive answer on CCPA language…
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Typically during the November Publisher Forum, we ask attendees to come up with an ad tech startup that would solve a particular issue that's driving them nuts. You can bet this is an interesting portal into ad ops' biggest—while some fake companies address novel up-and-coming challenges, others elicit an appalled…
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The programmatic black box has opened. Ad platforms are beginning to make their log-level data available in the hopes of satiating industry hunger for transparency. Once considered the “data exhaust” of the industry, log-level data (LLD) has been positioned more recently as a remedy for many of programmatic’s woes. LLD…
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