Malware is a blanket term that applies to any software planted on the user’s device with malicious intent. It’s come a long way from that old bogeyman of the rogue hacker launching “gotcha!” viruses, which captured the public imagination in the ‘90s. Now it’s a very different bogeyman, and malware…
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It's becoming more common to hear industry folks suggest that blockchain holds certain keys for tightening up security in the ad ecosystem--providing verification and reducing fraudulent bot activity. Regardless, it's still common for other media types to respond, with at least a whiff of doubt, "What's blockchain gotta do with…
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Single-request architecture is a setup where, in a header bidding framework, the bidder sends one call to the ad server for multiple ad slots, and the server returns bids for all of those ad slots at the same time. To explain why single-request might be advantageous to the publisher, and…
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A private marketplace is an invite-only programmatic auction. A publisher sets aside certain inventory, or a group of publishers pool inventory they’ve set aside, and grants approval to certain buyers who can bid on it. In theory, PMPs were created to combine the most appealing elements of direct sales and…
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Congratulations! Digital privacy policy made it to the general-interest news hole this week. Shame it’s not under better circumstances, but, well, at least it’s a reliable conversation-starter, that Congress voted to nix proposed changes to FCC policy to require a user’s opt-in before ISPs could be allowed to sell their…
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Page speed is never too far from the main stage of the ongoing show that is ad ops, and it’s enjoying another spotlight moment right now. On one side, publishers have Google and Facebook calling for compliance with their platform publishing guidelines--and with massive mobile traffic coming to them through…
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AdMonsters new and old have assembled for another heady three and a half days of ops education and commiseration at the 41st Publisher Forum. This time, we're in Palm Springs, CA, in palm tree-studded valley surrounded by beautiful but forbidding mountain ranges. In other words, it's a lot like ops,…
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Header bidding is a way for publishers to solicit real-time bids from a multitude of programmatic partners on each and every piece of inventory by using the page header within a site's source code. Basically, it’s a convoluted way to bypass the ad server waterfall and ensure inventory is valued…
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When we split up the types of publishers out there in digital, we tend to group them broadly. You have your pubs originally from the traditional newspaper/magazine space, those that came out of broadcast media, your newer digital pure plays. We don’t tend to divide B2B pubs from B2C pubs—even…
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Yield management is a slippery topic to explain, and even more complicated in practice. Rather than explain how it works, it’s probably more helpful to explain what it does. Well… what it’s supposed to do, in theory. First, the problem that yield management aims to solve for publishers: The total…
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