AdExchanger

The agency embrace of programmatic is a long story with many twists and turns. This week, Stephan Beringer recounts how and why Publicis Groupe dramatically restructured its VivaKi AOD trading desk six years ago, and describes the aftermath of the episode.

With almost a year of the pandemic under our belt (Ugh), brands have by now figured out a way forward. In many ways, the measures they’ve had to take in response to COVID-19 has set them up for future success – a future without a health crisis, but where streaming and online buying are both happening en masse. In this special Industry Preview fireside, two agency chiefs – Belinda Smith of m/SIX North America and Tom Denford of ID Comms – analyze the vast transformation of 2020 and what 2021 holds for ad buyers.

Manu Mathew was the founder and CEO of Visual IQ, a digital multi-touch attribution company that rose with the programmatic tide and was acquired by Nielsen in 2017. However the MTA segment suffered a huge blow when Google stopped allowing its DoubleClick ID to be linked to ad server log files. 

Amazon had a big 2020 - and 2021 is Primed (get it?!) to be even bigger. Listen in to learn how Amazon Advertising is thinking about combining new types of signals, how it's thinking about its diverse range of inventory and how it hopes to tighten brands' relationships with customers.

What does media look like in the post-Trump era? Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei is betting that newer companies like Axios will have an easier time bridging the divide between the two “bubbles” of media that have emerged. With four years under its belt, the upstart media publication is applying its formula to local news in 2021. A lean editorial staff will write up the news in Axios’ signature, bullet-point style in five cities, including Tampa Bay and the Twin Cities. VandeHei also gives his take on trends like “corporate social responsibility” advertising, revenue diversification and AI in journalism.

AdFin developed a marketer dashboard that drew on log-level data to offer clients a holistic view of their supply chain, but the company went under in 2019. Former AdFin product leader Ravi Patel speaks to the vision, why it failed at AdFin and how he's carrying on the work at PwC. 

LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe has a unique view of the advertising industry’s crossroads. The company is one of the key tech firms zeroing in on the reinvention of online identity, and how it will impact advertisers and publishers. Moreover, a lot of this innovation is happening at a time when publishers are hyper-aware of the ways their data is used. And with numerous legislative efforts worldwide designed to regulate data use, the tides are constantly shifting. Speaking to AdExchanger shortly after the US Capitol riots, Howe talks about the future of identity, the opportunity for publishers and the responsibility platforms have around the messaging they allow.

Bob Lord is the SVP of cognitive applications at IBM. In this episode he discusses emerging applications for AI across industries during this period of rapidly scaling data. “AI can help you make sense of massive data and protect consumer privacy at the same time. We need to learn how to make large amounts of data accessible, useful and productive in a post-cookie world.”

The term “artificial intelligence” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which can make it hard to know what’s legit, what’s froth and what has the potential to, well, transform marketing and change the world. David Jones, CEO and founder of You & Mr Jones, explains the difference.