Google’s published a blog post last week about “bad apples” in the ad industry. The meaning of the post is now clear: it was intended to rein in shady software, but also to send a message to other advertisers to clean up their act. Read more »
AOL announced Marketplace, an effort to consolidate the stack of tools publishers use to serve ads. AOL is competing with Google in the ad tech field as it tries to diversify its revenues Read more »
The process of selling digital ads is notoriously complicated and involves a lengthy list of competing companies and technologies. A recent ad tech conference explored if things will ever change – here’s some highlights. Read more »
Looking for the turnaround story of 2013? Stop looking at Yahoo — it’s AOL that’s the real deal. The company has quietly put in place a powerful strategy based on media, technology and advertising. And investors like what they see. Read more »
The Huffington Post’s new Conversations feature rounds up individual discussions taking place within comment sections and gives them a webpage of their own. It’s an attempt to fix comment chaos and could be an ad goldmine for AOL. Read more »
Display ads such as “lose your belly” and “professors hate him” are discrediting the familiar model of online advertising which is based on slapping banner ads on websites. Now, one company has a solution to keep the same ad format — but replace the crummy content. Read more »
A study of Black Friday cyber-shopping said that social media advertising was a big bust with few people buying things in response to an ad from Facebook. The story is very different if you use other metrics to define “responded.” Read more at GigaOM »
Web publishers can buy tools that let them identify and segment their readers, and then combine that information with other customer data to offer fine-grained audience options to advertisers. As the ad market gets more demanding, the tools may become essential for some – but not all. Read more »
Many small businesses have had few options beyond Google’s AdWords to attract customers online. But now, upstart ad companies are using social media and new publishing tools to offer businesses effective — and affordable — alternatives. Read more »
A growing army of bots are doing everything from leaving comments to entering sweepstakes, harming the online environment for both publishers and advertisers. Solve Media has a study on the problem. Read more »
According to estimates, 30 percent of online ads are seen by no one at all. Read more »
