AdExchanger News for May 17, 2019

Today's Must Read - Learning Google’s Dizzying Policies: 20 Minutes With Prabhakar Raghavan On His New Job Leading Ads And Commerce [AdExchanger | Optimizing the News] Today from AdExchanger Friday, May 17 Listen In [Subscribe To The Big Story]( - Our weekly podcast, hosted by the AdExchanger editorial team, features roundtable discussions on the week's top news stories. --------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Must Read [Learning Google’s Dizzying Policies: 20 Minutes With Prabhakar Raghavan On His New Job Leading Ads And Commerce]( Leading the ads and commerce group is a hot seat within the Google organization. Prabhakar Raghavan is responsible for bringing home the bacon and his job comes along with enough regulatory and investor heat to, well, fry bacon. [More.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( [Ad Sales Prez Rita Ferro Talks Disney’s Digital Evolutions – And Ambitions]( Ferro speaks with AdExchanger about how the data and advertising capabilities are evolving with the internal re-org and Disney’s other digital media investments, like the launch of the Disney+ ad-free streaming service later this year. [More.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( --------------------------------------------------------------- More from AdExchanger [The Big Story: Upfronting And Fingerprinting]( This week on “The Big Story,” we look at the news coming out of all the advertising festivities. Disney quietly – very quietly – mentioned it has operational control of Hulu and will acquire Comcast’s stake. And Xandr revealed that its data is now available on properties not owned and operated by WarnerMedia. [More.]( [McDonald’s Venture Into Ad Tech Highlights The Importance Of First-Party Data]( Perhaps McDonald’s was keeping its cards close or, perhaps, for a brand as large as it is, even small customer experience improvements can have huge benefit and ROI. [More.]( [Doing Math: How The Cheddar Acquisition Could Bring Home The Bacon For Altice]( If Altice takes the right steps and “gives” Cheddar the data and tech to unlock the full power of its advertising potential across Cheddar’s entire footprint, it’s not out of the question that we could see Cheddar driving $100 million or more in revenue within a year. [More.]( [Never Launch "On Time"]( [Beware the air quotes. Watch the video.]( []( News Round Up Sizmek Rumbles Amazon is circling a deal for the Sizmek ad server business, as the ad tech company closes its bankruptcy review, Bloomberg reports. Amazon has built out a strong ad platform business that spans the demand-side and supply-side. Does it need an ad server? Amazon probably has [larger ad serving ambitions]( in video, where it would compete with the likes of Comcast’s FreeWheel and Google, but Sizmek could be a very cheap and effective way to pick up an ad server and the key analytics data that comes with it. Sizmek sold its DSP and DMP business to Zeta Global for up to $36 million – receiving $15 million in upfront stock and cash. Amazon could snap up what’s left and “level up” its ad challenge to Google. [More](. On Fire Don’t count Amazon out in any race, especially not the race for streaming adoption. The ecommerce giant’s Fire TV platform has surpassed Roku in monthly active users at 34 million, Variety reports. Roku, previously the largest streaming operator, ended Q1 with 29.1 million monthly active accounts. Amazon is leveraging its strength in other areas, like voice and content production, to drive sales of its OTT platform. And now that Amazon and Google have put aside their differences to make YouTube available on Fire TV, one of the biggest pain points for the Fire service has been cleared. [More](. Pubs In The House? In-housing is thought of as a brand phenomenon, but a similar process has been unfolding with publishers as well, though only the largest have managed the transition. “If in-housing means the disintermediation of partners in the value chain, then I would argue that only the largest of publishers have gone down the in-housing route,” Geoff Smith, eBay’s EMEA director of ad tech and innovation, tells ExchangeWire. Publishers can take more control over their auction logic, Smith says. But as with brands, publishers with in-housing programs have found it surprisingly expensive and difficult to get off the ground. “The time and resource investment needed to build an SSP, DSP or ad server is far beyond the reach of most sub-billion-dollar publishers, and even the billionaire club tries and fails on a regular basis to build or buy technology that can compete with the more established players.” [More](. NPS Skepticism The coolest three-letter acronym and new metric in corporate America is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks customers one single question at checkout or in a survey: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the company’s product or service to a friend?” It’s an unscientific metric, but NPS has developed “a cultlike following among CEOs,” The Wall Street Journal writes. But Fred Reichheld, the Bain consultant who coined the term in a 2003 edition of Harvard Business Review, says he’s disappointed with businesses using NPS as a way to determine bonuses or attribute true performance. “I had no idea how people would mess with the score to bend it, to make it serve their selfish objectives.” [More](. But Wait, There’s More! - [Streaming Service Quibi Seeks Up To $1B In New Funding]( - The Information - [TV Ads Still More Relevant To Consumers Than Streaming Video Ads]( - eMarketer - [Instagram Is Killing Direct, Its Standalone Snapchat Clone]( - TechCrunch - [Facial Recognition’s Many Controversies]( - NYT - [JumpCrew Secures $7.2M Funding Round]( - release - [How Twitter Became Ubiquitous In Japan]( - Bloomberg - [The DTC Playbook Is A Trap]( - 2PM - [Dentsu Reorganizing As Growth Sputters]( - MediaPost - [Vice Media Focuses On Programmatic Guaranteed Deals]( - Digiday - [Salon Media In Talks For $5M Fire Sale]( - NY Post Podcasts [The Big Story Episode 42:]( Google-Fu [The Big Story Episode 41:]( Strange New World [The Big Story Episode 40:]( United We Stand [The Big Story Episode 39:]( Stack That Cash [The Big Story Episode 38:]( The Great Escapes [The Big Story Episode 37:]( Riding Eternal, Shiny And Chrome [The Big Story Episode 36:]( Agencies And The Supply Side [The Big Story Episode 35:]( Spring Forward, Fall Back [The Big Story Episode 34:]( Google’s On First [The Big Story Episode 33:]( Boiler Room [The Big Story Episode 32:]( Falling Down [Check out all episodes of The Big Story >>]( [AdExchanger Talks Episode 127:]( Beeswax's Ari Paparo [AdExchanger Talks Episode 126:]( Integral Ad Science's Lisa Utzschneider [AdExchanger Talks Episode 125:]( Publicis Groupe's Rashid Tobaccowala [AdExchanger Talks Episode 124:]( Dentsu Aegis’, Doug Ray [AdExchanger Talks Episode 123:]( Xaxis' Nicolas Bidon [AdExchanger Talks Episode 122:]( 614 Group's Rob Rasko [AdExchanger Talks Episode 121:]( National Public Media's Tutuwa Ahwoi [AdExchanger Talks Episode 120:]( MikMak's Rachel Tipograph [AdExchanger Talks Episode 119:]( Brian O'Kelley [AdExchanger Talks Episode 118:]( Adform's Julian Baring [AdExchanger Talks Episode 117:]( 360i's Jared Belsky [Get More AdExchanger Talks Episodes >>]( Events [PROGRAMMATIC I/O](, New York, October 15-16, 2019 [Industry Preview 2020](, New York, January 28-29, 2020 [PROGRAMMATIC I/O + AdExchanger Awards](, San Francisco, May 11-12, 2020 Share This Email: [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( [Google+]( | [Forward To A Friend]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( [View in web browser]( This message was sent to {EMAIL} To ensure delivery to your inbox, [add us to your address book](. 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