James Hercher

The publisher-focused DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial is finished. A judge will now decide the fate of Google’s sell-side ad tech business. On Friday, both sides presented their closing arguments and fielded final questions from Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Even she can’t believe […]

Competitive tensions and ad tech drama have flared all year. DSPs and resellers … I mean, SSPs, have butted heads over access to bidstream data. Google screwed over every vendor that committed time and energy to the Chrome Privacy Sandbox. The Trade Desk is throwing its weight around. Prebid and The IAB Tech Lab are […]

Amazon Ads, the company’s demand-side ad tech business, hosts its annual industry show, called unBoxed, in Nashville this week. The event can be boiled down to one word: simplicity. Some version of the word  “simple” is ubiquitous at the show this year. “Simplifying Advertising through Innovation” is the literal headline for the day-one keynote from […]

The Trade Desk posted solid Q3 results on Thursday, with $739 million in revenue, up 18% year over year. Net profit increased 16% YOY to $116 million. It’s the second straight quarter TTD met its earnings estimate since its calamitous miss in Q4 2024, which was reported in February. But the main narrative for TTD […]

Perhaps you know the supplement brand AG1. Or maybe you know it by its original name, Athletic Greens. Regardless, the company is one of the great ecommerce adapt-and-survivors of the past 15 years. AG1 was founded in 2010 and was practically unique as a one-SKU, single-checkout ecommerce brand. In other words, it made only one […]

Perhaps you know the supplement brand AG1. Or maybe you know it by its original name, Athletic Greens. Regardless, the company is one of the great ecommerce adapt-and-survivors of the past 15 years. AG1 was founded in 2010 and was practically unique as a one-SKU, single-checkout ecommerce brand. In other words, it made only one […]

Vidushi Dyall went from tracking cybercriminals at the Manhattan DA’s office to dissecting online ad empires. In this episode, she breaks down the DOJ’s antitrust battles with Google – and why she sometimes finds herself rooting for the so‑called evil empire.

The phrase “caution is key” has already become a totem of sorts for the new age of US antitrust regulation. It was used by the Supreme Court in its ruling in NCAA v. Alston, an antitrust suit that essentially uncorked sponsorships and other revenue-earning opportunities for college athletes – now known as NIL deals (for […]

One of the great myths of programmatic advertising is the illusion of algorithms replacing humans. In truth, the programmatic industry relies heavily on human relationships and handshake agreements. Nowhere is this more evident than with deal ID-based advertising. When programmatic campaigns run through private marketplace (PMP) deals or curation services, they typically come with deal […]

For big ad platforms that command their own media environments, standard web measurement benchmarks can seem like an awkwardly low bar. A viewable ad, by the IAB’s accepted definition, is one in which 50% of the creative pixels are in view on the page for one continuous second. Enticing, no? Jokes aside, this dynamic is […]