Anthony Vargas

2 weeks ago | adexchanger.com | Anthony Vargas

At approximately 1:30 pm EST on April 9, President Trump announced a 90-day pause that dialed most of his planned tariffs back to 10% – unbeknownst to the AdExchanger editorial team, which was in the midst of recording this episode of The Big Story podcast analyzing the impact of tariffs on the advertising industry. In other words, by the time we finished our recording, the world had already changed. It’s hard to plan when a situation is so volatile. CMOs know what we’re talking about.

2 weeks ago | adexchanger.com | Anthony Vargas

Programmatic bidding algorithms aren’t always aligned with campaign goals, so agencies are relying on AI tech to create algorithms tailored to their campaigns instead. Butler/Till ran a display ad campaign on behalf of a financial services client between August and September last year that utilized tech from SWYM.ai, a company that provides programmatic decisioning tools to aid in deal curation.

2 weeks ago | adexchanger.com | Anthony Vargas

Forget the race to the bottom. The digital ad industry is in a “flight to quality,” according to Freestar CEO Kurt Donnell. One reason why is because publishers can now work more closely with the buy side via direct DSP connections, such as The Trade Desk’s OpenPath. Freestar integrated OpenPath for its publisher ad network’s display and video inventory in late 2022.

2 weeks ago | adexchanger.com | Anthony Vargas

The Trump tariffs are official – and the impact on ad spend could be even more grim and wide-ranging than expected. On Wednesday, President Trump announced 10% baseline tariffs on just about every country, including a few uninhabited islands. Certain countries, including China, Vietnam, Taiwan and the EU got slapped with even higher tariffs. The tariff rollout was long anticipated. Trump campaigned on igniting trade wars with US allies and competitors alike.

3 weeks ago | adexchanger.com | Anthony Vargas

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: There’s a disconnect between how much time audiences spend playing video games and how much money advertisers spend on video games. That disparity was front and center for the fourth consecutive time at the fourth-annual IAB PlayFronts, the trade organization’s dedicated event for the growing gaming ad channel, which took place on Tuesday. While advertisers’ interest in gaming may be growing, their spending commitments seem stuck on pause, according to the IAB.