The ‘topic du jour’ for publishers and ad tech companies: Ad blockers
Everyone is battling ad blockers, from publishers to ad tech companies. At last week’s Digiday Publishing Summit, Complex Media’s CEO Rich Antoniello says ad blocking is “a really serious thing” for him in particular: Up to 21 percent of his audience uses ad blockers, an increase from just 8 percent a year ago. (The company even fines its own employees who use ad blockers. Antoniello said, “the cookie jar is filling.”) Kenneth Suh of Unruly called ad blocking “the topic du jour,” though we’re only in the early days of the phenomenon. Here’s what publishers and ad tech companies had to say on ad blocking.
More in Media
Meta AI rolls out several enhancements across apps and websites with its newest Llama 3
Meta AI, which first debuted in September, also got a number of updates including ways to search for real-time information through integrations with Google and Bing.
Walmart rolls out a self-serve, supplier-driven insights connector
The retail giant paired its insights unit Luminate with Walmart Connect to help suppliers optimize for customer consumption, just in time for the holidays, explained the company’s CRO Seth Dallaire.
Research Briefing: BuzzFeed pivots business to AI media and tech as publishers increase use of AI
In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine BuzzFeed’s plans to pivot the business to an AI-driven tech and media company, how marketers’ use of X and ad spending has dropped dramatically, and how agency executives are fed up with Meta’s ad platform bugs and overcharges, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.