The Wall Street Journal reports that while publishers are taking ad blocking seriously, they're not running scared over it either. Speaking at an event on ad blocking, David Stern, director of product development for Slate said ad blocking on mobile “hasn’t fully materialized.” In fact, Stern said ad blocking on desktops is a larger concern for Slate than mobile. He said that more desktop readers are using ad-blocking software and desktop remains where Slate rakes in most of its ad revenue. The Journal reported that Slate's analysis of ad blocking found that the publication is losing about 8% of its …

Forbes contributor AJ Agrawal, CEO of Alumnify, Inc., explains the benefits of real-time marketing, such as leveraging your customers' social media posts: "When customers respond to the posts of a business on social media, their queries and views can be gathered in real-time and responded to physically by the businesses. This enables businesses to utilize real-time data and market their products effectively." Agrawal makes the point that companies need to use social media to identify real-time trends which can, in turn, help them with product marketing and iteration. "Knowing exactly what is charming the current target …

The Financial Times on Wednesday announced the appointment of Elli Papadaki as global head of programmatic sales. Papadaki will help shape the FT’s strategy on automated revenues, working closely with the global trading director and the digital development, data and ad operations team. She will be responsible for monitoring technology changes and trends within the automated buying marketplace, with a view to creating multiple routes to market for revenue generation,  according to a story on her appointment. Most recently, she was agency sales director at Celtra but prior to that, she held several positions in sales and marketing at the …

SSP ConvertMedia on Wednesday announced the addition of more than 100 premium publishers to its platform in 2015, including American Media, Inc., The Daily Beast, Scripps, Salon, Tribune Media, Thought Catalog,The Guardian, and Reader's Digest, among many others, contributing to the company's substantial milestones last year. In a release, Yoav Naveh, CEO, said "outstream video, unlike traditional pre-roll, is not dependent on video content. Publishers can utilize outstream to immediately increase their available video inventory, while providing premium opportunities for brands." ConvertMedia is positioning itself to take advantage of the plethora of available video inventory. In fact, eMarketer projects that U.S. …

AdExchanger chats with Rob Norman, GroupM's Chief Digital Officer, who opens up on a number of issues including his views on open exchanges vs. private deals in 2016. "We're going to see less demand for bad supply in 2016. I suspect the amount of inventory that we ever bought in the pure open exchanges was relatively low in comparison to the total impressions in the markets. I'd like to think that [GroupM client] AT&T was buying a lot less than that than the University of Phoenix. The private marketplace is clearly a safe and relevant haven for many …

Ad server Flashtalking on Tuesday announced it acquired Encore Media Metrics. In so doing, it will be able to offer attribution analytics to clients. Flashtalking already has cross-device functionality on its platform. The news broke in AdExchanger.

Advertisers have a lack of understanding of programmatic advertising on mobile, according to research by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, according to a report in Brand Republic. In a survey of 301 markets, half said that they use programmatic for buying smartphone inventory, but 44% reported having no or little knowledge of it. In terms of mobile advertising as a whole, 29% explained their understanding as "excellent," with 22% saying "poor." However, 79% said that mobile ads are an "important part" of their company’s overall advertising strategy.

Our favorite video guy, Andy Plesser of Beet.TV, spoke with Mac Delaney at CES. Delaney, a former executive at Vivaki and SMG, heads programmatic operations at Merkle and is looking to build a programmatic practice at the shop which has its roots in search and display. Andy's interview with Delaney can be accessed here.

The prospect of programmatic ad buying for TV inventory is a heady one -- and now Mediaocean and Videology, two companies that help publishers sell online video ads, have partnered to help ad buyers evaluate TV and Web video ads in a single software interface via Mediaocean's Spectra, according to the Wall Street Journal. Spectra is used by TV ad buyers to help them plan where to allocate clients' budgets. The hope is that helping influential TV buyers weigh TV ad inventory against Web video could help accelerate a shift in ad dollars to the Web. "For example, instead of …

A Yahoo executive responded to claims that Yahoo has an ad fraud problem. A CNBC report last week alleged that between 30% and 70% of ads running through Yahoo's Brightroll partner weren't running in places where they were supposed to and that it charged $20 CPMs on pre-roll video despite the fact that much of the inventory was low-quality in-banner ads. Tod Sacerdoti, VP of display and video ad products and the founder of Yahoo’s video ad exchange BrightRoll, fired back: “We’ve spent over the course of two to three years planning very sophisticated partnerships and work around the …