Roi Carthy, Chief Marketing Officer at Shine, that helps wireless carriers bring mobile ad blocking to consumers worldwide responds to a column by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) that asserts that "ad blocking at the network level undercuts consumers' ability to control the content they see and don't see." Carthy argues that some members have reached out to Shine and are having thoughtful discussions about creating a sustainable model for ad tech that doesn't put consumers at risk. Shine, he said, offers consumers the choice to protect themselves from the abusive practices of ad tech. "The IAB leadership -- …

"Ad blocking at the network level undercuts consumers' ability to control the content they see and don't see, which is a bedrock principle of the world wide web," writes Dave Grimaldi, executive VP-public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, in Ad Age. Grimaldi notes that Shine Technologies, backed by Horizons Ventures, offers ad-blocking technology that allows companies to block ads at the network level. Last September, Jamaica-based mobile carrier Digicel said it would begin to implement Shine's technology on its network, blocking ads across all mobile display, apps and mobile video. While there's an opt-out mechanism, by using Shine, "Digicel …

P&G, which reported better-then-expected earnings for its first fiscal quarter, has been on a tear to cost-cut across the organization in recent years to boost growth and transform into a leaner company. P&G had previously spent $2 billion a year on agency fees before embarking on a two-year plan to cull the number of agencies it works with for advertising, media, public relations and other services. The company last year reduced its roster of agencies by nearly 40% and reduced agency and production spending by about $370 million, The Wall Street Journal reports. Now it's targeting another $200 million of …

The Video Advertising Bureau, a TV trade group, is proposing metrics that it says would put digital on the same footing as networks for the first time. The group, comprised of TV networks and pay-TV companies, is recommending that observers and advertisers use average audiences as the standard to compare traditional and digital platforms, according to a report in Ad Age. "This is how TV has been evaluated for decades," said Adam Gerber, senior VP-client development and communications, ABC. "It the only fair way to make comparisons across channels."

True cross-platform digital video advertising deals can emerge only when agencies change the way they now plan and buy content for their clients, according to Bloomberg Media’s David Bickford. “If you buy a spot on TV you are trafficking that spot,” Bickford says in a recent interview with Beet.TV. “But a digital video purchase is out of a completely different team and frequently out of a different agency who may not even talk to the TV buying team. The way the buying process occurs has to change in order for a true cross-platform video deal to get in place," Bickford …

AdExchanger offers an in-depth look at WPP's GroupM's Connect, a unit it introduced a year ago that organized real-time ad buying capabilities across programmatic, social, search and mobile. Connect is positioned as WPP's response to the need for the programmatic decentralization of programmatic buying. That dynamic has been playing out in WPP's rivals Publicis and Omnicom often with undesirable results. Instead of collapsing the programmatic buying unit as Publicis did with VivaKi, GroupM has positioned Connect as a complement to its sibling Xaxis. "Clients of GroupM's “Big M” agencies (Maxus, Mindshare, MediaCom and MEC) will still use Xaxis – some of …

AdRoll President CMO Adam Berke tells Mashable he thinks the hype that sent iPhone users flocking to download ad-blocking apps was at first "fleeting." However, the initial surge in downloads might also mean that while more people did install ad blockers, "the number of ads being shown to mobile Safari surfers has actually climbed steadily after a precipitous drop that followed that initial rush" of ad blocking, according to Mashable.  

While YouTube has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of advertisers shifting spending from TV to online video, it's still only capturing a small fraction of marketers’ media budgets, according to the Wall Street Journal'sMike Shields. "YouTube faces several nagging challenges that are holding it back from capturing more TV revenue, including pricing concerns, the way agencies are structured and lingering doubts over the quality of its content, according to ad buyers," he writes. "You only have to look at the revenue at a number of TV companies to realize you have not seen a wholesale transfer of dollars,”  …

Digital advertising revenues reached $59.6 billion in the U.S. during 2015, representing a 20% increase year-over-year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) which has tracked digital ad revenues for 20 years. The surge in 2015 marks the sixth consecutive year the IAB has reported double-digit, year-over-year growth for online advertising. Mobile and video are helping fuel the growth. And Sherrill Maine, SVP of research, analytics and measurement told Adweek that: "Programmatic is clearly not impacting pricing in any downward fashion... if anything, it's boosting [pricing]."

The Drum reports that Q1 2016 was the third-highest for ad tech/martech deal activity on record, with transactions amounting to $2.4 billiion during the period, according to data from M&A advisor Results International. There were 108 deals announced in total during this period, 75 in martech and 33 in ad tech, according to Results International’s report, which also highlighted the activity of serial acquirers advertising agency network Dentsu Aegis, online retail giant Rakuten and enterprise software provider Oracle.  Oracle’s rumored $175 million acquisition of Addthis signals the software giant's ongoing push into marketing technology.