What's next for IBM after the news last week that it hired AOL's former president Bob Lord as chief digital officer? Lord is known for helping AOL transition into an ad-tech platform, which eventually led to its acquisition by Verizon. AdExchanger notes that  while Lord’s duties at IBM will likely impact marketing tech, his role is more expansive. IBM’s marketing portfolio still has some holes (a data management platform and paid media execution tools, and "independent analyst Rebecca Lieb points out that it’s 'conspicuously' missing content marketing components), [so] perhaps those lapses can be filled if third parties have an …

Writing in Marketing Land, L. Erik Bratt vice president of corporate marketing at Ensighten, a provider of tag management and omnichannel data solutions, argues that tag management systems and the DMP are changing the way modern marketers take action. "These technologies are foundational to what we now call data-driven marketing. Even more, together they make it possible to gain more control and transparency in advertising. AdTech exchanges may “stack the house” because they can control where the advertising money gets spent (targeting), and then tell you how effective it was (performance)."

Writing for AdExchanger's Sell Sider, Rachel Parkin, senior vice president of strategy and sales at CafeMedia, says the benefits of private marketplaces (PMPs) are clear given the rise of header bidding. She says that with a PMP-first approach, advertisers lean toward maximizing PMP volume before utilizing the open market. She writes: "In essence, it means choosing relationships over technology.... PMPs provide the safety net of knowing exactly who you’re dealing with, and the benefits of this are twofold. Advertisers get the certainty that they are actually buying impressions where they want – and not from someone masquerading as that site. …

A fascinating look at the role academia is playing in the ad-tech landscape from AdExchanger's James Hercher.  He spoke with Susan Athey, a Stanford economics professor and long-term consultant with Microsoft who said ad tech companies turn to academics because there are tons of applications for microeconomics. Athey said: "With billions and billions of auctions per month, a lot of nuanced economic ideas come into the rules for an auction and how you introduce news products or integrate them into the market. And because these are so new, there’s no playbook for how this is done. You can’t just call …

Amid the layoffs, Yahoo's executives insist that the paring down of its media properties is all part of a master plan, according to a report on CNBC.com. The tech company says it's now playing to its strengths — news, sports, finance and lifestyle — and working on developing its already owned advertising technology products like BrightRoll, Yahoo Gemini and Flurry. "We're very invested in creating rich experiences for consumers on any device, especially as we see more and more consumers watching that live baseball game on their smartphone," said Yahoo chief revenue officer Lisa Utzschneider. "We want to ensure a …

Business Insider reports that a number of "high traffic" websites in the U.S. say they are likely to support legal action to ward off the threat of ad blockers, according to a new report from Medianomics. The firm surveyed 42 websites and multisite networks that represent an aggregate 2.2 billion visits per month — ranging from sites with 6 million to 10 million visitors, to those attracting 450 million monthly visitors — to determine which tactics they are likely to use in order to address the impact of ad blockers. Of the strategies the respondents were most likely to test next, supporting …

Writing in a Facebook for Business Post, the social network giant's vice president of monetization product marketing Matthew Idema shared its philosophy for developing advertising products. Here are the goals: 1. Facebook wants to build great experiences for people 2. Study consumer behaviors on the platform 3. Help businesses connect with people organically. 99. Introduce new advertising solutions. Step 99? Huh? Idema says: "Steps 4 through 98? Those are pivots, backtracks, failures and sometimes big leaps forward. They are focus groups with people and conversations with advertisers. They are A/B …

During Ad Age's Digital Conference, participants on the ad-blocking panel agreed on one thing: It's an issue in the short term, and better content might be one way to combat it. But give it five years and there may not even be an issue at all. "Ad blocking will still exist, but I think it's a fad," said Shenan Reed, president of digital for WPP's MEC in North America. "It's going to start to wane a bit and we'll get over the newness syndrome." During the panel, Reed accepted some of the blame on behalf of advertisers. "Pages have …

Using online tracking technology, marketers no longer have to rely on assumptions about consumer behavior, according to a report in the Harvard Business Review. They can deliver ads targeted specifically to individuals based on their behavior online. While marketers have long known that this type of personalized advertising is more effective at generating both clicks and conversions, they haven't fully understood the consumer psychology that makes these behaviorally targeted ads so effective. HBR's research, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, explored whether behaviorally targeted ads have unique psychological consequences that help make them more effective than ads that …

Adweekinterviews Brian Lesser, fomer CEO at Xaxis, and now North American CEO at GroupM. Lesser says over time, "all media will be digital, all digital will be addressable, and all addressable media will be bought and sold programmatically." And in his new role, his goal is to push GroupM forward on technology innovation and technology that's  directed toward consumers to ensure messages are targeted appropriately. By the way, Lesser says so-called "walled gardens" aren't going away: "Our clients are going to be faced with managing walled gardens, whether it's Facebook or Google or others. The job of our agency, …