EBay posted a 6% revenue increase in Q1 to $2.1 billion. Marketing services revenue increased 19%, credited mostly to the transition to mobile ad placements. A total of 162 million global active users were responsible for transacting nearly $9 billion on mobile devices in the first quarter, AdExchanger reports. "Like Amazon, eBay is a hotbed of mobile commerce data drawn mostly from logged-in users. EBay claims its app has been downloaded 314 million times globally, which is why it is prioritizing mobile and in-app native formats. Bridget Davies, VP and GM of eBay Advertising in North America, told AdExchanger: “We …

Mashable reports that while Facebook has always said it's a tech company, the "dividing line between media and tech is fuzzier than ever, as Facebook and its peers increasingly package, host and yes even create some news and entertainment content. Yet Facebook appears to be hellbent on clinging to its tech identity." Facebook's refusal to be seen as a media company comes at its own peril. "Facebook endured a prolonged outcry over allegations that contractors hired to help curate Trending Topics had inappropriately downgraded certain conservative news topics. 

Writing for Adotas, Ariane Gut, head of insights and analytics at Tremor Video, argues that  "While the NewFronts treat digital like TV’s branding equal, marketers want to take advantage of the data science around these buys, to consider crucial factors like real-time audience behavior, device-specific user experience, and proper measurement of effectiveness. And furthermore, when asked about the benefit of programmatic buying, a large majority of advertisers now understand it can also enable them to buy high quality content and not just low-cost inventory."

AdExchanger talks to three experts on mobile ad fraud, asking how marketers should handle it. Here are the opinions of two: MICHAEL OIKNINE, CEO of Apsalar: "Fraud has become such a problem in large part because many companies take few or no steps to recognize and address it. For performance marketers, knowledge is power, and digging into your data is the essential first step to mitigating the risk of fraud for your business – things like install sources, where your ad views come from, the expected conversion rates on your purchase funnel, the validity of your in-app purchases." …

It's TV upfronts week and with that comes all the attendant frenzy of star-studded dog-and-pony shows, show trailers and prognostications about TV ad spending. The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg argues that TV has been upended by consumers. "In the not-too-long run, network television could come to look nothing like it does today. Maybe you will be surfing apps instead of channels, as the Apple chief executive Tim Cook predicts, skipping between shows that don’t have commercial breaks or hard-and-fast 30- and 60-minute time limits." There are signs that ad-buying agencies are moving more dollars to digital. Magna Global signaled …

One of the most coveted demos on Seeking Alpha's site is financial advisers, who make decisions about vast amounts of other people’s money, AdExchanger reports. "Seeking Alpha needed a better way to target them because while one out of three people on Seeking Alpha works in the financial services industry, only a fraction are financial advisers." However, not all of the site's 5 million registered users reveal their profession and third-party behavioral targeting to find users who fit the financial adviser demographic yielded skewed results. The company sought to create lookalike audiences. "After organizing its data and creating segments with …

Google is trying to figure out how to deal with ad blocking. It currently pays an annual fee to AdBlock Plus-owner Eyeo to whitelist its ads. AdExchanger reports that it pays some $25 million, though some sources tell AdExchanger the number is closer to $40 million or $50 million. Still a tiny percentage of Google’s revenue -- in first-quarter 2016, Alphabet reported $18 billion in ad revenue alone -- "shelling out to an ad blocker puts Google in the weird position of financing a tool that eats into publisher revenue." Still, Google has some internal ad guidelines and policies in …

According to a Poynter report, publishers are finding work-arounds are better than confrontation as they deal with the ad-blocking challenge. That's according to research from WAN-IFRA finds. The Frankfurt-based international newspaper trade group had earlier suggested that publishers should take responsibility for ad clutter and poor user experiences. The report's findings also suggest that publishers make the user experience better and weed out cookies that slow load times and refuse to accept interruptive ad formats. Also, publishers must find ways to encourage users with ad-blockers to agree to be served ads. The report says that "the fast-growing body of research …

Forbes has been experimenting with ways to combat ad blocking, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, including asking ad-blocking users to provide personal information to access its site. "In December, Forbes began blocking access to its site to users with ad-blocking software. Ad-blocking users were greeted with a message prompting them to disable their blockers in return for an “ad-light” experience with fewer ads, and ads that typically load faster." According to Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Media chief product officer, around 40% of users were turning off their ad-blockers. More recently, users with ad blockers turned on have …

Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's former political adviser in 2008, is out to reinvent the advertising holding company. Penn, according to a report in the Journal, has lured $250 million in funding and is building what he hopes will be a new kind of advertising co. "to challenge the ultra-scale-driven model of the four giant 'holding companies' that dominate the marketplace." Penn's private-equity fund, Stagwell Group, is looking for acquisitions after completing three since it was launched last year—public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker, research firm NRG and Code and Theory, a digital creative agency. Penn's no stranger to adland--he held several executive …