Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) CEO Randall Rothenberg refused to shake hands with Till Faida, founder of Adblock Plus, in public at TechCrunch Disrupt NY and he minced no words in his dislike for the ad-blocking company, which will whitelist some advertisers if it deems their ads unintrusive (and — for some — when they pay). “I have no argument against anybody using adblockers because there is a kernel of right when it comes to the impedance of user experience,” Rothenberg said. “But as I’ve said before, this is an extortion-based business and hurts publishers.” Noting that most publishers still earn …

Rocket Fuel has been successful at building relationships with international agencies and independent North American agencies, said CEO Randy Wootton during the company’s first-quarter 2016 earnings call Tuesday. But it has “not yet turned the tide with key holding companies in North America.” That remains a challenge. Rocket Fuel’s penetration into international agencies -- often owned by the very North American companies that Rocket Fuel is struggling to work with -- drove a lot of the 6% non-GAAP first-quarter growth to net revenue of $62.2 million, according to a report in AdExchanger. (Rocket Fuel is moving to a net revenue …

A survey by Technology Business Research of 241 ad tech buyers found that in Western Europe, more than half or 57% said they managed their data management platforms (DMPs) internally. Over a quarter (26%) said they used an ad tech vendor's app and 11% used a service firm. About 7% of buyers in Western Europe said they don't manage a DMP, according to an eMarketer article.

Adweek features a cool infographic from OwnerIQ that shows programmatic is already capturing large segments of the ad market. (We already knew that.) Ninety-six percent of marketers surveyed are already using programmatic to buy display ads. In 2015, $14.88 billion worth of U.S. ads -- fully 55% of digital display ads -- were purchased programmatically. In total, 52% of all non-search digital ad transactions were programmatic, according to the Adweek report. "The infographic predicts that these methods could come to eclipse all others, and that 90% of the ad market could be steered programmatically …

Ad Age reports that a report by analytics firm Integral Ad Science found a 20.9% decrease in both overall and programmatic ad fraud last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2015. "That's in contrast with predictions for a worsening problem with ad fraud, in which bad actors charge marketers for ads intentionally served out of sight or to software routines only simulating real people. The Association of National Advertisers, for example, said in January that fake traffic would cost marketers $7.2 billion globally this year, after earlier predicting $6.3 billion in ad fraud for 2015. Integral Ad Science also …

Google has updated DoubleClick for Publishers to make it easier to sell native ads that look good across device screens including mobile Web sites, apps and desktop sites, the company said Tuesday. "The move underscores Google's aim to enable native advertising via programmatic ad exchanges, though right now it affects only ad sales where there is a direct relationship between publisher and advertiser," according to a report in Ad Age. "Native ads seen on desktop can look the same or radically different on mobile, depending on various publishers' strategies for each screen, according to Tom Bender, group manager at Google …

Till Faida, co-founder and CEO of Eyeo, the maker of Adblock Plus, told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 on Monday that his company’s software is now closing in on close to a billion downloads and is installed on more than 100 million active devices. Those numbers represent significant growth in ad blocking, given that at the beginning of the year the company was touting 500 million downloads and 50 million active users.

"One hundred percent sounds like the best there is – but that’s not 100% true when it comes to viewability," a report in AdExchanger declares. The publication has its own spin on Goodway Group's news regarding the economics of delivering 100% viewable campaigns. Keith Pieper, VP of technology at IMM, tells AdExchanger that for marketers measuring ROI by online sales revenue or lifetime value minus the cost of media, targeting 60% viewability seems to deliver the best bang for their buck, although that won’t necessarily be the case for every client.  “It’s about finding the right threshold,” Pieper said. “What …

AdExchanger's take on TubeMogul's first-quarter earnings: Advertisers are spending less on desktop pre-roll and shifting more dollars into cross-screen formats. "Nondesktop pre-roll spend (including mobile, social, TV and traditional display ads) grew from 37% last year to 43% – or close to $50 million – of total spend running through TubeMogul’s platform in Q1." AdExchanger notes that the non-desktop video figure has risen sharply  since the company’s IPO in July 2014, when cross-screen was only 5% or so of spend. TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson told the publication that programmatic TV  (PTV) represented 10% of spend in the quarter, or about …

Mobile-marketing platform firm Tune reports that, as the number of ad-blocker downloads rises, use of the limit-ad-tracking feature available in iOS and Android devices has actually dropped, according to a report in Ad Age. Usage figures dropped to 16.7% of devices in February, down from 22% in August 2015, according to Tune, which observed 1.3 billion mobile app installs by about 150 million people over seven months, from August 2015 to February 2016.