Explaining Wildfire
Wildfire Interactive was a social marketing software company Google acquired in 2012 and closed by 2015, ad tech's clearest case study in platform dependency.
PPC Land
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Explaining Adometry
Adometry was a cross-channel attribution vendor Google bought in 2014 and rebuilt as Attribution 360, the ancestor of the data-driven attribution used today.
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Explaining Sovrn
Sovrn is a Boulder publisher technology company running an ad exchange, header bidding software and an affiliate commerce network for independent websites.
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Explaining word of mouth
Word of mouth is unpaid consumer-to-consumer recommendation, the channel that buyers trust most and marketers measure least, now reshaped by AI answer engines.
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Explaining Admeld
Admeld was a supply-side platform that optimised publisher ad network revenue. Google bought it for $400 million in 2011 and retired the product in late 2013.
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Explaining PubMatic
PubMatic is an independent sell-side platform that auctions publisher ad space to automated buyers. Listed on Nasdaq as PUBM, the company has run since 2006.
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Explaining OpenX
OpenX is an independent supply-side platform auctioning publisher ad inventory to programmatic buyers. Its origins, mechanics, scale claims and open disputes.
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Explaining TripleLift
TripleLift is a supply-side platform that rebuilds ad creative to fit each publisher's page, selling native, display, video and CTV formats programmatically.
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AI ad labels cut click-through 31.5%, IAB framework cites NYU study
Advertisers get 60 days to name a disclosure lead under IAB voluntary rules issued August 18. Which AI uses trigger a consumer label, and which stay exempt?
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Google's third spam update of 2026 rolls out to every language
Google's August 2026 spam update reached every language on August 18, as Apple rewrote its EU App Store fee terms and ChatGPT ad units swapped advertisers.
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The ad stack between the brief and the screen it lands on
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. One group reads like plain marketing language and is not, which is where most solvers spend their first mistake.
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Brands named in ChatGPT's own query win mentions 33x more often
Only 3.1% of 3,554 retrieved pages earned a citation, and 21 of 27 first queries carried brands nobody typed. Where does technical AI visibility work land?
