kirk mcdonald

Crunchtime The EU’s Digital Markets Act has teeth – and now it’s biting, TechCrunch reports. The DMA regulates anti-competitive practices within “gatekeeper platforms” that have an annual turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros. Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and ByteDance all tick that box. Gatekeepers have until March to ensure their operations in the EU […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Location, Location, Location The FTC’s consumer privacy case against Kochava is back on the docket. Last year, the consumer watchdog accused the mobile app analytics platform of selling users’ geolocation data in an open market. However, the presiding judge threw out the FTC’s […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Heads Will Roll CEO Kirk McDonald is out at GroupM North America, Insider reports. WPP’s revenue growth tumbled in the US this year, which the company blamed on tech clients curtailing their ad spend. GroupM North America has fared particularly poorly, putting GroupM, […]

Brand advertisers want the chance to engage with consumers in the metaverse. But platforms and publisher reactions are more … “meh.” The media industry should be cleaning up our current digital environments before “mucking up the metaverse,” writes Gavin Dunaway, product marketing lead at The Media Trust.

AT&T is reportedly exploring a sale of Xandr, the ad tech unit it launched in 2018 with lofty ambitions to transform the TV advertising industry with data and automation. The talks are still preliminary and a deal may not go through, per The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news. Xandr made a big splash […]

Former Xandr exec Kirk McDonald will join GroupM as its CEO for North America, the company said Tuesday. McDonald, who’s been serving as the interim head of AT&T-owned Xandr since CEO Brian Lesser stepped down in March, will report directly to GroupM Global CEO Christian Juhl. McDonald will be replaced by AT&T exec Mike Welch […]

AT&T said Thursday it will combine TV ad tech division Xandr with WarnerMedia. Xandr Chief Business Officer Kirk McDonald will continue to lead the group and report into WarnerMedia Chief Revenue Officer Gerhard Zeiler. Zeiler reports to John Stankey, AT&T’s new CEO. “Xandr and WarnerMedia have always worked hand-in-hand to benefit our incredible advertising partners,” McDonald said in a statement. […]

Corporate siblings WarnerMedia and Xandr are full steam ahead on data-driven TV sales. Just look at this year’s upfront, where the AT&T subsidiaries will go to market together for the first time. The companies have been inching their way toward a joint offering over the past year and a half in an effort to sell […]

AT&T rode into Cannes this year amid fanfare following its Time Warner acquisition, freshly rebranded as WarnerMedia. But trailing in its wake are a lot of questions around what this mega-merger means for the advertising landscape. Intentionally or not, AT&T added to the ambiguity with its Cannes branding – or complete lack thereof. The telco […]

Welcome to episode No. 9 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Since PubMatic President Kirk McDonald joined the company from Time Inc. five years ago, publishers have had to continuously react to market changes. Mobile, video, fraud and viewability have each disrupted and transformed the media seller’s calculus. But none of […]