The Advertising category on BillHartzer.com highlights the latest developments shaping the marketing and media landscape. This section features timely news coverage, industry analysis, and expert commentary on campaigns, ad technology, brand strategy, and the companies driving innovation in digital advertising. Articles dive into real-world examples, breaking announcements, and the trends influencing how brands reach audiences today. Whether it’s a major acquisition, a new platform feature, or shifts in consumer behavior, these posts offer clear, informed insights from Bill Hartzer’s seasoned perspective in the advertising and digital marketing space.
Liftoff’s 2025 Mobile Ad Creative Index isn’t based on theories. It’s based on 4.7 trillion impressions, 263 billion clicks, and over 1.1 billion installs from January 2023 through May 2025. That’s not a guess—it’s a field test with global reach. And when that much real user data speaks, it’s worth listening. [Read more…]
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has introduced a new Gaming Measurement Framework to address one of the most persistent challenges in digital media: how to measure ad performance inside gaming environments. As the gaming audience expands across all demographics and devices, advertisers have struggled to compare results, select partners, and justify spend. This new initiative is meant to fix that. [Read more…]
Globant has introduced a new AI suite called FUSION, and it’s not just another platform trying to ride the artificial intelligence wave. Unveiled during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, FUSION was built with a single goal: to help marketing teams get real work done, faster and more effectively. [Read more…]
AdRoll’s latest State of Digital Advertising Report for Q2 2025 has put a spotlight on one thing: display prospecting ads are getting cheaper—and fast. Costs dropped 27% year-over-year in Q1. That’s not just a blip. It reflects a growing hesitation among marketers to invest in top-of-funnel campaigns during a period of economic uncertainty.
The steep decline in display prospecting CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) contrasts with a much smaller 8% drop in retargeting CPMs. Brands appear to be doubling down on audiences already expressing interest, opting for marketing tactics with shorter return cycles. It’s a shift driven by caution—and numbers.
AdRoll pulled this data from over 20,000 businesses using its platform. Their findings highlight one thing: performance matters more than presence right now.
Courtney Herb, AdRoll’s senior director of brand marketing, summed it up: “Retargeting gives you immediate ROI. But if you ignore brand-building now, you’ll be invisible when people are ready to spend again.”
Marketers aren’t being paranoid—they’re reacting to measurable change. The U.S. consumer sentiment index fell by over 20 points in the first five months of 2025, reaching its lowest point since 2022. Inflation expectations, meanwhile, hit 6.6%, their highest recorded level.
Though inflation has eased in actual numbers—down to 2.3% in April—the concern is that this drop might reflect weaker demand rather than positive momentum.
Social platforms aren’t immune to this economic climate. TikTok’s ad rates started rebounding in March, reaching near 2024 levels in April. But the recovery is fragile. Ongoing uncertainty about its status in the U.S. has marketers wary, especially with another ban deadline looming in June.
Meanwhile, eMarketer projects that tariff-related slowdowns could slice up to $10 billion from social ad budgets in 2025. If your business is leaning on social for upper-funnel impact, it may be time to rethink that mix.
In a surprising twist, Google has delayed its phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome. For now, marketers can keep using their existing cookie-based targeting. But no one’s pretending this is a permanent stay of execution. Safari and Firefox already limit cookies, and privacy expectations aren’t shrinking.
AdRoll recommends building campaigns that mix cookies with zero-party data (what users share directly), first-party data (what brands collect themselves), and contextual targeting. That mix is likely to stay relevant longer than any single platform policy.
If your traffic depends on organic search, there’s another storm on the horizon: AI Mode.
Google rolled out this feature nationwide in May. It changes how users interact with search results—transforming them into conversational summaries that answer questions directly without requiring clicks. According to Ahrefs, early tests show click-through rates on organic results dropped more than 30%.
The new format also includes ad placements, meaning advertisers may have to fight harder—and pay more—to stay visible. Organic tactics alone may no longer carry the same weight. Paid visibility within AI-powered experiences is becoming more necessary by the week.
AI Mode and AI Overviews change the structure of how people find and process information. Brands that once relied on keyword rankings are watching their web traffic drop. The advice from AdRoll is clear: diversify. Use a mix of platforms. Explore Connected TV. Build campaigns that reach people across multiple channels at once.
AdRoll’s report calls out Connected TV (CTV) as a high-impact tool right now. When integrated with other media, CTV can lift purchase intent by 11%. It’s one of the few areas showing promise across the entire funnel, from awareness to conversion.
George Castrissiades, general manager of CTV at AdRoll, emphasized the need to break out of platform silos: “To keep up, marketers need integrated strategies that work across paid and organic, mobile and desktop, upper funnel and lower funnel.”
If you’re planning campaigns for the back half of 2025, here’s what matters:
AdRoll’s Q2 data offers a clear takeaway: the brands that win in 2025 will be the ones balancing short-term results with long-term visibility. Chasing quick wins without maintaining a presence is a short-sighted bet. But ignoring performance during a downturn? That’s just as risky.
In a time when every ad dollar matters, the smartest marketers are not spending more—they’re spending smarter.
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A new class action lawsuit is moving forward that could impact thousands of businesses and marketers who bought Facebook or Instagram ads between August 15, 2015, and October 27, 2021.
The lawsuit, filed as DZ Reserve, et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (Case No. 3:18-cv-04978), claims that Facebook misrepresented a key advertising metric known as “Potential Reach.” This figure, often used to forecast how many people an ad might reach, allegedly gave a distorted picture by counting accounts, not individual users. In practice, that may have led advertisers to believe their ads would be shown to more people than was possible. [Read more…]
AdCellerant, known in the U.S. for shaking up digital advertising, just made a major move north of the border. The Denver-based company has officially opened shop in Canada, offering its end-to-end digital marketing platform to media companies, agencies, and advertisers across the country. This isn’t a soft entry. AdCellerant is launching with full capabilities—automated campaign execution, analytics in real-time, privacy-compliant solutions, and a platform built for local media. Canadian businesses can now access tools that were previously only available to AdCellerant’s U.S. partners. [Read more…]