digital advertising

Google has been working on a “conversational experience” with a small group of advertisers during the past few months that could once again change the way advertisers build ads. Through the small pilot, the company has heard feedback on how the ability to converse with the platform has helped to save time and inspire new ideas when creating campaigns. Based on this feedback, Google has made improvements to the conversational experience and in the coming months plans to move the project into a beta test phase in the U.S. and U.K., with both in English.

A Google executive on Tuesday admitted to changing the price of advertisements during the auction process to meet revenue targets. The company frequently changes the auction price for search ads and reserve pricing by as much as 5% on average. Jerry Dischler — Google VP-GM who oversees the company’s ad business — during Google’s antitrust trial told the U.S. Justice Department that for some queries, the company may have increased prices as much as 10%.

House and Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that could take a bite out of Big Tech’s online advertising marketplace by banning co-called surveillance advertising. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, made it clear that the bill was clearly aimed at hitting Big Tech in the wallet.

President Biden’s reelection campaign has placed a large ad buy on the Fox News website ahead of Wednesday night’s first GOP primary debate, using the event to promote abortion rights messaging while making use of a popular meme relating to the president. The “Dark Brandon” ads will be displayed on FoxNews.com beginning midnight Tuesday running through Thursday morning “highlighting President Biden’s commitment to fighting a national abortion ban and codify Roe,” the campaign said.

A year after announcing that it had chosen Microsoft as its ad-tech partner for its introduction of an ad-supported subscription tier, Netflix is preparing to build its own server in order to enable new ad formats. To better compete with Disney+, Max, Peacock and others with ad-supported options, Netflix has been talking to ad buyers about experimenting with “episodic” campaigns that would allow them to create mini-series-type ads featuring multiple, sequential spots — rather than showing the same ad repeatedly, according to a Financial Times report.

Microsoft Advertising has an advertising verification requirement that it plans to enforce starting Aug. 1. The move follows the program’s announcement in June 2022. “We want our customers to have choice and control through transparency, so in addition to making our network safer, one of the primary goals of AIV is to increase visibility to those who interact with our ads,” Sarah Ralston, senior service engineering manager at Microsoft Advertising; and Sandeep Krishnan, senior program manager at Microsoft Advertising, wrote in a blog post.

Advertisers may wonder how the reversal of YouTube’s decision to take down content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 or other elections will impact ad-placement decisions. The change, which YouTube announced Friday, will not impact its advertising policies or YouTube monetization policies.

“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk wrote in a Friday tweet. He added that Yaccarino “will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.” Luring advertisers is critical for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing harm to their brands in the ensuing chaos. Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no details. Pictured: Musk with Yaccarino, chairman of global advertising and partnerships for NBC, at a marketing conference in Miami Beach on April 18.

While video streamers have been moderating their marketing spending of late, Amazon Prime Video has gone in the other direction — up almost 72% versus the previous 12-month period with estimated $285 million, over the according to iSpot.tv. Another $18.4 million in media value came from Prime Video messages from associated Amazon TV-video platforms.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at cutting Google and Facebook’s clout in online advertising, an early sign that lawmakers will press on with efforts to rein in Big Tech in the new congress.

Utah lawmakers last week passed a package of bills that would prohibit social-media companies from allowing minors under 18 to have accounts, without parental permission, and would ban the companies from serving any ads to minors. In addition to those restrictions, the Social Media Regulation Act (SB 152) would require social media companies to verify all current and prospective users’ ages, and would force social media companies to allow parents to access all content and interactions of their underage children’s accounts.

Meta on Tuesday announced it would now include information on how it uses machine learning to deliver ads — increasing transparency since Meta and others including Google have launched independent tools to tell users why they see the ads they do.

A local advertiser on KOSA in Odessa-Midland, Texas, was so impressed with the digital advertising campaign done for his business by the station that he went on camera to let others know that he wanted “to invest more in that type of advertising.”

The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.

Disney’s prowess as an entertainment powerhouse is undisputed. Aaron LaBerge, chief technology officer of the Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution (DMED) division, argues that the company also has also built an industry-leading competency in ad tech. Over the last several years, LaBerge’s team has created its own advertising-delivery stack from the ground up, centered on the proprietary Disney Ad Server. The company deployed the new Disney Ad Server on Hulu last year — and it’s now also powering Disney+ with ads, which launched last month. Currently, the Disney Ad Server delivers some 500 million ad impressions per day.

Starting next month, Meta Platforms will no longer allow companies to send targeted ads to teens based on their gender, the company said Tuesday. Meta also said that data about teens’ engagement on Meta’s own apps — including whether teens followed Instagram or Facebook pages — won’t be used for ad targeting.

The decision is one of the most consequential issued under the E.U.’s landmark data-protection law and creates a new business headwind for the social media giant.

The bulk of advertising spend on Roku and Amazon Fire TV — two major streaming video distributors’ devices/platforms — comes via virtual pay TV providers such as Hulu + LiveTV, Pluto TV, Tubi, FuboTV and Sling TV. In November, 71% of Roku ad advertising spend and 62% of Fire TV ad spend was through vMVPD (virtual multichannel program distributors) apps, according to Pixalate, the CTV analytics company.

For the first time since July 2020, digital ad spending declined in November, according to new data from Standard Media Index (SMI). The analysis also is the first from SMI to include new media breaks based on ad formats, and shows that a new break for “digital video” rose 7% in November, helping to offset digital’s overall 1% decline in November. The data also shows linear TV ad spending fell 12%, driving the share of U.S. ad spending for the long-dominant medium to 35% vs. 23% for digital video, which includes any digital ad format running on websites, platforms or CTV apps and devices.

Google and Meta, known together in the ad industry as the “duopoly,” are expected to bring in less than half of all U.S. digital advertising this year for the first time since 2014. The duo’s ad dominance has for years made both companies the target of antitrust investigations and lawsuits. While they still tower over digital rivals, their momentum is starting to slow as competition moves in.

The ads, submitted by researchers, were rejected by YouTube and TikTok.

Online sales reached $17.2 billion over Cyber Weekend — a 10.2% hike YoY, Salesforce reports. Globally, sales totaled 83.9 billion, with 3% growth. Black Friday sales reached $15 billion in the U.S., and 65.3 billion worldwide. The average deal in the U.S. was 30% off, versus 27% worldwide. Mobile accounted for 78% of all U.S. online sales, and roughly the same globally.

Among the many findings: Led by CTV(+14.4%), every digital channel is projected to see ad spend growth in 2023 while traditional channels will decline year over year.

The Chinese-owned video app’s ad business is thriving, even as a digital advertising slump hurts Meta, Snap and other rivals. Above: Screen shots of an ad, featuring Kate Bartlett, for Tiffany & Co. on TikTok.

Its new TV web platform, RUN3TV, adds server-side ad insertion functionality and adtech platform integrations.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms is urging a federal appellate court to prevent advertisers from proceeding with a class-action fraud lawsuit over allegedly inflated ad metrics. In papers filed Monday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Meta Platforms argues that the claims do not lend themselves to class-action treatment, partly because the metrics were allegedly inflated by different proportions for different advertisers.

Interpublic Group, the advertising giant, has suggested to clients that work with its large Mediabrands ad-buying group to “pause” spending on Twitter for the next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. Executives at the media-investment firm want to get more clarity, this person says, on Twitter’s trust and safety policies, as well as its “organizational capability” under Elon Musk, the new owner. Musk last week closed a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter.

To help campaigns target ads, voter-profiling firms score millions of Americans on issues like guns, vaccines and QAnon.

Although millions of American voters may not be aware of it, the powerful data-mining techniques that campaigns routinely use to tailor political ads to consumers on sites and apps are making the leap to streaming video. The targeting has become so precise that next door neighbors streaming the same true crime show on the same streaming service may now be shown different political ads — based on data about their voting record, party affiliation, age, gender, race or ethnicity, estimated home value, shopping habits or views on gun control.

Some advocates for children and teens are urging Senate leaders to hold a floor vote on two bills that could affect the content that young users can access online, as well as how their data is collected and harnessed. Both measures — the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (S. 1628) and the Kids Online Safety Act (S. 3663) — advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee in July.

In a move that broadcasters can leverage to make their point about the relative value of their ad platform versus online, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is slamming Google Ads, saying it has a troubling record of not weeding out fraud and abuse and calling on the company to pony up info in its ad practices and policies. Blumenthal, like many on the Hill, has been a sharp critic of edge provider privacy and marketing practices in general.

The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market. Lawyers with the DOJ’s antitrust division are questioning publishers in another round of interviews to refresh facts and glean additional details for the complaint, said three people familiar with the conversations.

Spanish-language programming and sports were big gainers during the first half of 2022, according to a new analysis from research and analytic firm iSpot.TV. Liberty Mutual was the top advertiser in the first half of the year. iSpot found that despite the shift of viewing to streaming, live TV continues to deliver for advertisers, increasing impressions by 7.29% from a year ago.

The good news is that U.S. ad executives project their second-half ad spending will be up an average of 7% vs. what they originally planned, according to a survey released this morning by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The bad news is that the same sample of ad execs reported their full-year ad spending will be down 31% from what was projected in a similar survey conducted by the bureau in the fall of 2021.