digital 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.

Now commanding 28% of all video viewing time, over-the-top services have exploded in popularity. Borrell Associates found that they Increased from just 13.7% of all locally spent advertising in 2021, with more than a third of local media managers calling OTT their hottest-selling digital product. Find out why OTT is commanding such rapidly growing attention — and an equally growing piece of local advertising spend — and why OTT players like YouTube and TikTok are likely to take an increasing piece of the ad pie.

Most advertisers buying connected TV and over-the-top inventory plan to increase their spending on streaming by an average of 22%, according to a new study from Advertiser Perceptions and Premion, Tegna’s local OTT/CTV ad unit. Among those responding to the study, 25% called CTV/OTT the most important or valuable media type in 2021, topping linear TV, paid search and social.

The Federal Trade Commission is warning the “shadowy” advertising-tech marketplace that it is on the lookout for any practices that run afoul of its rules, and that any claims ad-related data collection is anonymized to protect consumers are no shield from the long arm of the regulator. And while the FTC is an independent agency, the White House has added its muscle to the warning by circulating it to the press.

Facebook is developing a product that will not rely on anonymized personal information from users and will be more in line with privacy guidelines set by Europe and U.S. states that have privacy regulations. “I think it will use a lot less user data visible to the advertiser,” said Marty Weintraub, Aimclear founder and Facebook expert. The product — Basic Ads — is aimed at brand advertisers wanting to build awareness. It focuses on mass marketing, similar to the way a television station targets viewers, Weintraub said.

The Federal Trade Commission plans a major overhaul of its guidance for digital advertisers, the agency says. It last issued updated guidance for online disclosures in 2013, when it recommended that marketers make sure all terms, conditions and disclaimers were available to people who accessed ads on small mobile screens. Lesley Fair, a senior attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said: “It’s time for a start-to-finish reboot, given the major changes in advertising tactics and techniques that marketers use.”

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s IAB Tech Lab has unveiled the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) to standardize U.S. and global privacy preferences for digital ads and wants input on the plan. Getting the privacy part of targeted advertising right could be crucial to the continued health of what has been a booming online ad market. Statista.com predicted that digital ad spending in the U.S. alone will top $200 billion by 2025.

Internet advertisers and others have filed a friend of the court brief at the Supreme Court in support of NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which are challenging a Texas social media law they say will irreparably damage online platforms as advertising vehicles.

Walt Disney Co. is taking a less-is-more approach to selling commercials on its Disney+ streaming service. Disney+ will carry about four minutes of commercials an hour on the ad-supported version of the platform set to launch later this year, company officials said.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with NBCUniversal’s Josh Feldman, CMO, and Collette Winn, VP of commercial innovation, about new ad types from the company that envelop consumers more than ever before and venture deep into the metaverse with iterations for both national and local advertisers.

A round of tech earnings last week made it starkly clear that the COVID-led surge in digital advertising has begun to ease. The slowdown was caused by a confluence of events, including inflation fears, supply-chain shortages, the war in Ukraine, a gradual return to normalcy two years into the pandemic, the continued rise of TikTok and Apple Inc.’s recent privacy changes.

As the NewFronts start their first in-person edition in New York since 2019, streaming stats are in for 2021, and the market is officially booming. The IAB, the industry group behind the NewFronts, issued its ninth annual report on online ad spending, finding that connected TV spending exploded to $15.2 billion, up 57%. It forecasts a 39% gain in the current year, to $21.2 billion, meaning a doubling in CTV spending since 2020.

Veteran digital marketing executive Dennis Cook will lead all marketing for company’s digital division, with a special focus on accelerating the company’s advertising sales business.

Apple and Google are pushing privacy changes, but a shift in digital tracking is giving some platforms a bigger advertising advantage.

Twitter kicked off pilot tests this week for three new ad formats: Interactive Text Ads, Product Explorer Ads and Collection Ads. Group Product Manager Madeleine Bayer and Product Manager Lauren Nagra said all three formats will be visible to U.S. users on Android, iOS and the web, adding: “As we kick off early experiments, we’ll aim to understand how the new formats resonate with consumers and drive results for advertisers. We’ll test, learn and iterate based on performance and customer feedback.”