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CEO Stephenson: AT&T Will Acquire More Companies 'In The Coming Weeks' To Support Ad Unit President Wayne Levings Has Confidence In Kantar, With Or Without WPP Ownership AT&T Can Acquire Time Warner, District Court Rules CEO Kelly Clark: GroupM Has 'Moved On' From Sorrell Exit How The California Consumer Privacy Act Stacks Up Against GDPR Google Reverses Course On GDPR Consent Tool Limiting Publishers To 12 Vendor Partners IAS Acquisition Highlights Growing Competition Among Ad Verification Vendors Indie Ad Servers Smell Blood In The Water As Google Limits DoubleClick ID – But Does Google Care? Vista Equity Partners Acquires Majority Stake In Integral Ad Science

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Exchanges Are Under Pressure To Pony Up For Guaranteed Viewability

by James Hercher // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 10:31 am.

Advertisers are sick of paying for unviewed impressions, and some programmatic exchanges are appeasing them by eating the cost of anything that wasn’t viewed.

Viewability guarantees aren’t new. For advertisers that demand it, ad tech companies can optimize toward viewability on open exchanges or run viewable deals in private marketplaces.

The problem is, those options often lack the scale necessary for national branding campaigns, said Sarah Warner, GroupM digital investment lead.

GroupM, known for its hard line on viewability, has been working with AppNexus since last year on a viewability product in which the exchange assumes the cost of unseen impressions.

With that safety net in place, the agency can target a large pool of supply and not end up in a fight with its vendor over reconciliation and potential make goods, Warner said.

The TrustX exchange offers a similar human-viewable guarantee that allows buyers to pay only for viewed inventory, but its reach is limited to the selection of premium publishers that participate, as in a private marketplace.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Stutz On Data, Paid Media And The “Passing Fad” Of The CDP

by James Hercher // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 2:32 am.

The marketing cloud landscape has taken big steps into advertising technology and media buying, as with Oracle’s recent acquisitions of Moat and Grapeshot or Adobe’s deal for the video DSP TubeMogul.

But Salesforce defies that trend. The company has deferred to partners to provide online advertising. And while rival clouds contend for new data sources, Salesforce positions itself as perennial integrator.

“For us, it’s more broadly about engagement between our customer and their consumers,” said Bob Stutz, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

AdExchanger spoke to Stutz about his growth plans for the cloud marketing business – and how Salesforce differentiates itself from a competitive field of cloud tech giants.

AdExchanger: How do you go to market these days with the marketing cloud? And how has that changed?

BOB STUTZ: We’ve always talked about it as a consolidated solution. At the end of the day, companies have to do sales, to do ecommerce, any mix of B2B or consumer business. The collaboration across clouds is central to everything we’re doing.

In any company, there are multiple integrations with different systems, and that’s an opportunity. The key is to tie stuff together.

With MuleSoft, there’s an added element with this great way to bring in other third-party data or disparate sources.

And we’ve seen a shift in situations where previously, we were dealing with the CMO, and now that’s often moved up to the CEO. There are things like customer acquisition, retention for companies with users or contract deals, ecommerce, prospecting, where it’s not just the CMO anymore.

Magna: Global Ad Spend Is Set For Monster Growth In 2018 (Google, Facebook: ‘We’ll Take That, Thanks’)

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 2:30 am.

The global ad market is set to grow even faster than forecasted. Why? It’s the duopoly, folks.

In a report released Monday, IPG-owned Magna Global significantly revised its global ad market growth projection from 5.2% to 6.4%, which translates to $551 billion in global ad spend. In Q1, Google and Facebook’s collective ad revenue increased an eye-popping 31% globally – reaching $26.6 billion and $11.8 billion, respectively.

Magna predicts overall digital ad spend will hit $250 billion this year – accounting for 45% of global ad revenue – with mobile on track to make up 62% of the total.

In the US, the ad marketplace grew 8% in the first quarter. Digital ad sales in the US will increase in 2018 by 15% to reach $106 billion and more than half (52%) of all ad dollars.

The seemingly unstoppable growth of digital ad spend was surprising to Vincent Letang, Magna’s EVP of global market intelligence.

Anything that reaches scale has to plateau some time, but digital still hasn’t reached that inflection point, Letang said.

Brand safety concerns and anxiety over data scandals aren’t having any discernible impact on digital growth, either, although some big brands, particularly in CPG, entertainment, QSR and pharma, are putting some money back into the stability of television.

Data Ethics: Permission Is Not The Problem

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 1:00 am.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Tom Weiss, chief technology officer and chief data scientist at Dativa.

The recent uproar caused by the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal has made the ethical use of data one of the big news stories of 2018. It has also cast something of a shadow over targeted advertising.

The value of targeted advertising is clear to both consumers and the industry, and we should promote positive examples to remind people of the benefits of targeted advertising. When I shared on Facebook that I was drinking wine to celebrate my daughter's latest achievement, Facebook targeted me with ads for wine merchants. I wasn't surprised but intrigued. When I tried one product, it was great. If you want to target me with ads selling high-quality products in which I am interested, then count me in.

It has to be better than seeing and hearing ads about products and services in which I am not interested. But if these same ads are used to sell shoddy products, trick vulnerable people or spread political misinformation, then I'm sure we are all opposed to it.

Live Ads: Fad Or The Future Of Advertising?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 12:04 am.

"On TV And Video" is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.

Today’s column is written by Ann Green, managing partner of creative development at Kantar Millward Brown.

As the battle for consumer eyeballs gets more challenging, advertisers are trying anything to get viewers to pay attention, with one of the latest trends being running live TV commercials.

With companies such as Snickers, 20^th Century Fox and Virgin Holidays experimenting with live ads, it’s clear big brands across industries are interested in this new ad format. But the jury is still out on whether live ads actually drive business performance.

One of the challenges live ads face is that they can be expensive. For a live ad to work, it has to feel like an event that captures a specific moment in time. To do that, you need to promote it – an ad for another ad. That creates an added expense typically not associated with commercials.

Aside from the promotional effort behind it, everything about the ad must be coordinated in advance. There is no “take two,” which means it’s critical to prepare in case something goes wrong. For its live ad during Super Bowl LI, Snickers actually capitalized on the potential of something going wrong in a very tongue-and-cheek way by having Adam Driver both deliver the ad and then “apologize” for the same ad with the premise that it had gone “wrong.”

AT&T's TV Inventory Infusion; AppNexus Battles Bots

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2018 at 12:03 am.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

AT&TV

With DirecTV, AT&T has had two minutes of ad space per hour to sell as its own inventory. Time Warner’s Turner cable channels, which include CNN, TNT and TBS, will give AT&T around 14 more minutes per hour, reports The Wall Street Journal. AT&T can fuel growth by adding that cable TV inventory to its addressable ad platform – its targeted media sells at a CPM that’s five to six times higher than a typical national cable spot. “We understand that there’s going to be risk associated with that, but the size of the prize is pretty significant accompanied with the resources of AT&T combined with Time Warner,” said John Stankey, the AT&T exec who will lead Time Warner, referring during the DOJ trial last month to a potential automated ad marketplace.

Bot Busting

AppNexus announced a deal with White Ops to scan every ad either bought or sold through its exchange for bots. Read the release. The DSP has been on a mission to stamp out bad traffic for years. [Dive into the AdExchanger vault to read about some of the company’s earliest efforts.] AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley was attracted to White Ops because of its singular focus on detecting non-human traffic, unlike other third-party ad tech and verification vendors, whose services extend to brand safety and viewability. Industry initiatives like ads.txt have made strides against certain kinds of fraud, like spoofed URLs or unknown supply chain vendors, but picking ad fraud’s low-hanging fruit may bring attention to more sophisticated, better-hidden efforts. Business Insider has more.

Podcast: How Bayer Cures Programmatic Headaches

by Zach Rodgers // Posted on Friday, June 15th, 2018 at 1:27 pm.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Josh Palau, VP for digital strategy at Bayer Consumer Health, spent years in agency land before going over to “the client.” In this week’s podcast, he describes how moving in-house (he has worked at brands like Comcast and J&J) taught him to focus on the numbers.

“Literally I’m in a sales meeting every morning talking about where the channel mix is going,” Palau says. Being on the inside also means dealing with factors that are invisible to agency partners, like IT constraints and internal politics. “It helped open up my mind about all the things that happen.”

In this episode he talks about the changing rules around media and, especially, data. He cites ongoing concerns around third-party audience data, including accuracy and cost issues. But he’s still a believer.

CEO Stephenson: AT&T Will Acquire More Companies 'In The Coming Weeks' To Support Ad Unit

by Ryan Joe // Posted on Friday, June 15th, 2018 at 11:02 am.

AT&T, which closed its acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday, will acquire more companies to support its Advertising and Analytics unit, CEO Randall Stephenson said Friday during a CNBC interview. Watch it here.

Stephenson spoke of an upcoming ad-supported skinny bundle called AT&T Watch TV, featuring Turner content, that will be formally announced next week.

“Those are the kinds of things we’ll be bringing to market,” he said. “Obviously, these will be ad-supported models.”

After name-checking Brian Lesser, the former GroupM honcho who now heads up Advertising and Analytics, Stephenson said: “You should expect some smaller – not like Time Warner, but smaller – M&A in the coming weeks to demonstrate our commitment to that.”

Stephenson has frequently brought up Lesser in interviews, underscoring the importance he places on advertising in AT&T’s future.

Cannes 2018: The Media Agency Ground Game

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Friday, June 15th, 2018 at 12:30 am.

Last year, when Publicis Groupe said it would pull out of the Cannes Lions festival and awards show and reinvest the funds in an artificial intelligence platform, it sparked other holding companies to rethink their presences.

Many had become concerned that the festival, which takes place every June along the beach in the south of France, had become too flashy and out of touch with its original purpose to honor creativity in advertising. Attending seemed extravagant at a time when agencies are being squeezed on costs and experiencing low growth.

While Publicis Groupe is implementing the largest pullback, sending just 84 delegates and judges and only entering for awards funded by clients, other holding companies and media agencies are changing their strategies on the ground, too.

WPP: Digital-first

WPP’s media-buying unit, GroupM, is sending a different type of delegate to Cannes this year: one that can chat fluently about programmatic, technology and the convergence of digital and linear. Sarah Warner, digital investment lead for programmatic and video at GroupM, calls it “a new face for the agency.”

Warner herself is attending the festival for the first time as an embodiment of the executive GroupM wants to showcase. It’s a fitting time, as leaders such as Irwin Gotlieb and Rob Norman have retired, she said.

Today’s Ad Verification Providers May Fail Us In The Long Term

by AdExchanger // Posted on Friday, June 15th, 2018 at 12:05 am.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Adam Broitman, chief strategy officer at Kiip.

Despite the industry’s best efforts, the cost of ad fraud remains a $6.5 billion concern. Trust, in the world of digital advertising, is no stronger today than in years past. One might argue – and many do – that trust has grown weaker. As a result, a handful of companies today profit greatly by serving as arbiters of trust between ad buyers and sellers.

It’s not that these “trust brokers” – fraud monitoring and viewability vendors – don’t deserve their stature or success. They are necessary in an advertising ecosystem largely devoid of trust. But although these firms serve a critical function, most are not incentivized to guide the industry to long-term solutions.

As someone who has worked on both the buy and sell side of the media industry, I have been a party to the rise of the cottage industry that has grown around fraud prevention and viewability. But we’ve reached a concerning juncture. The ever-increasing lack of trust in the digital advertising world has made the demand for trust brokers so great that the pursuit of trust has become prohibitively expensive for many companies. At times, the costs even outweigh the benefits.

The overarching question the industry now faces is this: Can trust really be brokered by commercial entities whose incentive is to identify and track – but not necessarily eradicate – fraudulent, unviewable ads?