Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Bog Standard
TV broadcasters still dispute the basics of how to count an ad impression.
This week, a broadcaster-backed joint industry committee published a first pass at standards for video currency providers. Paramount, which is part of the JIC, released a template of its own to help buyers and sellers use alt currencies.
Not to be left out, YouTube followed up with its standalone standards doc this week … which somewhat contradict the JIC’s guidelines.
YouTube’s perspective is that an impression counts when an ad is viewable on-screen for at least two seconds, as per the MRC standard.
This baseline might make sense for short-form ads on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, but there’s no such thing as a two-second TV spot. From the broadcaster POV, YouTube is mixing momentary, ineffective ad views with primo 30-second commercials.
“Two seconds is freaking stupid – it’s too small,” one TV network exec tells Digiday.
Impressions aren’t the only thing YouTube and the TV industry are butting heads on, either. YouTube is hesitant to support alternative currencies, which is no surprise considering it’s a full-on walled garden. Not to mention that traditional TV networks don’t consider user-generated content to be premium video.
So much for cross-platform standards.
A Frame Job
Malwarebytes and DeepSee, an automation tech company, co-published news of an online ad fraud ring – which they dub DeepStreamer – that swipes $1 million or more per month, according to a blog post. And that’s a conservative estimate.
A network of illegal streaming sites use hidden iframes and a series of elaborate backstops to prevent invalid traffic detectors from spotting the code.
“We were impressed by the technical complexity of the code and underlying infrastructure,” the researchers write. “The perpetrators took many steps to prevent reverse engineering.”
It was only possible to fully uncover the operation because a DSP (which asked to remain nameless) agreed to purposely place fraudulent spots to help identify hops in the chain of ad money.
In case you’re wondering why that DSP wants to be anonymous, it’s probably because Google Ad Manager, Google’s exchange and supply-side ad tech, was excoriated after it was revealed that the fraudulent ads were apparently laundered via GAM sellers.
A separate troubling signal, according to the authors, is that when DeepSee used its own crawlers to generate ads on fraudulent sites, Google only flagged 2% of the traffic – despite the IP addresses being uncloaked and generated by known data centers.
Where Content Pays
Brand-based publishing is having a moment, Marketing Brew reports. Or it’s trying, at least.
Not all brands have the stomach for it.
Netflix, for instance, created an editorial operation called Tudum, but that folded before the cards even hit the table. Certain ecommerce-native brands launched and then quietly stopped publishing their own magazines.
But more established brands in finance and insurance are now getting in on the trend, Brew reports, and they have competition from scrappier companies that already have successful media units, like Robinhood.
And even B2B marketers are trying their hand at publishing, with The Trade Desk as a salient example. TTD has hired more ad industry trade reporters lately than news publishers have.
In January, The Trade Desk hired Emma Shepherd, former editor at the Australian media trade Mumbrella, as APAC editorial content manager. Ilyse Liffreing, a former Ad Age writer, is an editor at The Trade Desk. And George Slefo, another former Ad Age writer, was a senior editor at TTD, the same title he now holds at Amazon, where he works with the DSP business.
Tanya Dua, a longtime Digiday and Business Insider reporter, joined LinkedIn as technology editor last year.
But Wait, There’s More!
Rob Wilk, global head of Microsoft Advertising, is leaving the company and handing the baton to sales leader and longtime Microsoft vet Kya Sainsbury-Carter. [OnMSFT] Sainsbury-Carter spoke with AdExchanger recently about her ambitions for Microsoft Advertising in retail media.
TelevisaUnivision’s post-cookie targeting shows promise for seller-defined audiences. [Adweek]
Tastemade, the online food and recipe publisher, opened its first restaurant. [release]
Walmart has chipped away at Amazon’s edge among one key demo: wealthy online shoppers. [Bloomberg]
It’s official: Roku TVs are now available for purchase at Best Buy. [CNET]
A Catholic group spent millions of dollars on app data to identify gay priests. [WaPo]
You’re Hired!
Lotame names Mediaocean’s Eli Heath as head of identity. [release]
VideoAmp hires Jenny Wall as CMO. [WSJ]
Ranker hires digital publishing exec Alex Mason as VP of programmatic sales, yield and strategy. [release]
Meta vet Becky Owen joins influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy as CMO. [blog post]
