Kellogg Reduces YouTube Ad Spend; Snapchat Keeps Moving

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Power Of The Purse

Kellogg is dialing down its ad spend on Google properties, including YouTube, due to Google’s restrictions on third-party measurement. GroupM CIO Rino Scanzoni tells Ad Age, “Third-party verification is a critical component to responsively measure ad viewability. The vast majority of publishers agree to it and the few that don’t will be adversely impacted with significantly reduced spend.” Google claims to have nearly solved for viewability on its O&O properties with a 91% viewability rate on YouTube. But there’s no verification like third-party verification. More.

Busy Snapchat

CNBC reported Snapchat is out raising a $650 million equity round, valuing the ephemeral messaging startup at $16 billion – or about 5x Vice Media. The ephemeral messaging startup is also gunning for an IPO. CEO Evan Spiegel didn’t split hairs onstage at Re/code’s Code Conference in LA. “We need to IPO,” he said. “We have a plan to do that.” Spiegel has been vocal about making the platform into a more profitable business, which it plans to do by selling more ads. More via Business Insider.

CPGs Have Efficiency Mindset

eMarketer predicts nearly two-thirds of display investment from CPG marketers will be spent programmatically this year, and cost efficiencies are part of the reason. Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal are among those aiming to do more with less by leveraging data. “For CPG brands, which have been able to amass client data from third-party sources such as retailers and loyalty programs, the challenge is to corral that data and make it useful,” reports eMarketer. P&G spent 14.4% less on advertising in 2014 than in 2013, according to Kantar Media, while L’Oréal spent 8.3% less during that timeframe.

Load Times Win In Mobile

One of the big justifications for Facebook’s Instant Articles product is the user experience benefits of faster-loading news content. Catchpoint Systems, a web performance monitoring firm, tells the WSJ, “Early data suggest Facebook might be right.” The home pages of 50 major news outlets loaded, according to Catchpoint Systems, at an average of 3.66 seconds. Facebook Instant Articles loaded “nearly instantly,” at zero to 300 milliseconds. Can publishers compete on speed?

Programmatic, Eh?

BrightRoll partnered with IAB Canada to survey 130 agency execs about their programmatic video strategies. About 20% of Canadian agencies plan to spend more than 60% of their digital video budgets programmatically this year – that’s up about 10%. A third of agencies will spend a more modest 40-59% of their digital video budgets programmatically. MediaPost has more.