Platforms

Whenever there’s a sociopolitical or economic crisis, the lowest rung of online marketers finds a way to prey on the vulnerable and disenfranchised. The pending overturn of Roe v. Wade is no different – it’s creating a new class of online audiences that are potential prey, and publishers can stand to take more steps to filter out misleading ads (like donation scams and brand infringement) that harvest and sell users’ personal information.

TikTok’s content relies heavily on influencers and creators. As prime ad real estate for targeting younger “video native” audiences, TikTok is using its market positioning with brands to capitalize on both the creator marketplace and ecommerce through shoppable video trends, said Melissa Yang, TikTok’s head of ecosystem partnerships, speaking at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference earlier this week.

A rose by any name will smell as sweet, sure. But attribution by any name doesn’t work the same. Call it what you want, the problem of channel-based incremental testing is important. Measured raised $21 million last week, as it expands in the post-attribution attribution category, alongside other startups like Triple Whale, which raised $24 million a month ago, and Northbeam.

Seven months ago, TikTok surpassed one billion worldwide users, breaking into a club that previously consisted only of Google and Facebook apps. Since then, TikTok has been on a massive ad platform expansion campaign as it tries to both follow in the footsteps of apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and differentiate itself from the old guard of the billion-strong walled gardens.

It’s not surprising that AppTrackingTransparency and the end of third-party cookies on Chrome didn’t come up during the razzle-dazzle of Meta’s NewFronts debut this week. But advertisers have been asking about both a lot, especially for brands focused on commerce.

Facebook marketer Rok Hladnik awoke last Thursday to discover that more than half of the 140 Facebook ad accounts he operates had been randomly turned off. The week before, the campaigns were overspending in the wee hours of the morning, when they should have been dormant. 2021 was the year of the cicada swarms in the US. But the bugs have come for the metaverse this year, apparently.

Signal loss – and dealing with it – was a big theme during Meta’s first quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Mark Zuckerberg referred to signal loss due to Apple’s privacy changes as a “meaningful headwind.”

Publishers that pack their ad servers with hundreds of thousands of line items can go ahead and clear them out: Google Ad Manager is building a connection to Prebid to better support header bidding

“The best way for us to deal with this is not to complain, but to partner with the ecosystem,” says Alvin Bowles, Meta’s VP of business ecosystem partnerships. AdExchanger caught up with Bowles to talk about the metaverse, Facebook haters, the $10 billion in revenue set to evaporate due to Apple ATT and the rise of TikTok.

Meta is bringing all of its automated ad products together under a single roof. Meta Advantage, which is what Meta is calling its new suite, may sound like a health plan but is really a home for Meta’s existing automated tools, including lookalike expansion, automated app ads and automatic placements, as well as the future home for other automated products in the works.