Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Out-Of-This-World Bidding
Media buyers and ad tech companies are accusing Pluto TV – the free ad-supported TV (FAST) service owned by Paramount – of egregious bid duplication, Adweek reports.
Bid duplication is a common tactic among media sellers. Duplicating ad requests for inventory garners more high bids and crowds out competitors, boosting yield. But Pluto is overdoing it, four media buyers and two ad tech companies tell Adweek.
One buyer says Pluto sent out 9.4 billion bid requests in one day, compared to just 750 million for The Roku Channel and 133 million for Tubi. Another buyer says the average winning bid on Pluto for one client was 55% higher than the floor price, compared to 11% for Tubi.
To avoid wasting ad spend, some agencies are helping clients shift more spend away from Pluto and into other FAST platforms instead, they say. Other agencies are confronting Pluto to demand more transparency into why Pluto’s prices are so high. One buyer, for example, negotiated deals with Pluto to tie bid requests in an auction to actual viewers, while another built tech to limit how much it spent with Pluto.
Credit To Reddit
This newsletter has tracked the cascading partnerships between Google and Reddit.
And the next incremental update in the saga is out this week, as 404 Media reports that the Reddit website is now accessible only to the Google Search crawler.
Reddit is a large and growing element of Google’s search ranking. Google particularly likes Reddit for its authentic, authenticated user base. Google also has major data licensing and third-party advertising arrangements with Reddit, including unique access to Reddit’s internal data API.
Reddit’s site was formerly accessible to other crawlers. But Reddit begrudged LLMs using its public data to train their models – and not reimbursing the platform.
Google, in contrast, is paying $60 million per year for access to the Reddit API and proprietary data to train its LLM. That said, the deal didn’t include Reddit blocking every other crawler, while allowing Google continued (in fact, enhanced) access to its data APIs to potentially channel search traffic or target ads.
¡AI, Caramba!
Artificial intelligence has great potential use cases for ad tech, particularly in data analysis and optimization. But putting more dollars into AI-powered products might not be the best way forward.
As Ad Age reports, findings by performance marketing agency Tinuiti suggest that Google’s new AI Overviews in search results “may be depressing clicks on some ads.”
Google says traditional search placements still perform. But the whole point of AI Overviews, which Google also says is going gangbusters, is to provide the info without the click. No click, and both marketers and publishers miss out on traffic to their sites.
Meanwhile, other AI products are gaining widespread adoption. Meta’s Advantage+ now accounts for 23% of retail ad spend on the platform despite Meta’s endless series of glitches. And Google’s AI-infused Performance Max (PMax) accounts for about 30% of all Google Shopping spend, Tinuiti estimates. PMax adoption dipped from last year, as some customers have been displeased with results and the platform’s transparency.
Speaking of tech not meeting expectations, AI is approaching the dreaded “trough of disillusionment” on the hype cycle. A recent Goldman Sachs report theorizes the technology represents “too much spend, too little benefit,” and polling suggests Americans are skeptical of AI services at best.
But Wait, There’s More!
Informa has agreed to buy Ascential, the owner of the Money20/20 and Cannes Lions conferences, for approximately $1.5 billion. [Ad Age]
The cookie is dead. Long live the cookie! [Consent Economy]
The New York Times has a high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI, but it also has a generative AI tool showing promising results for advertisers. [Adweek]
CrowdStrike explains how its update broke the world’s computers. [Business Insider]
The FTC wants to remind you: No, hashing still doesn’t make your data anonymous. [blog]
You’re Hired!
Adlook promotes Mateusz Jedrocha to chief product officer. [release]
Skai promotes Gil Sadeh to president. [LinkedIn]
Innovid promotes Stacey Reney to SVP of marketing. [LinkedIn]
Channel Factory names Luiz Felipe Barros as global CMO, Anudit Vikram as global chief product and technology officer and Nerissa Valdellon as SVP of media solutions. [release]
