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IAB Launches A Consent Framework That Google Will (Finally) Join Next Year Facebook’s Third-Party Data Clearing Tool Is Finally Going Live (But Not In The United States Yet) Omnicom Jumps On LinkedIn Audience API For Platform Data It Can Actually Use TV Broadcasters Are Hot On Addressable – But CCPA Might Hamper Their Plans PubMatic Sees Early Returns With The Trade Desk’s Unified ID, But Can We All Just Get Along? Holding Company Strategies Diverge On Data And Agency Brands – Or Do They? GumGum Grows Leadership Team, As Industry Focuses On Contextual Ad Tech Democrats Are Flooding Facebook With Ads And Paying Crazy Money For New Donors As Prices Rise And Ratings Fall On Linear TV, Brands Pay More For Mass Reach

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Facebook’s Third-Party Data Clearing Tool Is Finally Going Live (But Not In The United States Yet)

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Tuesday, August 20th, 2019 at 11:00 am.

After more than a year of tinkering, Facebook is rolling out a long-promised tool that lets users see and delete the data about them that third-party apps and websites pass to Facebook.

Starting Tuesday, users in Ireland, South Korea and Spain will be able to access the feature, which Mark Zuckerberg talked about publicly for the first time at the F8 developers conference in May 2018 just a couple of months after the Cambridge Analytics scandal blew up.

Facebook wouldn’t say when exactly the Off-Facebook Activity tool will be available in the United States, other than to note that Facebook will continue rolling it out “everywhere over the coming months.”

But Facebook did reiterate a point it’s made in the past: Giving users the ability to scrub their data will affect Facebook’s business.

Samba TV Acquires ACR Startup Axwave To Slurp Up More ACR Data

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Tuesday, August 20th, 2019 at 9:00 am.

You can never have enough automated content recognition (ACR) data.

Samba TV added to its store of smart TV data on Tuesday with the acquisition of Axwave, a company that uses audio fingerprinting to catalog and measure linear TV and over-the-top content across panels in the United States and Europe, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom and Germany.

Samba is live with Axwave in the United States and United Kingdom now, with other major European markets, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, scheduled to launch later this year.

This is Samba’s second acquisition in nine months. Samba bought cross-device graph provider Screen6 in December 2018. Same as with Screen6, Samba TV CEO and co-founder Ashwin Navin declined to share the deal price on Axwave, but did say that Samba used part of its May 2018 $30 million Series B round to finance both acquisitions.

Samba absorbed most of Axwave’s employees, roughly 20 people, bringing its total headcount to around 350.

Meanwhile, Axwave’s global ad database is helping boost Samba’s scale, Navin said.

Amazon Rolls Out 'Top Brand' Badge; TV Giants Tease Streaming Services

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, August 20th, 2019 at 12:03 am.

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

Shiny, New Badge

Amazon is testing a “Top Brand” badge for fashion and apparel products. Amazon doesn’t specify how the new label is applied, but it seems to be attached to large, well-known companies, according to Marketplace Pulse, an ecommerce analytics firm, which first spotted the badge in the wild. A search for “swimming goggles” returned Speedo as Top Brand, and brands like Under Armour, Fruit of the Loom and New Balance turned up on general searches such as “running shorts” and “t-shirt.” Amazon already has badges like “Best Seller” and “Amazon’s Choice,” but those often go to the ecommerce company’s private-label lines. Amazon runs tests all the time, so “Top Brands” could be temporary. But it would make sense for Amazon to open up a way for large brands to stand out – or, rather, to pay to stand out.

Swimming Up Stream

Big entertainment companies are in a headlong sprint to launch their respective streaming video subscription offerings. AT&T TV launches in 10 cities this week, according to Cord Cutters News, with a nationwide rollout expected by year’s end. And Disney has released new teasers for Disney+, the subscription library it plans to launch later this year with content from Disney Studios, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel and National Geographic. Additionally, Disney announced the streaming platforms where Disney+ will be available at launch, including Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. The list notably excludes Amazon’s Fire TV. More at The Verge.

Apple Clarifies Its Anti-Tracking Policy For Safari – And Possible Exceptions

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 3:21 pm.

Apple shed light on its policy on cross-site tracking prevention last week and, if you read between the lines (and use a magnifying glass), it’s leaving the door slightly cracked on a potential workaround for certain tracking-related use cases.

The document, posted on Wednesday, is designed to make plain, if it wasn’t already, Apple’s intentions when it comes to tracking prevention on Safari.

WebKit, the open source browser that powers Safari, will “do its best to prevent all covert tracking, and all cross-site tracking (even when it’s not covert),” Apple wrote, and it reserves the right to expand its policy to smoke out any new tracking techniques it discovers down the line.

Over the last couple of years, Apple has refined Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari, which limits both first and third parties from tracking visitors across the web. If WebKit determines a tracking practice infringes on a user’s privacy, it will block it by default.

Twitter Sweetens The Deal On Short Form With Six-Second Video Ad Bid Type

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 10:00 am.

Twitter introduced a new video ad buying model on Monday that only charges advertisers once 50% of their ad is in view for at least six seconds.

The purpose of the bid type is to encourage more advertisers to optimize toward short-form video ads while also giving them the “security” of being able to transact on a cost-per- completed-view basis, said Dan Kang, the group product manager in charge of Twitter’s mobile performance, programmatic and video products.

Although video is one of the fastest-growing ad products on Twitter, it’s an ongoing challenge to attract more advertisers to the platform. Quarter after quarter, Twitter CFO Ned Segal has pointed out that Twitter is “more demand constrained than supply constrained,” meaning that it’s got the inventory – now it just needs advertisers to spend more on its ad products.

Although the Twitter audience is generally more receptive to short-form video content, and most of the brand effectiveness that comes from a video ad is derived from the first second or two, advertisers are sometimes reluctant to transact on shorter views, especially within an autoplay (mostly mobile) feed environment like Twitter.

Madison Reed Enriches Its Data Strategy With A Focus On Lifetime Value

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 12:35 am.

Cost per acquisition (CPA) on Facebook has increased over the last few years as news feed ad load nears saturation.

That’s a big problem for advertisers like DTC hair care and coloring company Madison Reed, which spends a large portion of its budget on Facebook.

The company is always on the hunt for ways to optimize its user acquisition costs, said CFO Carrie Kalinowski, and has found that focusing on lifetime value (LTV) early in the customer life cycle tamps down CPA.

Knowing how valuable someone will likely be to a brand over time lets the growth team calculate how much it’s willing to spend to attract that customer, and create targeting segments that are better pegged to overall ROI.

For the last two years, Madison Reed has been working with a startup called Retina that helps companies build look-alike audiences based on their predicted LTV, by crunching a brand’s first- and third-party data on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to score customer relationship profitability and what types of customers are most likely to retain.

Brands, And Now Publishers, Must Get The Message About Programmatic Creative

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 12:05 am.

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

Today’s column is written by Scott Bender, partner, global head of publisher strategy and business development at Prohaska Consulting.

As we hyper-target, we can’t forget to hyper-message.

While programmatic has revolutionized the way media is transacted over the past decade, we have yet to see the same transformation in creative. With an industry fixated on the right audience, place and time, we must also focus on how programmatic can deliver the right message.

For brands, it can mean data-driven executions that drive performance and customer relationships. For publishers, it’s an opportunity to enhance relationships with both their audiences and advertisers.

Programmatic creative can consist of several elements of creative development. In its broadest definition, programmatic creative applies programmatic solutions and best practices to the creative process.

There is, of course, dynamic creative optimization, where creative assets can be quickly assembled into multiple ad formats and messaging, based on data or machine learning, and measured in real time.

You Are Now Playing In My Simulation

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 12:05 am.

"Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer's point of view.

Today's column is written by Jayne Pimentel, senior director of growth marketing at DraftKings.

One of the more far-out ideas to emerge in the post-digital era is the simulation argument, which stipulates that we are likely living in an advanced computer-generated reality. The hypothesis is a fun joke to some and a serious worldview to others.

But for data- and technology-forward marketers, the simulation can be more than a thought experiment. It is a reality, but one in which marketers are the ones running the simulation, while vendors, partners and platforms are living in it.

What follows are some thoughts on how to be a good steward of your simulated reality and set up rules that make it more utopia than dystopia.

In-housing

The simulation argument takes on greater applicability in today’s digital advertising industry with the rise of in-housing.

In-housing empowers advertisers to have a one-to-one relationship with a brand’s data just like they do with their customers. This enables every brand to make its own simulation where each vendor resides.

OTT Platforms Gear Up For Ad Campaigns; Drudge Drops Intermarkets

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2019 at 12:03 am.

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

Pick Me! Pick Me!

New OTT streaming services, both ad-supported and ad-free, are gearing up to spend heavily on advertising over the next few years. Amazon has launched a “Free Your TV” campaign to promote Fire TV and Prime Video. MediaPost asks, “Is Amazon smelling blood in the water?” and noting that cable companies and pay-TV services like DirecTV and Dish have hemorrhaged subscribers. But Amazon’s not the only one. Tubi is making its own big advertising push. (“Dear NYC, you free tonight? Because we are.”) And Pluto TV has been running commercials with a straightforward value prop: “It’s free TV.”

Programmatic Nepotism

Drudge Report dropped its long-time ads partner Intermarkets in May, replacing it with a new partner called Granite Cubed, according to BuzzFeed. The decision may have been sudden, since the site was without ad monetization for a period from late May to mid-July. The new company appears to be a family connection. The owner is a woman named Margaret Otto who has previous business associations with the Drudge family. Will being a relative unknown pose a problem for ad sales? “Certainly if you decide to go to big brands and sell directly, the Granite Cubed thing is going to be challenging,” said Goodway Group President and CEO Jay Friedman. “[Brands] get 100 requests a week for meetings and this probably isn’t going to float to the top.” More.

Real Talk With Nada Stirratt, The Face Of Facebook Advertising In North America

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Friday, August 16th, 2019 at 10:45 am.

As Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions in North America, Nada Stirratt is responsible for overseeing all of Facebook’s managed service business with small businesses to the largest global brands in the region.

These days, that job requires a healthy dose of explanation and apology.

Facebook has been raked over the coals throughout 2018 and 2019, gaining intense government scrutiny that culminated in July with a $5 billion fine from the FTC, the largest in the agency’s history.

“I do take a lot of responsibility and I take it incredibly personally,” Stirratt told AdExchanger.

Facebook also has to deal with brand safety concerns from advertisers, who are wary of the platform being a walled garden with an inordinate amount of control over the industry.

Stirratt, however, is warm and earnest: “I believe in [the mission] at every ounce of my core,” she said.

And her media qualifications, prior to joining Facebook in June 2017, are diverse, having worked throughout her career in advertising and data, holding top roles at AOL, MTV, Myspace, Verve and Acxiom.

She spoke with AdExchanger.