New Rankings on Ad Fraud of Mobile Exchanges

As we've discussed in class, fraud is a real problem when it comes to advertising online. According to an article I found (link below) on AdAge, it is estimated that 38% of mobile app ad inventory is fraudulent compared to about 27% of desktop inventory. This leaves advertisers in the dark, not knowing which ad exchanges can be trusted to provide real inventory.

An ad-fraud prevention firm called Pixalate has now created a "Trust Index" that ranks mobile app exchanges on their trustworthiness. This will be an extremely helpful tool for advertisers. Pixelate also ranks desktop and mobile web sites as well, but the addition of the mobile app rankings is brand new. Rankings will be updated on a monthly basis.

Hopefully, rankings like these will hold exchanges more accountable to take steps to eliminate fraudulent inventory and increase their transparency on the issue. This would be a win-win for exchanges and advertisers alike.


http://adage.com/article/digital/pixalate-launches-trust-index-mobile-app-exchanges/300473/
http://www.pixalate.com/sellertrustindex/mobile/#!global

Apple improves its retargeting capabilities

Apple and AdRoll have joined in partnership so that AdRoll's retargeting and programmatic buying capabilities will be available for Apple's advertising platform product, iAd. On top of this new partnership, Apple will also allow advertisers to target potential customers on iTunes and the app store as well. Some of the features that advertisers will be able to leverage to retarget ads include gender, device type, location, behavior such as app category preferences and frequency of use, and personal interests. This means an advertiser can target users who have visited their site and performed specific actions such as, read specific types of books, or played certain types of games. This puts Apple in the midst of the battle for mobile advertising among other large players such as Facebook and Google.

Source: VentureBeat

Rise of Programmatic Ad Buying

Last week, Yahoo announced that it had purchased BrightRoll, a technology platform that facilitates the programmatic purchasing of digital video ad inventory.  BrightRoll aggregates digital ad inventory from a wide variety of content publishers and then in real-time it analyzes user data to identify key characteristics of the person who is watching the video.  It takes these characteristics, and matches them against what types of customers a brand wants to see its advertising, and then matches the proper ad with the user.  This real-time, intelligent, ad placement is becoming increasingly common in the digital advertising realm.

Yahoo was particularly interested in this business because they have been struggling with in generating ad sales revenue from their owned and operated platforms.  In fact, while the digital ad industry is growing quickly, Yahoo has experienced year-over-year declines in its display ad business.  One way to offset this trend, is to begin to monetize advertising sold on other platforms, which this transaction facilitates.  This acquisition by Yahoo actually mirrors that of one of its major competitors, AOL, which acquired programmatic video ad tech company adap.tv over a year ago.  These acquisitions are meant to give these major digital content publishers an alternate revenue source, and allow them to create a non-labor intensive revenue stream.  By using the technology solutions to intelligently place the ads in real-time, Yahoo and AOL are taking a leading position in this increasingly valuable business segment.

The question coming out of this will be how does a company differentiate their programmatic ad technology solutions versus those of a competitor.  The obvious answer is that pricing will be key, but neither company is incentivized to engage in a price war to the bottom.  As a result, I think two key differentiators will be the sophistication of the targeting algorithms and the breadth of third party publishers' inventory that is placed in each marketplace.  At this point it is unclear which of these two companies is better positioned in this regard, but it will be interesting to see how things play out in the months ahead.

Advertising Week 2014

Today marks the first day of Advertising Week here in NYC. For those who don’t know, Advertising Week is the world’s premier annual gathering of marketing and communications leaders that is held each year in New York City.

According to the official website, Advertising Week draws from the client, media, and broader cultural communities with a laser focus on key business drivers which shape and influence the global industry. Here are some of the key numbers: The Week is 4 days long, has 250+ events, 190+ seminars and workshops, and expected attendance is 90,000.

The focus this year is on digital – as evidenced by the many hundreds of panels and discussions scheduled on various digital topics ranging from mobile marketing to data mining. One topic that is expected to get a lot of discussion is digital advertising, specifically programmatic ad buying. Programmatic ad buying is when automated software systems (rather than calls, faxes, or emails to salespeople) are used to buy and book ads.

According to the official schedule, there are more than 20 panels that will discuss some aspect of programmatic buying. Magna Global, a research and ad-buying unit of Interpublic Group estimates that digital-ad spending around the world done through programmatic channels will increase 52% this year to $21 billion. The majority of the panels will focus on the growth and efficiencies of automated buying, however the conference will also discuss some of the risks, including the rise of phony websites and online fraud. It will be interesting to see how the conversation develops and what larger trends emerge from The Week.

Source: Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/articles/digital-media-to-take-center-stage-at-advertising-week-1411933781