Yes, there was no blog post last week. Everything is OK, just the 4th of July holiday slowed the news cycle.
IPG Acxiom
The biggest news last week was IPG’s acquisition of Acxiom Marketing Services (AMS). There will be a lot of internal communications about this over the coming weeks and months. The deal is best understood as strengthening IPGs position in data ownership, specifically around data ethics and privacy; global scale; and proven reputation in data-driven marketing. Arun Kumar, IPGs Chief Marketing and Data Tech. Officer gave a great Q&A on AdExchanger about how the deal will supercharge IPG’s first-party data capabilities.
General
- Snapchat has introduced Lens Explorer, a way to discover the over 100,000 lenses created by the Snapchat community. Providing a good way to look for inspiration for client campaign ideas.
- Google has debuted a four (4) AI/Machine Learning tools for advertising. This includes Responsive Search Ads (where ad content optimizes based on machine learning); Maximize Lift for YouTube (smart bidding based on audience receptivity to a brand); Local Campaigns (the ability to optimize for store visits); and Smart Shopping (optimize to visits or new customers). The products were announced during the Google Marketing Live keynote.
- Facebook is introducing new ad formats for the holiday shopping season, including AR ads into the newsfeed and making shopping ads on Instagram available to all advertisers. The AR ads are ideal for the fashion and beauty categories, with Michael Kors being one of the first advertisers to test the ad product.
- A developer digging around in the Snapchat App Code found reference to Amazon integration in Snapchat codenamed “Project Eagle“. The integration would enable users to use the Snapchat camera to recognize products, scan barcodes and even identify music. The source code also references “other partners” so this feature may not be limited to Amazon integration.
- Facebook is closing 3 apps, Moves (a fitness app), tbh (a social media app for high school students), and Hello (an Android app available in the US, Nigeria and Brazil). Facebook cites low usage for the decision. The apps plus associated data will be deleted in 90 days. The surprise closure is tbh, which Facebook acquired less than a year ago (October 2017) for ~$100MM.
Trust, Privacy, and Brand Safety
- twitter has started purging fake accounts (so clients may seem a drop in follower counts). It is reported that as many as 70MM accounts were deleted. twitter’s stock fell as a result, with Wall St concerned it would hurt active user numbers. The stock has since rebounded – but does show that Wall St can unfairly punish companies for cleaning up fraud and rewards “growth” which may not be in the best interests of the adtech ecosystem.
- Facebook was fined £500,000 (the maximum amount possible) for two (2) breaches of UK Data Protection Act, for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Or as Quartz points out, 15minutes of Facebook’s net profit.
- Cadreon is Privacy Shield Certified. If you’re not sure why this matters, the basic primer is that it enables Cadreon to comply with GDPR requirements, specifically around the used of EU citizen data between US/EU operations. The US Department of Commerce has a privacy shield fact sheet that provides more specifics or you can read the full Privacy Shield Framework.
- Google / YouTube is looking to reduce the amount of fake news on the platform, especially around breaking news stories. As part of the Google News Initiative (GNI) Google will be funding US$25MM to making authoritative news sources more readily available. Of note, Google is partnering with Encyclopedia Brittanic and Wikipedia to surface accurate information on “established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation”. In addition, Google is partnering with various institutions to bring in digital literacy education to teens.
- the Media Ratings Council (MRC) opened for Public Comment the “MRC Supplement to IAB Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification: Enhanced Content Level Context and Brand Safety”. The 30page document (PDF link) is open to comment from any interested party. UM (and Mediabrands) are participating in the review through the 4As.
- you might recall that Vizio was subject to a class action for allegedly “spying on consumers” and settled related legal action with the FTC. Vizio is now close to a settlement of the class action, but the sector is under the microscope again. Two (2) New York Senators have requested that the FTC investigate Samba and Smart TV manufacturers over continued concerns about the lack of transparency and consumer understanding of Smart TV tracking. It’s worth reading the NY Times article on the topic, as a copy of the letter outlining the Senator’s concerns. The CEO of Samba (Ashwin Navin) has already come out in an AdExchanger Q&A stating “(Samba’s) legal basis for having data is a direct-to-consumer relationship and the agreement we have with the consumer.”
- Facebook is testing a label for Sponsored / Branded content partnerships. Facebook has had branded content tags since 2016, but this info label is more visible and would appear on the image in the post.
Have a great week.
Joshua