Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Do We Ever Not Kick The Can?
After Google Chrome first committed to third-party cookie deprecation, big advertisers and Google partners frankly didn’t expect the initial deadlines to remain. Google Ads and Chrome weren’t ready, not to mention needing the UK data regulator’s approval.
But the times are a-changing.
There is a hint of, dare I say, seriousness about Google’s Privacy Sandbox ad tech solutions and Chrome’s movement with sandbox proposals.
Google Ads published a blog post on Wednesday about a solution that uses the Chrome Attribution Reporting API’s two outputs – event-level reports and aggregate summary reports – for effective post-cookie bidding and measurement.
On GitHub, Google Ads published the technical details for blending Chrome’s event-level and aggregate reports, which can then be used for programmatic targeting or measurement. It’s a process Google calls “eventification.”
Although, it isn’t exactly replicable. Eventification is built on “custom post-processing techniques” and capabilities internal to Google Ads.
The Google Ads blog pushes industrywide adoption of the Chrome Attribution Reporting API. But when others get lost in the weeds, they’ll have to find a way out themselves.
PMax: “P” Is For Pretenders
When Microsoft Advertising first acknowledged its own iteration of Google’s Performance Max at the We Make Future conference in Remini, Italy in June, it was presented as “our version of Performance Max.”
Now, Microsoft confirms that the product name is actually “Microsoft Performance Max,” per MediaPost.
It’s a thumb in the eye to Google.
Google PMax is unique – who else has Gmail, Google Search, YouTube and Google Maps? But Microsoft PMax, alongside Meta’s Advantage Shopping Campaigns, Criteo’s Commerce Max and a burst of other ad products, package ad channels and machine-learning models into a black box. They call themselves “Max” and draft on PMax’s success while mucking up Google’s effort to shape sentiment about the product.
Ad buyers have been wary – and, at times, furious – about the lack of transparency, but most say the performance is there for PMax. The wannabe Maxes hope Google has accomplished the tough groundbreaking work to get advertisers comfortable with the platform’s control over campaigns and less analytics transparency, and to accept a foundational reset of what “performance” looks like.
Auto-Gen The News
The robots may be coming for journalism jobs sooner rather than later.
Google is pushing a new generative AI product that can write news stories, The New York Times reports. The solution, called Genesis, has been previewed to major news publishers, including The Times, The Washington Post and NewsCorp (The Wall Street Journal).
Although Google is promoting the product as a time-saving assistant for journalists, fears abound that it’s a play to replace human reporters. Sources who have seen the bot in action describe it as “unsettling.”
Google’s decision to shop this product around to news organizations comes as the company battles news orgs over whether platforms must compensate publishers for sharing, reusing and advertising alongside their content.
Could it be a flex by Google and a threat from Big Tech to replace the journalism industry with chatbots rather than share revenue? Perhaps.
But the dire warnings are premature, considering Google’s main generative AI service, Bard, has been known to confidently produce factually inaccurate content.
But Wait, There’s More!
TikTok expands its research API to Europe and launches an ads transparency library. [TechCrunch]
Web3 attribution tech Spindl partners with Serotonin, a Web3-focused agency, on marketing growth solutions for the category. [blog]
Is RealClearPolitics secretly running a disinfo ad network called Publir? [CheckMyAds]
After the first waves of ad tech layoffs … layoffs are continuing through the summer. [Insider]
You’re Hired!
Peter Gonzalez joins Canela Media as chief technology officer. [post]
Dan Rapaport joins InMobi as VP of product, InMobi Commerce. [release]
