Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
All Work And No Pure-Play …
Nobody wants to be an SSP anymore. But is supply-side ad tech really in such bad shape?
Index Exchange is the loudest – if not the only – voice still backing the pure-play publisher ad tech role. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Casale penned an open letter in April affirming the company’s commitment not to represent ad buyers, in contrast to Magnite and PubMatic launching buy-side solutions.
Some “public companies” no longer represent the sell side exclusively, SVP Matt Barash tells VideoWeek. “They’ll actually walk into agencies and holding companies looking to secure demand.”
Advertisers and publishers want fewer tech partners and lower margins. But trends are cyclical. We’ve seen ad tech companies resell inventory across publishers with direct agency accounts. “That used to be known as an ad network,” Barash says.
Companies follow trends, and the current fashion is unified supply chains. For ad tech companies with no first-party media or data, the logical conclusion of the SPO trend could look like an ad network. Which would be sure to spur another cycle of change.
Joint Judging
The Joint Industry Committee (JIC), consisting of broadcast advertising stakeholders, unveiled its certification measurement plans for measurement currency providers, Ad Age reports.
In July, the JIC will start grading applications from Comscore, VideoAmp, iSpot, SambaTV, 605 and InnovidXP. Nielsen still refuses to participate.
The JIC rubric ranks companies by their clean room integrations, advertiser and seller transparency into match rates and focus on advanced audiences based on big data.
Depending on how well applicants meet these standards, the JIC assigns a score between one and four per category, with a three or four rating considered acceptable for a TV ad currency.
The JIC also updated the streaming data set it uses to certify potential currencies. Viewership and ad exposure data from TV networks will be available in what the JIC calls its “federated data clean room,” which plugs into individual publisher clean rooms. This design is similar to what Paramount, which is also part of the JIC, is building on the side.
Under The Influence
Social media creator David Dobrik has ridden many waves of influencer monetization.
He built a brand on Vine, the six-second video repository acquired and frittered away by Twitter. From there, he made a logical leap to YouTube, where he has a large following but hasn’t posted in more than a year – in 2021, a friend and former co-creator was accused of sexual assault, among other controversies, and the production shuttered.
In the past year, though, Dobrik resurfaced on Snapchat, The Information reports.
Dobrik has an interesting perspective on social platform nuances, since it’s often taken as a given that compelling videos work across TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube.
Dobrik consumes TikTok, for instance, but posts methodically to Snapchat, since that’s where fans are interested in minute details of people’s lives. TikTok is for polished content with a shot to go viral.
Dobrik is headfirst down the next influencer revenue rabbit hole, too, with a pizza parlor named Doughbrik’s and ambitions for a frozen pizza line to sell in Walmart, Target and the like.
But Wait, There’s More!
The CNIL, the French data privacy regulator, fines Criteo $44 million for a 2018 GDPR complaint, revising down an earlier fine of $66 million. [TechCrunch]
Inside Netflix’s growing M&A machine. [Insider]
Vice Media has sold to its creditors, Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management, for $225 million (though the entirety of that sum comes from previous loans to the publisher). [NYT]
Amazon Prime Day in July will include invite-only deals and “Buy with Prime” purchases across the web, not just Amazon’s site. [GeekWire]
Omnicom and Criteo are partnering on a data clean room product built using InfoSum. [Digiday]
You’re Hired!
Brian Quinn is Vibenomics’s new global head of advertising. [post]
