Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
AdExchanger’s daily news round-up will return in 2023. Enjoy your holiday, and may we all resolve to make fewer cookie jokes in the new year.
Of No Account
A ProPublica report levels damning criticisms at the Google Display Network.
For one thing, accounts who’ve had sites blocked for repeated fraud, IP theft, disinformation or other ban-worthy actions routinely return with different URLs without even bothering to get a different GDN publisher ID. And GDN is the only ad platform that houses so many anonymous listings – a string of numbers, not the URL of the site and its ownership. Open ad tech vendors and ad networks list the publishers they buy from. It’s routine for every company except GDN, which eventually released a sellers.json list, but it’s an incomplete one and still almost entirely confidential accounts.
Google says it polices for violence, pornography, IP fraud and misinformation. But reporters bringing issues to Google comms is the primary way to get publishers ejected. And even then, accounts resurface with new URLs.
Google has said more than 90% of GDN spend goes to the small percentage of sites that are publicly listed in its sellers.json file. Which begs the question, why not take stronger measures with the unabashed bad actors and horrible inventory suppliers in the network that account for so little?
Back To School
Team Dayā, an organization founded by a group of ad tech and media execs, raises money to build schools in global areas without adequate facilities. And then they go out and build the schools.
The org began with a school in Nepal in 2019 and this year finished another in Senegal.
Plans for schools in Guatemala and Malawi were set back by the pandemic but are on the books for 2023. Team Dayā is looking to raise $15,000 (or more) by December 31 as part of a commitment by U of Digital to match donations between now and the end of the year.
You can donate here to make sure U of Digital founder Shiv Gupta ponies up the whole sum.
Block Party
The FBI is wading into the murky waters of ad-blocking browser extensions.
A public service announcement warns that criminals are using search engine ads to direct unwitting users to malware.
There’s nothing new about that bit of ad fraud, but one interesting notice stands out: “Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches” is one of the only passive ways that users can protect themselves from the crime, according to the FBI notice.
Not that this has Google quaking in its boots. Besides, ad blocker adoption mainly hurts the open web, not Google. You’re welcome!
“While search engine advertisements are not malicious in nature,” says the PSA, “it is important to practice caution when accessing a web page through an advertised link.”
VLOPping the Bubble
The EU’s Digital Services Act takes aim at ad scams that thrive on social media, writes CafeMedia’s Don Marti in a blog post at Web Wide Open.
Starting next year, the DSA requires “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) to maintain a registry of all ads served on their platforms – including ads that impersonate legit entities.
VLOPs are defined as sites with at least 45 million European users. In addition to keeping a public record of their ads, VLOPs must provide metadata on those ads, such as the ad buyer’s identity, the length of the campaign flight, audience demographics and targeting parameters.
The DSA’s registry requirement should make it easier to identify scams on social platforms like Facebook, which saw fraudulent ads increase eighteen fold between 2017 and 2021. Facebook’s ad library allows a 24-hour delay before ads are logged. And ads disappear from the library after their flight is served, unless the campaign is classified as political.
The DSA shifts the burden for reporting scams to the VLOPs, who may have to be more diligent about vetting ad creatives and catching up to scammers’ constantly morphing schemes.
But Wait, There’s More!
Starting in January, Microsoft Advertising will exit beta with a product to serve ads to the Microsoft app store on Windows devices. [MediaPost]
I trained my Instagram algorithm to think I just got a dog to see what happens – and it zeroed in on insecurities. [Bloomberg]
The social strategist teaching viral TikTok classes. [NYT]
In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics. [NPR]
TikTok steps up efforts to clinch US security deal. [Reuters]
