Political Ad Targeting Fraud Concerns; Deloitte Pushes Further Into Marketing Services

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Voter Bots

In a 2016 presidential year, one big-money opportunity for ad fraudsters will come from digital budgets aimed at Latinos (who disproportionately rely on smartphones over cable or print for political news), writes White Ops political director Mark Schlosser in a column at the political trade pub Campaigns & Elections. “Campaigns should be aware that Hispanic Targeting is two-times more vulnerable to fraud when run on programmatic exchanges, and (have) higher bot percentages across all buy types.” More.

Enterprising

Adweek’s Lauren Johnson remarks on Deloitte’s creative/digital hybrid consultancy, which is making a splash at SXSW this year. Enterprise tech players like IBM, PwC and Accenture see an opportunity to push further into marketing services [AdExchanger coverage]. Enterprise storytelling is converging with supply-chain logistics, retail and commerce, customer service and operations. Deloitte Digital’s Alicia Hatch tells Johnson, “We’ll be a hit on some level to the agency and holding company world for consultants to have those services.”

Sonnenlicht

Acquisitive German publisher Axel Springer disclosed revenues for Business Insider, for which it paid about $442 million last year. BI lost about $1.2 million in the last two months of 2015, reports Jeremy Barr of Ad Age. But revenue was up 41% in 2015, and Axel is helping BI build out new monetization opportunities like fee-based research, content licensing and international markets. More.

Aspiring To Bronze

Yahoo’s fate is still up in the air, and Verizon-owned AOL has been publicly mulling a bid on the one-time giant. If either party needs some encouragement, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell says the new Verizon entity “would instantly transform into a strong ‘third force,’ behind Facebook and Google.” It’s not a meaningless pleasantry either. As Business Insider editor Lara O’Reilly shows, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft (which outsources its ad sales to AOL), are in a muddled pack alongside the likes of Twitter and traditional media outlets. But combined under Verizon’s roof, a Yahoo-AOL-Microsoft triumvirate starts to look like a contender.

App Natural Laws

How come Google’s Play Store has almost twice as many downloads as Apple’s App Store, but generates half the revenue? “We are not sure,” writes the app developer firm Information Architects in a Medium post. “It just seems to be a cold hard fact.” The post goes on to say, “It didn’t matter what price we asked, on an average day iA Writer for Android’s revenue was always $30. At $1 we sold 30 apps, at $5 we sold six, at $2 we sold 15.”