Advertisers Plan To Spend Less On Twitter; Gnack Develops Snapchat Measurement Tool

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Broken Wings

Many advertisers plan to spend less on Twitter in 2016, according to a survey by RBC Capital Markets. “Just like there are momentum stock buyers, guess what? There are momentum ad buyers, and the momentum is moving away from Twitter,” said lead analyst Mark Mahaney. Twitter has been throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping for revenue products that stick (like top-of-feed real estate, sponsored Moments or promoted tweets on profile pages), but marketers – and shareholders – continue to pull back. More at CNBC.

SnapData

Advertisers like Snapchat, but they love automation. Enter Gnack, an Austin, Texas-based startup that measures Snapchat influencer campaigns. By having influencers log in to Snapchat via their Instagram accounts, Gnack can piggyback on Facebook/Insta’s more robust measurement capabilities to track the number of times Snapchat posts are opened or screengrabbed. CRO Chico Tirado tells Adweek’s Lauren Johnson that the goal is to make Snapchat more attractive to metrics-driven ad buyers. “We want to streamline the process for influencers and advertisers and be able to go to brands selling programmatically.” More.

Uncle Sam

US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, who led US efforts to replace the Safe Harbor data transfer pact with the EU [AdExchanger coverage], announced an initiative to send “Digital Attaches” around the world to support US businesses as they maneuver regional webs of privacy and regulatory standards. Digital services now account for more than half of all US service exports, and one-sixth of all goods and services (including agriculture, energy, automotive and manufacturing). The US government has begun to view its startup community as an advantage on the scale of international trade.

Challenging The Duopoly

Did you know Amazon has an app store? Well, it does, and it’s blowing up. Amazon Underground is an app store that works on a new model: Developers create games that would be paid apps in other stores, but which Amazon offers for free. Amazon then pays developers on the back end based on in-app time and engagement. Amazon doesn’t share any numbers in its coming-out story with Wired, but relies instead on percentages. It’s a ridiculous way to measure something that’s a few months old – but you can bet Apple and Google are taking it seriously. By paying developers directly, Amazon has unprecedented control over in-app opportunities and more freedom to tie Underground into its growing media empire.

But Wait, There’s More!