Facebook Acquires TheFind; Havas Takes A Stance On Viewability

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Powering The Transaction

Facebook has acquired, and shut down, personalized commerce search app TheFind. TheFind combines search data with longitudinal purchase data to refine product suggestions. Facebook needs smarter targeting for retail marketers. Could this be the bridge? TechCruch has more. “Facebook’s resources and platform give us the opportunity to scale our expertise in product sourcing to the over 1 billion people that use the platform,” TheFind said in a statement on its site.

Havas Joins Viewability Hard Liners

Havas Chief Media Officer Adam Kasper is the latest agency heavy talking up a 100%-viewable standard. Speaking to Digiday, Kasper called current standards “Kind of a joke,” adding that “[i]t doesn’t really offer us anything. Fifty percent for one second? What does that do for you? It needs to be 100 percent, and it needs to be longer than one second. I very much want to see it this year.” To boost viewability, Havas has teamed up with engagement-based ad network TrueX and has been testing the TrueX platform with some of its clients. The tech is now available to all Havas customers. “We’re not moving all our media buying to TrueX but we expect to scale this pretty rapidly,” said Kasper.

Ad Blocking Woes

Ad-blocking software is on the rise and pre-roll video ads are fueling the growth, according to a Wells Fargo Securities report released Friday. The report ranks ad blocking as a challenge on par with viewability. “Our work leads us to conclude that the power that Google and Apple are able to exert over their respective ad ecosystems (through limitation of access to their app stores) affords them the ability to limit the adoption of third-party apps designed to block ads,” reads the report. According to the findings, publishers are hit the hardest by ad-blocking practices. Ad Age has more.

Yesterday’s Programmatic

Speaking to The Drum, Chris Dobson, executive chairman of The Exchange Lab, says “remnant” is now definitively part of the past. “We have moved past the preconceptions that programmatic trading offloads ‘remnant, cheap’ inventory,” Dobson said. “In 2014, we saw many large brands go public with their programmatic strategies, including luxury brand Burberry. This move helps to dispel the myths surrounding programmatic and instils confidence in other marketers to explore the innovation and benefits that it offers.”

Programmatic Diagnosis

RTB will account for 33% of digital ad sales in the US by 2018, jumping to $18.2 billion from 2013’s $3.1 billion, says BI Intelligence. Mobile and video ads will spur this growth, with spend in those categories hitting $6.8 billion and $3.9 billion in 2018, respectively. The report counts Criteo, Rocket Fuel, Rubicon and AOL among the top programmatic players in the US, together grossing more than $1.5 billion in global ad revenue in 2013. The study also explores barriers to programmatic adoption, changes in pricing and evaluates other key players in the programmatic space. Read on.

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