Facebook Continues Serving Ads To ABP Users; The ANA Transparency Report Has Effects Abroad

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Blocked

Facebook is still serving ads to Adblock Plus users, one month after publicly signaling it would circumvent the ad blocker’s filter. “They have basically removed every identifier that’s findable in the first level of ads,” ABP comms guy Ben Williams acknowledged to TechCrunch. But the blocker hasn’t given up. “We’ll have to change the software, and we’re very, very careful. We have to do some testing.” More. The comments come after a weeklong comedy of errors in which Adblock Plus announced plans to sell ads via exchanges and was shut down. AdExchanger coverage.

About That Report…

The ANA’s transparency report has made waves outside the US. German telco company Deutsche Telekom is assembling its own ad stack to take back control of its media buying, Chief Media Officer Gerhard Louw told Digiday. While rebates have traditionally been accepted in Europe, Gerhard finds the report’s distinction of principal vs. agent important. “You’d better be damn sure that in each and every contract, interaction or negotiation with the agency, you understand which they’re acting as,” he said. Like the ANA does in its second report [AdExchanger coverage], Gerhard puts some of the blame on marketers for allowing this nontransparent behavior to flourish. More.

Spend Money To Make Money

The US ad market saw record ad investments in August, according to the spending index from MediaPost and Standard Media Index. The gains were apparently driven by the very largest marketers. “The pattern was similar for all the vertical categories tracked in the index, including national TV, digital, etc.,” writes Joe Mandese at MediaPost. “But much of the expansion was driven by the top product categories versus the long-tail.”

In Retweet

The Economist takes a sharp look into the state of Twitter, deviating often into the hypothetical messaging/streaming future it could have had. The social platform “will survive, but it has lost its chance to be the sort of internet giant it might have become under better management.” Twitter was prescient on the ascent of digital video – buying Vine and Periscope – but is still falling further behind YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat. Twitter has also lost its once-dominant position as a source of news, with external links down and rival platforms courting big media companies. Twitter is one of the best-known brands on Earth, but it really only has between 20 million and 40 million core users. More.

But Wait, There’s More!