Google Battles Ad Blockers (Again); Safe Harbor's Successor Met With Skepticism

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

I’d Take The TV Ad

Digiday asked digital media buyers what a Super Bowl spot’s $5 million price tag could get them in social or digital media. Snapchat could provide a week’s worth of sponsored lenses, with 250 million video ad impressions. You could also take over The New York Times home page for about 16 days. Read it. Adweek, doing the exact same story, says you could translate $5 million into more than 2 million mobile app installs or 250 million Facebook video views.

Google Blocks Blockers

Google has shut down a mobile ad blocker that sprouted up in its Google Play app store this week. TechCrunch has the backstory: “Samsung rolled out support for ad blocking in the new version of its web browser for mobile devices, the Samsung Internet Browser. Third-party developers quickly responded by launching ad-blocking mobile apps that work with the browser.” The story notes some apps are still live, including Crystal and Adblock Plus. More. Flashback: In a similar episode back in September, Google banned an app called Disconnect for “unauthorized interference with other apps.” AdExchanger story.

Coming To An Amazon Store Near You

First Amazon made physical bookstores obsolete. Now it’s bringing them back. Though unconfirmed by Amazon, The Wall Street Journal reports that mall CEO Sandeep Mathrani told investors in an earnings call that the ecom giant would open “300 to 400” stores. Read it. To be fair, Mathrani later said he didn’t mean to speak for Amazon. But as a thought experiment, let’s say it’s true. First, Amazon will potentially have much better insight into how online browsing activity leads to in-store purchasing. Talk about closing the loop on attribution. Second, it already knows what books are popular in which locales, so it’ll be able to bring that online data into a retail environment. It’s already doing this in its one Seattle location, but now it can do so on a much larger scale. Of course, until Amazon confirms it, it’s all speculative. As are so many things with Amazon.

Hot Heads

The new “Privacy Shield” data-sharing agreement between the EU and the US, which replaces Safe Harbor, has been received with suspicion by many European state regulators, reports Mark Scott of The New York Times. Officials in France, Germany, Spain and other countries are demanding more than the vague assurances currently offered by the US government that the NSA won’t have indiscriminate access to European data. “Half a trillion dollars of trade is at stake,” says Victoria Espinel, president of the Software Alliance, a trade group promoting a roster of Silicon Valley heavyweights. “We still expect that cool heads will prevail.” Read AdExchanger’s coverage.

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