Opting-Out Of Mobile Tracking; Programmatic Fraud Council

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

Do Not Track Mobile

In the world of smartphone tracking there are multiple ways for an advertiser to find a consumer. Privacy advocates in Washington are developing a solution that will allow consumers to completely opt out of all tracking methods by entering their MAC address into a database, according to The Wall Street Journal. So far 11 location analytics companies have agreed to participate. Read more.

Fraud Council

In Australia, advertisers that operate programmatic platforms, including agencies and tech vendors, have united to create a click fraud council. One major issue that recently came up is the practice of dynamic masking, which allows a company to get around the blacklist temporarily, rendering brand safety tools ineffective. It’s problems like these that the programmatic council hopes to stay ahead of in order to prevent future incidents. Read the rest.

Private Label

UK-based multiscreen ad platform Adbrain launched a mobile programmatic buying service in private beta, according to The Drum. M&C Saatchi Mobile, Annalect, Fetch and Somo will all participate in the private beta. Read on.

Zipping Message

Rance Crain, Crain Communications’ president and the editor-in-chief at Ad Age, explores data and privacy in an op-ed for the trade publication. Crain observes, “Programmatic buying through a myriad of ad exchanges is zipping messages to the farthest reaches of cyberspace, and there are so many missives going to so many places that nobody is really sure of what’s being conveyed to whom. Even the digital-ad media say they can’t always keep track.” Read the rest.

Premium Partnerships

MediaMath says it now has access to publisher platform Sonobi’s inventory, which includes more than 500 publishers from the United States, Canada and Latin America. “We believe there is significant value compression across RTB spend,” said Michael Connolly, CEO and founder of Sonobi. “When a publisher is able to identify and isolate high-value users in a premium auction, it increases organic demand that does not exist in the RTB market today.” Read the release. Chris Karl, a former MediaMath SVP, recently joined Sonobi as its chief strategy officer (a.k.a. chief revenue officer).

Open Internet Battle

The FCC isn’t giving up on Net neutrality, but it has been forced to pivot, according to GigaOM’s Jeff John Roberts, who reviews a commission statement on the matter. Roberts writes, “Now, owing to its bungling of the earlier process, the [FCC] is now tasked with putting the net neutrality genie back in the bottle. [FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler] signaled his intent to do so at several parts of the statement: ‘I intend to accept that invitation by proposing rules that will meet the court’s test for preventing improper blocking of and discrimination among Internet traffic […].’“ The National Cable and Telecommunications Association appeared pleased and said in its statement: “We continue to believe that the values of an open Internet can be preserved, while avoiding a damaging move to heavier regulation.” Read more. The White House hasn’t given up, says The New York Times.

Native Gemini

Following Marissa Mayer’s statement last week that Yahoo is “long on search,” the company rolled out a new platform on Wednesday, Yahoo Gemini, and described it as “the first unified marketplace for mobile search and native advertising” in a Tumblr post. “With Yahoo Gemini, advertisers get the performance and ease of search, combined with the scale and creativity of native advertising,” writes Yahoo’s Jay Rossiter, SVP of its cloud platform group, and Adam Cahan, SVP of mobile and emerging products. Advertisers can access Yahoo Gemini via the company’s self-service buying platform, Yahoo Ad Manager. Read more.

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