Amazon To Invest In 'Outcomes'; Firefox Flips To Google In Search Surprise

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Procter & Gambling

Activist investor Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management won a recount vote for a board seat at Procter & Gamble. P&G previously reported that Peltz lost by a narrow margin, but that now appears to be wrong. The news will come as a blow to Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, since Trian advocates the business be split into three product divisions with autonomous marketing activities. “It doesn’t matter about me,” Pritchard told AdExchanger in October. “What really matters is the employees of P&G, the community in which we operate and the shareholders. Splitting the company into three is a very bad idea. We’ve done a lot of analysis that indicates that it would add a lot more cost to the business.” Shares of the CPG industry giant jumped on the news. And here’s more info on the road map Peltz laid out during his campaign to win P&G co-investors.

Year Of Attribution

2018 will see Amazon boost its support for “outcomes and attribution,” Seth Dallaire, VP of global ad sales and marketing, said Wednesday at the Ad Age Next conference in New York. “There’s a ton of data that’s available to us,” he said. “How do we take these inputs and manage them in a way that we get a better output? Demand for that kind of counsel and interpretation of the data will only continue in 2018. We’re aligning our business in anticipation.”

Go Play In Traffic

The new Firefox release came with an unexpected change: The browser has switched its default search engine from Yahoo to Google. For the past three years, Mozilla’s Firefox has used Yahoo as its default search service after Yahoo outbid Google for a five-year deal. “We are surprised that Mozilla has decided to take another path and we are in discussions with them regarding the terms of our agreement,” Charles Stewart, a spokesperson for Oath, Verizon’s ad business and Yahoo’s new owner, tells Bloomberg. This deal won’t match the billions Alphabet pays Apple for search rights on Safari and Siri, but it does continue the trend of Google allocating more of its revenue to traffic acquisition. Though really it’s paying to consolidate the web search market. With Firefox’s 6% of the browser market and Safari’s 15%, the 55% position held by Chrome is more powerful than it appears – and it already looks pretty powerful. More.

The Data Exemption

American consumer data generates upward of $1,000 in value per person per year, writes Saadia Madsbjerg, managing director of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation, in a column for The New York Times. Why not tax it? She suggests starting with data brokers who bundle and sell information from internet service providers to advertisers or other data buyers. That wouldn’t strike platforms like Google, Amazon or Facebook that profit off data in less straightforward ways (like, by improving user services or targeted ads). A one-time tax of less than 1% on one year’s revenue from data brokerages alone could bring in around $2 billion. “The tax would pull money back to the public, from an industry profiting from material and labor that is, at its very core, our own.” More.

TV Standard (Or Tax)?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is close to a vote on a proposal for a new, next-gen broadcast TV standard called ATSC 3.0, and that’s invited support – and criticism – across the ecosystem. On the one hand, ATSC 3.0 is seen as a way to deliver high-def ads more effectively across IP-based protocol to the splashiest new TV screens. That said, some – like FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel – have voiced their disdain for ATSC 3.0, saying the standard is incompatible with a current slate of TV devices and could drive up costs for consumers who may need to reinvest in new devices that support the nascent signal. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has pushed back, calling opponents of the so-called next-gen TV standard opponents of “technological innovation.” And privacy advocates are also questioning the data collection provisions around the TV standard. More at Bloomberg.