Pixalate Releases A Seller Trust Index; Amazon Starts A Partner Program

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Seller Report Card

Ad analytics startup Pixalate surfaced its first monthly Global Seller Trust Index, rating marketplaces for ad quality. Google, OpenX and Rubicon Project rated highly for viewability, fraud and ad engagement. Millennial Media, Yahoo and AOL, meanwhile, have continuing issues. “This is a supply chain management problem and it will encourage good sellers to be ranked high and lower ranking sellers to invest in their supply quality management departments,” Pixalate CEO Jalal Nasir told Business Insider. Next up from Pixalate will be two forthcoming indices, one on website quality and a second looking at DSPs and buy-side platforms. Blog post.

Amazon’s Creative APIs

Amazon Media Group debuted a Trusted Creative Partner Program, allowing select agencies to create and execute campaigns for Amazon’s ecommerce ads and its Fire tablets. “This is e-commerce, and this is marketing in a digitized world,” Mark Renshaw, chief innovation officer of Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide, told Ad Age. “First and foremost this trusted status gives us a greater ability to go to market, a greater ability to move quickly.” Other partners include POSSIBLE, Rockfish and TeaLab. More.

Building The Native Hooks

Berlin-based SSP PubNative says it now supports native formats from any mobile ad network or DSP. “More than 90 percent of mobile demand does not support native formats,” explained PubNative co-founder Ionut Ciobotaru. “Our technology tackles this challenge by enabling all programmatic demand sources to effortlessly access native inventory.” Press release.

$600B In Ads

eMarketer projects global ad spend in 2015 will overtake 2014 spend by 6%, spurred by (what else) digital and mobile. Mobile ads will draw an estimated $64 billion next year and more than double that by 2018, making up 22.3% of all ad spend worldwide. The upward revision is “due chiefly to faster-than-expected growth in China’s mobile ad market.” Read on.

Instagram Advances

Instagram crossed 300 million users and debuted a verification badge for brands and celebrities. With verified badges, Instagram hopes to weed out spammers and imposter accounts. Read the blog post. The NYT points out that this puts Instagram’s user base above Twitter’s. But when will Instagram leverage Facebook’s data regime for Instagram targeting? No word on that yet.