Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Better Sorry Than Safe
Twitter is partnering with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science on brand safety. Gotta do something to woo back its advertisers.
“Through custom-built solutions for Twitter’s feed environment, these tests have shown that more than 99% of measured impressions appeared adjacent to content that was deemed safe in accordance with the GARM brand safety floor criteria,” writes AJ Brown, Twitter’s head of safety.
Except, brand safety tools don’t solve the main issue with Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Advertisers can ensure they aren’t placed next to posts that contain certain keywords or topics. New “adjacency controls” provide up to 1,000 keywords an advertiser can avoid on the Twitter feed.
Great … but the problem is often with account holders, not the text of specific tweets. When Musk allowed Andrew Anglin, a notorious right-wing writer and Nazi sympathizer, back on Twitter, many of Anglin’s posts would trigger IAS or DV filtering. But horrid individuals also post innocuous tweets, and those would be targeted for ads without violating Twitter’s brand safety standards.
Also, the suitability controls are for the feed, but Twitter’s ad platform also serves ads to profile pages. Without better filtering controls, an advertiser might easily end up smack dab in the middle of Anglin’s page or someone like him.
ARPU Serious?
Netflix says ads are helping grow its subscriber base – but what about revenue?
The streaming giant exceeded expectations for new accounts last quarter, but it didn’t share how many of those subscribers signed up for Basic with Ads – or how much revenue came from ads.
Turns out, Netflix’s AVOD tier is a “drag” on its average revenue per user (ARPU), writes Eric Seufert at Mobile Dev Memo. (Netflix had expected that ads would be neutral or positive for ARPU.)
But Netflix doesn’t appear all that concerned with its “deteriorating ARPU,” Seufert writes. For the moment, Netflix is laser-focused on subscription growth.
Disney, by contrast, raised the price of its ad-free offering when it rolled out ads in order to keep ARPU in the black.
And therein lies the rub: Streamers are battling for new viewers by keeping subscription prices as competitive as possible – but if prices are too low, ARPU tanks.
“Disney did the right thing pushing prices up,” Naveen Sarma, senior director at S&P Global Ratings, told AdExchanger. “Price hikes aren’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Can I Get An Email?
The signed-in web is here to stay.
Even if Chrome never deprecates third-party cookies, the growing importance of CTV, addressability and, well, iPhone customers, means that publishers will continue to push its site visitors to register and log in.
Toolkits, a brand and publisher consultancy, published a note on “the rise of the registered web” that highlights how publishers have prioritized email address collection and other ways of identifying audiences without cookies. Having a strong subset of registered users is no guarantee of profitability, but it does create a solid foundation for a publishing business.
On the other hand, the data shows how difficult it is to register a web audience. Although the majority (68%) of “very profitable” publishers have logged-in audience rates above 7.5%, just 12% of “loss-making publishers had built registered bases of that size,” according to Toolkits.
In other words, getting visitors to register may be difficult, but the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.
“Revenue aside,” writes Toolkits Co-Founder Jack Marshall, “registered user bases are also helping publishers to develop more valuable and engaging content and features by enabling them to understand their audiences more intimately.”
But Wait, There’s More!
Creators report extremely low earnings from TikTok’s ad revenue sharing initiative. [Fortune]
And, speaking of, with TikTok’s growing list of issues, should marketers think twice about the platform? [Digiday]
Microsoft’s cloud outage hits customers around the world. [Reuters]
Nintendo is the Apple of Asia. [Bloomberg]
More advertisers are using clean rooms, but not to their full potential, according to the IAB. [Marketing Brew]
You’re Hired!
Stagwell Technologies appoints Jason Brandt as managing partner, commercial. [release]
“Creator commerce company” Whalar names Ashley Rudder as its first-ever chief creator officer. [release]
