Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
The OOH F.U. ROI
Macy’s is suing its landlord, the Kaufman Organization, to prevent the building owner from placing an Amazon billboard above the department chain’s flagship Herald Square location in New York City. Macy’s has had its own brand on the billboard for more than 50 years, but the original deal expired a month ago. Macy’s says the terms of its deal indefinitely barred other retailers from advertising on the billboard, CNBC reports. “The damages to Macy’s customer goodwill, image, reputation and brand should a prominent online retailer (especially Amazon) advertise on the billboard are impossible to calculate,” the company said in its state court filing.
The Anti-Vax Offensive
Wait, did Facebook and YouTube do something good? On the same day? YouTube expelled some anti-vaccine activists and accounts from the platform, and will remove any video that claims an approved vaccine causes autism, cancer or infertility, according to a blog post. Facebook didn’t announce a new policy or product, but the 10 top-performing posts on the platform yesterday came from Insider, CNN (x2), Occupy Democrats, The New York Times, the Onion, Peachy Sunday (a women’s fashion company), HuffPost, NPR and Reuters. For anyone who keeps tabs on Facebook’s daily top links (usefully compiled by New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose using data from Facebook’s CrowdTangle social analytics tool), that’s a shockingly respectable collection of news brands. Typically, right-wing authors and conservative news rule the leaderboard. This was just one day, but if the CrowdTangle top-10 list continues to show legit news titles, it could mean Facebook either quashed distribution of additional would-be news sites, mostly conservative news and often sites that publish anti-vaccine rhetoric, or changed its classifications for news content or performance.
Ads.Crackdown
The IAB Tech Lab updated guidelines to stave off digital ad fraud. The organization hopes to create a detailed “supply chain framework” to help advertisers adopt anti-fraud solutions and shore up weaknesses in its Ads.txt tool – which publishers use to distinguish authorized inventory sellers. Ads.txt adoption has also been a mixed bag, Adweek reports. Shailley Singh, the IAB Tech Lab’s SVP of product management, recently told AdExchanger that adoption has been good on the sell side. The challenge, he said, is to educate buyers about the “complex relationships” in the ecosystem. The IAB Tech Lab bolstered its suite of products. For instance, it recently extended Ads.txt to CTV and rolled out App-ads.txt. The IAB Tech Lab also released its Content Taxonomy 3.0 last week, which enables more contextual ad targeting in RTB.
But Wait, There’s More!
CafeMedia acquires the SEO platform Topic. [release]
Instagram’s IGTV is establishing itself within the broader video platform. [Digiday]
Microsoft Advertising is bullish about the use of “zero-party” data. [MediaPost]
Accretive Media launches automated OOH attribution tool. [release]
CDP Optimove raises $75M to expand its CRM marketing. [TechCrunch]
The FTC weighs new online privacy rules. [WSJ]
You’re Hired
Precise TV hires Denis Crushell. [Variety]
ADT makes DeLu Jackson its new CMO. [release]
Treasure Data hires Eugene Saburi as chief business officer. [release]
Admix appoints Stefan Adamczyk as VP of global partnerships. [Pocket Gamer]
Glewed TV names Andrew Budkofsky as its CRO. [release]
