Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Two Kinds Of ECGs
The TV industry is riled up over Nielsen’s plans to incorporate Amazon’s streaming data in time for the next season of Thursday Night Football.
On Wednesday, the ratings giant responded to the letter the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) sent earlier this week accusing it of giving Amazon an unfair competitive advantage over other programmers. Nielsen refutes the accusations as “misleading and inaccurate.”
“We shared a document in March outlining requirements for the integration of first-party streaming data,” writes Karthik Rao, CEO of Nielsen’s audience measurement division. “Clients other than Amazon did not immediately decide to take action.”
As a result, Rao says, Amazon does not have a competitive advantage over other broadcasters when it comes to Nielsen ratings. If Amazon’s streams have higher co-viewing numbers than other services, the letter maintains, it would likely be because homes watching Amazon Prime have a higher average household size (2.7 persons per home versus the 2.5 average in Nielsen panels).
And the bickering continues.
Press Pause
Shoddy online video inventory may be the rule, not the exception, Adweek reports.
Programmatic video is notoriously troubled, with buyers unable to control their ad placements in a space seething with fraud, mislabeled inventory and misinformation. Programmatic video’s lofty prices (display is far cheaper) and the paucity of quality inventory also make buyers grumble. Plus, inventory quality has only deteriorated over time.
One media buyer tells Adweek that they couldn’t run a campaign in Europe with videos that were 100% audible, viewable on completion and in large enough video players because there wasn’t enough inventory that met their standards.
“The truth is we’re in a muted, outstream, autoplay video bubble,” another buyer says.
Yet, despite these issues, buyers are still champing at the bit to buy online video. The 50,000 highest-spending brands upped their desktop video expenditures by more than 200% from 2018 to 2022 while paring down their desktop display spend by 29%, according to Pathmatics.
In the end, buyers might have to accept that premium programmatic video is a unicorn: elusive, highly sought after and ultimately mythical.
Feeling Like A Trillion Bucks
Growth in ad spend has cooled this year, but the trend may not continue for long.
Marketing research firm WARC predicts global ad budgets will increase by 8.2% in 2024, compared to 4.4% in 2023. That would bring total global ad spend to more than $1 trillion next year, Marketing Brew reports.
But the rising tide won’t lift all boats equally. Five platforms – Google, Meta, Amazon, Alibaba and TikTok parent company ByteDance – will collect 51.9% of that trillion, according to WARC.
Social media and retail media will drive the increase in spend. And, unsurprisingly, the large incumbents in those categories will vacuum up the bulk of budgets.
For example, Amazon is expected to rake in 37% of retail media’s projected $142 billion in 2024 revenue.
Meanwhile, WARC projects that social spend will reach $227 billion next year, with Meta as the largest beneficiary, collecting 64%. (Meta is coming off a down year in 2022, but its Q2 earnings suggested the company is on the upswing.)
The US will absorb about one-third of 2024’s spend. But WARC expects South Asia (12%) and the Middle East (6%) to see the highest rates of growth.
But Wait, There’s More!
Social media users weary of all the curation and creator content on platforms like Instagram are moving to direct messages, group chats and closed niche communities. [Insider]
AWS slept on generative AI, leaving the door open for competitors like Microsoft to pull ahead. [The Information]
Speaking of gen AI, OpenAI’s on track to make $1 billion in annual revenue, thanks in large part to ChatGPT. [Bloomberg]
Eric Seufert: The great streaming squeeze. [Mobile Dev Memo]
Netflix’s anti-password sharing caused a subscriber dip in Australia. [Mashable]
You’re Hired!
NBCUniversal promotes Mark Marshall to chairman of global advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino’s previous role. [Axios]
CNN names Mark Thompson its next CEO. [Ad Age]
Innovid hires Sarah Ripmaster as SVP of strategic accounts. [release]
Larry Hinz joins digital consultancy Bounteous as CFO. [release]
