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Currents Of Currency
In January, a group of US broadcasters formed a joint industry committee, fronted by OpenAP, to work on new video currency standards. On Monday, the JIC published its first guidelines.
The “first pass” on these guidelines establishes a baseline between buyers and sellers. They have reached a consensus on what it means for a company to sell itself as a TV ad currency, OpenAP CEO David Levy tells AdExchanger.
Some of the minimum requirements include operating big data sets that are nationally representative and providing “full transparency” into how they deduplicate audiences and what their match rates are.
Video currencies should use impression-level measurement and be able to deliver IDs with a limited reliance on panels. Also, MediaOcean and WideOrbit get callouts as examples of vendor integration that must be supported for interoperability’s sake.
Still, these are just the basics. Levy says the JIC’s first pass is “a living document” that will be refined and expanded over time.
For the next stage, he says, the JIC anticipates “spending a lot more time calibrating between buy- and sell-side partners.” The goal is to establish a full certification program by the 2024 upfronts.
The DoubleClick Double Cross
A “corporate surgery” to extract Google’s core ad tech (the tech from the DoubleClick acquisition, plus some other parts) doesn’t change the skewed incentive structure that affords Google such dominance over online advertising, according to a blog post by The Trade Desk founder and chief Jeff Green.
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“With all the source code, the resources and the history, any of these features and products could be rebuilt,” he writes.
Green lists some examples of how Google leverages its dominant product lines: Advertisers who spend a $10 million minimum across YouTube, Search and DV360 (the Google DSP) get a rebate; some ad buyers receive free Google phones and valuable smart home merch; publishers sign over their entire supply to Google or risk being filtered out by DV360.
Then there’s Project Bernanke, Jedi Blue and Project Poirot, which diverted revenue from header bidding and were revealed by US attorneys general.
Green’s column also doesn’t get into how the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is interwoven with Google ad tech and media assets by Ads Data Hub – a GCP product, not an Ads business, though the data hub contains the ad server data.
Good luck unraveling this web. But, actually, there may be better ways.
When 1+1 = 2 Trillion
Google isn’t the only globetrotting behemoth who’ll face regulatory issues because of how it flexes (or, in business school speak, synergizes) its advertising and cloud tech businesses.
Another example is Amazon.
The Information reports that, for weeks, Twitter has not paid its past-due Amazon Web Services bills, because Elon Musk wants to renegotiate a five-year cloud services contract (and because he often doesn’t pay contracts unless forced to by a court). Interestingly, AWS secured a small partial payment from Twitter on its $70 million bill after threatening to withhold millions in ad payments to Twitter for Amazon retail marketplace sponsored product listings and other branding and video ads for Amazon Studios productions.
Amazon also has special synergies of its own – namely, the warehouse and fulfillment network. The California AG opened a suit against Amazon last year for allegedly forcing advertisers to use Amazon warehousing and delivery, rather than a DTC or outside fulfillment network.
But Wait, There’s More!
Microsoft is pushing the OpenAI generative content tech to more services, including its Dynamic 365 CRM product. [Tech Monitor]
The Washington Post looks to bring in new subscribers with its first in-house game. [Digiday]
The Biden administration is considering pushing Congress for more legal power to deal with TikTok and Chinese Big Tech. [NYT] TikTok, meanwhile, is waging a charm offensive with UK and US politicians to head off potential bans. [WSJ]
The industry’s creative disconnect is about more than remote work. [Campaign]
