Suing AdBlock Plus; Nielsen's Uncertain Future

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AdBlock Battle

Two French publishers, GESTE and the French IAB, are considering suing Eyeo GmbH, creators of AdBlock Plus, on the grounds that the software poses a threat to the advertising ecosystem. The legal proceedings are still in the consulting stage, with a formal complaint yet to be filed. In an installment for Monday Note, Frédéric Filloux explores what the legal action means for the digital ad market at large, and claims that “the rise of ad blockers is the offspring of two major trends: a continual deflation of digital ads economics, and the growing reliance on ad exchanges and Real Time Bidding, both pushing prices further down.” The “race to the bottom” meme ain’t dead yet. More.

Nielsen On Trial

With linear TV faltering, Nielsen is under pressure to reinvent. But measuring video consumption on OTT devices, desktop and mobile is easier said than done, Ad Age’s Jeanine Poggi reports in a feature on the company. For example, “while Nielsen said in September it is now capable of measuring mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, industry executives said that’s not exactly accurate. The software that must be implemented is filled with bugs, according to these executives, and tests of the system have been postponed several times.” More. Related: In case you missed it last week, Nielsen has shown interest in acquiring Datalogix. AdExchanger story.

Half-Year Results

A report from Strategy Analytics details how 44 of the largest publicly listed digital media companies performed in the first half of 2014. The group’s collective revenues topped $85.9 billion, a 17% YoY increase. Google led the pack with $31.4 billion in sales. Online ads accounted for 77% of all digital media revenues, trailed by online games (15%) and video (5%). TechCrunch has more.

Hispanic Early Adopters

Data from Verizon suggests Hispanic audiences are 72% more likely than non-Hispanic audiences to consume video online and via mobile. The study also finds that the average Hispanic viewer watches 90 minutes more online video per month than the average viewer. “This significantly reflects the media patterns of the young Hispanic generation, in particular Millennials, as they are prone to lead the way in consuming much of their media online,” says Daisy Terrazas-Cole, multicultural strategist at Haworth Marketing + Media. These patterns are in line with Hispanics’ early adoption of mobile technology and their tendency to highly consume media across the board. Read more at Media Life Magazine.

Spree And Pray

Yahoo might be shopping around for programmatic tech this holiday season, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Mike Shields. According to ad buyers, Yahoo may aspire to catch Google, Facebook and AOL as advertising moves more swiftly towards automation. Shields speculates that Yahoo’s plan of attack could involve video, on the coattails of its BrightRoll acquisition. Rather than buy one of the remaining large DSPs or SSPs, Shields writes, “Yahoo could go bold and buy one or several emerging players in this programmatic TV cluster, and get its hooks into a market that is certain to grow and has the potential to explode over the next few years.” More. The WSJ also chimes in with ESPN’s programmatic efforts. More here (subscription).