Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
It Takes Two
ACR data and ad analytics firm Samba TV’s media sales business is now in the hands of programmatic firm MiQ, Deadline reports. As part of the multiyear commercial partnership, MiQ will directly handle all of Samba’s former sales operations.
Meanwhile, Samba TV gets to focus on TV measurement. By shedding its managed advertising biz, Samba TV frees up time and attention it can redirect to measurement and analytics products for streaming TV consumption and ad campaigns.
Presumably, Samba is busy sharpening its knives and eyeing Nielsen’s buffet dinner. As alternative currencies gain traction with broadcasters, now might just be the time to go all in on measurement.
Owning an ad sales business could muddy the waters for Samba with potential strategic partners. By ditching its ads business, Samba is no longer competing with the likes of DSPs or with TV manufacturers that have their own ad businesses, such as Samsung or Hisense.
If Samba has ambitions to become an ad ratings service, advertisers and media sellers will trust those ratings more if Samba doesn’t also sell ads itself.
And The Winners Will Be …
Fans were thrilled last week when Michelle Yeoh told the Golden Globes award show producers to “shut up” when they tried to play her off stage after her win for Best Actress of the Year.
Why does this matter to AdExchanger readers?
Because the disintegration of award show ratings is a reflection of the constraints of linear TV.
It’s not as if award show producers want to hastily yank winners off stage without consideration for non-English speakers or whether someone actually has something of substance to say. That’s just the TV station rule. Awards programs must finish on time and hit their commercial breaks.
And hey, a lot of fans actually enjoy the technical and other down-ballot Academy Awards that no longer broadcast live, and yet both have been sacrificed to the strictures of linear TV.
Starting next year, the Screen Actors Guild will broadcast on Netflix, reports Axios, which calls the deal “a new era for award shows.”
The linear TV edge was always open distribution. Netflix reaches subscribers, whereas even people who just have bunny ear antennas get ABC or NBC.
But if nobody’s watching live TV anyway, why not move to Netflix or Amazon Prime?
Where The Prog Pros Go
Nobody will ever disentangle the labyrinthian complexity of ad tech – but wait.
Never say never. People who have in-depth ad tech knowledge, because they’ve been in the trenches themselves, are here for you.
Meet Sincera, an analytics company that launched last year as a specialized ad tech web crawler.
“If you’re willing to dive into the details, if you’re willing to get yourself a little bit muddy, you can look and see what’s happening,” Sincera Co-Founder Ian Meyers tells Marketing Brew.
Prior to Sincera, Meyers was a longtime product leader at LiveRamp, where he ran addressability solutions.
Sincera’s other co-founder, Mike O’Sullivan, was previously VP of product at Index Exchange and spent time at AppNexus, Criteo and Microsoft.
As the Brew notes, Sincera is part of a cadre of new ad tech and analytics startups that are trying to create a market around shining a light on the programmatic supply chain. One of the ways they’re doing that is by helping ad trade reporters track the activities of vendors in the space. (And we thank them for their service.)
But Wait, There’s More!
A group within the W3C has rejected Google’s Topics API proposal, saying it won’t adequately preserve user privacy. [Insider]
How to pick an identifier to navigate the ad industry’s cookieless future. [Digiday]
Marketing Brew acquires digital media company and short-form agency Our Future. [tweet]
The FTC weighs stiff penalties for deceptive “green” marketing. [WSJ]
Google is locked in a legal battle to avoid a potential global rebranding of YouTube Shorts in the UK. [Bloomberg]
