Coca-Cola Brings Back The CMO Job; Ad Fraud Comes To TV

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Long Live The CMO

Two years after Coca-Cola retired its CMO role, kicking off what would turn into a trend among big brands, the job title is back. The company has promoted 24-year veteran Manolo Arroyo to CMO, Ad Age reports. But it’s not exactly a reversal, since Arroyo will retain his position as president of Coke’s APAC business. “We know consumer needs are changing faster and faster, and it is critical for the company to be agile in how it responds and adapts,” Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said in a statement. “(Arroyo’s) dual leadership over operations and marketing is a new structure for us, and we anticipate that it will evolve in the months ahead.” More. Related in AdExchanger: The Rise And Fall And Rise Of The Global CMO.

Screening For Fraud

Fraudsters have followed the money to OTT ads, and they’ve brought some sophisticated tactics with them. As supply has opened up in OTT over the past two years, prices have decreased and demand has exploded – making the nascent market ripe for bad actors, Digiday reports. Some fraudsters are copying techniques that are common in digital, such as using bots and spoofing domains, but applied to TV screens. But TV ad fraud has its own challenges, too. For example, on the sell side, SSPs can manipulate buys by cutting commercials into smaller pods and reselling them at a mark-up. Other sellers stuff multiple ad requests into the same pod. And others still are spoofing geolocation, IP addresses and apps to command higher CPMs. Forty percent of fraudulent OTT ads use server-side ad insertion, making it harder to verify. More.

Hear To Stay

Amazon Alexa, the voice assistant embedded in Amazon Echos and other smart home devices, has reached an inflection point. Amazon is shifting from a growth-at-all-costs mentality to making Alexa a more mature, revenue-centric part of the business, The Information reports. The low-hanging fruit for Alexa is to take a cut of content subscriptions and advertising that’s already embedded in music, podcasts and talk shows. To that end, Amazon has reportedly sounded Spotify on an advertising rev-share deal for audio ads, among other potential alliances. More.

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