IAB's Rothenberg Critiques Mozilla Cookie Strategy; Malware Trends

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

War Of The Cookies

If browser company Mozilla accomplishes nothing else with its intention to block third-party cookies by default, it at least got people talking. This time it’s IAB’s Randall Rothenberg who criticizes Mozilla for its efforts, saying, “It is not a clearinghouse for cookies — It is a kangaroo cookie court, an arbitrary group determining who can do business with whom. It replaces the principle of consumer choice with an arrogant ‘Mozilla knows best’ system.” Read more.

Ad Spend Down

Ad spending declined the first quarter of this year compared to last year, Ad Age’s Michael Sebastian is reporting. Decreases are attributed to year-over-year comparisons where the Olympics and the presidential election spawned unusual increases in ad spend. Also: “Data from the early second quarter are mixed, suggesting marketers are still being cautious and conservative with ad budgets,” said Kantar Media’s Jon Swallen. Read more.

Global Malware

GigaOm’s Jeff Roberts reviews Google’s latest Transparency Report, which sheds light on malware infecting the World Wide Web, among other nefarious data points. “The highest rate of malware … doesn’t belong to obvious suspects like Russia or Ukraine (8% each), but instead India (15%) and many Latin American countries like Mexico (12%) and Chile (11%).” Read more. And see the Transparency Report.

The Debt Trend

Following other startups’ moves into the world of borrowing (Triggit, Lotame, and [x+1], to name a few), and rather than risking further dilution, b2b data manager and ad platform Bizo announced $12.5 million in financing yesterday. It previously received nearly $16 million in capital from investors, says Crunchbase. Read the release. The company, which was spun out of Zoominfo in 2008, said media and data deals running through its platform are producing a (presumably “gross” rather than “net”) annual run rate of $40 million. Also, read AdExchanger’s May interview with Bizo CEO Russ Glass.

FBX Road Trip

Facebook’s Exchange is adding travel data courtesy of Adara (among others), which aggregates booking data directly from airlines and hotels. From the release: “A hotel chain or rental car company can serve ads about their Hawaii properties or rental car rates to people on Facebook who searched airfares to Honolulu. Or, a mobile communications provider could advertise international service packages to travelers on Facebook who booked flights overseas.” More. Adara at one time sought to pivot away from the travel vertical (AdExchanger story), but has retrenched.

Programmatic Tweeting

Twitter added five new partners to the ads API it opened in February: Kenshoo Social, Optimal, SocialCode, SocialFlow, Unified and Voxsup. According to a Twitter blog post, the company will add new partners on a rolling basis. Read more. One of the new partners, Unified, added Twitter to its Social Operating Platform, allowing programmatic buying across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Read more.

All Things Programmatic

Still in doubt about programmatic? Mondelez’s Bonin Bough predicts a future when programmatic buying dominates all channels, according to The Drum, which covered his participation at the Cannes festival last week. “TV is probably going to be traded on digital exchanges sooner and more rapidly than digital itself was – everything will be programmatic buying,” Bough said. Read more.

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