Amazon Ad API Advances; Priceline Swaps Digital For TV

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Step By Step

Amazon is beta testing an API for Amazon Marketing Services that will open programmatic access to self-serve and paid search ads. The API lets brands manage their bids, keywords, ads and budgets through connected buying platforms. While the Amazon Media Services API has been live with an aggregation and reporting function since early this year, it just recently debuted search optimization, one agency holding company exec tells Digiday’s Shareen Pathak. Amazon is also letting advertisers buy product display ads programmatically. The API is not yet widely available but reportedly will go public early next year. “[Amazon] is throttled by the lack of an API,” another buyer said. “There’s so much less you can do without it.” More.

Price Chopper

Priceline will increase its TV advertising by 55% and cut back on digital ads over the next few quarters, Skift reports. Priceline is the travel industry’s biggest spender, investing billions on pay-per-click and search and hundreds of millions on brand advertising. Priceline is making this dramatic change to its media mix because it’s “evaluating whether certain performance-based advertising channels, which include everything from Google AdWords to hotel listings on TripAdvisor or Trivago, really help or hurt in attaining a key goal.” More in Skift’s earnings coverage.

A Dozen Eggs Laid

Facebook fessed up to yet another measurement error this week when it informed some advertisers it had overcharged them for mobile videos that played out of view in Instant Articles, Marketing Land reports. Facebook said it will reimburse for the miscounted views, which exceed $5,000 for some advertisers. While Facebook said the error was much smaller than its first miscounting issue revealed in May, the incident marks the 12th time Facebook has misstated a metric. More.

Telaria Calling

Telaria (formerly Tremor Video) pulled off a successful Q3 as a standalone video seller platform. This was its first earnings cycle after divesting its heritage DSP business in August. Revenue increased 67% YoY to $12.7 million while gross profits increased 68% YoY to $12 million. Although Telaria’s revenue in Q3 was markedly lower than the revenue it generated as a combined business (for the sake of comparison, Q2 revenues inclusive of its DSP were $48.9 million), its growth was strong and gross margin was a staggering 94%. Earnings.

Couch Potatoes

Among US consumers, ‘watching television’ is now a functionally multiscreen experience. The number of adults who will watch television and simultaneously use a smartphone, laptop or tablet in the next year is, roughly, every smartphone-owning adult in the country. But it’s less clear whether that’s an opportunity or a detriment to marketers. According to eMarketer, about three times as many people browse unrelated content – essentially distracting themselves from commercials – than digital media related to the TV show. More.