Facebook Expands Political Ad Transparency Tools; Comscore Raises $20M

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Global Transparency

Facebook started rolling out transparency tools for political ads in 2018 – now it’s pushing those tools out globally. These tools include an authorization process, where Facebook confirms a political advertiser’s identity, and the party responsible for the ad will appear on the creative. “With these tools, regulators are now better positioned to consider how to protect elections with sensible regulations, which they are uniquely suited to do,” writes Facebook product manager Sarah Schiff in a blog post. More.

What’s The Score?

Comscore announced that it has raised $20 million from CVI Investments, a venture capital fund, with an option to raise an additional $30 million within a year depending how this investment performs. “This transaction strengthens our balance sheet and positions us to pursue our refocused growth strategy while providing the flexibility to better apply resources to meet our business objectives,” Comscore interim CEO Dale Fuller said in a press release. The media measurement firm has been through a period of disruption – if not an epoch. Former CEO Bryan Wiener suddenly quit in April, and was joined by then-President Sarah Hofstetter. Earlier this month, COO Kathryn Bachmann resigned after only a few weeks on the job. TechCrunch has more.

Mind The Shop

Instagram has stepped up its shopping capabilities, pitting the platform more directly against affiliate marketing and retail tech companies. Major online ad players like Google and Facebook are motivated by “a little bit of fear and a bit of jealousy” of Amazon, Michael Jaconi, CEO of Button, tells Bloomberg. More. What the other ad platforms envy about Amazon is that it’s become a “habituated source of transactions,” which in turn fuels its advertising business. Jaconi said the next stage of growth for online ad platforms will come from capturing shopping intent via mobile and connecting interactions to outcomes like sales, bookings and subscriptions. Button just raised $30 million, bringing its total backing to $65 million, so investors are still betting on independent tech in the mobile commerce space. Read the release.

Pay And Stay

The Herald Sun, a tabloid newspaper owned by News Corp, will start offering bonuses for reporters when their stories drive new subscriptions and subscriber pageviews. The extra payments will amount to “hundreds of dollars” per week for top performers, reports the Guardian Australia. News Corp has an internal analytics tool called Verity used by all of its news properties, which is what the Herald is using to dole out its bonuses. Reporters were briefed on the incentive scheme last week. “They were told it was a measure to encourage reporters to think about ‘selling’ their stories to readers and being more ‘proactive’ across the website and social media.” More.

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