Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Podded Plants
Podcasters have a new trick for juicing downloads, Bloomberg reports.
The idea is to serve mobile in-game reward ads that players click to collect some virtual loot. In exchange, the user downloads a podcast episode in the background.
It’s a win-win-win for everyone except the podcast advertiser. Game developers need the ad revenue, particularly from non-gaming apps. (Effective in-game ad campaigns for other games have the unwanted effect of channeling players to rival apps.) Users get the in-game bennie. And podcasters win big, because downloads are their key metric.
Most podcast ad deals hinge on downloads, since actual numbers and listening behavior – like, did the listener exit before the sponsor message? – aren’t disclosed by the platforms. Also, podcast ads are typically not programmatic. The ad downloads with the episode; ads aren’t served in real time. So even if the podcast is deleted without ever being opened, the ad counts.
Discovery is a legit problem for podcasters. But this is a cynical metric ploy.
“Don’t rely on [in-game ads] exclusively because at some point you’re going to want as much organic and authentic growth as you can get,” says podcaster Scott Saslov, who Bloomberg spotted using the in-game ad tactic. Also of note: Podcasters aren’t the only ones juicing audience numbers with in-game reward ads. Digital publishers also use the tactic to boost traffic.
Programmatic Plus
Audience targeting and measurement for television is a pain in the behind for digital marketers. Linear TV inventory isn’t typically sold like digital media (aka programmatically).
OpenAP, which is jointly owned by NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, rolled out OpenID last year to help TV programmers sell inventory based on buys across multiple networks. This week, OpenAP announced a programmatic ecosystem extension with three SSPs (Magnite, Comcast’s FreeWheel and Microsoft’s Xandr Monetize).
GroupM is the first agency to sign on.
But convincing buyers to adopt new identity solutions is no walk in the park.
Advertisers’ biggest pain point with TV is the lack of a consistent audience identity across channels because broadcasters sell most of their inventory directly, unlike digital publishers, OpenAP CMO Brittany Slattery tells AdExchanger.
“Enabling OpenID programmatically unifies endpoints across linear and digital delivery, and allows for deduplicated reach and frequency measurement,” she says.
The main value prop of programmatic is to scale audience buys across an expanse of inventory. Buyers can now include OpenID audiences across their other digital and linear buys when they buy through their DSP, Slattery says.
Priva-Seeing Green
Privacy lawyers have had a bonanza lately. The California Gold Rush doesn’t hold a candle to it. And there’s still gold in them thar hills.
The latest cascade of business comes courtesy of the California Attorney General, who reached a $1.2 million settlement with Sephora, partly because of Sephora’s marketing data applications and how it handled (or failed to handle) global opt-out requests.
The settlement served as a warning shot to other brands that CCPA enforcement is happening. Many companies didn’t comply with CCPA in 2020 because they begrudge its definition of a data “sale,” The Wall Street Journal reports. California defines a sale as any use of data by a third party, even if not a cash-for-data transaction. Companies dragged their feet on telling customers that they “sell” their data in consent notices, because consumers hate that phrasing. Small and even large companies across ecommerce, media and martech may not have expected the spotlight would fall on them. Governments go for Google, Facebook and Amazon, maybe spice things up with Apple or Microsoft. But Sephora?
Now any brand with email sign-ups or first-party data used to target ads must buckle down. Google won’t be the target every time, and clicking all the right checkboxes in Google Marketing Platform won’t cut it, either.
But Wait, There’s More!
The initial results are in for Google Chrome’s FLEDGE trial. [Adweek]
Why Kochava says it doesn’t want to settle with the FTC. [Marketing Brew]
McKinsey: ‘If you’re going to build something from scratch, this might be as good a time as in a decade.’ [blog]
Amazon is still figuring out how to price its TV inventory. [Insider]
TripleLift launches in-show ad spots for connected TV. [release]
You’re Hired!
Crossmedia taps Ram Singh as chief performance media officer. [release]
