Pub Crawl
In ad tech, everything is becoming, well, everything.
Viant has released a publisher data feed and dashboard-style product called Viant Publisher Solutions or VPS for short, because why not. The tool provides feedback from the DSP perspective on inventory performance, including match rates, coverage via Viant’s ID graphs, query-per-second allotment and how inventory is graded for quality.
VPS also cuts out other ad tech middlemen, namely SSPs, by creating a direct pipeline between Viant’s DSP and media companies. The participants are mostly in the CTV space, with pilot partners, including Tubi, LG Ads, TCL, Scripps, A+E Networks and Xumo.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because VPS is very similar to The Trade Desk’s OpenPath. The primary difference is that Viant’s version comes with no cost to the publisher. TTD’s OpenPath charges a flat 4.5% fee for publishers to integrate and access direct demand.
That 4.5% is “meant to be nearly breakeven to slightly profitable,” TTD CEO Jeff Green told investors in February.
But Viant clearly thinks that data and publisher integrations are worth far more than charging a fee.
TAG, Nobody’s It
Is the game over?
Adweek reports that Google and The Trade Desk have opted not to renew their Trusted Accountability Group accreditations. TAG has been around since 2015 as a checkbox item for advertisers and ad tech platforms to (purportedly) be able to separate legitimate players from the digital junk.
But it isn’t just platforms pulling back. Procter & Gamble, a long-time vocal proponent of the org, has also stopped contractually requiring ad vendors in its supply chain to have a TAG accreditation.
TAG CEO Mike Zaneis acknowledges that there’s real overlap between TAG and the far more extensive, heavily audited – and more expensive – MRC accreditations. “And they are absolutely correct,” he says of Google’s move.
Google doesn’t need both and wasn’t about to give up its MRC creds.
TTD’s perspective, meanwhile, is that its internal standards are already superior to some TAG requirements – an attitude the sell side can also get behind.
Sell siders have wanted to ditch TAG for years, one sell-side exec tells Adweek. And now that major buyers have signaled their own ambivalence, he says, “we won’t be the only ones considering such a move, I imagine.”
A Token Gesture
OpenAI and Anthropic are battling it out for the role of indie AI frontrunner. And as Anthropic pulls further ahead, OpenAI is considering drastic changes, namely, a significant reduction in the cost of tokens.
Any reduction OpenAI makes to the cost of tokens would likely be mirrored by Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter. But it’s unclear whether cheaper tokens would help or hurt each company’s profit margins.
High token prices are already prompting some corporations to scale back their AI use, regardless of provider. It’s “a huge issue,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at a recent event.
A lot of the key questions come down to the price of tokens.
Can consumer AI costs be covered by business AI revenue? Can investors subsidize business AI costs? Can advertising make up for the losses overall?
But if tokens get cheaper, AI usage could spike – perhaps counterintuitively – and ultimately lead to more profit. (Jevons paradox, anyone?)
Or perhaps OpenAI and Anthropic – which, according to the Journal, already lose billions on the cost of processing queries and executing tasks – will simply crash and burn, popping the AI bubble in the process.
But Wait! There’s More!
A WARC study says the Gulf crisis continues to reduce global ad investment. [Advanced Television]
Walmart Connect DSP expands its programmatic partner pipes via an integration with YouTube and DV360. [Adweek]
Fox plans to show commercials during World Cup hydration breaks in a first for the tournament. [Sports Business Journal]
YouTube appears to be making money off of accounts managed by US-sanctioned groups in Iran. [Wired]
Google can be held legally liable for false claims spread by its AI Overviews, according to a ruling by Germany’s Regional Court of Munich. [The Decoder]
Data from Pokémon Go players who use their phone cameras to scan their surroundings for rewards is being sold by Niantic Spatial to train camera-based navigation systems for military drones and robots. [DroneXL]
Spotify removes tens of thousands of podcasts promoting pharmacies that sell drugs without a prescription after they were uncovered by reporters. [CNN]
You’re Hired!
Health marketing platform Doceree names Yesh Srinivasan, TripleLift’s former VP of data science and engineering, as chief AI officer, and Graham Wilkinson, Acxiom’s former chief innovation officer, as its new chief innovation officer. [release]
Media brand Upworthy appoints Amanda Farrand as CEO. [Variety]
Sarah Gavin, former comms and marketing chief at ZenDesk, is the new CMO of The Trade Desk. [release]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
