Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Ghosts In The Machine
The rise of machine-learning-powered ad products from Google and Meta is changing the performance marketer’s job from a hybrid creative tactician, media hound and command pilot to, well, someone who just feeds data, text prompts and raw creative assets into platforms.
“The role of a performance marketer is now 100% about giving the right signals, data and assets to the machine,” writes Ben Kruger, CMO of Event Tickets Center, in a blog. Kruger is also a former Googler, who was one of the company’s main evangelists and a consultant to ecommerce brands.
“Give the machine the goods, and it’ll return what you’re looking for,” he writes.
As of now, though, most marketers aren’t feeding Google’s AI with what would be valuable inputs, including product-level profit margins, lifetime customer valuations, detailed product feed info, the links to and from their sites and encryption keys for internal text data. So there’s a lot of untapped potential.
“At this point,” according to Kruger, “an account that is managed by human intervention will lose out to one that is leveraging AI and automation.”
Scopes Up
VCs are hoping the programmatic industry’s new obsession with sustainability isn’t just a lot of hot air.
Brian O’Kelley’s Scope3, a consultancy focused on rating ad tech products by their energy-carbon consumption, announced a $20 million Series A round this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. Investors currently value the company at $100 million, although it hasn’t disclosed revenue.
The funding round was led by GV, a venture capital firm owned by Google parent company Alphabet. Which is ironic, because O’Kelley has been a vocal antagonist of Google’s ad biz and even once testified against the company to Congress based on his experience at AppNexus.
Additional Scope3 investors include Room40 Ventures and Venrock.
Scope3’s ballooning valuation illustrates the growing concern about emissions produced by digital ads, which account for about 10% of the internet’s overall energy consumption, according to a 2018 study.
O’Kelley tells the Journal that, in some cases, agencies are now telling media owners: “I don’t want to spend money with you because your carbon is so high.”
Right Idea, Wrong Module
Instacart has expanded its brand verification capabilities, adding both DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science as third-party partners for viewability and invalid traffic detection.
Both IAS and DV put out boastful press releases about the news. Verification services – actually, the lack thereof – are a sticking point for retail media networks right now.
Big brands pony up trade dollars, which retailers use to target customers around the web. It’s effective, but falls into a classic programmatic trap whereby having tunnel vision on deterministic audiences can blind advertisers to the world around them.
Retailers have rock-solid credit card, email and home address data. As long as they’re confident an impression is valid and viewable, it makes a lot of sense to chase those customers around the web.
But targeting individuals wherever they go around the web – and actually favoring cheaper impressions – will also bring advertisers to some dank corners of the internet.
Which is why, although Instacart’s IAS and DV news is a good start, it also reveals the vulnerabilities for retail media. Invalid traffic detection and viewability don’t solve retail media’s big problems around brand safety and suitability.
But Wait, There’s More!
Chrome Developers: Preparing for the end of third-party cookies. [blog]
TikTok argued in court on Thursday against Montana’s statewide ban of its app. [WSJ]
Teens in the US say they spend more time watching YouTube than Netflix, per investment bank Piper Sandler. [CNBC]
Google’s AI-powered search experience can now generate images and write draft copy. [TechCrunch]
Meanwhile, Google says it will defend users of its Google Cloud and Workspace generative AI products from copyright claims. [Reuters]
The Independent Streaming Alliance that formed in June to promote smaller and minority-owned streaming services now reaches 15% of US households. [release]
You’re Hired!
Consultancy MadTech poaches Horizon Media’s Laura McElhinney to be its chief data officer. [release]
