Daily News Roundup

Ecommerce and DTC marketers may be overrelying on YouTube and Meta for advertising. Plus, song recognition technology is becoming a problem.

Mediaocean has a new certified partner program. Plus, Google’s “site reputation abuse” search update is cratering publisher affiliate revenue during the year’s busiest shopping season.

OpenAI may be opening up to the idea of serving ads. Plus, Television for toddlers is quietly powering streaming media ratings.

Black Friday ecommerce continues to surge, mainly on mobile; social platforms pull optimization features for health and beauty brands; and Google’s antitrust lawyers subpoena info about rival AI search startups.

It’s been tough going for enterprise SaaS companies since 2021. Plus, the EU’s top antitrust watchdog is pulling back from the regulatory beat.

Meta’s privacy policies are uniquely impenetrable. Plus, Google once thought Apple would likely expand its ad business to third-party apps.

Meta changes policy on “sensitive” ads; Texas AG launches an investigation into GARM; and the CMA takes it easy on Apple and Google when it comes to cloud gaming.

Bluesky’s user count is booming, but it lacks the scale marketers crave; “individual-level prices” are ruining airline rewards programs; and Meta details its fight against forced-labor camps that perpetuate online scams.

Live video threw sports broadcasts for a loop – and the losses are only just being tallied. Plus, media buyers are dealing with a surge of AI-generated, made-for-advertising websites

The Justice Department will ask Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled in August that Google operates a search monopoly, to require Google to sell Chrome. Plus, the ad tech wants the IAB Tech Lab to roll out curation standards.

Perplexity AI, the generative AI search engine trying to out-Google Google, began rolling out its ads products last week. Plus, An AI-powered shoppable ad platform is causing problems for readers of BuzzFeed Australia.

Driverless vehicles could become the next hot media channel; FDA reveals new ad guidelines for drug manufacturers; and artists come up with new ways to sabotage generative AI.

Why the agency pivot to alternative payment models is good for M&A; Zeta Global responds to a short-seller’s explosive claims; and X sees a mass exodus after the election.

Threads will introduce ads to capitalize on users fleeing X; Perplexity tests ads and sponsored queries; and Amazon pulls the plug on Freevee.

Meta continues to tinker with its business model as it deals with the new European regulatory environment. Plus, Government officials liberally used location-tracking software Locate X in criminal investigations dating back to 2018.

Can Netflix do live programming? Plus, efficiency gains from generative AI are causing some ad agencies to rethink how they bill clients.

One priority for Republicans once Donald Trump is back in the White House is to reduce regulation and, specifically, to replace FTC Chair Lina Khan. Plus, Microsoft Bing has a new claim to relevance.

AppLovin might be the next breakout in retail media. Plus, some advertiseres have already turned off TikTok Smart+.

A class-action lawsuit was filed this week against French game studio Ubisoft. Plus, expect Trump to pull back on regulating AI.

Walmart’s latest data play: an app for unlocking barricades on store shelves; training generative AI may rely more on scraping big-name sites than previously thought; and tracking the issues that mattered most to Trump and Harris, based on ad spending.

Nielsen has received accreditation from the MRC for a product that integrates a broadcaster or media company’s first-party streaming data into Nielsen’s TV panel ratings.  Plus, Google launches a curation service that bundles ad inventory within its own Google Ad Manager.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT will launch a web search engine. Plus, this year’s $12-billion-plus deluge in political advertising has priced brands out of certain markets.

Integral Ad Science is raising rates on various products by one to three cents per CPM. Plus, Gannett is inching back to overall growth.

Google holds court with bloggers bumped from its search algorithm; a backlash is brewing as the online recommendation engine goes into overdrive; and X pushes conservative politics to accounts with nonpartisan interests.

Adelaide may become the first vendor to receive accreditation for an attention metric. Plus, the IAB is leading a lawsuit against the FTC.

Google Search dings big-name pubs’ affiliate-link-laden articles; Google’s new audience prospecting guesses user intent from less obvious keywords; and TikTok Shop’s success could finally make social commerce a thing in the US.

Disney redirects subscribers to its site to avoid Apple’s App Store fee; ad tech IPOs are in a lull, but the tech companies that are going public rely on ads for growth; and a Democratic PAC spent $30 million on Spanish-language ads.

The term “data clean room” has gotten co-opted. Plus, a useful one-pager on the new baseline standards for DTC marketing. 

A tool popular with law enforcement can track devices to sensitive locations. Plus, black boxes are getting a bit more transparent.

Ari Paparo’s Marketecture acquires another ad-tech publication; Spotify is launching an SSP; and CPG brands turn to “chaos packaging” to stand out among the crowd.