Totally Tubular
YouTube has long been the No. 1 streaming media platform by engagement. In other words, people spend more time watching YouTube on TV screens than internet-delivered services operated by broadcast giants, including Disney, Comcast and Amazon.
But 2025 will be the first year that YouTube is the winner in terms of ad revenue, Variety reports.
That’s based on estimates by investment bank MoffettNathanson, which pegged YouTube as the second-largest streaming TV earner in 2024, hot on Disney’s heels. If YouTube was an independent company, MoffettNathanson believes it would be worth a cool $500 billion, almost one-third of Alphabet’s entire business.
And it’s not just MoffettNathanson. Even official referees have weighed in. Nielsen, for instance, ranked YouTube as the nation’s largest TV content provider in February – for the second time in the past year – even compared with traditional TV broadcasters and streamers like Netflix.
The kicker is that, despite YouTube’s outsized growth, it remains “significantly under-monetized,” as per MoffettNathanson. While other streamers must manage downward pressure on ad rates and reduce supply (there are fewer ad units in streaming), YouTube has a long runway ahead of it.
Antitrust ATTack
Do you hear that? It’s the sound of the mobile ad tech ecosystem saying, “We told you so.”
Nearly two years after the French competition authority began an antitrust investigation of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, we have a decision, reports The Wall Street Journal.
On Monday, the Autorité de la concurrence fined Apple 150 million euros (roughly $162 million) for using ATT to further its own interests at the expense of competitors.
Apple launched ATT in 2021, ostensibly as a privacy enhancement that requires explicit consent for data collection and tracking. But the entire mobile economy cried foul almost immediately, claiming Apple was imposing unfair requirements on third-party apps.
Apple’s first-party apps didn’t bother to request consent for months after ATT’s launch, and then later used different, more permissive language to encourage opt-ins for its own tracking that would have resulted in account suspensions for third-party apps.
An Apple spokesperson told the Journal that it’s “disappointed” with the decision and noted that, despite the fine, the French aren’t requiring any specific changes to the ATT framework.
Which begs an important question: What does the future hold for ATT in the EU?
According to mobile expert Eric Seufert, an early critic of ATT, it’s unlikely the framework will be fully outlawed. But France’s decision does improve the odds that Germany – which is running a parallel investigation – comes to a similar conclusion.
“I believe Apple will most likely have to implement changes to either the ATT prompt, its own ads personalization opt-in prompt, or both,” Seufert writes on LinkedIn.
Let’s Rebrand To “Accord”
Discord Co-Founder and CEO Jason Citron has derided advertising in the past, but the messaging and gaming platform now has big plans to make inroads into advertising.
Discord will be a prominent sponsor of the IAB’s PlayFronts, Ad Age reports. “This is a real opportunity for us to get them to kick our tires,” says business chief Jules Shumaker, who joined this year after stints as CRO at Unity and advertising VP at Zynga.
The online ad industry uses the term “Holy Grail” to describe some mythical form of closed-loop customer tracking. But it could also describe the hope to make live gaming and in-game advertising happen – finally.
There has always been a chasm between the amount of time spent playing mobile or online games (very high) and ad monetization (rather low).
Meanwhile, the gaming industry – mobile gaming in particular – experiences a serious post-pandemic slowdown after engagement soared in 2020 and 2021.
Discord and gaming hubs in general also face a the problem that their large, logged-in user bases are made up mostly of young men and boys who post things that brands don’t want to be anywhere near.
But Wait! There’s More
YouTube turns off ad revenue for fake movie trailer accounts following a report on their terms of service violations. [Deadline]
“Curation” is the new programmatic buzzword. But what do ad tech vendors mean when they say they’re “curators.” [Digiday]
Samsung Ads will offer interactive games within ad units. [Adweek]
Google will pay $100 million to settle a decades-old class-action suit regarding Google Ads (from back when it was still called AdWords) serving ads outside of a geotargeted area. [Reuters]
Reddit rolled out new tools to simplify campaign management for SMBs and make it easier for them to reach niche audiences. [Search Engine Land]
You’re Hired!
Yahoo names Josh Line, previously Paramount Global’s chief brand officer, as its new CMO. [WSJ]
