Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Church And Stock
News publishers have had some business model challenges lately. That’s not news to anyone.
But one startup hopes to avoid the news industry’s advertiser drop-off and subscription malaise.
The startup, called Hunterbrook, will commission news stories from journalists, while an investment arm trades based on knowledge of how breaking stories will affect stocks, The Financial Times reports.
“Rather than try to predict or react to events, we time trades on news we break ourselves,” says Nathaniel Horwitz, a co-founder, in a pitch doc. The timing aspect is key, because trading on prepublished reports is, well, illegal. Trading on public info the instant it publishes on the other hand …
Hunterbrook’s business model faces headwinds, however, in the form of foreseeable ethical issues and legal quagmires. Like, what happens when a report is wrong and the company profits by seeming manipulation?
The model is also another example of the blurring line between investors and the media.
Eric Seufert of Mobile Dev Memo, for instance, has a VC fund, and Ciarán O’Kane, a co-founder and current chief strategy officer of ad industry news service ExchangeWire, is an investor and co-founder of FirstPartyCapital, an ad tech industry fund.
Farewell Address
Marketers who rely on IP addresses for post-cookie identity data may want to rethink that strategy.
IP addresses are already an unreliable signal. Apple blocks them by default, multiple people and devices can share an internet router and both Safari and Firefox offer products for users to mask their IP addresses.
And now Google Chrome is planning a crackdown with its IP Protection tool, which means the ad industry should prepare for even more disruption, according to Marketing Brew.
Chrome’s IP Protection isn’t on by default – yet. Users still have to opt in. But with Safari and Chrome accounting for 43% and 46% of the web browser market, respectively, the fact is that nearly 90% of internet users will soon be able to hide their IP address.
Google’s solution only applies to third-party tech vendors, meaning publishers can still collect IP directly. Still, the new Google Analytics (GA4) won’t touch IP address data – period.
That means any tech vendor reliant on IP addresses to create user or household IDs must go back to the drawing board, says Mike O’Sullivan, co-founder of metadata analysis platform Sincera.
The one-two punch of third-party cookie deprecation and losing IP addresses, according to Index Exchange’s Andrew Casale, would mean “you’re basically going to have to replumb all of programmatic overnight.” Cool.
Get Blocked
YouTube is cracking down on ad blockers.
The video platform experimented with disabling them earlier this year and is now ready to roll out enforcement globally, The Verge reports.
Video playback will be blocked for those with an ad blocker installed along with a pop-up notifying them to disable the blocker or take a hike. First, though, they’ll be prompted to either allow ads or sign up for an ad-free YouTube Premium subscription.
Like most major streaming services, YouTube prefers ad-supported streaming revenue to subscription only. It raised the price of YouTube Premium by $2 per month in July, and its current crusade against ad blockers brings to mind Netflix’s prohibition on password sharing. In both cases, the point is to produce more ad revenue, not more ad-free viewers.
YouTube is so hungry for ad revenue that, amid the crackdown, users are still reportedly seeing ads for blockers. Yep.
But, hey, ad dollars are ad dollars.
But Wait, There’s More!
What President Joe Biden’s AI executive order means for advertisers. [Ad Age]
Speaking of AI, despite efforts to clean up their training data sets, generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion often spit out images that traffic in – and magnify – harmful stereotypes. [Washington Post]
Google adds more shopping features for merchants. [The Verge]
Amazon expects its new ad products for this year’s Thursday Night Football season to rake in $100 million. [Insider]
Inside TikTok’s livestream expansion. [The Information]
Is Marvel in trouble? [Variety]
You’re Hired!
Comcast’s Effectv hires former Snap exec Chris Vail to head political sales. [release]
January Digital hires Brian Simmons as the agency’s head of growth. [release]
InfoSum appoints Aline Zenses as managing director of the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). [release]
