Social Butterflies
The employees who know Meta’s platform best work there, right?
Wrong. The CMO of Meta believes the people who know the platform best are the marketers using the platform.
In 2012, when people asked the same question, “I always said to people, hire someone from Zynga,” Meta CMO Alex Schultz tells Ad Age. “Because the Zynga people understand our system better than we do.”
Nowadays, “the Amazon team is brilliant at using us,” he says, along with brands like Disney+ and Coca-Cola.
The Chinese ecommerce marketplaces Temu and Shein “are killers right now” when it comes to using the Meta ad platform. “I’m always just sitting there looking and observing what they’re doing and saying, ‘Wow, I need to learn from them.’”
Meta’s marketing team, he adds, stacks up to anyone as Google advertisers.
To that end, Schultz also says, “I buy the keyword ‘Facebook ads,’ which really goes against my personal beliefs.”
So why do it?
“Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, all show up as paid listings before you get to the SEO term for ‘Facebook ads’” on Google, he says. “And so it’s very clear, actually, when we do the testing, that if we don’t buy that ad, we get less people signing up to buy Facebook ads.”
Going Once, Going Twice …
Big global advertisers and holdcos are trying to get Google, Meta and Amazon to adopt self-regulatory and disclosure-based standards for how they run ad auctions, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The effort is led by OMD Chief Media Officer Ben Hovaness, with support from the MRC.
The proposal shows how in the dark advertisers are about platform ad auctions. The idea would be for platforms to disclose the auction type (like, first price or second price) and what fees, discounts or bidding minimums influence the final price. And to pledge to disclose when material changes occur moving forward.
Google was the only major platform that declined to participate in the discussions. Which is unfortunate because this is primarily a Google problem.
Speaking at Programmatic IO New York City on this topic last week, Hovaness noted recent trials (the DOJ’s parallel antitrust suits against Google Search and Google’s publisher ad tech, though he carefully never named Google) forced revelations of significant auction changes that happened without disclosure to advertisers.
Advertisers believed they were being paranoid or seeing scattered instances of auction gamesmanship, but that type of deception “has happened as a matter of fact.”
And Google ain’t stopping on its own.
Collect First, Ask Later
Data, data, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
To paraphrase the Samuel Coleridge poem, the point is that we are just starting to uncover opportunities, even whole new markets, as brands adopt data-driven practices overall, not just in their online advertising.
The New York Times reports on a cottage industry of companies that offer Wi-Fi-enabled wearable tech and software for “precision farming.” The end result means healthier cows that produce more milk. The livestock-monitoring industry, which is what the software and sensor category is called, is already a $5 billion market.
While the ad opportunity in livestock sensors may be emergent, brands are connecting data in other examples already, even in agriculture and livestock. Land O’Lakes discovered new data-driven opportunities when it began connecting data from its farm feed and equipment business to the marketing CDP. Because 15 to 18 weeks after a baby hatches, it starts needing a different type of chicken feed.
Suntory Global Spirits, the booze brand, began using its distillery visitor information to create lookalike audiences online. The berry brand Driscoll’s connected its supply-chain data to advertising by monitoring how long a berry had been plucked and the time spent in either refrigeration or at room temperature, because the brand didn’t want to spend heavily to advertise past-ripe berries.
As Mark Twain put it: There’s gold in them thar hills!
But Wait! There’s More!
Warner Brothers Discovery appoints Sky Media as its sole ad partner for its 2026 UK launch. [Campaign]
Tractor Supply’s $1.35 million CCPA fine for flawed consent management practices is the latest sign that privacy enforcement is hitting retailers, not just big platforms. [CPO Magazine]
OpenAI’s Sam Altman says he didn’t expect any public backlash to the Sora app – because who’d have guessed people would have “in-between” feelings about deepfakes of themselves saying offensive things? [The Verge]
When the Apple App Store banned DeICER, an app for real-time reporting of ICE’s immigration enforcement activity, it invoked an internal rule that’s used to shield protected groups and minorities from harassment. [Migrant Insider]
The Apple App Store also banned Eyes Up, an app for archiving previously published videos of ICE abuses and controversial enforcement actions that did not include real-time reporting. [404 Media]
Epic Games sues two Fortnite game developers that used bots to inflate the popularity of their games and earn tens of thousands of dollars through the platform’s revenue-sharing program. [Polygon]
You’re Hired!
Podcasting ad platform Acast hires Laura Hagen as SVP, regional MD Americas and global head of agency relations. [Podnews]
Limelight names Jez Fawcett as Global Head of Product. [release]
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