Got Anything Without Spam?
It’s bad enough that brands have to worry about their ads appearing on made-for-advertising websites. Now, spammy junk is creeping onto their own websites, too.
According to 404 Media, AI-generated pages were recently found on domains hosted by Nvidia, NPR, Stanford University and even several US government organizations.
Most of the content was hidden in abandoned or unmonitored subdomains and covered a wide variety of topics, from the mundane (eyelash-tinting services) to the prurient (NSFW game genres). Nvidia’s defunct events page, for example, was unwittingly the home of more than 62,000 AI-written articles before the company took it down.
But even though Nvidia’s gotten wise, there’s still tons of SEO-focused slop out there, much of it under the byline of a so-called author named “Ashley.”
Google’s AI Overviews even served some of this content to search users, 404 Media found. Legit Google searches (for cat cafes in Portland, for example) lead users to these bizarro cul-de-sac slop pages, because Google’s AI has ingested the rubbish and accepted it as fact.
It doesn’t appear, though, that any of these subdomains contained ads – although many redirected to a site that claims to use Google AdSense. Every site also has the same shared privacy policy that includes language about using third-party advertisers to collect user data.
Doublespeak
When Amazon first launched ads on Prime Video early last year, the ad load was between two and three-and-a-half minutes per hour. Well, it’s double now.
“Prime Video ad load has gradually increased to four to six minutes per hour,” per an email Adweek obtained from an Amazon representative.
This is a major flex by Amazon Ads. Even before starting to gradually increase inventory, Amazon already had huge advantages when it comes to CTV ad sales. For one, it has cheap CPMs compared to other streaming services, like Hulu or Roku, or even compared to inventory available on The Trade Desk.
Amazon’s CTV supply has now roughly doubled with the ad load increase, which brings it closer to being on par with services like Paramount+ and Disney+. (Those two are coming down to four to six minutes from TV’s 10+ minutes per hour.)
“Our commitment is to improving ad experiences rather than simply increasing the number of ads shown,” the Amazon Ads spokesperson says.
We’ll let viewers be the judge of that.
The ‘Partisan’ In Bipartisan
The Trump administration’s FTC is putting a partisan stamp on preexisting bipartisan efforts to increase online protections for kids and teens.
An FTC workshop hosted last week featured a bevy of speakers from right-leaning parents’ rights groups and conservative think tanks, The Washington Post reports.
However, the workshop was originally set up by the Biden administration’s FTC. And some speakers who had planned to highlight free speech rights, antitrust concerns or the harmful design choices of platforms were disinvited in favor of Republican-aligned speakers who emphasize a “family values” agenda.
The featured speakers were in lockstep in their support for age-verification laws recently passed in Republican-controlled states. They also called for more privacy protections for teens and for holding platforms accountable for failing to protect kids from sexual content.
Interestingly, speakers from libertarian groups – which are typically aligned with Republican opposition to government regulation – were also disinvited.
According to The Verge’s Lauren Feiner, excluding libertarians may have been a message to Republicans who oppose the regulation of Big Tech platforms, which is a shrinking but still influential faction. For example, the Republican-led House declined to bring the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act to a vote last year after it passed the Senate 91-3.
But Wait! There’s More
Disney and Universal sue Midjourney for copyright infringement. [Reuters]
Commerce marketing startup FERMÀT raises $45 million. [release]
Publicis Groupe has won Mars’ sprawling media business from WPP. [Adweek]
Five possible candidates for WPP CEO, and why each makes sense. [Digiday]
PMG acquires Momentum Commerce, an ecommerce marketplace analytics and intel company. [release]
Walmart is facing calls for a MAGA boycott after heiress Christy Walton placed a “No Kings Day” ad in The New York Times. [Newsweek]
You’re Hired!
Simpli.fi names Cali Tran as its new CEO. [release]
Kantar appoints Jeff Greenspoon as CEO, Americas. [release]
In-store audio platform QSIC appoints David Haase, former Epsilon Retail Media CEO of the Americas, as president, and hires Artem Lavrinovich as chief data and AI officer. [release]
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