Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Help Me, Help Me
Amazon announced ad platform upgrades at its annual UnBoxed conference, just ahead of quarterly earnings today.
Like Google, Amazon is now a content fortress with its own cloud, which means that when it makes ad tech updates, the result is typically a tighter integration between the different offerings in its portfolio.
The Amazon DSP, according to Digiday, touts new features available within the Amazon Marketing Cloud, an ad analytics hub that’s actually part of AWS. (Google’s Ads Data Hub, which houses Google’s ad server data and clean room tech, is similarly a Google Cloud unit and not part of Google Ads.)
Then there’s the new Amazon Publisher Cloud, built on the AWS Clean Rooms product, which promises media owners better campaign results and privacy standards … but only when they sell to Amazon DSP buyers.
Consider this quote from a press release: “We built Amazon Publisher Cloud to ensure that publishers securely maintain control of their first-party signals with the ability to analyze them alongside Amazon Ads insights, create customized and more effective deals and easily make them available in Amazon DSP.”
Sounds great – although it should be noted that the quote begins with publisher benefits and ends with why the product is important to Amazon.
Can You See Me?
CTV still has a viewability problem.
Roughly 8% to 10% of CTV impressions run when TVs are off, according to a recent report by iSpot and GroupM. Now, buyers are busy trying to figure out why this is happening, Adweek reports.
The biggest and most obvious culprits are external hardware, such as gaming consoles or set-top boxes. If viewers turn off only their TVs, ads can still run on those other devices. Buying fraudulent inventory also causes impressions to fire when a TV is off.
But there are solutions.
Advertisers can buy ads directly from a programmer for more transparency into impression-level reporting, something buyers desperately want.
But the best way to tell if someone is actually watching TV or left the room an hour ago is to simply ask, which is why we’re seeing an uptick in “Are you still watching?” prompts.
The IAB Tech Lab recently added a spec for these prompts to its open measurement SDK, and the signal is currently available for Apple and Android TV devices. Once it’s more widely available, one buyer says, it could lower the likelihood of unviewable ads.
The Snap Back
Snapchat’s earnings report wasn’t a blockbuster, but it’s worth tweezing out a couple details to illuminate broader digital media trends.
For example, Snapchat+, its $3.99 per month subscription product, now has more than 5 million accounts, having added 4 million last quarter – an impressive increase. However, the incremental $60 million or so per quarter Snap gets from subscribers is still just 5% of revenue (based on Eric Seufert’s back-of-the-napkin math at Mobile Dev Memo).
It will be very hard for subscription revenue to become a true pillar alongside advertising.
Another detail is that Snapchat is particularly vulnerable to the whims of world events, which affect brand advertising more than direct response. Most advertisers look to Snapchat as an upper-funnel branding play, not a conversion-and-optimization flywheel like Google, Amazon or Facebookagram.
Also of note, Snapchat declined to provide Q4 guidance citing advertising volatility following the start of the Israel and Hamas war. The company likely prefers not to disclose a number it may miss.
But Wait, There’s More!
One year into Elon Musk’s ownership, Twitter continues to burn a hole in bank balance sheets. [WSJ]
How Google kept Apple’s search ambitions in check. [The Information]
Apple has raised the price of Apple TV+ streaming for the second time in a year. [Variety
Insiders question WPP CEO Mark Read’s bounce-back plan after a chaotic period of mergers, account losses and a stock market slump. [Insider]
Amazon now lets advertisers use generative AI to dress up their product shots. [The Verge]
You’re Hired!
Magnite hires Erik Brydges as head of political demand. [LinkedIn]
