Crossing The Meridian
Last year, Google announced an open-source marketing mix modeling product called Meridian. Now the training wheels are off.
Meridian was tested by “hundreds of brands globally,” according to the Google blog post announcing that Meridian will be available for all advertisers and tech companies. There is also a partner program of 20 vendors and agencies.
The change will elevate Meridian from a testing project to being fully downloadable from GitHub. It’s a relatively accessible MMM codebase, too. Meridian is based on Python, a programming language familiar to ad tech and marketing developers – Meta’s MMM product, called Robyn, is coded in R, more familiar to data scientists or statisticians.
But Meridian is still a Google play, even as an open-source project.
“Traditional MMMs, built for offline media and branding, have historically been unable to fully measure performance media, like Search ads, and AI-powered campaigns,” writes Google Senior Director of Data Science Harikesh Nair in the post. “They lack a modern approach, which may lead to inaccurate budget decisions.”
Prime TV
Amazon Prime Video’s ad business is one year old.
Already, though, Amazon has established itself as a major player in CTV and streaming media advertising, Digiday reports.
Amazon split from other streaming service leaders by force-shifting all customers to viewing ads, with an option to pay for an ad-free version. By comparison, Netflix and Disney+ launched cheaper ad-supported tiers with an option to switch.
Also, Amazon accepted the market rate on its streaming supply. Netflix and Disney+ tried to maintain CPMs around $50-$60 when the services launched. Which perhaps worked at first for the novelty factor, but later became harder for advertisers to stomach. Meanwhile, Amazon grabbed an edge by coming in relatively cheaper and with no preset pricing floor.
Agency buyers especially appreciate Amazon’s TV ad inroads, according to Digiday. And no surprise, since it has forced other streamers and broadcasters to bring down their prices as well.
The Kids Are All Right* [Citation Needed]
The teens just aren’t into Big Tech, TechCrunch reports.
That’s according to a new study from family media recommendation nonprofit Common Sense Media – aka the website parents use to make sure their family movie night pick won’t traumatize their kids – which surveyed 1,000 US teens between the ages of 13 and 18.
Almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) said that major tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta and TikTok cannot be trusted to care about their mental health, well-being or safety over profits.
Meanwhile, a little under half (47%) have “low levels of trust” that Big Tech companies will make responsible decisions about AI use, and a third (35%) say generative AI will make it harder to trust the accuracy of online information.
This contrasts against other findings that suggest Gen Z is more pro-AI than older generations; a survey The Brandtech Group conducted with YouGov, for example, concluded that 18-24-year-olds increasingly use AI tools to help with recommendations.
Then again, the problem isn’t the tech itself, this report suggests – it’s the fact that making money comes before user safety. We’ve all heard tech companies say it’s the reverse, but these teens aren’t buying it.
But Wait! There’s More
Programmatic live events, explained. [Ad Tech Explained]
Meta’s pullback on fact-checking puts brand safety back in the spotlight. [Marketing Brew]
Meta is considering testing the Chinese AI model DeepSeek in its generative AI tools for advertisers, according to an employee. [The Information]
Open AI is exploring whether DeepSeek used ChatGPT results to train its models. [WSJ]
A take on Open AI vs. DeepSeek. [Where’s Your Ed At?]
You’re Hired
MGID makes Kenneth López Triquell its VP of sales, and Tadej Pavlic its head of product for advertisers. [release]
Attorney Jason Howell joins Frankfurt Kurnit as a partner and co-chair of its Advertising Group. [release]
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