The Missing Link
Log another demerit for YouTube transparency.
Four buyers say their post-campaign reports for YouTube Select are riddled with broken links, Adweek reports.
Google introduced YouTube Select in 2020 as a way for buyers to purchase premium YouTube inventory, including top-performing channels and YouTube TV.
YouTube sends buyers post-campaign reports with links they can click to review the content their ads appeared in. But two buyers say the majority of their YouTube Select reports contained dead links, meaning the buyers couldn’t confirm the “premium” status of most of the inventory they’d purchased.
Another two buyers confirmed that, although links work in the majority of cases, they regularly encounter dead links in their post-campaign reports for YouTube Select and regular YouTube campaigns. It’s unlikely that the dead links mean YouTube was serving ads on defunct content. The problem more likely relates to difficulty with translating YouTube TV inventory – whereby ads run on a user’s connected TV rather than their desktop or mobile device – into standard digital campaign reports.
Guess advertisers have yet another transparency concern about Google’s platform to add to a growing list. (Performance Max and TrueView ring any bells?)
The Bundle Rumble
As predicted, broadband and cable companies have been adding ad-supported streaming to TV bundles since Charter and Disney set a precedent this fall.
Last week, Verizon said it’s planning to offer ad-supported Max (Warner Bros. Discovery’s consolidated streaming service), and Netflix as a discounted bundle at $10 per month, The Wall Street Journal reports. Both services normally cost $17 per month for someone who has both.
(WBD also alluded to an interest in bundling during its earnings call last week.)
Verizon’s move marks the first time Netflix with ads is available through Verizon and points to the reason why streamers are interested in pay TV bundles: Wider distribution helps attract more subscribers to new AVOD services that are still working on their scale.
Many of these services are new. Ad-supported Netflix and Disney+ are only a year old, and Max just launched in May.
Plus (ha, get it?), bundling services helps distributors keep more subscribers from cutting the cord or leaving for a competitor. According to Verizon, it has curbed its rate of churn by as much as 70% by bundling other streaming services together through a single subscription.
Riddle Me This
Google is suing three hackers who have established fake pages with names like “Google AI” and “AIGoogleBard” that are being used to promote posts and run fraudulent ads on Facebook, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The ads, which urge users to download Bard, Google’s generative AI chatbot, are air cover for a malware scam that targets small business owners in an attempt to steal their social media account passwords.
The real Bard is web-based and thus requires no download.
After infecting devices with malware and accessing a business’s social media login info, the swindlers use the accounts to further distribute more malware-infected ads.
Google has submitted around 300 ad-removal requests to Facebook.
This scam is only the latest malware-spreading attempt Facebook has seen this year. It’s not even the first to offer downloads of a web-based generative AI tool. In May, Meta noted that it blocked more than 1,000 URLs related to ChatGPT scams.
But Wait, There’s More!
Google pays Apple 36% of revenue from search ads served in Safari. [Bloomberg]
The tech startup annus horribilis – and what comes next. [The Information]
How agencies are adapting to the rise of the creator economy. [Ad Age]
X, formerly Twitter, paid a pro-Hitler account roughly $3,000 in ad revenue this year. [Media Matters]
Not surprising, then, that most advertisers have fled X, with monthly revenue plummeting close to 60% YOY. But a few have remained thanks to the beleaguered platform’s low prices. [Marketing Brew]
You’re Hired!
Salesforce elevates Denise Dresser to CEO of Slack (which Salesforce acquired in 2020). [Bloomberg]
