Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Not Buying It
There’s been a burst of reports about new subscription-based, ad-free social media products. (Looking at you, Facebook.)
It’s easy for these announcements to get caught up in trends like the pivot to subscriptions or revenue diversification.
But it is not a part of those trends. Social media services that require payments to enter and do not allow for targeted ads should be seen for what they are: negotiating positions as those companies settle even more firmly into becoming personalized advertising companies, writes Bloomberg columnist Max Chafkin.
For one thing, Facebook and Instagram’s pricing in Europe, where they reportedly will introduce a paid-only option in the coming months to users of the normal app who refuse to allow personalized advertising, equates to $15 or more per month. It is, in other words, way too high. It would make them more expensive than many of the phone plans that carry their apps.
TikTok and Snapchat are testing the idea, too.
Grand Reopening
The New York Times is bringing open auction programmatic back to its mobile app, Insider reports.
The Times discontinued in-app programmatic back in 2019, citing a negative impact to user experience. At the time, the Times was deprioritizing ads, especially marginal or less-popular formats, to focus on subscription revenue. And, at the time, mobile open web ads committed many sins against the user experience, from a high prevalence of mobile app redirect ads to heavy, slow programmatic SDKs and javascript that affected load times.
The Times didn’t stop serving programmatic ads to its site, but ditching open-auction programmatic on the app was easy to decide.
This year, though, digital advertising is a more optimistic revenue pillar. It’s back to growth after a year-over-year decline from 2021 to 2022.
The mobile tech has improved. But, more likely, the Times just got hungry enough to bring back in-app programmatic with its ad revenue growing again.
Unshipped
The ship of Theseus is a Greek thought experiment about whether something replaced over time maintains its identity. Does it apply, though, when every plank is replaced?
That’s the starting point for a blog post by Robin Berjon, governance and standards lead of the open-source research company Protocol Labs – also, the former VP of data governance at The New York Times and current board member at the W3C.
Berjon doesn’t paint a sunny picture of the web, though, or seem optimistic for a breakthrough from the W3C.
There are feasible ideas to improve the web, but none “break out of the incrementalist rut and stagnant vision that the web finds itself mired in.”
Greek philosophers contemplated the question of who owns the ship of Theseus. Constituents of the web must now deal with consequences.
“If you don’t replace each and every plank as it decays, then eventually the whole thing will rot and you definitely won’t have the same ship any more, or any ship at all for that matter,” he says. “We’re not far from not having a web left.”
But Wait, There’s More!
How Near Intelligence repackages bidstream data to track individuals, breaking ad tech and data broker terms of service but no laws – in the US, at least. [WSJ]
Shopify wants to woo creators, the ‘new generation of entrepreneurs.’ [Adweek]
The New York Times files a motion to unseal evidence in Google’s federal antitrust trial. [The Verge]
Brands hand out more free samples at Walmart as online ads lose appeal. [Bloomberg]
You’re Hired!
Innovid appoints Anthony Callini as CFO. [release]
