The Color Of Money
When Scope3 was founded three years ago as a carbon tracker for online ads, the US market was still humming.
Nowadays, the programmatic “sustainability” and “waste” conversation has shifted – less carbon, more Benjamins.
For instance, during a panel at the Possible conference in Miami on Monday, Infolinks CEO Bob Regular said publishers are “desperate for sustainable revenue.” But publishers need more bid requests to net higher CPMs.
“Waste can sometimes be a misleading term,” said Greg Joseph, StackAdapt’s VP of inventory development, on the panel. Carbon reduction is commendable. But advertisers want to “find levels of efficiency that we can start driving (programmatic) pricing backwards.”
Publisher incentives still favor programmatic gamesmanship (like quadrupling the bids per impression).
And as Scope3 CEO and Co-Founder Brian O’Kelley noted on the panel, big advertisers still want scale for scale’s sake. Household brands want to reach everybody as cheaply as possible.
Advertisers and publishers want the same unhealthy recipe to turn out a low-sodium, low-sugar version this time.
Plus, isn’t generative-AI tech a sustainability problem, as much as a solution?
“That’s a fair question,” O’Kelley said.
But sometimes there are hundreds or thousands of redundant ad calls for each relevant placement, he added.
Getting rid of those loser bids must be a sustainable improvement.
Or a sustainability improvement.
Whatever.
Facing Forward
The 2010s called – they want Facebook back. The once ubiquitous social media platform seems to be making an unexpected comeback for publishers, Digiday reports.
Last year, Facebook began using a new model that pays creators and publishers based on how their content performs, rather than how the ads within the content perform – and since then, creators have been seeing sizable increases in revenue. One executive reports seeing six to eight times more revenue since this change was implemented.
Meanwhile, between March 2024 and March 2025, Facebook’s referral traffic quadrupled, and publishers are now scrambling for a piece of the not-so-obsolete pie.
That being said, publishers are wary of counting on revenue or traffic referrals from Facebook. Meta has historically been known to remove content from its platform and start and stop paid deals with publishers at the drop of a hat. And besides, creators don’t get any say in which of their pages will be monetizable or for how long.
Still, there’s no denying that, when it comes to revenue shares, Facebook is back in the game. After all, if low-rise jeans are making a comeback, why not just relive the whole decade?
The Docket Rockets
No rest for the wicked.
The online advertising industry waited for what felt like a rather long time to get Judge Leonie Brinkema’s verdict in US v. Google.
But now that we have it – Judge Brinkema found Google guilty the week before last on multiple counts of illegal monopolistic behavior – it looks like the next steps in the process will happen with relative speed. (h/t to Ari Paparo, Khushita Vasant and Jason Kint)
Google and the Department of Justice submitted a joint proposal late last week with a recommended schedule for the remedy phase, including a request for the trial portion to commence on September 22. So this fall, the DOJ could present its arguments in favor of Google divesting GAM (Google Ad Manager), and Google could present its arguments in favor of, you know, not.
This proposed road map builds in a heck of a lot of time, however, for discovery and for both sides to sling their remedy proposals back and forth before the trial – and Judge Brinkema doesn’t seem pleased with it. So she scheduled a hearing for May 2 to hash out the court’s concerns “about the length of time that the parties are requesting.”
Sounds like she wants to get this party started ASAP. Not to mention that the proposed trial start date (September 22) would clash with Rosh Hashanah, which she no doubt doesn’t want to do.
And, anyway, Yom Kippur would make more sense. (Day of Atonement, y’know?)
But Wait! There’s More
ICYMI: AdExchanger did a LinkedIn Live on the Google antitrust verdict. [AdMonsters]
Meta licensed celebrity voices for AI chatbots. The bots are engaging in explicit chats with users claiming to be minors. [WSJ]
Speaking of Meta, the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish investor network JLens are pushing for Meta to release a public report on how it handles antisemitism and hate speech on its platforms. [Business Insider]
University of Zurich researchers ran an unauthorized experiment on Reddit in which AI bots left personalized comments aimed at persuading participants in a popular debate forum. [404 Media]
Two former FTC commissioners who were appointed by Democrats and fired by President Trump earlier this year in defiance of Supreme Court precedent discuss how their firing has impacted FTC oversight. [The Verge]
CEOs are increasingly raising the alarm about the threat posed by the Trump administration’s tariffs in media hits. [Modern Retail]
Temu adds a 145% import charge to US purchases in response to the Trump tariffs. Meanwhile, Shein has raised US prices due to tariffs but has yet to introduce a separate import fee. [CNBC]
You’re Hired!
Spotify hires Jeremy Wirth as global head of creative. [Adweek]
Melissa Kihara joins PHYND as chief product officer. [release]
