Nobody’s Property, Everybody’s IP
Last December, Google reversed a long-held policy forbidding IP addresses for ad targeting.
The no-IP stance was awkward for Google. The company was trying to get ahead of what many saw as the inevitable end of IP addresses for targeting. Plus, Google’s under constant scrutiny, and IP addresses can be tied back to an individual, thus creating endless possible privacy issues. In 2022, Google Analytics announced that it would no longer even ingest IP address data, although it’s legal to collect.
Google’s reluctant return to IP addresses was seen as a defensive measure in streaming and CTV, where its ad tech has relatively low adoption. Other DSPs gleefully use the IP address to anchor on households. And TV advertisers generally use the household rather than individuals as the atomic unit.
But The Information reports that, inside Google, there was also concern last year about AppLovin’s growing ad revenue. AppLovin apparently also leveraged IP addresses to win share from Google.
In particular, the IP data meant AppLovin could maintain campaigns across Android and iOS. Google, with its self-imposed IP restraints, was flying blind on iOS by comparison, one agency buyer tells the Information.
The Great Brand Safety Conspiracy
The FTC is investigating how and where brands decide to spend their budgets.
The commission sent inquiries to a dozen ad industry trade organizations and media watchdog groups regarding their business practices, The New York Times reports.
The FTC investigation comes in the wake of several lawsuits filed by X owner Elon Musk, who accused the WFA and GARM, which has gone defunct due to legal costs, of leading a conspiracy to ruin X’s reputation with advertisers.
Brands fled X en masse after Musk bought the social network and reinstated many right-wing – or let’s say not woke – accounts that had been booted for violating former Ts&Cs. This caused a number of brand suitability concerns.
Musk’s lawsuits were also followed by congressional hearings into whether GARM illegally conspired to demonetize conservative media.
Since X has become a conservative media apparatus, there’s political concern about its viability. And although how advertisers spend their budgets is a free speech matter, the FTC seems more focused on whether the lack of ad support is a threat to conservative speech.
As FTC chair Andrew Ferguson put it at a conference last month: “Drying up the advertising will dry up the idea.”
Share the Dupe
Aldi is in hot water for store-brand packaging that “blatantly copies” Mondelez snack lines, CNN reports.
Mondelez filed a lawsuit last week alleging that Aldi’s private label brands bear a marked resemblance to Oreo, Chips Ahoy! and Wheat Thins.
Selling imitation chocolate sandwich cookies isn’t strictly illegal, of course. (And Oreo wouldn’t have a leg to stand on – remember Hydrox, which predated Oreos?) But using the exact same blue packaging as Oreo, and doing the same thing across multiple product lines, is less justifiable.
Over on LinkedIn, BeeRoll CEO Brian Dutt called the lawsuit emblematic of “an age of cut and paste marketing,” where brands specifically imitate competitors rather than create something.
Under a retail media lens, the Mondelez suit registers as more complicated and awkward.
Sure, Aldi’s retail media ambitions are still in early stages, at least as of January last year. But similar cases could be made all over. The CVS private-label dandruff shampoo is, uhh, clearly aping category incumbent Head & Shoulders. Complicating things further, sometimes the brand actually wholesales the private-label product, and the mimicry is tacitly approved.
But Wait! There’s More
Morale among holdco agency employees is, uh, not great these days. [Adweek]
Circana has completed its acquisition of NCSolution. [release]
Journalists used Google’s Veo 3 AI video tool to create convincing deepfakes of riots, conflict and election fraud – prompting Google to add a watermark to its outputs, albeit one that’s easily cropped out. [Time]
Meta is buying nuclear power from an Illinois plant to fuel its AI technology. [Bloomberg]
The one-time billion-dollar “AI” startup Builder.ai was actually powered by 700 human programmers. It is now entering bankruptcy. [International Business Times]
TechCrunch quietly shuts down its European operations after getting sold to a private equity firm in March. [Sifted]
You’re Hired!
Uber appoints Andrew Macdonald to COO, its first in the role since 2019. [Reuters]
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