New York Life is in the insurance business – but the brand also has to protect itself. Marketers today have several metrics to juggle in their digital buys: Fraud, viewability and context top the list. But it’s not enough to monitor these metrics; brands need to take action. Natan Cohen, New York Life’s corporate VP of […]
Do ads for STD self-testing kits count as sexual content? If medical and recreational marijuana use is legal in California, why can’t a cannabis advertiser geotarget Californians over the age of 21 on the large social platforms? These are the gray areas that certain categories of advertisers have to navigate on a daily basis, and […]
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, acknowledged that some marketers are “feeling uneasy” about viewability, online ad metrics and brand safety. She outlined updates meant to address that discomfort. First, Facebook intends to give advertisers more control over where their ads are running by tightening guidelines on the […]
While Google claimed advertisers are returning to YouTube, new data from Standard Media Index reveals advertisers really did tighten their purse strings after the video platform’s brand safety scare. YouTube ad spend declined about 26% YoY in Q2, while ad spend spread across digital video platforms such as Hulu or network-owned video services, in comparison, […]
Every vendor in the supply chain takes its cut before a CPM goes to work, and that includes a fee for brand safety protection. It’s a small price to pay, said John Montgomery, global EVP of brand safety at GroupM, running somewhere between two and 10 cents per thousand impressions for brand safety protection when […]
The duopoly isn’t a duo when it comes to brand safety. The nuances of how their respective platforms operate mean that Facebook and Google face their own particular challenges to ensure brand safety. While the primary risk on YouTube is adjacency – ads appearing within or beside unsavory or questionable content – the personal nature of […]
Facebook made several overtures to openness on Wednesday with tools designed to give advertisers more control over where and how their ads appear across in-stream video on Facebook, Instant Articles and the Audience Network. “Advertisers want separate controls for inside the news feed environment and outside the news feed environment where ads are more deeply […]
NBCUniversal’s chairman of advertising sales, Linda Yaccarino, went straight for Google’s jugular at the network’s Monday upfront presentation. “At NBCUniversal, you never have to worry about showing up next to something objectionable,” Yaccarino said at the New York City event, alluding to the online giant’s brand safety struggles. “But, let’s be honest: Brand safety is […]
For Vice Media, an edgy, youth-oriented publisher rooted in eccentricity, being brand-safe means giving advertisers enough control over their ad placements to keep the briefs coming. “There’s certain content brands would like to be associated with and certain content they would not,” said Andrew Smith, VP of digital for Vice Media. He noted that much of […]
Whisper, an app that lets its anonymous users post what’s on their mind, is still going strong after five years – even after other secret-sharing social apps like Yik Yak have closed shop. One reason for its longevity is that it is making money through programmatic advertising. Demand partners include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, OpenX […]
8 p.m. Katy Perry. That’s all. 7:40 p.m. Google Preferred FTW Google Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl claimed Google Preferred (translation: Google’s top tier videos) has tripled its number of advertisers. Kyncl credited YouTube for turning publishers like BuzzFeed, Vice and AwesomenessTV into “daily destinations of can’t-miss programming.” Consumers watch over 1 billion of hours […]
Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]
On the heels of Google’s ongoing brand safety headache, MediaMath is trying to add a few safety bumpers to the sharp edges of the digital ad ecosystem. The programmatic buying platform took the wraps off a product on Thursday that aims to help advertisers find addressable audiences on brand-safe sites at scale. MediaMath vets a […]
Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]
As advertisers yank spend from YouTube and Google Display Network due to brand safety concerns, premium publishers see an opportunity. These pubs have long complained that audience-based buying devalues the context they provide – context they claim ensures brand safety. “Marketers are recognizing in a blunt force way the difference between a platform and publisher,” […]
By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]
Ad-supported brand-unsafe content is on the rise. DoubleVerify, which validates tens of billions of advertiser impressions per month, has blocked 8 million ads from appearing on content pages classified as hate speech – up threefold since January. And according to keyword targeting tech platform Grapeshot, the amount of terrorism-related content it sees flowing through its systems […]
The UK boycott of YouTube and the Google Display Network jumped the pond Wednesday when AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson joined the ever-growing pile-on of advertisers suspending their ad spend over brand safety concerns. But the issue at the heart of this developing scandal – ads appearing next to extremist and offensive content – […]
Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]
Mobext, the mobile arm of Havas Media Group, is hoping to get away from using pain-in-the-neck manual whitelists and blacklists to manage brand safety and contextual placements. Consequently, it’s been testing the fruits of an integration – revealed Wednesday – between Peer39, the brand safety and online semantic platform Sizmek bought in 2012, and StrikeAd, […]
This is the 12th and final installment in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Read previous interviews with comScore, DoubleVerify, Dstillery, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, Moat, PubChecker, RTB Asia, Telemetry, Videology and White Ops. Wasted delivery is not necessarily fraud – but all fraud is wasted delivery. In other […]
In the past week, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify – two companies whose aim is to ensure that brand advertisers get the kind of exposure and inventory they expect – unveiled their respective tools designed to limit, if not eliminate, the waste caused by fraudulent traffic – namely “bots.” The new tools, as outlined by […]
Click Forensics announced the “beta version of its display ad verification platform which it says “Protects Against Impression Inflation and Fraud.” Read the release. AdExchanger.com spoke to Click Forensics CEO Paul Pellman about the news. AdExchanger.com: Please define what you mean by “impression inflation.” How pervasive is this issue and how do fraudsters pull it […]
By John Ebbert, Managing Editor, AdExchanger.com. “Hey Frankie – have you heard? Brand safety solutions are the rage!” [Cue the surf music.] Within the recent demand-side platform (DSP) trend where advertisers effect buying strategies across multiple supply sources – and potentially hundreds of websites -, a growing list of companies and products is emerging to […]
David Smith is CEO of Mediasmith, a digital advertising media agency. The biggest impact will be the increased credibility and volume to the Exchange category. It should also give a big boost to the technology platforms like Turn, MediaMath and Invite which agencies are increasingly using to combine exchange purchasing with targeting options. Our concern […]
