The web is hurting. Google is doing splendidly. Q2 was a “standout,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told investors on Tuesday, with “robust growth across the company.”
Netflix cracks Nielsen’s top 3 channels, but YouTube is still tops; CTV is maturing as a marketing channel, but it comes with zits; and Google rolls out another core update for search.
Social media companies are cutting the junk from their diet; Trump is trying to reshape American media; and selling ads is always the last resort.
The return of in-banner video has resulted in a deluge of cheap video supply flooding the open web, driving down CPM rates for dedicated video inventory and creating user experience and ad quality concerns.
Nextdoor isn’t ruling out AI data licensing, but it has concerns; NBCU touts sports and streaming as drivers of its record Upfronts; and Scholastic follows kids and parents to YouTube.
Advertising restrictions on social platforms often flag keywords and images used in women’s health care ads, preventing those ads from reaching their target audience. There is a “gag order around women’s health care,” Caruso said.
AI Overviews makes dodgy product recommendations because it scrapes marketing copy; discrepancies in TV ratings hamper upfronts negotiations; and why mar tech companies are building software fortresses.
There’s no way around using an assortment of measurement methodologies, says Owen Bickford, the paid performance media director at Alaska Airlines. “I don’t think they can work in a vacuum.”
Google challenges Cloudflare’s anti-scraping tech; are dupes plagiarism?; and web traffic is careening off a cliff.
Measuring media quality is just the first step. A bigger challenge looms: assessing media quality against a marketer’s short-term and long-term goals.
