For those of us who have logged some years in the ad industry, it can feel inevitable that once an ad platform puts ads in one place, it will expand until it puts those ads in every place.
Nailing that expansion into new places is the theme of this week’s episode.
First off, those home screen ads you see when you turn on your TV have long been prized possessions for TV operating systems. Usually, that inventory is only available directly. But now, those home screen ads are going programmatic. Samsung is making its home screen ads programmatic, part of a growing group of smart TV operators that are unlocking this inventory to new demand.
Then, Roblox, the gaming platform popular with grade schoolers, is showing ads to kids under the age of 13. Kids who go through a new age verification system, which uses facial recognition to affirm a kid is the age they say they are, will see untargeted ads if they are under 13. For those of us millennials who grew up on the cereal and toy ads that bracketed our cartoons, the addition offers an interesting window into the ad experiences of Generation Alpha.
What these two companies have in common is that they don’t want to mess up the ad experience as they put ads in new places and in front of new audiences. We talk through the guardrails these companies have put into place as they expand – with a side dish of our own experiences with home screen and pause ads.
