Home The Big Story The Big Story: Will Google Reopen YouTube?

The Big Story: Will Google Reopen YouTube?

SHARE:
The Big Story podcast

Digital advertising is poised to grow despite a looming economic slowdown, according to midyear advertising forecasts from Zenith and GroupM.

The macro trends are distressing: As inflation rises, tech stocks crater, and the potential for a recession increases. The only certainty is that uncertainty is on the horizon. But even though both Zenith and GroupM cut their growth forecasts for digital advertising, both agencies are projecting more than 10% growth.

Still, signs of a slowdown are evident, from excess stock piling up at retailers, such as Target, to companies like Microsoft pulling TV advertising in an effort to avoid layoffs.

But while tech stocks are down overall, former digital media darling BuzzFeed is breaking records. BuzzFeed’s stock price has decreased by more than 80% from the time of its IPO late last year. When employee share lockups expired last week, the stock took a nosedive. Not a great sign of confidence among those who know the business intimately.

Then we discuss Google’s reported plan to compromise with European competition regulators to avoid an $18 billion fine. According to Reuters, Google is considering allowing outside ad tech companies access to YouTube inventory for the first time since 2015.

When Google took YouTube inventory out of AdX, third-party ad tech companies lost millions.

Although restoring access to YouTube inventory could help save Google billions of dollars in fines, regulators are going to want more before they settle. Listeners, what else should Google offer up to resolve the EU’s antitrust case?

Regulators around the world are watching.

 

Must Read

Comic: What Else? (Google, Jedi Blue, Project Bernanke)

Project Cheat Sheet: A Rundown On All Of Google’s Secret Internal Projects, As Revealed By The DOJ

What do Hercule Poirot, Ben Bernanke, Star Wars and C.S. Lewis have in common? If you’re an ad tech nerd, you’ll know the answer immediately.

shopping cart

The Wonderful Brand Discusses Testing OOH And Online Snack Competition

Wonderful hadn’t done an out-of-home (OOH) marketing push in more than 15 years. That is, until a week ago, when it began a campaign across six major markets to promote its new no-shell pistachio packs.

Google filed a motion to exclude the testimony of any government witnesses who aren’t economists or antitrust experts during the upcoming ad tech antitrust trial starting on September 9.

Google Is Fighting To Keep Ad Tech Execs Off the Stand In Its Upcoming Antitrust Trial

Google doesn’t want AppNexus founder Brian O’Kelley – you know, the godfather of programmatic – to testify during its ad tech antitrust trial starting on September 9.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

How HUMAN Uncovered A Scam Serving 2.5 Billion Ads Per Day To Piracy Sites

Publishers trafficking in pirated movies, TV shows and games sold programmatic ads alongside this stolen content, while using domain cloaking to obscure the “cashout sites” where the ads actually ran.

In 2019, Google moved to a first-price auction and also ceded its last look advantage in AdX, in part because it had to. Most exchanges had already moved to first price.

Thanks To The DOJ, We Now Know What Google Really Thought About Header Bidding

Starting last week and into this week, hundreds of court-filed documents have been unsealed in the lead-up to the Google ad tech antitrust trial – and it’s a bonanza.

Will Alternative TV Currencies Ever Be More Than A Nielsen Add-On?

Ever since Nielsen was dinged for undercounting TV viewers during the pandemic, its competitors have been fighting to convince buyers and sellers alike to adopt them as alternatives. And yet, some industry insiders argue that alt currencies weren’t ever meant to supplant Nielsen.