Transmit AdTech

The merger closed on Monday. The purpose of the deal is to bring together under one roof all of the tools developers need to create, test, launch, grow and monetize their games.

Unity first announced its plan to acquire ironSource in July for $4.4 billion in stock. The following month, AppLovin made an unsolicited bid to merge with Unity in an all-stock deal valued at $20 billion, but only if Unity agreed to jettison its pending ironSource acquisition. Unity unanimously rebuffed AppLovin’s offer the week after it was made.

Unity will retire its own mediation tool, Unity Mediation, and replace it with a rebranded LevelPlay, which will now go by the name Unity LevelPlay. IronSource and Unity will each continue to run their own respective ad networks, but both networks will use one mediation platform. Demand will also come from more than 25 other partners that integrate with LevelPlay.

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Apple's ad business is quietly expanding into streaming ads and sponsorship, reports Insider

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General

Nov 7, 2022

Streaming Wars

Apple's advertising empire is set to expand beyond the App Store when Apple TV begins broadcasting Major League Soccer for ten seasons beginning February 2023 — a global deal that is costing Apple $250 million per season.

In a first for the company, Apple is selling traditional TV commercials against its telecasts of MLS games, as well as other sponsorship integrations like digital billboards that appear during programming, people familiar with the matter told Insider.

There are three tiers of sponsorship up for grabs next season, with the most expensive priced at $4 million for the largest number of prominent placements and integrations. The next tier comes at $3 million and the last tier was described by one person familiar as more "a la carte," in which advertisers can cherry-pick a smaller number of specific placements.

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Digital will account for 71.8% of US media ad spend this year, up 16 percentage points from 2019, reports Insider

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General

Nov 7, 2022

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Judy Shapiro

Facebook Parent Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week, reports WSJ

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General

Nov 6, 2022

Layoffs

Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could be the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry’s rapid growth during the pandemic.

The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the people said.

The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history. While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company’s staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment.

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Twitter Sued for Mass Layoffs by Musk Without Enough Notice, reports Bloomberg

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General

Nov 4, 2022

Layoffs

Twitter sent out letters on Friday to regulators in California outlining the layoffs. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as WARN, generally requires at least 60 days of advance notice for mass layoffs at large companies.

The cost for failing to give notice under the WARN Act is limited to 60 days of pay and benefits, plus possible civil fines of as much as $500 per day for violations, said University of California at Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk.

Liss-Riordan’s lawsuit asks the court to issue an order requiring Twitter to obey the WARN Act, and restricting the company from soliciting employees to sign documents that could give up their right to participate in litigation.

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Warner Bros. Discovery Rushes Release Of Combined AVOD Streaming Service, reports AdExchanger

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General

Nov 4, 2022

Streaming Wars

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is still reeling from a rocky post-acquisition start earlier this year, which included heavy content cuts, debt and revenue loss. The combined companies’ networks lost 8% in total Q3 revenue, including an 11% decrease in advertising revenue.

But within its streaming (DTC) business, which includes HBO Max and Discovery+, ad revenue doubled. WBD also gained 2.8 million subscribers for the quarter, bringing its total to 94.9 million users.

Now, it’s bumping up the official launch date of its combined, ad-supported streaming service from summer to spring 2023. (WBD didn’t confirm pricing, other than confirming an ad-free and an ad-supported tier.)

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Elon Musk Says Twitter Has Had Massive Revenue Drop, reports WSJ

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General

Nov 4, 2022

Brand Safety

Elon Musk capped off his tumultuous first week as owner of Twitter Inc. by carrying out sweeping job cuts while complaining that advertisers have slashed their ad spending on the platform over concerns about how he will handle content moderation.

Mr. Musk blamed what he called “a massive drop in revenue” on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He said in tweets that Twitter hadn’t changed content moderation and had tried to address activists’ concerns.

Mr. Musk, later Friday, appeared to threaten to expose advertisers that were withholding business from Twitter even though many have been public about their decision to suspend placing ads as they watch what the new Twitter owner does with the platform. “A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues,” he tweeted.

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MiQ acquires AirGrid, the privacy-first audience platform for publishers

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M&A

Nov 3, 2022

Cookie Deprecation

MiQ, the global programmatic media partner, today announced the acquisition of UK-based AirGrid, the privacy-first audience platform. Powered by edge computing, AirGrid adds critical publisher-focused technology capabilities and proprietary data to MiQ’s extensive solution suite, accelerating its leadership in shaping the cookieless future for clients.

AirGrid is the only platform which enables marketers to connect directly to publishers for privacy-first and cookieless audience creation and activation. Instead of using cookie-based data, AirGrid uses machine learning to segment publisher audiences without the use of any identifiers. It then stores, models, and activates locally on-device or “at the edge” so that user data never leaves a device.

In addition to maximising yield for publishers, these capabilities supercharge marketer audience strategies across a network of premium publishers, without ever having to handle user data, and increases reach in cookieless environments, such as the Safari web browser.

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Musk Plans to Eliminate Half of Twitter Jobs to Cut Costs, reports Bloomberg

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General

Nov 3, 2022

Layoffs

Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company’s workforce, in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Twitter’s new owner aims to inform affected staffers Friday, said the people, who requested anonymity discussing non-public plans. Musk also intends to reverse the company’s existing work-from-anywhere policy, asking remaining employees to report to offices -- though some exceptions could be made, the people said.

Musk and a team of advisers have been weighing a range of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that the terms of the headcount reduction could still change. In one scenario being considered, laid off workers will be offered 60 days’ worth of severance pay, two of the people said.

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Warner Bros. Discovery earnings for Q3 show -8% YoY revenue decline pro-forma ex-FX, Advertising Revenue Up +40.5% YoY

-8% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Nov 3, 2022

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Newsletters Are Booming. Can Their Ad Products Catch Up Reports Adweek

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General

Nov 3, 2022

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HUMAN Acquires clean.io to Enhance Malvertising Protection Across the Media Ecosystem

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M&A

Nov 3, 2022

Ad Fraud

HUMAN today announced the acquisition of clean.io, the industry leader in protection against malvertising and e-commerce fraud. By adding clean.io’s products to the Human Defense Platform, HUMAN is furthering its vision to safeguard the advertising ecosystem from a full range of fraud and abuse by disrupting the economics of cybercrime and ensuring the industry’s $500 billion annual ad spend reaches real humans rather than funding criminal schemes.

The acquisition is the third strategic market move HUMAN has made this year, beginning with the announcement of a $100 million growth funding round led by WestCap and NightDragon followed by the merger with PerimeterX, which included a $100 million debt facility from Blackstone Credit. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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Roku reports continued ad slowdown in third quarter and predicts a fourth-quarter downturn, reports Digiday

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General

Nov 3, 2022

Recession

The advertising slowdown that Roku saw in the second quarter of 2022 deepened in the third quarter. And the connected TV platform owner expects economic conditions to further worsen in the fourth quarter and lead to year-over-year revenue declines in what is typically a strong period.

Roku’s ad revenue still grew in the period, as the number of people using its connected TV platform — and the amount of time they spent streaming programming on it — increased. The company added 2.3 million active accounts in the period.

Roku acknowledged that the TV scatter ad market — i.e. the inventory available for purchase outside of annual upfront commitments — has been particularly hard hit and that Roku plays an outsized role in that market by selling ads across its CTV platform.

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Paramount Q3 Earnings Report +4.6% YoY Revenue Growth, Adjusted OIBDA Down By -22.9% YoY

+ 5% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Nov 2, 2022

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Snap and Amazon partner on AR shopping in the Snapchat app, initially for eyewear, reports TechCrunch

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General

Nov 2, 2022

Retail Media

Snap has landed a notable new partner for its augmented reality-powered Virtual Try-On shopping experience with today’s news that Amazon will now offer Snapchat users the ability to digitally try on eyewear styles from a range of popular brands.

The new partnership between Amazon Fashion and the social app maker will see brands including Maui Jim, Persol, Oakley, Ray-Ban, Costa Del Mar and others made available for virtual try-on to Snapchat’s 363 million daily active users, the retailer says.

The partnership is one of several that have followed Snap’s investments in AR shopping, where it has this year rolled out a number of upgrades to better appeal to retailers and brands, including the ability to update product information and pricing in real time, access better analytics and more easily create AR Shopping Lenses, among other things.

Other brands that have leveraged Snapchat’s AR Shopping Lenses have included MAC Cosmetics, Ulta Beauty, American Eagle, Puma, Chanel, Walmart, LVMH, eyewear brands Goodr and Zenni Optical.

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Netflix With Ads Launching as Talks Continue With Studios Over Content, reports WSJ

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General

Nov 2, 2022

Streaming Wars

Netflix is rolling out an ad-supported tier of service in a dozen countries as it continues talks with major studios, capping a seven-month sprint between the streaming giant’s announcement about entering the ad business and the product’s debut.

The company has so far secured big-name advertisers for its initial launch and hired new senior ad industry executives to help develop its business, but it continues to haggle with several major studios for the right to run ads against their content in the new service or put their content on the ad tier, according to people familiar with the matter. The service is scheduled to launch Thursday in the U.S.

The launch of the company’s ad-supported tier of service, called “Basic with Ads,” comes a month before rival Disney+ starts its first ad-backed plan and as Netflix tries to boost subscriber growth and revenue after a tumultuous 2022. New ad-backed plans are important elements of a push within the streaming industry to make more revenue per subscriber by offering lower-cost plans that let consumers pay less in exchange for watching ads.

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Roku Q3 Earnings Report +12% YoY Revenue Growth, Active Accounts Up +16% YoY

+ 12% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Nov 2, 2022

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Why Google Plays Down Its Ad-Tech Business but Is Determined to Keep It, reports WSJ

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General

Nov 1, 2022

Antitrust

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai met in Washington several months ago with Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sponsored legislation that would require a breakup of the tech giant’s advertising-technology business.

Mr. Pichai’s message in opposing the bill was one that has been a common refrain for the company in the face of concerns about its dominance in the sector: Ad technology is a small part of what Google does, he said, and doesn’t make up a significant share of the company’s revenue, according to people familiar with the meeting.

As Google faces years of regulatory scrutiny over whether it has abused its market power in ad tech—from the European Union and U.K. to the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states led by Texas—the message that it’s a small share of the company’s revenue stands in contrast to its determination to hang onto the business.

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Media Matters for America Coalition letter urges top Twitter advertisers to protect their brand safety

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General

Nov 1, 2022

Brand Safety

Media Matters recently published a list of Twitter's top 20 advertisers in 2022. The coalition letter urges them to stand up for brand safety on the platform now owned by Elon Musk (and Saudi Arabia and Qatar) — before it is too late.

Read the full letter here.

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Zeta Global Q3 Earnings Report +32.2% YoY Revenue Growth, Adjusted EBITDA up by +40.0% YoY

+ 32% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Nov 1, 2022

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Ad Giants Advise Brands to Pause Spending on Elon Musk’s Twitter, reports WSJ

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Nov 1, 2022

Brand Safety

Two large advertising companies recommended that their clients temporarily pause their paid advertising on Twitter, the latest example of Madison Avenue’s cautious stance toward the site after Elon Musk’s takeover.

“The current situation is unpredictable and chaotic, and bad actors and unsafe behaviors can thrive in such an environment,” Interpublic Group of Cos. wrote in an email Monday that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “At this moment, we cannot confidently state that Twitter is a safe place for brands.”

Havas Media is also recommending that clients temporarily pause their Twitter ads in the U.S. because of concerns about the company’s ability to monitor its content, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Social Logins, Increasingly a Liability for Publishers, Are Fading From Sites, reports Adweek

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Oct 31, 2022

Privacy

Social logins, the options people have to log in to a website with credentials from their social platforms like Facebook or Google, are increasingly falling out of favor among publishers amid increasing privacy regulation and media companies’ desire to own their relationship with audiences, four sources told Adweek.

When social logins started popping up on publisher webpages in the past decade, adding them to a publisher page was a no-brainer: People had the ease of not making a new password, platforms could benefit from more data about people outside their properties, advertisers had more signals to target, and publishers benefited from this symbiosis.

Now that calculus is changing. While social logins may make life simpler for users, their legal risks can create future difficulties for publishers.

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As midterms loom, TikTok faces its next political test, reports WaPo

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Oct 31, 2022

Political Ads

Three years ago, TikTok imposed strict rules prohibiting campaign advertising as the video-sharing app tried to avoid the scandals over political content that have long dogged its social media rivals. But with Election Day fast approaching, TikTok can’t manage to stay on the sidelines.

Nearly 30 percent of all major-party candidates in Senate races have TikTok accounts, and one-fifth of all major-party House candidates have an account on the platform, according to a new analysis from the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that examines efforts by foreign nations to interfere in democratic institutions.

Even though politicians are still figuring out how to harness the app’s power, their increased presence signals that TikTok could play a bigger role in future U.S. elections. That’s worrying to some national security and social media experts alike, who say the app isn’t as prepared as other social networks to spot misinformation.

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Audiences say advertisers shouldn’t avoid hard news, like war or Covid, reports Marketing Brew

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General

Oct 31, 2022

Brand Safety

Turns out, audiences aren’t necessarily thinking about advertisers when they’re consuming news about geopolitical crises like the war in Ukraine. That’s according to a survey published by the Trustworthy Accountability Group and the Brand Safety Institute, both industry organizations designed to promote the concept of “brand safety,” which is the idea that a brand’s reputation could be impacted by the content it appears alongside.

Some key results of the survey:

46% said that “all high-quality journalism should be appropriate for ads” without content-specific restrictions
18.6% said news about the war in Ukraine shouldn’t be supported by advertising revenue
18.7% said the same for news about the Covid-19 pandemic

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Google introduces Ads Data Hub for Marketers and Measurement Partners, reports SEL

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General

Oct 31, 2022

Privacy

Google’s Ads Data Hub helps advertisers do customized analyses for their business objectives while maintaining user privacy. Because marketers and measurement partners have different needs, Google has created two different solutions: Ads data Hub for Marketers and Ads Data Hub for Measurement Partners.

The Ads Data Hub for Marketers is a way for advertisers to analyze their data, get access to insights, and be better informed when they buy media.

The Ads Data Hub for Measurement Partners gives partners the ability to provide YouTube insights and measurement services on behalf of marketers, advertisers, agencies, or publishers.

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Bloomberg Opens Up Its First-Party Data To Advertisers, reports AdExchanger

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General

Oct 31, 2022

Cookie Deprecation

Bloomberg Media just turned off third-party ads on its site. But as it shuts the door to open-market programmatic, Bloomberg is opening a first-party data advertising platform. The business media giant described the change as part of a broader evolution in how online advertising works.

Dubbed “Audience Accelerator,” the tool was built in house. Bloomberg created its own data lake with information about its 450,000 subscribers and 5 million registered users. The publisher uses that data for its own targeting algorithms and lookalike modeling. A few advertisers have already run test campaigns using the data.

The Bloomberg audience data in its data lake includes self-identified info, such as job title, industry and seniority, along with people’s reading habits, and can be used to target ads on Bloomberg’s sites and for post-campaign analytics. Registered users, not just subscribers, are prompted to share this kind of information before they view content.

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Elon Musk tweets misinformation about Paul Pelosi, reports Axios

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General

Oct 30, 2022

Disinformation

It's been just two days since Elon Musk officially bought Twitter. Already, the billionaire businessman is using the platform to spread misinformation to his 112 million followers — about the biggest U.S. news of the weekend.

Early on Sunday, Musk cited a widely discredited website that implied the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, wasn't carried out by an unhinged far-right blogger — but rather was linked to an anti-LGTBQ "theory" about a skirmish at a local bar.

“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk said in response to a tweet from Hillary Clinton.

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Elon Musk Is Said to Have Ordered Job Cuts Across Twitter, reports the NYT

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General

Oct 29, 2022

Layoffs

Elon Musk planned to begin laying off workers at Twitter as soon as Saturday, four people with knowledge of the matter said, with some managers being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut.

Mr. Musk, who completed a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Thursday, has ordered the cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others, said three of the people, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. The scale of the layoffs could not be determined. Twitter has around 7,500 employees.

The layoffs at Twitter would take place before a Nov. 1 date when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Mr. Musk may avoid paying the grants, though he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.

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How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World, reports ProPublica

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General

Oct 29, 2022

Disinformation

Google is funneling revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of false information in Europe, Latin America and Africa, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such topics as vaccines, COVID-19, climate change and elections.

The investigation also revealed that Google routinely places ads on sites pushing falsehoods about COVID-19 and climate change in French-, German- and Spanish-speaking countries. The resulting ad revenue is potentially worth millions of dollars to the people and groups running these and other unreliable sites — while also making money for Google.

Read the full report here:

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Krzysztof Franaszek

Ruben Schreurs

Meta, Google earnings suggest RIP to the platform momentum narrative, reports Digiday

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General

Oct 28, 2022

Judging by the latest earnings update from Google, Facebook et al it’s clear that the end is near for this blockbuster chapter of growth for digital advertising. Exceptions aside, it was another tough quarter for the largest online platforms. Digiday publishes a rundown on those that were worst hit.

Let’s be clear, these platforms are still making loads of cash. They’re just not making it as quickly as they once did. Slowdowns like this are inevitable — and not just because there was only going to be some sort of reversion in ad spending after a white hot 2021. This slowdown is more structural.

During the last financial crisis digital media accounted for 12% of total ad spending, according to JP Morgan. Last year, that percentage was 67%. The bigger the ad budgets get the more exposed those dollars — and by extension the media owners they fund — are to broader macro trends.

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Joshua Lowcock

Criteo Q3 Earnings report -12.2% YoY revenue decline, Net income down by -70.8% YoY

-12% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 28, 2022

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Expert Opinions

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OpenWeb, Which Helps Publishers Target Readers With Ads, Raises $170 Million, reports WSJ

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General

Oct 27, 2022

Investment Rounds

Open Web Technologies Ltd., which helps publishers engage readers and target them with ads, raised $170 million in a Series F round led by Canadian venture firm Georgian Partners, the company said. The new round values OpenWeb at $1.5 billion, up from $1 billion in its previous round, according to the company.

OpenWeb launched in Israel in 2014 to help publishers add comment threads to their stories. It later expanded its services to include live-blogging, polling and data-management tools, as well as the placement of ads across publishers’ sites.

Earlier this year, the company acquired French digital advertising firm Adyoulike for $100 million in cash and stock in order to help clients collect first-party data from their readers for ad-targeting purposes.

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TikTok to launch standalone gaming channel, reports the FT

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General

Oct 27, 2022

Gaming / Metaverse

TikTok is making a big push into gaming, adding a dedicated tab within the short-form video platform, its first venture into a different entertainment format.

The Chinese-owned company is the latest video platform to expand beyond video into games, one of the most lucrative entertainment industries, following Netflix’s launch of mobile games last year and filling a void left by rivals Snapchat and Facebook, which are winding down their gaming platforms.

Users will be able to access the games via a button on the homepage of what is one of the world’s most popular video apps. It will feature a host of mobile games where ads can be served and users can pay for additional content, according to four people familiar with the plans.

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Joshua Lowcock

Amazon Q3 Earnings Report +14.7% Revenue Growth YoY, with Advertising Revenues Up By +25.4% YoY

+ 15% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 27, 2022

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Ian Whittaker

Comcast Q3 Earnings Report -1.5% YoY Revenue Decline. Consolidated Advertising Revenues Down -26.2% YoY.

-2% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 27, 2022

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Pinterest Q3 Earnings Report +8.2% YoY Revenue Growth. Adjusted EBITDA Down -61.6% YoY, MAUs flat

+ 8% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 27, 2022

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Amazon Unveils New Video Ad Features Ahead of Q3 Results, reports Videoweek

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General

Oct 27, 2022

Retail Media

Amazon has unveiled new video advertising features at its UnBoxed 2022 conference, allowing more advertisers to create immersive content, including tutorials, demos and unboxing videos.

The retail and media giant stated its intention to open up campaign options for small- and medium-sized businesses. “We want to bring the power of video advertising to more brands, no matter their size or level of resources,” said Tanner Elton, VP of US Sales at Amazon Ads.

In addition, the company announced the launch of Amazon Streaming TV incremental household reach, a post-campaign measurement tool for adverts running across streaming channels. The solution provides aggregated results by combining first-party and third-party signals, the company said, providing marketers with in-flight reporting for optimising brand campaigns.

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Meta Q3 Earnings Report -4.5% YoY Revenue Decline. Net Income Down -52.2% YoY.

-5% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 26, 2022

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Richard Kramer

Judy Shapiro

Joshua Lowcock

Google and Meta cracked down on political advertising. Marketing Brew Investigates Where That Money Went

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General

Oct 26, 2022

Political Ads

Though they still dominate digital advertising, Google and Meta have begun to lose the interest of a once-reliable category—political advertisers. Of every dollar spent on digital platforms during the 2019–2020 election cycle, Meta received 59% and Google made 18%, according to Insider Intelligence.

Now, in light of targeting restrictions placed on political ads since 2019, the category has begun shifting budgets elsewhere. Though analysts predict that Google and Meta will still make a combined total of over a billion dollars in ad revenue this election cycle, political strategists and media buyers told Marketing Brew that they’ve begun to find success elsewhere.

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Spotify Q3 Earnings Report +21.4% YoY Revenue Growth, with Ad-Supported MAUs up by +24.1% YoY

+ 21% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 25, 2022

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Microsoft Q3 Earnings Report +10.6% YoY Revenue Growth. Linkedin Up +16.8% and Search and News +10.2%

+ 11% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 25, 2022

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Alphabet Q3 Earnings Report +6,1% YoY Revenue Growth, Net Income Down -26.5%

+ 6% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 25, 2022

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Don Marti

Some of the largest publishers are breaking up with ad tech middlemen, reports Digiday

Opinions

General

Oct 25, 2022

Supply Chain

Recently, Bloomberg Media, told AdWeek that it ditched Taboola — the source of a lot of cash it got in exchange for letting ads redirect traffic away from its site.

The rationale is straightforward enough: win and retain more subscribers by shielding audiences from the low quality ads companies like Taboola run on their site. Or rather, this is straightforward to certain publishers — the kind that aren’t so reliant on advertising that they have to partner with ad tech vendors against their better judgment.

These are calculated, rational gambits, clearly. Taboola et al just aren’t as lucrative to some publishers as they once were. The downsides of losing them are minimal as a result. And therein is the crux of the matter. Some of the ad tech intermediaries are very important. But there are plenty others that, in a pretty opaque industry, have found a way to insert themselves and arbitrage.

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Judy Shapiro

Apple raises prices of TV and music streaming subscriptions, reports the FT

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General

Oct 24, 2022

Streaming Wars

Apple says it is raising prices for its TV+, Music and services-bundle subscriptions for the first time since their respective launches, becoming the latest consumer tech group to increase fees for customers.

The iPhone maker increased the price of Apple Music by $1 to $10.99 a month, citing “an increase in licensing costs”, and said artists and songwriters would make more money as a result. Family plan prices went up $2 to $16.99 a month.

Apple also raised the price of its Netflix rival, TV+, by $1 to $5.99 a month, while the cost for an Apple One subscription — an all-access pass to its music, TV, arcade, cloud, news and fitness offerings — rose $2 for individuals, to $14.95 a month, and $3 for a family pass, to $22.95 a month.

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Google fined $162 mln by India antitrust watchdog for abuse of Android platform, reports Reuters

Opinions

General

Oct 21, 2022

Antitrust

India's competition regulator on Thursday ordered Alphabet Inc's Google to change its approach to its Android platform and fined the U.S. tech company 13.38 billion Indian rupees ($161.95 million) for anticompetitive practices.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said Google leveraged its dominant position in markets such as online search and app store for Android, to protect the position of its apps like Chrome and YouTube in mobile Web browsers and online video hosting.

CCI also restricted Google from certain revenue sharing agreements with smartphone makers, noting that such practices helped Google to secure exclusivity for its search services "to the total exclusion of competitors."

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BeReal raised $60M in its Series B earlier this year, now has 20M DAUs, reports TechCrunch

Opinions

General

Oct 21, 2022

Investment Rounds

BeReal, the photo-sharing app, has been a huge hit with Gen Z and beyond. Now with other big social apps rushing to clone some of its no-frills ethos, it’s put together a war chest to work on its next chapter. TechCrunch has learned that the startup closed a round of $60 million earlier this year. The funding is coming in the form of a Series B and it values Paris, France–based BeReal at a valuation north of €600 million — which at today’s exchange rates is just under $587 million.

A source tells TechCrunch that the company now has around 20 million DAUs. As a point of reference, The Information noted that the app had 7.9 million users as of July of this year. The numbers appear to indicate that despite efforts from competing social apps to reproduce the core of the BeReal experience — a two-photo set taken from a user’s front and back phone cameras, to be shared with friends at the same time each day — it ain’t nothing like the real thing, so to speak.

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TikTok failed to stop most misleading political ads in a test run by researchers, reports NYT

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Oct 21, 2022

Political Ads

TikTok failed to catch 90 percent of ads featuring false and misleading messages about elections, while YouTube and Facebook identified and blocked most of them, according to an experiment run by misinformation researchers.

The test, run by the watchdog group Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy team at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, used dummy accounts to submit 10 ads in English and 10 in Spanish to the social media services. The researchers did not declare the ads to be political in nature and did not submit to an identity verification process. They deleted the accepted ads before they were published.

Each ad, which included details like an incorrect election date or information designed to delegitimize the voting process, violated policies established by Facebook’s parent company, Meta; YouTube’s owner, Google; and TikTok, the researchers said. In one ad, researchers wrote: “Already voted in the primary? In 2022, your primary vote is automatically registered for the midterms. You can stay home.”

TikTok rejected only one ad in English and one in Spanish, in what the researchers called “a major failure.” TikTok banned political advertising in 2019.

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Snap Inc Q3 Earnings Report +6% YoY Revenue Growth, Adjusted EBITDA Down -58%

+ 6% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 20, 2022

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Marketing budgets fall under heavy scrutiny as risk of prolonged slowdown in 2023 rises, reports Digiday

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Oct 19, 2022

Recession

Come next year things are going to go from bad to worse. Senior marketers know it and are already making contingency plans. Read: rationalizing ad dollars.

Less than a third (29%) of the world’s largest advertisers plan to slash ad dollars next year, according to a study of 43 multinational companies from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Ebiquity. Three quarters of the sample “agree strongly” or “agree” that 2023 budgets are under heavy scrutiny.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Some of those marketers surveyed (28%) claim they will invest more next year, per the study. Which really reinforces one overriding aspect of economic downturns: they affect everyone, but some more than others.

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Study claims widespread collection of unconsented data, reports Digiday

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Oct 19, 2022

Privacy

A report claims that companies are unknowingly in breach of global data protection laws, including in Europe and the Americas, with consent management platforms a particular area of concern.

The audit was published by a company called Compliant, an outfit that claims to offer brands full transparency over their data supply chain, in a whitepaper dubbed “Data Privacy: The Compliance Illusion.”

It contains a Data Safety Index in which Compliant asserts that publishers in the region are placing themselves at risk of censure with a number of findings. Among them:

92% of European publishers operate a CMP
81% of these publishers pass user data to third parties before consent is gained
The average European publisher website contains 27 piggybacked tags

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Uber to Let Marketers Target Riders by Destination, reports WSJ

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Oct 19, 2022

Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. wants to help marketers target consumers with ads based on where they have been and where they are going.

Uber announced the new capability as it rolled out its mobility media division, offering ads across its ride-hailing app for the first time. These ads will be available in select markets at launch. The company sees huge potential for revenue growth in the new ad-targeting product, though some experts say it could raise concerns about consumer privacy.

Uber has been building its ad business for several years, though most of its growth to date has come from ads placed on the Uber Eats food-delivery app, said Mark Grether, general manager of Uber Advertising. The ride-hailing ad business could grow far larger, Mr. Grether said, especially when self-driving cars become more common.

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Data-management company InfoSum has laid off staff as its tech struggles to gain traction in the US, reports Insider

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Oct 19, 2022

Layoffs

Data-management company InfoSum had a recent round of layoffs, the company confirmed. The layoffs, which happened this month, come as it faces a gloomy economic outlook and as the company has struggled to hit its revenue targets, according to people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs earlier this month were across areas including engineering and sales, the people familiar with the matter told Insider. Prior to that, the company had clamped down on costs, such as marketing, those people said. Another person familiar with the matter estimated the layoffs hit 12% of Infosum's staff, or about 20 employees.

The company's founder, Nicholas Halstead, also left the company this week, according to an announcement on his LinkedIn profile. His post said that he had "been transitioning out of the company for a while" and that he planned to spend more time pursuing his motorsport career.

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Meta will be forced to sell GIF platform Giphy after a groundbreaking ruling by UK regulators, reports Insider

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M&A

Oct 18, 2022

Antitrust

UK competition regulators have ordered Facebook parent company Meta to sell GIF database Giphy. The CMA said that Meta's takeover of Giphy "could allow Meta to limit other social media platforms' access to GIFs, making those sites less attractive to users and less competitive."

Meta completed its purchase of Giphy in May 2020, with various news outlets putting the deal at between $300 and $400 million. The CMA started probing the deal in June 2020 and in October 2021 it fined Meta $70 million, accusing it of not reporting all required information about how it was continuing to compete with Giphy.

The month after it ordered Meta to sell Giphy, which the social-media giant appealed. In July, the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) upheld the CMA's decision on five of the six challenged grounds. The CMA said that it was now issuing its "final decision."

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Netflix Q3 Earnings Report +5.9% YoY Revenue Growth, +4.5% YoY Subscribers

+ 6% YoY Opinions

Earnings

Oct 18, 2022

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Microsoft becomes latest tech firm to cut staff, reports Axios

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Oct 18, 2022

Layoffs

Microsoft announced layoffs across multiple divisions. Microsoft declined to say how many jobs had been cut, but a source said the layoffs numbered under 1,000. The cuts occurred across a variety of levels, teams and parts of the world.

“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly. We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead,” Microsoft said in a statement to Axios.

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Retailers, Brands and Tech Platforms Bet Big on Live-Streamed Shopping in the US, reports WSJ

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Oct 18, 2022

Retail Media

Despite becoming a major sales driver in China, live shopping has yet to break through in the West. But some predict that’s about to change.

A number of retailers, brands and tech platforms are convinced that it can, despite a slow start. The practice, which adapts the QVC model of televised home shopping to the digital era, grew popular in the Asia-Pacific region before exploding in China during the pandemic as businesses rushed to connect more directly with homebound consumers.

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OpenAP Gets Investment From Advertising Outsider Snowflake, reports AdExchanger

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Oct 17, 2022

Investment Rounds

Snowflake announced an investment in OpenAP, an advertising identity data company co-owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Snowflake was already OpenAP’s data clean room infrastructure provider, since OpenAP debuted its clean room solution at Cannes in June. But when that commercial partnership started to produce, both companies realized the opportunity for a partnership to become an investment.

This is not a new tactic for Snowflake, which has taken ad tech by storm since the company officially launched a Media Cloud business exactly one year ago. Last November, Snowflake and Habu, another data clean room tech provider, announced a partnership to integrate Habu’s tech with Snowflake for joint customers. A week later, Snowflake became a minority investor in Habu.

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Big Tech accused of shady lobbying in EU Parliament, reports Politico

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Oct 14, 2022

Big Tech companies like Google, Meta and Amazon have deceived lawmakers by lobbying through smaller front organizations, leading lawmakers claimed, asking for the firms to be banned from engaging with European Union institutions.

Leading Social-democrat lawmakers Paul Tang, René Repasi and Christel Schaldemose on Thursday submitted complaints against eight companies and lobbying groups to the EU's lobbying body, the EU transparency register, according to documents seen by POLITICO.

The MEPs asked for an investigation into Google, Facebook's parent company Meta and Amazon, as well as large lobbying groups including tech trade association the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and advertisers' group IAB Europe. Three other lobbies representing small and medium-sized companies — SME Connect, Allied for Startups and Connected Commerce Council — are also targeted by the complaints.

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Kroger to Buy Albertsons in $24.6 Billion Deal, reports WSJ

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M&A

Oct 14, 2022

Retail Media

Kroger Co. said it is buying rival Albertsons in a deal that values the company at $24.6 billion, one of the biggest deals in the history of the U.S. grocery industry. Combining would give Kroger and Albertsons—the largest and second-largest U.S. supermarket operators—greater scale and increased leverage in negotiations with vendors.

The deal would also bolster the grocers’ market share and technology to compete better with Walmart Inc., the top U.S. grocery seller by sales, and Amazon.com Inc., which has been expanding its food operations.

Together, Kroger and Albertsons could command about 13% of the food-retail sales in the U.S. following divestitures for regulatory approval, according to J.P. Morgan analysts—smaller than Walmart’s 22%.

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Netflix will charge $6.99 a month for new ad-supported tier starting Nov. 3 in US, reports CNBC

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Oct 13, 2022

Streaming Wars

Netflix will charge $6.99 per month for its new advertising-supported tier, which the company will roll out in the U.S. on Nov. 3.

Netflix’s “Basic with ads” tier will include an average of four to five minutes of commercials each hour and won’t give users the ability to download movies and TV series. A limited number of TV series and movies will initially be unavailable due to licensing restrictions.

Ads will be 15 or 30 seconds in length and will play before and during Netflix’s content. Companies will have the ability to prevent ads from appearing on content they deem unsavory or unsuitable. To help advertisers understand its reach, ratings company Nielsen will use its standard digital audience measurement, Digital Ad Ratings, in the U.S. beginning in 2023.

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UFC partners with Meta for live and on-demand events in VR on Fight Pass

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Oct 13, 2022

Gaming / Metaverse

The UFC announced a partnership with Zuckerberg’s company Meta, offering live and on-demand MMA events through Meta’s Horizon’s Worlds app for use on their Meta Quest 2 headset.

“We are excited to offer an unprecedented level of engagement for Fight Pass subscribers and MMA fans around the world by producing a live MMA event in virtual reality,” Crowley Sullivan, Fight Pass vice president and general manager is quoted as saying. “With Meta providing the VR platform and YBVR lending their production expertise, we’re confident this will be a great experience for fight fans.”

This announcement comes just days after Meta announced their new Meta Quest Pro headset, which it called “the first in a new line of advanced headsets built to expand the possibilities of virtual and mixed reality.” The new headset will retail at $1,499.99.

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Netflix to get Nielsen ratings as streaming giant rolls out ad-supported plan, reports CNBC

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Oct 13, 2022

Streaming Wars

Netflix announced Thursday that will start using Nielsen’s digital audience measurement in the U.S. to give advertisers an understanding of its reach. It said the Nielsen ratings will start sometime in 2023, marking the first time the streaming giant will have the ratings available for its content.

The move comes as Netflix prepares to roll out a plan with ads that costs $6.99 a month in countries including the U.S. on Nov. 3. The streamer is looking for other ways to grow its revenue after losing subscribers in recent quarters.

Nielsen is the go-to ratings agency for broadcast and cable-TV shows, allowing the advertising industry to have an idea of the size of the audiences reached by various programming. Live sports, especially events such as the NFL’s Super Bowl, and news programming, are often among the top-rated moments on television.

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Google faces EU antitrust charges over its adtech business, reports Reuters

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Oct 13, 2022

Antitrust

Google could face EU antitrust charges next year over its digital advertising business, putting the company at risk of its fourth fine in the EU of more than a billion euros, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Google's ad business, which generated over $100 billion in sales last year, is Alphabet's biggest moneymaker. It accounted for about 80% of annual revenue, despite efforts over the past decade to push into selling hardware, subscription services and cloud computing technology.

The European Commission launched an investigation into Google's adtech business in June last year, concerned that the U.S. tech giant may be getting an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. The EU competition enforcer is likely to issue the charges early next year although the timing may still change, one of the people said.

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