AdTech News Round-up
YouTube Shorts is trendy. But are the ads targetable?
Until recently, not really.
YouTube first launched ads for its short-form video format in 2022, but as of late last year, the ability to buy exclusively Shorts inventory was only available to a small group of advertisers. Most advertisers could only buy Shorts ads as part of a bundle.
But on Wednesday at the Possible conference in Miami, YouTube announced a new feature that allows advertisers to buy ads within YouTube Shorts specifically for particular content categories.
As the Gulf region gains strategic importance in the tech war between the U.S. and China, Microsoft is making a big move into one of the Middle East’s oil-rich countries.
On Monday evening, Microsoft announced a $1.5 billion investment in Group 42 Holdings (G42), the Abu Dhabi-based AI company that has become a major force in the United Arab Emirates’ effort to be a global leader in artificial intelligence. The minority stake will give Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, a seat on G42’s board of directors.
The deal signifies more than a commercial collaboration between two AI titans — it serves as evidence of two countries’ strategic positioning amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The funding comes as U.S. politicians’ grow increasingly concerned about G42’s ties with China. In January, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, urging the Department of Commerce to investigate G42 for inclusion on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List, which would bar the Emirati company from accessing sensitive U.S. technologies.
After years of easy money, the AI industry is facing a reckoning.
A new report from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), which studies AI trends, found that global investment in AI fell for the second year in a row in 2023.
Both private investment — that is, investments in startups from VCs — and corporate investment — mergers and acquisitions — in the AI industry were on the downswing in 2023 versus the year prior, according to the report, which cites data from market intelligence firm Quid.
AI-related mergers and acquisitions fell from $117.16 billion in 2022 to $80.61 billion in 2023, down 31.2%; private investment dipped from $103.4 billion to $95.99 billion. Factoring in minority stake deals and public offerings, total investment in AI dropped to $189.2 billion last year, a 20% decline compared to 2022.
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Clean rooms are one of the buzziest technologies in the advertising industry. Sparked by a need to activate first-party data in a privacy-compliant fashion, many brands are eager to adopt this solution.?
Amid any industry boom comes the eventual consolidation, and it looks like that day has come for the clean room space. Snowflake kicked things off late last year when it bought Samooha, and LiveRamp continued the trend by purchasing Habu in January.
While the industry is assessing its clean room needs, the big question looms: Is consolidation actually going to make things any cleaner when it comes to collaboration, accessibility and pricing?
The digital out-of-home space is starting to hit its stride, and publishers and advertisers are beginning to understand its true benefits for attention, measurement, and much more.?
After a long career working with the largest media holding companies, Brian Rappaport launched his own business focusing on out-of-home (OHH) and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. He founded Quan Media Group in 2019 and has since amassed over 100 clients, primarily through referrals. While Quan Media Group offers media plans, audience profiling, programmatic ad targeting, and measurement reports, Rappaport rejects the “agency” label. He prefers “out-of-home concierge,” which emphasizes the flexibility and speed required in this fast-changing channel.?
Working with a wide range of clients, including FreshDirect, the NYC-based grocery delivery service, Olipop, Ro, PrizePicks, SKIMS, and others, Quan Media Group has picked up a wealth of insights into what makes for a successful out-of-home campaign, which he shared with AdMonsters.
Google started deprecating third-party cookies on January 4, 2024, but most companies are unprepared for the cookieless future.
A 2023 EMARKETER survey reported that 50 – 90% of industries hadn’t yet invested in non-cookie programmatic ads. Now, feedback on Google’s Privacy Sandbox fuels more confusion. The IAB Tech Lab found few use cases viable in the Sandbox. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised similar concerns, spurring about a 60-day standstill period.
So, if you’re an advertiser, what should you do next?
With no one-size-fits-all solution, marketers need a strategic approach. Despite all the doom-and-gloom news out there, cookieless marketing will be better, and there are practical strategies advertisers can implement now to prepare for third-party cookie deprecation.
Streaming is opening the door for more small and local businesses to get in on the action, as the barriers to entry for video advertising come down.
Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed during the company’s latest earnings report that more than 1,000 new advertisers joined Disney+ during the first quarter, a 1,000% increase from launch in late 2022. Meanwhile, Peacock has seen a 40% increase in advertisers over the past year. And Paramount is also making it a priority to bring more small businesses onto Paramount+, with Paramount Advertising COO Steve Ellis noting that Paramount now serves thousands of advertisers.
“Premium video is the one space left in media with scale that SMBs [small-and medium-size businesses] have not really had an optimized experience for,” Ellis recently told The Current. “There is an excellent opportunity in expanding the number of advertisers we work with. It’s streaming and ad-supported streaming and that scale that allows us to even investigate that opportunity.”