AdTech News Round-up
The world’s largest Web3 game has thrown its hat into the in-game advertising ring.
Since its initial release in 2021, the blockchain farm simulator game Pixels has accrued a larger user base than any other Web3 game, with over a million users logging in on a daily basis to socialize and farm their virtual land.?
In late July, the game launched its first intrinsic in-game advertising offering, with clickable ads located in natural in-game locations such as billboards and banners. So far, the experiment appears to be showing some promising results: one in-game billboard achieved a claimed conversion rate of over 20 percent, with over 50 of the 237 users who clicked within the ad’s first two weeks purchasing some of the crypto token advertised.
Although the Web3 gaming space is smaller than it once was following the cold of last year’s crypto winter, millions of users still play blockchain games on a regular basis, making the Web3 community a potential gold mine for advertising looking to reach a young, technologically literate audience.?
The U.K.’s data protection watchdog claims a crackdown on websites that don’t ask for consent from visitors to track and profile their activity for ad targeting is bearing fruit. However it’s admitted some of the changes driven by the intervention have seen sites adopting a controversial type of paywall that demands users pay a fee to access content or else agree to being tracked and profiled for ad targeting (also known as “pay or consent”).
The ICO hasn’t divulged which sites have shifted to a pay-or-consent model since it started asking questions about their tracking cookies. But it has named and shamed a couple of companies for not playing by other cookie rules.
On Tuesday local time, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced it’s issued a reprimand to Bonne Terre, the company behind Sky Betting and Gaming, for unlawfully processing people’s information without their consent.
With a growing number of platforms and opportunities for advertisers to engage audiences, creative is increasingly challenging to track and manage across linear and digital channels. Lack of adoption for universal ad creative identification has led to ineffective tracking of ads across platforms, creating a major barrier to successful cross-platform advertising.
Adopting standards and interoperable IDs can benefit the entire ecosystem, enabling solutions that can help solve for omnichannel ROI and establish a thriving marketplace. The promise of cross-platform is fueled by rich data, the evolution of audience targeting and shifting dynamics around privacy – all driven by the fragmented media landscape.
According to the IAB, 89% of ad sellers — including publishers and platforms — have expanded their political ad inventory since the last presidential election. Meanwhile, 86% of these sellers have seen a significant rise in demand. With political ad rates climbing for 84% of sellers, publishers are seizing the opportunity to leverage OOH advertising, targeting voters in high-traffic, real-world locations.
Since Kamala Harris entered the race, 91% of ad sellers have reported a surge in demand for national political ads, while 75% have seen growth locally. Political advertisers now leverage custom audience segments at unprecedented levels, using political affiliation, interest-based targeting, and demographic data like race and ethnicity. The creative potential and precise targeting offered by OOH advertising allow campaigns to connect with younger, multicultural voters in impactful ways.
What’s behind PubMatic’s missing $5 million in 2024 revenue?
In its Q2 earnings report in August, the SSP revised down its revenue projection for the year after it saw shortfalls from an unnamed DSP partner shifting to first-price auctions in May of this year.
The unnamed DSP was Google DV360, a PubMatic spokesperson confirmed to AdExchanger.
Until earlier this year, DV360 contained a bidding logic that increased its bid slightly if an SSP tagged its bid requests as second-price auctions, according to two SSP sources who spoke to AdExchanger but requested anonymity. By tagging auctions as second-price to DV360, PubMatic was able to win more auctions from the DSP, the sources said.
With the help of artificial intelligence, media agencies are analyzing emotions detected in streaming content to contextually align their ads, with the hopes of improving outcomes from attention to ad recall.
Agencies hope that generative AI tools will help them perceive and log the emotions and context of the content on a scene level, be it a show or movie, to help transition ad breaks with a better fit in tone, volume, message and imagery. Imagine watching an intense, emotional scene in “The Walking Dead” slowly building up — only to break into a loud, aggressive car commercial.
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.
They all served as inspiration for the code names associated with different internal Google projects that came to light as part of the DOJ’s ad-tech-focused antitrust lawsuit against Google.
The disclosure of these initiatives generated much discussion over the past couple of years, but it’s unlikely we’ll see the government get into the weeds on them during the trial itself, which is set to begin on Monday morning in a Virginia federal court.