Alix's Weekly Programmatic Industry News Updates

Hi everyone, 

Welcome to Programmatic Land and sorry I'm late - last week was quite special: it was the one year anniversary of these updates (internally to my current company, RocketFuel - on LinkedIn it has only been a few weeks).

Thank you for reading it! I really like collating these on a weekly basis, and everyone becomes persuaded I am knowledgeable, so it is fun making them believe that.

NOW ENJOY! 

In the news this week: The FT says no to spoofs, how to know which auction type you're in, more ad fraud fighting, YouTube targets more and more, and other stuff if you scroll. 

The Financial Times warns advertisers against high levels of domain spoofing - Read here 

• The FT found display ads against inventory imitating themselves on 10 ad exchanges and video ads on 15 exchanges (even though FT doesn't sell video ads programmatically) 
• The estimated cost of that is ￡1 million a month
• The FT discovered the extent of the fraud right after installing ads.txt - see it helps! 

SSPs will soon pass data to tell ad buyers what auction type they're participating in - Read here 

• Recently, some exchanges announced they would give ad buyers more transparency into how their auctions function - and so have some SSPs
• This is a big step for ad buyers who request more transparency, but they will only be able to adjust their campaigns in real time once DSPs build tools that use this new information to give buyers the choice on whether or not they want to bid in particular types of auctions
• For years this hasn't been possible due to the ad server waterfall and ad buyers not knowing what pricing type of auctions they were bidding in - and it has exposed issues like hidden fees, weird auction dynamics, etc. 

Everyone is helping in the ad fraud fight... Even brands - Read here 

• As you may know unless you've been living in a hole those past 12 months, about 30% of ad impressions are fake or fraudulent. 
• So obviously more and more companies are focusing on fighting this - e.g. the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), the ANA, the IAB etc. 
• Charles Xi, Senior VP Sales at Mobvista, outlines: "If advertisers decide to withhold payment to ad networks that allow fraudulent traffic, that will stop the flow of money through to the fraudsters. It will also prompt ad tech companies to redouble their efforts to become more transparent in how they manage the flow of ad traffic, and empower brands and advertisers with the right measurement and tracking tools to make life much tougher for the fraudsters"

YouTube rolls out tools focused on personalization - Read here 

• These will give marketers a better control over constructing a video ad campaign, enhance targeting and segmentation options, make personalisation easier and measure the campaign's success in a better way. 
• New features include Custom Affinity Audiences, Director Mix, Video Ad Sequencing to AdWords Labs and 3rd party measurement from Nielsen and Oracle 
• Director Mix: creative personalisation tool that lets marketers produce thousands of different video spots with varied voiceovers, backgrounds and copies from a single asset
• Custom Affinity Audiences and Video Ad Sequencing to Adwords Labs are targeting tools based on user search history and mobile apps they installed, or targeting users with different messages... 

Stats of the Week 

• 72% of CMOs feel pressure from brand safety issues and 43% of them have issues with where and how digital ads are placed and viewed. More info here. 

Highlights & Whispers 

• Ever heard of the Chrome Extension Green Screen? It covers banner ads with illustrations of flowers - see here.  
• Adyoulike and The Trade Desk announce a new integration that delivers in-feed native videos programmatically across Adyoulike's publisher portfolio. More info this way. 

Have a great week everyone!

Alix