Welcome To AdTech Weekly
All Things Being Equal, Of Course.
There were a lot of interesting developments this week across the industry. However, one stands out more than any other. It’s been a long time coming, but the IAB may be on to a very simple solution for cleaning up ad fraud across the industry. The development of an Ads.txt program that will give publishers the ability to declare ad partnerships in a simple text file on web servers (in the same way they already do with robots.txt files for search engines) is quite encouraging.
“All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.” — William of Ockham.
It’s amazing what a simple solution like a text file can do for an entire industry. Ad fraud could evaporate immediately. “Sketchy” ad tech providers will disappear overnight. Ads.txt could even clean up “Fake News” problems in a hurry.
It's hard not to oversell it, but as a solution, Ads.txt has a lot it can offer. It just needs to start gaining traction. It has my vote.
AdTech News And Editorial
MailChimp Launches Instagram Ad Campaign Integrations
You can create, manage, and track your email marketing, Facebook ads, and Instagram ads in one place—without any additional fees from us.
Digital Advertising Takes a Hit
When a beer brand wanted to hit a thin slice of the male audience, calorie-conscious men aged 21 to 27, Adobe tested the tactic and showed the client that perhaps it was looking through the wrong goggles to gauge success. By making its ad campaign less targeted, the brand lowered the cost of each ad impression and in the end sold more beer.
Google launches free Google Attribution, hopes to kick last-click attribution to the curb
Google Attribution is focused on understanding the full customer journey versus being limited to looking at last-click impact.
Faceless Publishers
What made this downward spiral particularly devastating is that, as demonstrated by the advertising shift, newspapers did not exist in a vacuum. Readers could read any newspaper, or digital-only publisher, or even individual bloggers. And, just as social media made it possible for advertisers to target individuals, it also made everyone a content creator pushing their own media into the same feed as everyone else: the brand didn’t matter at all, only the content, or, in a few exceptional cases, the individual authors, many of whom amassed massive followings of their own; one prominent example is Bill Simmons, the American sportswriter.
Customertech Will Turn the Online Marketplace Into a Marvel-Like Universe in Which All of Us are Enhanced
Nearly all the world’s martech and adtech practitioners assume we have no more agency in the marketplace than marketing provides us, which is kind of the way ranchers look at cattle. That’s why so many marketers assume, without irony, that it’s their sole responsibility to provide us with an “experience” on our “journey” down what they call a “funnel.”
Outbrain expands programmatic to AppNexus Marketplace
Outbrain has launched Outbrain Programmatic Access (OPA), which is now available on AppNexus Marketplace.
How to Write Powerful Advertorials that Sell
Before writing an advertorial, marketers should get familiar with the publication’s content to learn how it speaks to its readers. Writing an advertorial using a similar tone to the publisher’s allows readers to have a seamless transition from the publisher’s content to the advertorial, and makes them more receptive to a sponsored message.
LUMA's State of Digital Media May 2017
Fantastic roundup of the trends so far this year. Worth poking through.
Ads.txt Could Wipe Out a Legion of Programmatic Ad Players. That's Good
The Interactive Advertising Bureau''s Tech Lab has released a proposed standard called "ads.txt" that allows publishers to declare which businesses are authorized to sell their digital inventory. This lets the demand-side platforms, where buyers find inventory, to verify that the inventory for sale in ad exchanges comes from authorized sellers.
So simple. So effective.
Vendors Need to Shape Up Because Publishers Don’t Need Ad Tech
Publishers need advertisers. Publishers don’t need ad tech. That’s an important distinction that people might not realize from looking at the past ten years of digital publishing. Ad tech promised a lot to publishers, claiming to increase revenue while delivering ads that people actually want to see.
Ad Blocking
Google's Scoring Publisher Experiences, And Will "Filter" Ads Soon
Google isn't calling its technology an ad blocker, instead classifying it as a "filter" that removes the ads that consumers hate most. These include popups, ads that flash quickly, change colors or force people to wait 10 seconds before accessing content on a publisher's page.