Every Monday we present you a curated list of top AdTech stories in a condensed, easily-digestible format. The goal is simple: maximum knowledge at minimum reading. All you need is five minutes of spare time and a cup of good coffee.
Here’s this week’s portion of interesting industry news:
Why the Rise of Ad Fraud and the Fall of Brand Safety Needs to be Reversed [ExchangeWire]
Fraudulent activity continues to target advertising money. Video ad spend reached an estimated USD$15.4bn in 2018. While this constitutes just 45% of total ad spend, it’s targeted by 64% of all ad fraud, a Forrester study found. Apart from video, fraudsters also target mobile ads, as an estimated 21% of mobile app impressions in 2018 were fraudulent.
Key points:
- The advertising industry today fights not only with bad actors, but also tries to strike the sweet spot between highly-personalised messages and respecting users’ privacy
- Fighting bad actors may benefit all the industry
- Players with clean, engaging traffic can count on more business and longer-running campaigns.
Google Prepares to Launch New Privacy Tools to Limit Cookies [WSJ.com]
On May 7th, 2019, at the Google I/O conference Google announced that they would introduce a set of new privacy and transparency features to their Chrome browser. It’s not known when these features will be available, but a Q4 2019 release seems likely.
Key points:
- Google’s open-source browser extension will provide users with more transparency into which companies are involved in the ad-servicing process, including intermediaries like ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and supply-side platforms (SSPs).
- There will be two new privacy features in Chrome that will provide users with more choice and control over online advertising.
- One feature allows to see which cookies are being stored on their Chrome browser and enable them to block and delete certain cookies, the other one prevents device fingerprinting
We explain what device fingerprinting is and how it works in one of our previous posts.
US digital advertising exceeded $100B in 2018 (IAB report) [TechCrunch]
IAB’s recent report on the advertising industry presents interesting insights about the current state of digital advertising.
Key points
- Mobile advertising is growing at an astounding pace, 40% year-over-year. US ad spending currently stands at $69.9 billion.
- Video ad spending grew 37% to $16.3 billion.
- Eyeballs are being followed by the time spent on these devices.
- Dominance of the Facebook and Google duopoly is growing, collecting 77% of global spending
- GDPR will continue to influence ad spending, but its exact financial impact is still unknown.
Everything You Need To Know About Fingerprinting After The Chrome Crackdown [AdExchanger]
After Safari, Firefox and now Chrome started their crusades for user privacy, device fingerprinting may be the only viable replacement for third-party cookies. But it’s not perfect.
Key points:
- Device fingerprinting bases on the unique settings of the machine browsing the internet. It can include language, resolution, system, browser preferences and network details.
- There is no way for a consumer to opt out of device fingerprinting
- The data seems innocuous on their own, but when interpreted together can probabilistically determine the identity of the user
- Just like with cookies, browsers may soon limit or scramble device fingerprinting
- Blocking fingerprinting techniques may turn out to be a double-edged sword and break websites using e.g. JavaScript APIs
- While fingerprinting may not cut the mustard in the long run, new ID solutions like LiveRamp will be key to driving the success of online advertising for everyone.
We explain how device fingerprinting and cookie syncing work in our previous posts.
