AppNexus Looks to Get By Without Buy-Side MRC Accreditation
The MRC has revoked AppNexus’ accreditations for all metrics on its buy-side business—and AppNexus is saying that’s okay. The company had withdrawn itself from the accreditation process in March, some months after the MRC suspended AppNexus’ accreditation back in September for not complying with IVT detection standards. As AppNexus stated, they’re working with third-party measurement companies (specifically DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, MOAT and Meetrics) that are all MRC-accredited, which the company says has them essentially covered and removes the need for AppNexus itself to get on board. The company’s statement suggests they would prefer to avoid the cost of accreditation, and adds that some of the major DSPs (including DBM, DataXu and MediaMath) “appear to have made a similar calculation.” Meanwhile, on the publisher side, Appnexus says it’s still working with the MRC to have its ad server accredited. It makes a person wonder whether this is pointing the way toward new “best practices” for the industry, even though at the same time it seems to counter the notion put forth by other trending industry initiatives that everyone along the ad supply chain get their certifications in order.
Facebook Adds Contextual Background to Publisher Posts
Facebook joins the party (well, a party where YouTube is also in attendance, as the video platform recently announced it would be placing similar “cues” adjacent to certain videos) in adding contextual information about publisher sites next to their content. That contextual information includes additional headlines from the same publisher, and info from the pub’s Wikipedia page—or, if there is none, a note saying there is none—next to links to their content. Maybe you know this already—if you’ve been on Facebook, you’ve seen it.
NBCU to Transact on Impressions for Digital and TV
NBCU has adopted a unified metric for TV and digital—they’re transacting everything on impressions, using a metric they’re calling CFlight. By this metric, an impression will count if it’s been viewed all the way through. The company worked with Nielsen, comScore and Moat on the standard, and it’s encouraging other measurement companies to collaborate.
EBDA Out of Beta, Looks to Add More Ad Formats
Google’s server-to-server offering, Exchange Bidding on DoubleClick Ad Exchange, is out of beta mode. AdExchanger says it’s already being used by “hundreds” of publishers. That calculation sounds about right, if our most recent PubForum is an accurate gauge–plenty of people in the room for the advanced programmatic session were quite familiar with EBDA. There are 10 exchange partners in EBDA now, and AdExchanger reports Google will be adding more demand sources, “slowly and only in closed alpha tests.” One of those partners is TripleLift, and Google is reportedly beta testing video suppliers, which suggests Google is looking to move past EBDA’s current restrictions (that is, it’s limited to banner inventory at the moment.)
Digital Pubs Get In on YouTube TV
Digiday reports YouTube is testing out a number of new channels from digital pure plays on its livestreaming subscription TV offering YouTube TV. That’s YouTube’s service angled toward cord-cutters, which bundles streaming content from “linear, cable and regional TV channels.” This isn’t the first time YouTube TV has opened the door to digital pubs—Newsy has been on board with the service since 2017. Reportedly, the new channels coming in include Cheddar, Tastemade and Young Turks Network. No one on either the publisher side nor the YouTube side is commenting on this story yet. YouTube TV’s subscription numbers currently lag behind Dish’s Sling TV and Hulu.