Lift Tests: The Next Programmatic Trend?
Among advertisers, especially performance advertisers, lift tests are on the rise, AdExchanger reports. Performance advertiser are feeling some heat to justify ROI for all their activities, which is why they’re looking at measuring incremental lift in whatever channels they’re spending in. One reason for the newfound popularity of lift testing is that advertisers are wary of ad fraud in mobile—but they know their audience is increasingly on mobile, so they intend to up their spending in mobile channels, while keeping a close eye on performance across various partners. Will lift testing be a major new trend in programmatic? Maybe—as AdExchanger describes it, the process is complicated. Advertisers don’t always know what they want to find out from a test. Advertisers don’t always trust Facebook’s attribution methodology, and Facebook isn’t even all that keep on lift testing.
Dish Network Says Cross-Platform Addressable Advertising Is Here
The march toward addressable advertising progresses: Thanks to a partnership with comScore and its measurement chops, Dish Network says it’s now able to measure addressable ads on satellite TV, OTT devices, desktop computers, mobile devices and smart TVs. Dish Network had been measuring addressable ads on satellite TV and its OTT offering Sling TV separately. Ad Age reported that “ad experience on Sling continues to look similar to its satellite counterpart,” regardless of Dish Network’s intention to leverage “skinny TV” bundles to get really granular in ad targeting. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise—making advertising addressable is easier to talk about (and it’s talked about very often on the buy side) than it is to put into practice. Are we there yet? Well, Sling TV says they are—dunno about everyone else…
What’s Long-Form Video Mean? IAB, 4As Update Guidelines
The IAB and the 4As released new Ts & Cs for long-form video last week. The idea is to pin down a clearer definition of “long-form” video (eight minutes or longer, the guidelines say, and “professionally-produced” content with dynamic ad serving). According to MediaPost, the Ts & Cs also dig into viewability, brand safety, terminology about audience guarantees, and other issues. The language was revised to bring it closer to that of the recent MRC measurement guidelines, and to help publishers and advertisers negotiate ad transactions. It’s a long time coming—the last time the IAB and 4As updated their long-form video guidelines was in 2009.
Jonathan Mendez: Watch Out, Google, ISPs Are Right Behind You
I’ve been harping on how the next real threat to the dominance of the Duopoly could be an ISP (and I haven’t been excited about that prospect). Looks like I’m in good company, as industry vet Jonathan Mendez has chimed in with a well-considered and cogent blog post about how Google is positioned in the digital ad business today. Mendez summarizes: Google launched Chrome back in 2008 in order to have greater control over the DOM and the way ads are displayed. Smaller tech companies were helping ISPs collect user data through Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), which Google saw as a threat. Potentially, ISPs could collect data around all site visits, purchases, instant messages and searches. So Google backed a lobbying campaign that eventually blocked DPI, clearing the way for Google and Facebook to dominate the ad market for 10 years. But now, ISPs are a threat again, with net neutrality off the table, and with regulatory rollbacks allowing them to sell user data. Meanwhile, there are still companies out there providing software to do DPI, just so you know. We’ve come full circle, and in the interim, ISPs have accumulated much more tech firepower through acquisitions.