This week's review of ad fraud and privacy in the digital advertising space:
Pixalate released the Q4 2023 Abandoned Mobile Apps Reports, analyzing apps from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store that are considered “abandoned” - meaning the app has not been updated in the last two years. The report also analyzes “super abandoned” apps (last updated 4+ years ago). Download the reports below:
The findings from the Q4 2023 Roku and Amazon CTV Device Spoofing Reports expose the frequency with which non-Roku and non-Amazon CTV devices impersonate Roku or Amazon devices, respectively, in the open programmatic advertising ecosystem.
The February 2024 Top 100 Most Popular Bundle IDs for Open Programmatic CTV Advertising are rankings based on global open programmatic advertising data, and are ranked after removing invalid traffic (IVT). The report also includes the top 10 most popular Bundle IDs for each CTV platform for key regions.
Pixalate's Trust & Safety Advisory Board regularly publish manual reviews where they assess an app’s child-directedness:
You can search Pixalate's full catalogue of reviews in our CTV and Mobile App Review Page
The bipartisan leaders of the House committee on interstate and foreign commerce commended the passing of a bill aimed at safeguarding Americans' private data from U.S. adversaries. The bill prohibits data brokers from selling sensitive data to countries designated as "foreign adversaries" by the U.S., such as China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and the Maduro government in Venezuela. The legislation, introduced by Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Frank Pallone, passed unanimously with a vote of 414-0, signaling strong bipartisan support.
Read the news in full in CNBC's press release
The Autorité de la Concurrence, France's competition authority, has fined Google €250 million for violating copyright protections for news snippets. The tech giant was found to have disregarded previous commitments with news publishers and failed to notify them about its use of their copyrighted content to train its generative AI model, Bard/Gemini. This decision is significant as it highlights Google's failure to uphold fair payment talks with publishers for the reuse of their content. The fine serves as a reminder of the ongoing battle between Google and France's competition authority over news snippet copyright protections.
TechCrunch covered the news in this press release