This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.
According to MediaPost, "[T]he Media Rating Council is looking at raising the bar on video ad impressions to '100%' viewable." The article adds: "Characterizing it as a call for 'research and input,' the MRC said it is weighing a 'possible move to 100% pixels as a viewability criteria.' That would be a significant shift from the previous standard -- for both video and static digital ads -- that a minimum of 50% of their pixels must be in view for a minimum duration of time (two seconds for video and one second for static ads) to be counted as 'viewable.'”
The Register has reported that "The Mozilla Foundation has expressed its discomfort at the Cambridge Analytica revelations by pulling its ads from Facebook." The article notes: "It's feasible that Mozilla won't be the last to review its ad spend. In the UK, advertiser organisation the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) is demanding answers on behalf of its roughly 3,000 brands."
According to a new eMarketer study on programmatic advertising, "prices are up across all the major categories: desktop, mobile, mobile app and video." The article reads: "Looking specifically at desktop display prices, the study found that every data provider—both buy- and sell-side—reported that CPMs for 300x250 desktop display units rose from Q4 2016 to Q4 2017. But the increases varied widely, with two sources reporting an increase of just 2 or 3 cents, working out to a rise of 1% or less. By contrast, most of the other sources reported increases of roughly 25 cents, representing a gain of more than 10% for the year."
"Google is requesting that web publishers provide it with the necessary consents to continue gathering personal information from Europeans for targeted ads as it gears up for the impending arrival of toughened data privacy laws," reported The Drum. In response to the pending GDPR, "Google has rewritten its EU user consent policy and will update its contractual terms for products including DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX), AdMob, and AdSense."
As reported by CNBC, "Google is looking at whether it can incorporate blockchain technology" into its advertising products. "Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google's senior vice president of ads and commerce, said the company was researching the technology, but had no official product announcements to make," wrote CNBC.
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