December 11th-December 17th // Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. The industry is cleaning up its act!

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Top Story 👁️ 

Marketers’ digital waste declines yet DSP transaction costs rise🔒
December 12th, 2024
Source: Ad Age

Summary: Programmatic media buying is becoming more efficient, according to the latest update to the ANA's 2024 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark Study. The trade group that represents advertisers found that more ad spend is reaching consumers in quality environments as fewer dollars flow to made-for-advertising (MFA) sites (which are essentially low-quality, clickbait websites). In 2023, the ANA estimated that MFA sites captured 15% of US ad spend, but that fell to 6.2% this year. Another critical stat: marketers advertised on nearly 50% fewer websites and apps in 2024, which generally implies that programmatic “clean up” efforts are working.

That's progress to be sure, but it's too soon for the industry to pat itself on the back. Still, less than half (43.9%) of ad spend is actually reaching consumers (last year, 36% reached consumers). And transaction costs are rising, with demand-side platform (DSP) costs increasing by 0.8%, reaching 16.8% of ad spend. However, DSP costs for connected TV are considerably lower, at 8.8% overall. Advertisers are also working with more supply-side platforms (SSPs)—19—than ever, which goes against the ANA’s recommendation to work with fewer SSPs, not more.

The study was based on log-level data from advertisers and platforms including TripleLift, Yahoo, and Google’s Display and Video 360. The data encompassed $235M in ad spending from April to September of this year. The ANA compared this data to ad spending from September 2022 to January 2023.

Opinion: Frankly, this is awesome. It may not be sexy as M&A or as provocative as antitrust, but it’s incredibly impactful.

That said, the job is not done. Publishers aren’t reaping the benefits of increased efficiency. In order for advertisers to drive even better outcomes and for more dollars to flow to publishers, progress must continue in the following areas:

• Lowering technology costs

• Reducing bot traffic

• Cutting inefficient supply paths

• Eliminating MFA inventory

How will we get there? By ensuring marketers get full transparency into their supply chain, and are knowledgeable enough to know what to do with the information. The ANA, and others across the industry, are doing the hard work to shine a light on the issues and help marketers take action. Let’s all support the cause! (we’re looking at you, ad tech companies)

It’ll lead to better outcomes from programmatic advertising, which will lead to happier advertisers, which will lead to more programmatic spend, which will lead to more revenue for ad tech companies, which will lead to more revenue flowing to high quality publishers, which will lead to … a healthier open web.

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Roku brings CTV inventory to FreeWheel🔒- Roku has expanded programmatic access to its inventory through a beefed-up partnership with Comcast-owned TV platform FreeWheel. Advertisers who use FreeWheel can now access ad inventory from the Roku Exchange. The inventory includes ads that appear in The Roku Channel and other apps hosted on Roku devices. FreeWheel's demand partners such as The Trade Desk, Beeswax, Google’s Display & Video 360, and Xandr will also gain access to Roku inventory. In other Roku-related news, Roku wants to help small and medium-sized advertisers reuse their existing social media ads for CTV through a partnership with creative tech platform Spaceback.

Failure of Kroger-Albertsons Merger May Curb Grocers’ Advertising Ambitions🔒 - A Kroger-Albertsons merger could have created a formidable commerce media network that would have competed with Walmart Connect. Kroger Precision Marketing alone generated $1.3B in profit in 2023 and is expected to grow 20% this year. A merger would have also significantly expanded the companies' physical footprint, exceeding Walmart's. Now that the deal has been blocked, it will be tougher for both companies to accelerate the growth of their respective ad businesses. Amazon captures 76% of commerce media ad dollars, followed by Walmart at 8%, and the rest gets split between all the other networks. Commerce media is one of the fastest digital advertising channels, with spending in the US expected to reach ~$68B in 2025, a 23.7% increase from this year.

Apple and Google instructed by House committee to prepare to dump TikTok next month - The clock is ticking on the Jan. 19 ban of TikTok. House Committee members have sent letters to Apple and Google reminding them of their responsibilities as operators of the internet's top two app stores, advising them to be prepared to follow the law. Last year, Congress passed a law with bipartisan support that would ban TikTok on Jan. 19 (the day before Trump’s inauguration) unless it is sold to a non-Chinese company. The popular social platform has asked the US Supreme Court to block the law after lower courts upheld it. President-elect Donald Trump met with TikTok's CEO on Monday and has said that he'll "take a look" at the situation. Remember, he tried to ban the platform during his first term in office but was thwarted by the courts. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop is killing it this holiday season, passing other retailers like Sephora and Shein 🔒in the race for consumer dollars. 

Data licensing lawsuit adds a legal wrinkle to Omnicom’s planned acquisition of IPG🔒- Several potential obstacles are coming to light as adland continues to digest Omnicom’s bid for IPG. One potential hiccup relates to a lawsuit filed by data company Adstra, which alleges that IPG’s data platform Acxiom and performance marketing agency Kinesso used its data to develop a competing product—the Real ID reference graph, Acxiom's identity-resolution product—violating a master data-supply agreement. Acxiom could face a serious setback if the case is decided in Adstra's favor and Acxiom is required to remove Adstra's data. Such a ruling could also affect how IPG and Omnicom integrate Acxiom and Kinesso into the combined company's ad tech stack. Another potential hurdle for the acquisition: client conflicts🔒. Omnicom and IPG service many competing brands, including State Farm (Omnicom) and Geico (IPG), AT&T (Omnicom) and T-Mobile (IPG). The Omnicom-IPG deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025. IPG plans to lay off 103 Mediabrands employees🔒in January.

Google unveils Project Mariner: AI agents to use the web for you - The Gemini-powered Project Mariner navigates websites like people by taking control of a user's Chrome browser and moving the cursor, clicking buttons, and filling out forms. Users can use the chat window to give Project Mariner instructions to build a shopping cart based on a grocery store list or find an airline flight. Project Mariner is one of several Gemini 2.0 models and features unveiled last week. Others include Deep Research, which acts as a research assistant to help users devise multi-step research plans to solve complicated problems. The Jules AI agent helps developers with coding, and other Gemini 2.0 agents can help users navigate video games.

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

Havas Is Officially a Public Company🔒 - Parent company Vivendi spun off the agency holding company and it debuted on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange with a $2.6B valuation.

Media Deals Outlook: “Pent-Up Demand” to Fuel Big Year in 2025 - PricewaterhouseCoopers expects a major year for M&A as companies look to strike deals in what's expected to be a friendlier business atmosphere.

EDO-DoubleVerify deal brings outcome signals to CTV programmatic buying🔒 - CTV outcomes measurement company EDO will partner with DoubleVerify’s bidding tech Scibids to use viewer engagement data to optimize programmatic CTV campaigns.

Mozilla removes 'Do Not Track' from Firefox because it was useless - Websites weren't required to obey the signal.

Trump’s new FTC chair puts advertising data in the crosshairs - Incoming FTC commissioner Andrew Ferguson has been critical of data collection practices such as indefinite data retention.

YouTube is a hit on TVs — and is starting to act like it - YouTube is finally trying to capitalize on its massive viewership on living room TVs with investments in high-end content and features like a new Shows page, which helps creators present their videos like a Netflix series.

WPP Wins $300M J&J Media Assignment - IPG's J3 previously serviced the account. J3 is a dedicated unit IPG created a decade ago after it won J&J’s global media account. Omnicom is probably already second-guessing their acquisition…

That’s It For This Week 👋

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