Month: April 2024

Snapchat’s recent staffing shake up has left publishers puzzled.

Layoffs across the mobile messaging app over the last six months have thrown a spanner into their usual way of working with them. In February alone, Snap laid off 10% (530 employees) of its overall, global workforce.

As a result, key contacts at the platform have gone silent or become slower to respond to publishers, and replacements haven’t provided much clarity — yet. Add swirling rumors to the mix about what’s going on at Snap HQ, and it’s no surprise publishers are feeling a bit adrift, as six publishers told Digiday.

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Last month, the esports company PGL enlisted gaming influencers to co-stream a “Counter-Strike” tournament — and more than doubled the event’s viewership as a result. The move shows how influencer co-streams could help rejuvenate fans’ interest in an increasingly beleaguered esports industry.

Based in Bucharest, Romania, PGL has operated esports tournaments since 2002, largely within the “Counter-Strike” scene. For its latest event, a March 2024 “Counter-Strike” major in Copenhagen, the company endorsed over a dozen official watch parties hosted by gaming livestreamers such as Felix “xQc” Lengyel and Jaryd “summit1g” Lazar. The event also boasted sponsorships from brands including Secretlab, 1xBet and Displate.

“Unlike how Riot Games has done an incredible job of curating a watch party co-streaming ecosystem that contributes enormous value from players and streamers back to Riot, no one had been doing this in ‘Counter-Strike,’” said Rod “Slasher” Breslau, an esports consultant who organized the co-streaming initiative for PGL. “Not any of the major tournament operators, including and especially ESL/FACEIT Group, had been doing any outreach at all to the biggest streamers.”

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X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, is making moves to convince marketers that it’s a safe space for their brands (again). But according to results from a first-quarter Digiday+ Research survey conducted among brand, retailer and agency professionals, it might be too late.

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Amid all of the concerns that the made-for-arbitrage (née made-for-advertising) crackdown would unfairly impact premium publishers, Forbes has been called out by a report by advertising transparency vendor Adalytics for intentionally operating an MFA subdomain for years, unbeknownst to the buy-side until this month.  

Four agency executives told Digiday that it’s still too early into investigations to determine how much of their clients’ budgets were spent on ads displayed on Forbes’ subdomain (www3.forbes.com). However, early examinations revealed as much as 4 to 5% of Forbes impressions per client or 25% of an agency’s total client base’s impressions from Forbes were tied to the subdomain.

Ultimately though, the total portion of a client’s budget spent on the subdomain isn’t the biggest concern amongst agency execs. The fact that their clients’ ads were being displayed on this subdomain for years, undetected by verification firms, DSPs, SSPs and even within the agencies themselves reveals that major gaps exist in programmatic reporting to detect domain spoofing. And even more concerningly, how widespread is this practice? 

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What happens when artificial intelligence analyzes human thoughts about AI and copyright?

As tech giants and startups alike move forward with AI models, the legal landscape is still full of uncertainty when it comes to current and future rules about AI and copyright. Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff introduced a new bill that would require AI companies to disclose AI training content including text, images, music and videos. Meanwhile, more authors, musicians and other creative professions are also speaking out. Last week, 200 musicians — including Billie Eilish, Jason Isbell, Nicki Minaj and Bon Jovi — signed an open letter calling for companies to protect artists from “the predatory use of AI.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is also considering new rules related to AI and copyright, including publishing guidance in February and again this week. Along with looking at whether AI-assisted works can receive copyright protections, it’s also considering whether AI systems should be trained with already protected content. As part of the rule-making process, the USPTO received around 10,000 submitted comments from a range of stakeholders — including companies, AI experts, artists and organizations — that expressed a wide range of views about AI and intellectual property.

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Tatari CEO Philip Inghelbrecht shared data Friday to show just how much of their budget brands and publishers could save buying TV media direct rather than programmatically.

TikTok has reportedly been talking with advertisers about an AI-generated feature that creates virtual influencers to star in videos on the app. A script would be generated for a video ad based on a
prompt provided by the advertiser.

Perhaps no other American celebrity delivered such extreme highs and evil lows in his lifetime.

The expanded TikTok partnership with Integral Ad Science will offer brand-safety services to 11 more countries and include new products to help advertisers on the social video-sharing app simplify
campaign measurement while avoiding a wider range of content unsuitable to their brand.

Tracking is a mess. Attribution is broken beyond repair. IP address identity data may go the way of the dodo. Which means marketing mix modeling is back, baby! If you need proof, Google launched its open-source MMM model, called Meridian, last month. A marketing mix model (MMM) is a way to attribute ad spend channel […]

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