Month: May 2024

The Trade Desk has a clear message for publishers worried about missing out on ad dollars due to a lack of a large logged-in audience: It doesn’t have to be that big.

The panic started earlier this month when the ad tech vendor’s CEO Jeff Green drew a figurative line down the open web — a realm plagued by poorly targeted ads, fraud and “malvertising” on one side — and what he calls the “premium internet,” characterized by high-quality ad inventory bolstered by first-party data and user consent on the other.

It wasn’t a new claim from Green, but it had definitely been spiced up with a fresh twist — replacing “open internet,” which he’s backed for years, with “premium internet.”

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Gaming is well on its way to becoming a part of brands’ marketing budgets in 2024 — but via customized brand integrations, rather than traditional programmatic formats. As the space matures, both publishers and marketers are looking to develop more seamless ways for brands to plug themselves into these in-game experiences.

Promising signs

Marketers were quick to jump on the opportunity as gaming exploded in popularity during COVID-19 lockdown. Between 2020 and 2022, a wave of intrinsic in-game advertising companies formed with the goal of serving traditional programmatic ad formats, such as banners, within natural in-game locations such as virtual billboards and signs. 

“I don’t know that I’m bold enough to say that we have reached an inflection point, but my observation of the broader industry is that we’re getting close,” said Activision Blizzard Media vp of global business research and marketing Jonathan Stringfield. “We are seeing more brands investing in gaming; we are having less of a dialogue around ‘why games.’ We are at a point where, for a large part of the industry, we’re getting over that hill, and we are seeing agencies that have dedicated gaming specialists, or entire teams, or entire organizations.”

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Using DNA from tangerines and tobacco, food scientists have made a familiar fruit tastier—and more Instagrammable—than ever. We looked into pink pineapples so you don’t have to.

Wishing you all a beautiful Memorial Day! This classic comic first ran in October 2011.

The post Comic: The Cookie Pool appeared first on AdExchanger.

TikTok last week launched another creator program as social platforms continue battling over creators — and media agencies say it could help keep Gen Z and creators on the app and drive growth for brands during uncertain times.

“Gen Z has a deep connection to impactful advocacy, and the associated content seems to make waves with other demographics on the platform as well,” said Nickey Rautenberg, director of content performance at influencer agency HireInfluence.

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The ad agency world knows it may have a problem on its hands if the Association of National Advertisers issues a report about some practice those agencies are using.

The latest iteration of that reality came out earlier in May when the ANA published the report, “The Acceleration of Principal Media (What Marketers Need to Know),” which tackled the growing practice among agencies of investing in media at non-disclosed prices to then resell to their clients, presumably at a markup to the agency.

The use of principal media is on the rise, notably by the agency holding companies, which are looking for profit wherever they can find it. As Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester puts it, “That’s what’s driving the growth among those agencies that are demonstrating it.”

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WPP’s integration of Anthropic’s Claude 3 model to the holding company’s AI platform is another example of in the evolution of how agencies are thinking about interoperability of various AI models.

Choosing which AI models to use has been a key factor for companies as they develop AI strategies for marketing and other applications. By adding Claude 3 into WPP Open, Anthropic joins other rival models from OpenAI, Google’s and Stability AI. The news, announced last week, also follows an April announcement from WPP and Google Cloud focused on generative AI.

Claude 3, released in March, comes in three versions named Opus, Sonnet and Haiku. Each model — with names associated with their size — also has different capabilities and costs. Opus is the largest, most expensive, most capable, but also the slowest. Sonnet, the middle size, has a blend of both intelligence and speed. Haiku, as one might guess, is the smallest, cheapest and fastest.

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The new Biden/Harris campaign ad “Snapped” features such Trump lowlights as his “drink bleach” pandemic suggestion.