That novel was heavy on my mind during the Blockchain Xplore conference in New York at the end of February because there’s something intrinsically anarchist about blockchain. That’s not meant to be derogatory—the concept of the World Wide Web is pretty anarchic to begin with. (I’m also not the only one to notice the anarchy link with blockchain.) Blockchain’s decentralized power structure controlled by groups of stakeholders is aweing… As well as baffling.

But it’s the potential of the technology itself that keeps me fascinated. If you haven’t heard it said 8 million times now, blockchain is the technology that enables Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but it can be mined (pun intended) for just about any industry. At its heart, blockchain is a radical way to store information—a ledger that is massively distributed and can be easily shared.

#blockchainXplore18 @rbeeler talks advertising transparency and Blockchain with @mrchriscable and @TraceRutland pic.twitter.com/giKv13QNj0

— AdMonsters (@AdMonsters) February 27, 2018

Media Applications

Blockchain Xplore kickoff speaker Yorke Rhodes from Microsoft noted many companies across a variety of verticals developed Internet-based systems for intra-organization processes and operations (Intranets, anyone?) before enabling technology on the open Internet. It looks like blockchains are being rolled out in a similar format.

So while blockchain is tied to cryptocurrencies in a lot of minds, companies are starting to examine blockchain’s tools for enabling transparency and trust at scale. #blockchainxplore18

— AdMonsters (@AdMonsters) February 27, 2018

In digital media, though, we’re talking less intra-company rather than inter-companies involved in digital advertising transactions. A blockchain could serve as a single source of truth accessible to many parties—which could be key in enabling the transparency we’ve long craved in digital advertising.

So while blockchain is tied to cryptocurrencies in a lot of minds, companies are starting to examine blockchain’s tools for enabling transparency and trust at scale. #blockchainxplore18

— AdMonsters (@AdMonsters) February 27, 2018

As panelist and 2018 Ops advisory board member Trace Rutland of Tyson Foods pointed out, this could take away a lot of the pain and hardship of reconciliation. In addition, blockchains could be a huge boon to audience targeting and data-sharing efforts.

If blockchain technology levels the playing field of the audience targeting world, context becomes the once and future king. #blockchainxplore18

— Gavin Dunaway (@AdMonsterGavin) February 27, 2018

Taking that a step further, blockchain could be the key in enabling consumers to take agency of their personal data and truly use it as a currency to trade for access to media and other digital services.

or give control of identity and data back to the user. That would be more interesting imo

— Le Mouton Noir (@MoutonNoir67) February 27, 2018

In the near term, what really excites me is how blockchains could completely disrupt the measurement space, particularly in regards to viewability, invalid traffic, and verification. Measurement companies in those fields are likely to lean to adopt or lean on blockchains in the next few years—blockchain is not about putting these companies out of business, but enhancing the services they offer.

Blockchain is not a competing tech against verification services—it will enhance verification. (After it disrupts the space…) #blockchainxplore18

— AdMonsters (@AdMonsters) February 27, 2018

Buy In?

However, we’re speculating a lot here, and many industry players will need to “buy in” for blockchains to truly shake up the measurement space. On top of that, many of the underlying mechanics of blockchain communities are confusing when it comes to transacting tokens and setting rules. I don’t know if “immature” is the correct way to describe blockchain in digital media, but for sure, it’s developing at a clip.

Which means publishers should figure out how to get involved—and surprisingly, there’s an easy entry point. As MetaX CRO Alanna Gombert put it, Ads.txt was the digital advertising industry’s gateway to the wider world of tokenization and blockchain. Many a publisher recognizes that their ads.txt file is horribly convoluted due to the simple nature of the solution.

Blockchain startups like MetaX have developed blockchain-based solutions for simplifying management of the files and ultimately demand sources. These are similar to the IAB’s Ads.txt update, yet more advanced and offering inroads to a blockchain-enabled future.

The Internet—and digital advertising in particular—has anarchy coursing through its veins. With its curious balance of chaos and progress, blockchain is another recipe in our digital anarchist’s cookbook. Publishers should throw on their aprons and pull out the mixing bowls—and possibly protective eyewear… just in case.

Obligatory Literary Nerd Epilogue

In “The Dispossessed,” protagonist Shevek rails, “Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls.”

I argue blockchain is a tool he’d approve of, particularly when it came to un-building walls around digital gardens.

The post Cooking With Anarchy at Blockchain Xplore appeared first on AdMonsters.

For starters, an item you’ve already heard about: Remember the user data Cambridge Analytica eventually used to build models that were in turn used to target ads on behalf of the Trump campaign? It was collected without user consent, according to a whistleblower from inside the company. Cambridge Analytica’s use of “psychographic data” has always been controversial—for complicated reasons, but in short, this data goes beyond standard demo/geo/behavior-type data points, and tries to create models around psychological traits, through game-like personality tests spread by advertising on Facebook. But new revelations of its data harvesting methods go beyond all that. Reports say Cambridge Analytica pulled in data points from not only users who took the tests, but from their Facebook friends—allegedly up to 50 million Facebook users in total. Cambridge Analytica has since been suspended from Facebook. But according to reports in various outlets, as far back as 2015, Facebook was aware Cambridge Analytica was harvesting data it shouldn’t, and the platform simply told CA to knock it off.

Here’s Team AdMonsters’ take: Mark Zuckerberg’s newfound discovery of Facebook’s conscience, and his commitment to the platform being a force for good, is a little disingenuous, and it’s contradicted by basically Facebook’s entire history of raking in dollars first and atoning for its sins of omission (like bad partner-vetting) later. I’ve always thought Zuck speaking about social accountability sounded like a man out of his league, and that’s probably because he is one in this case.

Facebook/Google Set to Lose (A Little) Market Share?

So with Facebook getting beaten up in the public square first for allowing fake news outlets to run wild on its platform, then for keeping the door open to the likes of Cambridge Analytica—will its revenue take a hit as well? Seems unlikely, as the sheer numbers of Facebook’s audience are undeniable. But a new eMarketer report suggests Facebook’s ad business might have already peaked, regardless. According to eMarketer analysis, the price of News Feeds ads seems to have maxed out, and the bulk of the company’s revenue growth is coming from Instagram. Overall, Facebook and Google’s combined digital ad market share is projected to drop by 1.7% from last year. Snapchat’s revenue is growing rapidly, but you have to wonder how sustainable that growth is—at the PubForum two weeks ago, we just heard Frank Simonetti, CEO of the Gen Z-focused media outlet Sweety High, tell us Snapchat ad performance is hard to quantify. Amazon is also on the rise, and it to be in a great position to take the number three spot in ad market share: eMarketer suggests it’ll be in that position by 2020. That seems like a safe prediction.

Inside One of Newsweek’s Questionable Ad Partners

As you’ve also heard, Newsweek is in hot water for buying bot traffic. Now AdExchanger gives us the skinny on one dodgy company that gave Newsweek an assist in that effort: PopAds, which specializes in pop-unders, pushes bots from sites with nonsense URLs to legit sites in need of traffic, and has a founder who had previously overseen an ad network that was called out for spreading malware. The AdExchanger story is a fun, if harrowing, read—Allison Schiff summarizes a whole buffet of bad behavior on PopAds’ part. In addition to serving pop-unders, which obviously serve no good purpose to either advertisers nor users and have been banned by AdSense, PopAds is accused of reselling traffic and cryptomining. The crypromining bit is interesting: When bots are identified as bots, their computer processing power is drained and used to generate cryptocurrency. But PopAds has been accused of doing the same with legit human users, too, and not just bots. The AdExchanger article ends with a quote that sounds kind of defeatist—stuff like this happens because there’s no clear way to prosecute ad fraud—but you have to wonder: It’s 2018, so why the heck isn’t there a way? (Oh, that’s not a rhetorical question: We totally know why there isn’t.)

iHeartMedia Filing for Bankruptcy

The company behind the biggest radio broadcaster in the U.S., iHeartMedia, announced it was filing for bankruptcy. The company is about $20 billion in debt. Some of us in media have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, there’s something tragic about seeing a legacy media company fall from grace like this—especially when part of its woes come from circumstances seemingly out of control, like being bought out by a private equity firm funded by banks on the eve of the Great Recession a decade ago (which is exactly what happened to iHeartMedia). It’s also sad to consider the number two radio broadcast company in the country, Cumulus, just went bankrupt itself. On the other hand, iHeartMedia is the company once known as Clear Channel, which for years had bought up local radio stations, imposed restrictions on programming, replaced local hosts with syndicated shows, and generally contributed to the homogenization of broadcast radio. Maybe banking on a captive audience was a good strategy in the ’90s, but not for the broadband era.

Google: No Crypto-Soliciting Allowed

One more parting shot: Everyone in digital advertising has thoughts about blockchain right now, many of them positive. But we keep shouting that blockchain is not bitcoin, and it’s an important distinction: Not quite so many folks are gung ho about cryptocurrency right now. Google is making moves to ban ads related to cryptocurrency, an effort to curb “unregulated or speculative financial products.”

The post Will Cambridge Analytica Hurt Facebook Ad Business? Plus, Inside Newsweek’s Bot Problem appeared first on AdMonsters.

This week I’m off to CES, and I actually mean CES. It’s not a well-kept secret that most people in our industry who do go to the event actually race up and down the strip for meetings, drinks, dinners, and drinks all followed by drinks. To give you an idea, this is what my office will look like for this week:

If my press credentials go through, however, I’m going to actually see cool stuff from the CES event itself, and hope to report back what I find. If you’re in Vegas, let me know!

Not sure if CES will cover bitcoin or blockchain, but if it does, I’ll check it out. Bitcoin is not blockchain. We all understand that, right? So why am I so concerned that if we in fact have a bitcoin bubble that bursts, then blockchain’s prospects might suffer? If blockchain is of course the cause of the bubble bursting, that would make sense–but otherwise I’d like to see more work done on blockchain.

That being said, not every ad tech discussion has to include the word blockchain. I’m not even sure you’re doing yourself a service by mentioning blockchain in a pitch. Right now blockchain sounds vaporware-ish. Show me a product. Convince me it helps me. Mention it’s on blockchain. I’ll respond, “Cool.”

This reminds me of a discussion at an event about the need to educate everyone in advertising on blockchain. I’m not sure educating everyone is necessary. We struggle enough with getting creative types off of Flash to add blockchain into the conversation. Not sure what a nonce is? I’m sure you’re going to be okay.

Instead, let’s talk applications. I like the idea about evolving ads.txt to the next level. Ads.cert looks like it isn’t necessarily being developed on blockchain, but it’s blockchain-esque in the use of cryptographically signed bid requests. Cool. Meanwhile, Ads.txt Plus from MetaX is built on blockchain and offers subscriptions vs. crawling, works on mobile app and web, and lets the publisher control what they disclose (versus the open kimono of a text file readable by everyone). Once again, cool.

Do I care (as an ad operations person) that these are built on blockchain or not? Not as much as the features they offer. Ads.cert is months away, at least. Ads.txt Plus is open for beta test partners. For those of you who need/want/crave the next gen of ads.txt, get in there and help these people make it work – not for blockchain’s sake but for the industry’s.

Related: I thought I had the ads.txt pronunciation problem solved:

I prefer "ads dot Tee X Tee" myself, but to programmers ".txt" is "dot text" as we don't like vowels in file extensions

— nealrichter (@nealrichter) October 26, 2017

But hell if I’m going to say “ads dot cee e r tee” and “ads dot tee x tee plus” doesn’t flow as well as “ads dot text plus” in my mind. I guess I’ll have to evolve my thinking. Damn blockchain!

In Nashville, I wore some righteous duds:

He’s got this! @rbeeler pic.twitter.com/zjK3VoJyqu

— Lin Carson, PhD (@lincarson) November 6, 2017

However, at OpsX in December I got asked a few times why I wasn’t wearing the stars jacket. Let’s get one thing clear, people: Until I get a wardrobe budget that matches my vision, I’m going to have to wear regular clothes from time to time. Happy to start a Kickstarter to raise the funds needed, if y’all think it’s that important.

Related: To dispel a rumor, no, I will not be attempting to pull off the Baywatch look in Huntington Beach:

(Not Justin Loresco and Rob Beeler)

Blade Runner 2049 ran out of the theaters before I got a chance to see it. I had this idea that perhaps the best way to test if someone is a replicant is to show them less than 50% of an ad for less than a second. If they click: replicant!  Sorry, folks. You can’t unread that.

Best book I got for the holidays: The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, by Scott Galloway. If you don’t follow him on YouTube, you should–he’s funny and informative. Note I linked to Barnes & Noble and not Amazon or Google. Read the book and you’ll get my reasons. #RealCapitalism

Free tip: I used our recent article on AdMonsters, “Discrepancies on Display: Ad-Juster Talks Visualizing Campaign Numbers,” to make a point of not going to meetings if I thought they would result in another Excel document to manage. I suggest you take the same approach.

The first draft of this piece came to 666 words. I’ve added this paragraph just to be safe.

The post Putting Blockchain to Good Use for Ops appeared first on AdMonsters.

Along the lines of testing prior to creating an ads.txt list, Ashley McGee, Director of Programmatic and Platforms at tronc, brought a really cool guide to AdMonsters’ Publisher Forum in Nashville this past November. Her presentation was called “The Spoof Is Up: Battling Counterfeiters With Ads.txt,” and one of top takeaways from her session was: If you want to understand the degree to which ad counterfeiting is a risk to your business, you should think like a buyer, and buy inventory that’s listed as belonging to your sites on the programmatic marketplace.

In short, Ashley explained that a publisher is at risk regardless of whether or not they run programmatic–regardless of whether or not you sell ads on your site, even. Counterfeiters are taking advantage of publishers’ good names–misrepresenting their inventory as yours, while theirs is on fake websites, on spoofed domains, and/or surrounded by garbage content. And whitelisting by site name or URL is not enough to stop these tricks.

So, here’s what publishers should do, as Ashley advised: Partner with a DSP. Look for inventory that’s marked as “yours.” Check to see whether the type of ad units available matches what you know you have on your sites, and that the number of available impressions also matches. Search your URLs and site names, and see if what you find matches what you know to be your URLs and publisher IDs. Then… buy your inventory! Or inventory that purports to be yours, at least. This slide breaks down how that buying process works:

Ashley had a bit of guidance on what to do after the buy, too. When you add up the numbers, factor in the cuts intermediaries take (DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, etc.). Make sure the eCPM of your purchase matches the exchange’s eCPM. Look for any exchanges or ad units that sound fishy to you. And then… get cracking on that ads.txt file!

The post Slides of Our Lives: Beat Ad Counterfeiting by Buying Your Own Inventory appeared first on AdMonsters.

The bot menace has caused particular pains in the programmatic video space, arguably halting the growth of what could be a lucrative channel for honest video content providers. In this interview, VertaMedia CEO Alex Bornyakov talks candidly about invalid traffic and fraud in both desktop and mobile video advertising, service providers’ responsibility in this space, and how publishers can push back against the bots.

GAVIN DUNAWAY: Why is fraud so prevalent in video right now? What has changed in the old presumption that there’s a high barrier to entry for fraudsters?

AB: Fraud ultimately follows ad spend so as investment in video advertising increases it becomes a more attractive target for fraudsters. Video was the fastest growing ad format last year—with spend increasing 67% in the first half of 2016—and fraud rates are rising in parallel.

Video is more expensive than other types of media so fraudulent activity provides greater returns and when this is combined with a scarcity of supply—meaning video inventory is in high demand—it provides valuable opportunities fraudsters have been quick to exploit.

GD: It’s pretty obvious that advertisers are the victims of ads served to invalid traffic, but how do legitimate publishers suffer?

AB: The most obvious impact on legitimate publishers is a reduction in available advertising revenues as these are being wasted on fraudulent impressions, but fraud affects publishers indirectly in other ways too. Invalid traffic to a publisher site can skew metrics such as click-through and bounce rates, making them appear excessively high or low and reducing the perceived quality of the site. Publishers need to be able to demonstrate high-quality inventory to attract advertiser budgets.

GD: Do you think estimates on the amount of ad spend going to invalid traffic are high or low?

AB: Headline-grabbing figures on the cost of ad fraud and estimates on the average volume of impressions affected aren’t particularly helpful in understanding the real impact. Fraud rates vary widely between platforms, campaigns, and publishers—in general premium publishers experience far lower fraud rates than the averages would imply but of course that means for other low-quality inventory the figures could be far higher.

GD: Has invalid/non-human traffic ruined the open programmatic video marketplace? Are there ways content providers can flag their inventory as clean?

AB: Fraud has certainly impacted confidence in the video marketplace—with half of US advertisers and agencies concerned about how video ad fraud or bots negatively impact their digital video ad spending—but there are ways publishers can restore trust in their inventory.

Last year VertaMedia partnered with Forensiq, which uses machine learning and in-browser analysis to evaluate the legitimacy of clicks and impressions and identify bot activity. Publishers are then able to remove all non-legitimate video ad impressions ensuring only genuine impressions reach advertisers.

GD: Is mobile a less bot-populated space than desktop? Is there a bot invasion on OTT/connected TV too?

AB: It is difficult to know precisely how mobile compares to desktop as mobile fraud has existed for far less time than desktop fraud and has not been monitored for as long. As with video, fraud will always follow advertising dollars and with mobile display ad spend overtaking desktop, mobile fraud is also growing rapidly.

There is a feeling the TV space has so far escaped the fraudsters but when Pixalate launched its Video Seller Trust Index in December, it revealed relatively high rates of fraud across OTT and Connected TV. Again, as advertising on addressable TV is set to grow rapidly in 2017, this is likely to be an area of increased concern.

GD: If you’re a publisher and you want to clear non-human video traffic off your site, what steps do you need to take? What kind of help will you need from other entities along the ad supply chain?

AB: Increased transparency is key to getting rid of bot traffic, so publishers should make sure they know whom they are working with. As well as implementing anti-fraud practices, they need to have frank discussions with anyone else they work with along the supply chain to find out what measures those partners have in place.

Ideally publishers should look for more direct relationships with buyers, reducing the number of middlemen and therefore opportunities for fraud. They should also be wary of sourcing third-party traffic or using audience extension programs that could potentially impact traffic quality.

GD: Where does the industry stand right now on curtailing Methbot? How does the fight against its spread differ from other instances of fraud you’ve seen?

AB: Methbot is certainly a wake-up call for the industry. Although the latest reports suggest the impact of Methbot may not be as serious as initially thought—indeed despite the fact that the bot generated a reported $3 to $5 million each day we have seen minimal impact to our clients—it has forced the industry to work more collaboratively to combat this growing problem. It is refreshing to see companies being more open about their experiences of fraud and the steps they are taking to fight it, and this will hopefully encourage contribution to wider industry anti-fraud measures.

GD: Slowing the spread of Methbot and other fraud activities seems like it can be very manual. Are there ways to automate those efforts?

AB: To quickly limit the impact of Methbot, specific manual measures were recommended, such as blocking compromised IP addresses. However the majority of platforms who use automated techniques to detect and filter out invalid traffic have reported minimal impact from the botnet, indicating these technologies are already in place and are working effectively—although they will inevitably need to evolve as fraudulent activity becomes ever more sophisticated.

GD: What is the role of a company like VertaMedia in protecting advertisers from serving creative to bots?

AB: Supply-side platforms should take responsibility for ensuring only high-quality impressions—free from fraud—are made available to advertisers. At VertaMedia we take this responsibility very seriously and combine our own deep machine learning with state-of-the-art external fraud prevention technologies to eliminate invalid traffic. Alongside these technologies we also have a highly skilled and experienced brand safety team.

GD: Are there ways those companies/advocates can work together to combat fraudsters without help from governments? Is there any way to get ahead of the “next Methbot”?

AB: Collaborative initiatives such as the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)—a joint marketing-media industry program created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)—are vital in helping the industry work together to fight fraud. They offer anti-fraud guidelines as well as a Certified Against Fraud program, which is open to buyers, sellers, and intermediaries. Proctor & Gamble has just announced that anyone involved with the digital media it buys must be TAG accredited by the end of the year.

GD: Are there other security or quality concerns publishers in the programmatic video space should keep their eyes on?

AB: The issue of viewability is becoming more prominent in video advertising, and advertisers are calling for better viewability metrics as part of a wider demand for increased transparency in the video space. Last year VertaMedia partnered with Moat as part of its brand-safety toolkit, allowing both advertisers and publishers to analyse viewability and attention metrics with greater precision. To improve viewability publishers could look at the size and positioning of video players on their websites, or consider in-article video advertising, which is highly viewable.

The post Night of the Living Dead Traffic: VertaMedia on Programmatic Video and Fraud appeared first on AdMonsters.