DIGITAL ROUNDUP

March 2025

Welcome to this month’s edition of the roundup to some core updates in the digital advertising industry.

NB: the following represents my own opinion & not that of my employer

Adalytics release new research on CSAM ads

Adalytics have made their latest research public, citing delivery of ads in CSAM websites across the programmatic ecosystem.

(https://adalytics.io/blog/adtech-vendors-csam-full-report)

DEEPDIVE

The newest ad quality related story to hit the ecosystem comes from another in-depth research piece from Adalytics, showcasing the monetisation of CSAM related websites across the SSP / DSP chain, with also ad verification vendors found to have not completely prevented ad delivery for a range of large advertisers.

Aside from the serious legal implications for this type of inventory, the main concern is how this is even possible to have occurred in the first place.

In the fallout, there have been immediate changes made to URL level reporting, both from the likes of DSPs like Amazon but also DoubleVerify from an ad verification perspective. Whilst this is a great move in the spirit of transparency, the fact that this type of reporting is on an even more granular level will mean most agencies / advertisers are not capable of actually handling this data, to make sure of it. The use of the Traffic Events API for Amazon vs an in-platform report showcases this explicitly.

I talk about this in a little more detail via my LinkedIn post but there are a few key measures that programmatic buying can leverage to minimise the risk of this type of issue impacting your ad campaigns. Which ultimately resides around curating your supply / setup and running on quality inventory through an inclusion list. Though to say an inclusion list is 100% risk free is false, where bad actors can still quite easily pretend to be a premium domain. The solution here is to leverage more advanced setup requirements like ads.txt seller targeting or seller.json targeting.

Ultimately though, if you truly want to protect your programmatic buying, you need to have a mix of process & technology in place. 3rd party verification tools can be part of this, but it is critical to understand where they may be weak and how to solve this with alternatives. The most important statistic on ad verification reporting is not your block rate, but rather your measure rate. From here it is somewhat clear where the gaps can eventually lead to wider issues.

Google release Meridian as a MMM solution to the public

Google have formally entered the open-source MMM market

(https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/meridian-marketing-mix-model-open-to-everyone/)

DEEPDIVE

Meridian is now available to all advertisers / agencies as a new open source marketing mix model (MMM) solution, provided by Google. This follows on from the previous announcement last year to introduce the concept, as a follow-up to the original Lightweight MMM solution that existed in Github.

Meridian focuses on a few key strengths that enables some powerful outputs, only available through this solution. This involves access to Google Query Volume (GQV) data to factor in the impact of organic search queries better. As well as access to specific Reach & Frequency data, particularly on the YouTube side of Google.

A lot of questions have started to appear on what exactly is the difference between Meridian and Meta’s open source MMM solution called Robyn. And the answer is primarily around the methodology behind both, where Meridian is more tied to Bayesian methodology looking at observed & prior data whilst Robyn is more focused on inferring on observed data. There is also the existence of PyMC as now the so called Big 3 in the open source MMM space.

For advertisers, the question will quickly become how is best to carry out MMM for your brand: is it to continue to invest with a traditional MMM solution like a TransUnion or invest in an open source approach. There are pros & cons to these different approaches, whether this is the cost efficiency or the resource / knowledge needed to leverage these tools. But ultimately, having some form of MMM is critical in this era of ad measurement, whether you are fully digital or a mix of traditional media, in order to triangulate with your in-platform / attribution data alongside measuring incrementality with experimentation.

OTHER KEY CALLOUTS

SOCIAL / SEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 📱

  • Meta have added more brand suitability offerings via DoubleVerify and Zefr, opening up from just IAS (Meta)

  • LinkedIn have added additional context to their newer product releases including Conversion API & Attribution reporting (LinkedIn)

  • Meta have released some newer product updates including Opportunity Score in a similar theme to Google Ads (Meta)

  • Microsoft have made updates to their PMAX campaign type on Bing, with the new ability to use LinkedIn profile targeting (Microsoft)

  • Google have similarly made updates to asset customisation, including the use of Gemini as GenAI (Google)

  • X have announced some new AI capabilities for ads via Grok (X)

PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS 🌐

  • StackAdapt have announced further investment, with AI driven capabilities being their core focus (TechCrunch)

  • Channel 4 will be relaunching their streaming offering this year, with digital advertising at the forefront in the UK (TheMediaLeader)

  • Amazon have announced the ability to allow users to navigate off Amazon through organic links (Amazon)

  • Google have been called out for 3rd party audiences curation on sensitive users (Wired)

  • Netflix have officially launched their ads solutions in specific EMEA markets via TTD / DV360 alongside Microsoft (TheMediaLeader)

IDENTITY HIGHLIGHTS 🆔

  • Amazon have announced the ability to allow users to navigate off Amazon through organic links (Amazon)

  • Google have made changes to their Offline Conversions API, make it mandatory to passback conversion environment as a parameter (Google)

  • Audience Project have announced a partnership with emetriq, as a German powerhouse to enrich their measurement solutions (Emetriq)

  • LiveRamp have partnered with Ocado in the UK to release a new solution called Audience+ (LiveRamp)

  • Adobe have released newer features for their Real Time CDP in the US, for 3rd party data (Adobe)

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