DIGITAL ROUNDUP - APR 2024

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

Adalytics report calls out MFA amongst US advertisers

Adalytics have put out another substantial research report into the programmatic buying habits of the largest US advertisers / agencies in Made For Advertising (MFA) inventory (https://adalytics.io/blog/ads-observed-on-made-for-advertising-sites-in-january-2024)

DEEPDIVE

There is no doubt that programmatic advertising, particularly in the openRTB space that has been scaled by display / video / native inventory is both complex (in comparison to PPC / Social) but also full of bad actors / dodgyness. The approach to campaign setup often dictates the difference between an efficient programmatic buy vs a huge waste of money.

MFA as a buzzword for Made for Advertising is not new but defining what it means has seemingly shifted over the past 12 months. I do like the play on words which changes the A to Arbitrage, which has a lot more legs to it into where the real fraudulent players exist.

The 3rd party verification approach is quite ironic also, at least for the bigger guys who have all seemingly released a “MFA” solution in the past 12 months, despite the fact I’m sure they all knew it existed far before that. I gotta give my props to Adloox here who have had functionality around this going back 8-9 years at this point.

Ultimately i’m not shocked to see this in the US, nor would I also not be shocked to see it being even worse in UK / Europe / Asia. For sure there are 3rd party approaches to dealing with MFA (shoutout Jounce Media) but it does also come down to how you buy programmatic: curated supply on quality / diverse / audited inventory which immediately shuts out a lot of the risk. But note I do not say its perfect; there is always risk even on a pure inclusion list. Then you have to deal with actual ad fraud where a MFA domain may hide behind a premium domain (spoofing), but that’s another post.

Google enters offsite retail media game with SA360 integration

Google have announced their intention to support the world of retail media, with some integration capabilities within the Google Marketing Platform in the form of SA360, their enterprise search / social management platform.

(https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/360/empowering-the-retail-media-ecosystem-with-search-ads-360/)

DEEPDIVE

Retail Media is growing at pace in all parts of the world. Whilst the giants of Amazon & Alibaba may have dominated this space for a long time, there has been a growing push by smaller ecommerce / retailers to get in on the act, either by monetising their powerful 1st party data or by allowing sponsored ads on their properties.

And with this growth, we have seen platforms already pivot into this space. Criteo has had the best start as it becomes more centered around a commerce world. But even the likes of Adform / Skai / TheTradeDesk have made moves to tap into this space for adserving / buying / measurement.

Now it is Google’s turn, which is likely not to be as mature as where their competitors are at first, but signals that there is intention to 1) bump up the value of SA360 as a tool & 2) bring some consistency in buying between regular search / shopping & retail media.

First party data is going to play a big role here, which may eventually bring into the picture the likes of PAIR for activation or Enhanced Conversions for measurement. Though the biggest challenge of all in retail media is fragmentation; there are far too many “mini walled gardens” appearing, with a programmatic means the most likely way to bring consistency here.

OtHeR KEY CALLOUTS

SOCIAL / SEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 📱

PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS 🌐

IDENTITY HIGHLIGHTS 🆔

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