DIGITAL ROUNDUP
September 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
Google launches placement transparency for Search Partners
Google have introduced Search Partner Network placement level reporting
DEEPDIVE
Google have moved to give advertisers another level of transparency in where ads are being served on their Search Partner Network (SPN) which is often a checkbox toggled setting that is part of standard search campaigns, allowing the ability to serve search ads beyond the google.com O&O search page.
This is a welcome move, given that Search Partners has had quite the negative reputation over the course of the last 10 years, where the ability to understand exactly on what inventory ads were being shown on was borderline impossible. To go back a step, SPN represents a combination of websites and mobile apps, most of which have some sort of relationship with Google’s supply adserving backbone, which is primarily AdSense or more enterprise AdMob (app) or Ad Manager (GAM).
The trouble with this is that inventory can be misclassified or hidden, based on the type of inventory and the general adoption of adsense for publishers who may be much smaller in size. And this is where the bad actors take advantage of, to make money through ad revenue at scale without being caught very easily. SPN was also heavily called out last year as part of an Adalytics research paper, which also has some pretty significant overlaps with Google Video Partners (GVP), the equivalent in the YouTube space.
At the end of the day, if you want to buy an ad on a reputable website / mobile app with transparent, verified reporting, buying it through an ad network as a toggle is not the most relevant approach to doing this. Google’s placement level reporting has never been perfect nor represent the whole 100% of impressions that are served. I explain more on my recent LinkedIn post. For advertisers, is this change worth considering serving on SPN again? In my opinion, no it isn’t and you should keep search to where you can trust.
ANA study show 34% uplift in programmatic wastage increased
DEEPDIVE
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) released a new Q2 2025 report, showcasing that there continues to be a big wastage in the use of programmatic advertising bought in its current form, up by 34% from the original report published in June 2023. The report is aimed predominately at the state of the US programmatic landscape, although brands may be global in nature and understandably similar patterns exists across different geo region, as proven by ISBA (the UK equivalent of ANA) doing similar studies over the years.
There is however some positive news, with the impact of buying on more emerging programmatic channels like CTV, which is generally bought on a more premium supply path, helping to aid good efficiency. As well as the investment of MFA (Made for Advertising) now only representing 0.8% of median traffic, due to the educational push around this subject alongside 3rd party tools allowing to avoid this for advertisers now much more readily available.
The biggest critics of Programmatic will use this report as fuel to say that this medium is rife of ad fraud and general inefficiencies. Which for sure is not wrong. But where reports like this really are vital is breaking down the makeup of the “media dollar”. Which can be both buy & supply side fees, ad verification costs and the “unknown delta”. That delta is the part that is becoming more transparent over time.
Programmatic continues to grow at a strong pace, with more emerging channels becoming programmatic in nature like audio / DOOH. It is not just display anymore, which is very much open to the real negatives that plague the industry. But programmatic is very powerful for any advertiser to leverage, in conjunction with other mediums like search / social / affiliates. If done correctly on the right technology, with the right setup & the right measurement, it will always be a powerful data-driven toolset to maximise the effectiveness of advertising on a digital landscape.
ANA continue to showcase the troublesome world of programmatic for cost breakdowns
(https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2025-08-programmatictrans)
OTHER KEY CALLOUTS
SOCIAL / SEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 📱
TikTok will roll out some new functionality to track users beyond their app, but likely an extension of their pixel (Adweek)
Microsoft have launched new controls for audience / search ads, particularly around exclusion lists which is up to 10k a list (LinkedIn)
Microsoft have introduced a new premium campaign type, specifically for streaming / CTV (Microsoft)
Microsoft have made some new updates to Microsoft Ads including impression based remarketing / PMAX (Microsoft)
Google have put out some insights on AI in search, which is providing inconsistent feedback to the wider ecosystem for click volume / quality (Google)
X announces plans for the future of ads, using AI and ads within Grok (SocialMediaToday)
Microsoft have dropped a blog on the impact of conversational AI on their ad solutions (Microsoft)
Snapchat rolls out promoted place ads in the UK (MediaLeader)
Meta rolls out a few new updates for the holiday season on their ads (Adweek)
Meta may bill users in advance for certain campaign types based on new updates to their billing systems (Meta)
Meta have allowed all 4 core brand suitability vendors to measure Threads (Meta)
Meta will move the dynamic media opt in feature for ad creation to standard if creating ads via API, ultimately opting into AI features by default (Meta)
PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS 🌐
DoubleVerify have launched more brand suitability measurement on Meta feed / reels (Businesswire)
DV360 have released SDF 9.0, which incorporates updates to political ads for EU markets (DV360)
OpenX sues Google over rigged ad auctions, in parallel to antitrust case updates (Adweek)
Google put out some collateral on how they leverage AI to fight invalid traffic in ads (Google)
IAB Tech Tab have announced a new proposal for content to ad product mapping (PrNewswire)
Pixability have introduced a new ad solution for Demand Gen (Pixability)
TTD have been called out over Kokai & AI bias for inventory (Adage)
TTD & Walmart will stop their exclusive partnership, opening the door to Walmart working with other commerce platforms (TheInformation)
Magnite & Acxiom launch a new partnerships for CTV data buying (Magnite)
Magnite have also launched a Pause Ads solution on CTV (Magnite)
IDENTITY HIGHLIGHTS 🆔
Google have dropped a new blog post on the state of their open source MMM Meridian (Google)
Google have made new capabilities available in Big Query to create machine learning models in BigQuery ML (Google)
Minnesota brings their own state US privacy laws in place, marking the 16th state to enforce something (Sourcepoint)
Meta introduces a new functionality to protect ads from fake profiles (Meta)
California will soon have a couple of updates to CCPA regulations, making it less strict for behavioral ads requirements (AdExchanger)
Google have brought 3 big updates to running / measuring iOS app campaigns (Google)
InfoSum have announced a brand new partnership with Nielsen Marketing Cloud (InfoSum)
Google have introduced new updates to conversion API uploads for Google Ads (Google)
Innovid have introduced some new AI themed updates to their performance solutions (Innovid)
Microsoft will make consent signals mandatory for Clarity, its analytics tool for EU / UK starting 31st October 2025 (Microsoft)
Microsoft have also added AI channel grouping to Clarity to define GenAI traffic (Microsoft)
Cloudflare have posted some latest insights on what they see from a CDN side on bot crawlers / impact of AI on clicks (Cloudflare)
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