DIGITAL ROUNDUP - DECEMBER 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

Meta drops new ad policy for sensitive verticals

DEEPDIVE

Another change driven by data regulation / privacy will be coming into effect for advertisers of Meta in January 2025, whereby certain types of verticals / brands will now be restricted in what is possible to run ad campaigns with.

The major update here is the conversion optimisation side of things, whereby the ability to use lower funnel events such as AddToCart or Purchase will no longer be allowed, either through a standard client side pixel or through server side Conversion API (CAPI).

For the most part, this has already been in place over the past year or so, based on adjustments that Meta have slowly rolled out to ad targeting / event tracking. But this move to more explicitly flag advertisers and restrict them is open to errors. And given there is no way to opt out or appeal, certain verticals like financial services / skincare / health wellness will be praying that they do not get their ad accounts flagged.

And to double down, if you attempt to circumvent this by using custom events / other events to send the same signal to your pixel, Meta will outright restrict your business.

Is Meta still a viable platform to run conversion based campaigns without the ability to optimise on that level? Absolutely. There are alternative forms of measurements and incrementality testing that can prove this. But whether advertisers / performance focused agencies want to take that risk will be another question vs moving to other platforms like TikTok where the rules are less strict.

Mediaocean Acquires Innovid to bolster its offering

DEEPDIVE

Mediaocean have made a $500m acquisition of Innovid, to significantly expand its adserving capabilities into a more video / CTV space, but with the background of a neutral backbone in comparison to its competitors aka Google.

The adserving marketplace is an interesting place to be in currently, but needs distinctions between how the supply side / publisher end works vs the buy side / advertiser side. Google dominates in both parts, but through a combination of Flashtalking which Mediaocean acquired several years ago with Innovid, there is a much bigger “global” consolidation move here in the works.

Add to this that Mediaocean also have made several other acquisitions over time including Prisma, 4C and Protected Media, they are shaping themselves to directly compete as a neutral ad stack across all different forms of use cases.

The adserver game though is not without challenges, as clearly we have seen from both Meta & Amazon failing to succeed with their attempts over time. And from a measurement perspective, the value of an adserver is questioned more than ever before. Though at the end of the day, the proof is in the name. Ad serving requires an adserver but more so technology that can evolve. A combined Flashtalking / Innovid tool could be quite powerful but whether it has the legs to truly challenge Google will also come down to the end results of the DOJ antitrust case, where the supply side adserving is the most likely fallout to change.

OTHER KEY CALLOUTS

SOCIAL / SEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 📱

• X have set out to sue Twitch over boycotting of advertising away from their platform (BI)

• Meta have introduced a subscription service for no ads on Facebook / Instagram for European users (Meta)

• Threads is likely to bring some form of ads to their platform in early 2025 (Information)

• Meta have rolled out a new flexible media option, to more streamline how ads are built / shown (SMT)

PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS 🌐

• Amazon have fully launched their bespoke contextual targeting solution on DSP (Amazon)

• Amazon have decided to sunset Freevee as a streaming service by end of 2024, in favour of pushing Prime Video (AT)

• Google PMAX gets called out again, this time for delivery on MFA websites (Adweek)

• Google will be deprecating Ads Creative Studio as a DCO platform, reverting back to legacy Studio going forwards (Google)

IDENTITY HIGHLIGHTS 🆔

• IAB tech lab have put out their framework around IDLess solutions, understanding how these may different to ID solutions and their role (IAB)

• AudienceProject have expanded their measurement capabilities into Disney Ads, for a more neutral measurement approach (AudienceProject)

• Google are making adjustments to how 1st party cookies operate on the supply side, through AdSense & Authorised Buyers (Google)

• Google have expanded the ability to do custom channel grouping in GA4 to manual ad content as a dimension (Google)

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