Highlights

• According to an eMarketer forecast, next year for the first time, ad-spending on private marketplaces will surpass spending on open exchanges.
• In an op-ed in the AdExchanger, it is claimed that Google’s shift from second to first price auctions’ model will most probably adversely impact SSPs’ revenues from header bidding, as the added value of the header bidding process in comparison to participating in Google’s exchange will significantly diminish.
• The eMarketer reviews the current state of header bidding, including the adoption of header bidding among US HBIX domains, the share of desktop and mobile header bidding impressions, US programmatic display ad spending and more.

Markets

• The online duopoly and Amazon are taking an ever growing cut of the global RTB revenue cake, while independent players have no choice but to brawl over the scraps. The AdExchanger publishes an article showing how Facebook, Google and Amazon continuously increase their share of the market.
• Two weeks after Apple’s announcement of Safari’s ITP 2.2 update, which exerts restrictive cross-site tracking protections to come out later in 2019, Google announces novel privacy protections for Chrome. The AdExchanger reviews this Chrome update.
• Digiday reports that Axel Springer, Funke Mediengruppe, RTL Group and Gruner+Jahr, Germany’s four largest publishers, join forces to create an advertising bloc with a reach of 50 million unique monthly users, meant to attract agencies and advertisers which would prefer working directly with the publishers to working with the online duopoly and Amazon.
  

Technology

• As Google and Apple crackdown on third-party cookies, the adtech vertical is preparing for a day when most players will depend on first-party data and the big four will have an even tighter hold on users. AdExchanger publishes an op-ed discussing what preparations should adtech players make to be well fitted for this new reality.
• Brian O’Kelley, former CEO of AppNexus, submitted a detailed and compelling forecast of ad-tech companies’ reaction to Google’s announced Chrome anti-tracking measures on quora.
• Ad refreshing, the practice of reloading ads which are already appearing on a webpage, is not allowed by AAX; it is however a quite common discipline in the adtech space, and numerous publishers, networks and SSPs employ this technique without guaranteeing to advertisers that these refreshed ads enjoy decent viewability rates. The AdExchanger published an op-ed that calls for an industry standard treatment of ad refreshing.
• Google’s SVP of Advertising and Commerce gave an engaging interview to CNET, speaking about online privacy in general and on Chrome update restricting the use of third party cookies in particular.

Supply

• Content solutions accounted for 40% of Forbes Media’s direct revenues this year (reaped through direct advertiser relationships), Digiday reports.

Regulation

• A year has passed since the GDPR came into power. CNBC publishes an unflattering review of the legislation’s influence on consumers, companies, and the market as a whole; claims that regulators are unable to properly enforce it due to manpower shortage and that its main impacts to date are added layers of bureaucracy to corporations and the creation of an overwhelming flood of privacy notices, to which users quickly become blind. The article raises interesting notes to consider as the market prepares for the coming into effect of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) on January 1, 2020.

   

• As GDPR complaints accumulate in Europe, Fix Adtech (a campaign striving to promote security and privacy in Adtech) published an article addressing complaints that RTB inherently infringes the GDPR in a regular and large scale manner, as personal data is being transmitted to different players in the adtech chain.
  This is a good example of the growing concerns of European users and privacy advocacy organization regarding the storing and transmission of personal data, and should definitely serve as a warning sign to companies in the space.

Markets

• Following the filing of a new suit against eyeo by Axel Springer (the fourth one so far, based on copyright infringement grounds), Digiday published a short review of the contentious relationship between the two companies
  

• MediaPost reports of a new form of malvertising that only impacts ads served via programmatic exchanges; the overwhelming majority of attacks occurr on mobile devices

• eMarketer podcast covers how payments are performed in the programmatic display world
  

• Digiday article suggests that Sizmek filing for chapter 11 is only a symptom of underlying issues within the Adtech industry as a whole: unsustainable debt levels, the duress on third-party cookies, lengthy payment terms and more

Technology

• Following adoption of its ads.txt initiative, IAB released a new specification (Sellers.json), this time with the intention of raising levels of trust among ad buyers in the middlemen involved in the selling and reselling of impressions. Digiday issued a short report on the tool.

Supply

• adExchanger published a compelling review of two contradicting trends currently taking place in the publishers’ landscape – complexity vs. simplicity, and Google as the surprising champion of the latter
  
• Digiday interviews reddit COO Jen Wong about its plans for future development, its current relationships with publishers and its monetization strategies

Demand

• Digiday reports an interesting trend in the buy-side of the programmatic advertising ecosystem, as advertisers are striving to close the gap between demand and supply and procure advertising inventory directly from publishers

Technology

• This March, Google announced that through the course of 2019, Google Ad Manager auctions will be switching from a ‘second-price auction’ model, where a winning advertiser pays one cent higher above the second-highest bid, to a ‘first-price auction’ model. As the biggest global ad exchange, this change is expected to have far reaching influences which will be felt all through the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Read more >

Supply

• eMarketer forecasts reddit’s ad business’ US revenues to cross the $100 million bar in 2019, representing a growth of more than 50% compared to 2018, and to more than double by 2021. eMarketer attributes the expected rise in revenues to Reddit revamping of its advertising offerings.Read more >

• An AdAge piece uses the Atlantic’s tribulations with finding a lucrative online business model to discuss the dilemma encountered by medium-sized publisher when considering raising a paywall

• A study performed for Digiday, with the participation of 15 leading U.K publishers, revealed that the ads, editorial content, tracking pixels and cookie-synching redirects constitute an average of 10% of pages’ weight.  

Demand

• DRUM reports that according to a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) poll on programmatic practices in the Asia Pacific region, nine out of ten marketers in APAC are currently buying media programmatically.

• A recent adExchanger op-ed addresses the trend of DSP consolidation and its influences on the industry as a whole

Markets

• The EU commission slapped Google with a whopping (relatively) fine of 1.49€ billion for violating EU competition law. The commission concluded that Google has abused its market dominance by restricting third-party websites it was working with, such that said websites were prevented from hosting ads of Google’s competitors. Read more >

• In a Medium post, Dem. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts laid out her plan to break up Amazon, Facebook and Google, if elected president in 2020.