Kate from Marketexture (29:51)
Hello and welcome back to the Refresh, your weekly download on what went down in advertising. I'm Kate with Marketexture and today is Tuesday, October 14th. This week we're talking about Paramount's new ad format. American Express launching their commerce media network, Duolingo building out an ad platform and Google's ad tech antitrust remedies trial wrapping up. So let's get into it. Starting things out with Paramount plus who's kicking it old school with their latest ad unit that they announced at Advertising week. It's called streaming fixed units. The idea behind the ad format is to recreate the static ad placement experience that comes with traditional appointment viewing TV where your spot always aired in the same slot episode after episode. With these fixed units, an advertiser's ad will stay locked into the same position for seven days after an episode airs for on demand viewers. After that, ad delivery reverts back to the usual dynamic ad insertion setup that's characteristic of most programmatic CTV activation these days. For advertisers, it's a small but meaningful win, a way to maintain some consistency and certainty in how their ads appear and where they show up within a show structure. To do this, the ads will be transacted via direct order and scheduled manually in the ad server. In a world where most ads are delivered dynamically in an addressable capacity, Paramount is recognizing the value in being able to at least temporarily deliver a universal brand experience for audiences. The format will roll out across some of Paramount's biggest titles, including Tulsa King, Landman, Mayor of Kingstowne, and eventually sports content, as well as the various Yellowstone spinoffs that are in the queue. Moving to our next story, American Express is looking to capitalize on commerce media's momentum, as DJ Khaled would say, Another one not to be outdone by rival payments providers like MasterCard, who, in case you missed it, announced their own commerce media network last week. American Express is launching Amex Ads, which is arguably one of the catchier media network names so far, thanks to a little bit of alliteration. The network will be powered by first party data from their 34 million cardholders and come with a full suite of measurement and brand safety tools. Like MasterCard, Commerce Media and Chase Media Solutions, Amex Ads builds off of their existing offers business, which is essentially just promoting brand deals and discounts within Amex's own web and app properties. While Amex's 34 million users seems to pale in comparison to MasterCard's 500 million, they're banking on their audience niche of more affluent premium cardholders to be a key differentiator for them to support this goal. And in a move that's counter to how we've seen other commerce media networks launch recently, Amex is keeping inventory within its owned web and app properties. The network will debut on amextravel.com and later expand to other Amex owned platforms, which also allows for a more closed loop measurement experience for its advertisers. The 10,000 foot view here Commerce Media networks and consequent spend is booming. WPP Media estimated it'll hit $170 billion this year, but the room is getting crowded. Standing out means offering something unique that's going to prove its worth to advertisers. American Express has said that this offering extends to what would be considered non endemic advertisers, but for now I think the offering feels most relevant to brands that align with Amex's premium positioning. Think travel finance business professionals in the context of the current commerce media landscape. Leaning into your niche and offering novel ways to reach audiences while also being able to more directly measure their actions could be what's needed to succeed succeed Jumping over to Duolingo, who's also making improvements to their ad offerings by building their own ads platform to bring sales and execution closer to home and under a greater degree of control. The language learning app currently relies on programmatic enablement via DSP partners and connections like Google's AdMob. Yes, the same AdMob that's under Google's ADX network and currently is the subject of antitrust scrutiny from the DOJ to deliver ads to its massive free user base, which makes up about 90% of Duolingo users. Duo's leadership stated that this new offering isn't meant to replace Programmatic but to complement it, and the premium direct sales product will live alongside the open auction system. Duolingo's ad formats fall into familiar categories for mobile app skippable, interstitions after lessons, and rewarded videos that earn users in app currency. But what's new here is how the brand is giving more of a leading role to its well known and well loved cast of characters. Duolingo plans to feature them in branded videos for advertisers or use them as fun intros that lead into partner ads. By asserting more control over its advertising solutions, Duolingo is creating a more premium experience for both its advertisers and app users, and so far, the results of those efforts seem to be a worthwhile investment. Initial advertiser tests saw click through rates hitting a 3% increase, and 94% of users who viewed rewarded video ads completed those ads. The release of this dedicated ad platform and Amex's strategy behind how they've chosen to launch their commerce media network reinforces a trend I've been noticing. More and more companies are pulling components of their ad sales closer to home to better steward their brand identity and retain greater control over who shows up on their platforms. It's an effort that takes the experience of the actual customers of brands like Duo and Amex into greater consideration. Finally, we have Google and the DoJ, who after two weeks of intensive back and forth, have wrapped up the remedies phase of their AdTech antitrust trial. In those two weeks, more than two dozen witnesses took the stand, offering legal, technical and or industry expertise to support arguments to, for and against the proposed remedies from both the DOJ and Google. At the core, the DOJ was pushing for structural remedies, including a potential spinoff of Adex, Google's ad exchange. Google argued that this would be way too complex, but was seemingly undermined by testimony from a former Google and Facebook exec revealing that actually it's doable, it would just be time consuming. The real plot twist was that Google itself even evaluated the possibility of spinning off adx and came to the same conclusion. The DOJ proposed several other remedies, including a spinoff of dfp, Google's ad server, and for Google to have to open source or make public the code that's used for publisher auctions. And right now, both of these are sounding fairly unlikely. On Google's side, their arguments hinged more so on behavioral remedies, stating that anything severe like what the government was suggesting would harm publishers more than help them. And this has been a critical point of contention in this case. How do you rectify Google's monopoly without causing even more disruption and damage to the publishers and the greater open web ecosystem system? On their side, Google is proposing behavioral remedies like policy changes and enabling greater interoperability with third party or competitor products, for example, being able to use a different ad server with adx. Basically, Google is saying they'll promise to change their behavior and play nicer with their peers. But as anyone who's ever navigated toddler negotiation tactics will tell you, it's likely that Google could apply similar antics like when my two year old misbehaves and then promises to change his behavior, I find myself correcting the same behavior and having to remind him of the rules. And not too long after, if you're looking for more in depth coverage that does adequate justice to the story, Market's Erie Pipero was in the courtroom and chronicled each day of the trial for the Monopoly report. And after having read each post, I can confidently say his is the most entertaining and concise capture of the trial's happenings. Ultimately, this trial matters because it hopefully holds Google accountable for years of monopolistic behavior in ad tech and has sparked open conversation around some of the industry's darkest corners for publishers. It might also finally deliver some form of restitution for those who have been caught in the crossfire. But at this point, it does feel like we're looking in the rearview mirror when it's more critical to be looking forward at the future monopolies that are forming right before our eyes. That's all for this week. Thanks for joining us for the refresh and we'll catch you next week. It.