This recent political season has been full of twists and turns, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. We’re all looking for ways to contextualize this presidential election cycle to keep our heads wrapped around what’s happening. 

A recent analysis by GumGum sheds light on how the media portrays Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump in political discourse. Utilizing their advanced contextual advertising tool, GumGum examined over 5 million pages of political content from late July to uncover trends in media coverage and sentiment. 

The findings reveal a significant disparity between mentions and sentiment: the media mentioned Donald Trump more than 1.7 million times, while Kamala Harris was mentioned around 1.36 million times. Notably, Kamala Harris’s media presence surged by 388% on the day of her candidacy announcement.

We chatted with Hailey Denenberg, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Data at GumGum, to explore these findings and how contextual advertising can help political advertising campaigns.

Leveraging Contextual Analysis for Political Campaigns

Andrew Byrd: Why did GumGum decide to conduct this study? What were your goals, especially in relation to your contextual tool?

Hailey Denenberg: Our contextual technology, developed over the past 15-16 years, uses computer vision and natural language processing to understand content as a human would. With the upcoming political campaign, we wanted to leverage this technology to track trends over time.

Given our extensive programmatic integrations with large platforms like DSPs and SSPs, we have a vast amount of classified content at our disposal. Following Kamala’s presidential announcement, we found it particularly interesting to analyze how the open web and editorial content discussed Kamala versus Trump over the last two weeks in July. We focused on mentions and sentiment, aiming to understand how each candidate is perceived and discussed in content.

Understanding how different editorial voices and platforms perceive and talk about each candidate, especially in terms of sentiment, provides valuable insights into the broader public discourse. Our goal was to use this analysis to uncover trends and patterns in how content about these candidates is produced and consumed, ultimately offering a deeper understanding of the political environment through the lens of digital content.

AB: The upcoming election is full of unexpected developments, especially after Kamala’s recent announcement and the campaign’s strategic execution. Given this dynamic, can you explain how contextual analysis helps understand political coverage?

HD:  Contextual analysis has many applications, especially in presidential campaigns. Advertisers should stay updated on how content is trending, positively or negatively. Think of it as playing offense and defense. For instance, if mentions of Kamala’s opponent, Trump, spike negatively, her campaign can play offense by surrounding that content with positive messaging about Kamala.

On the other hand, they might want to avoid any negative mentions of Kamala to keep the messaging streamlined, which is more of a defensive strategy. Understanding these content trends as different announcements unfold allows campaigns to use advanced contextual targeting. They can target all positive or negative content that mentions specific candidates, leveraging this analysis to shape their messaging effectively.

AB: How can publishers benefit from these technologies?

HD:  Yes, publishers can significantly benefit from contextual technologies. For example, news publishers can strategically package their inventory by grouping positive political news and offering it to brands comfortable with political content but wanting to avoid association with sensitive issues like abortion or immigration. This allows them to monetize content that aligns with the advertiser’s brand safety requirements.

Advanced contextual technologies not only understand the sentiment of the content but can also identify and filter out specific sensitive topics that an advertiser may want to avoid. This capability is crucial for maintaining brand safety while still allowing advertisers to participate in positive, relevant conversations.

Addressing Brand Safety Concerns

AB: At our last conference, there was a significant discussion about brand safety. Advertisers naturally want to avoid being associated with certain content, but publishers face revenue challenges due to these restrictions. How does GumGum approach brand safety, especially in contextual advertising?

HD:  Brand safety has become even more critical recently, especially with the news around the dissolution of VM and GARM. While we align with the GARM framework, we’ve also developed our custom threat categories beyond the usual “Dirty Dozen” like violence.

This is important because while positive contextual targeting aligns with preferred categories, there’s a strong demand for blocking or negatively targeting specific categories. Where GumGum stands out is in video analysis. For instance, in political advertising, which is huge for TV and CTV, most providers struggle to analyze what’s happening within the video content. 

However, our advanced video contextual technology allows us to explore the complete audio transcription and perform scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame analysis. This helps us determine what parts of the video are brand-safe or suitable according to our established threat levels, ensuring more precise targeting and reducing over-blocking.

Reaching the Right Audience and Environment

AB: How does contextual advertising help political ads reach the right audience in the right environment?

HD: At GumGum, we focus on placing ads where they are most relevant, using a deep understanding of content. For example, if someone is reading an article about the election and sees an ad with positive messaging about a candidate like Trump, it aligns with what they’re already thinking about. 

This increases the ad’s effectiveness, especially when combined with geo-targeting in swing states. It’s all about reaching consumers at the moment they’re considering a topic, which can influence their actions.

AB: Does your approach to contextual advertising change depending on whether it’s on mobile, desktop, or other platforms? Or is there generally much overlap?

HD: Generally, there’s significant overlap, as reaching the consumer in the right mindset is often based on the content itself, which tends to be consistent across devices like mobile and desktop. However, attention models can vary depending on the environment. We have different panels for mobile and desktop, and we’re beginning to explore video. While I don’t have definitive data yet, it will be interesting to see if there are differences in optimal attention times across these environments.

AB: What final advice would you give to advertisers and publishers considering political advertising and contextual targeting?

HD: I advise them to gather as much data and insights as possible from various sources. This will help you uncover unconventional ways to position your brand or supply. Instead of sticking to obvious choices, explore new audience segments. For instance, while Nike might seem like a fit for sports content, insights might reveal it’s also popular in Home and Garden content due to a current trend. By broadening your perspective, you can enhance your targeting strategy and reach new audiences more effectively.

The post How Contextual Analysis Shapes Political Campaigns: Insights from GumGum’s Hailey Denenberg appeared first on AdMonsters.

Political advertisers are forecasted to spend over $12 billion across all channels during the 2024 election cycle, marking the highest spend in U.S. history, according to eMarketer. While a significant portion of that budget will go to linear TV, digital advertising remains a critical battleground. 

Election campaigns are turning to advanced techniques like bid shading to stretch their dollars in this high-stakes environment. But what does bid shading mean for publishers? Let’s dig into how this tactic impacts publishers, the challenges it presents, and how to navigate these waters during this unprecedented election cycle.

What is Bid Shading?

Bid shading might sound like some covert operation, but it’s actually a savvy strategy media buyers use in digital ad auctions. Imagine you’re at an auction, but instead of bidding wildly, you have an algorithm whispering the optimal bid in your ear. 

This algorithm analyzes historical pricing data, current market conditions, and the value of the impression to tweak bids just enough to win ad impressions without overpaying. The method is especially crucial in situations like political advertising where budgets, although large, need to be spent efficiently.

Example:

Picture a political campaign aiming to secure an ad slot. Without bid shading, they bid $10 and pay the full amount. But, with bid shading, the algorithm suggests $7.50 based on past data, saving $2.50 while still winning the spot and potentially saving the advertiser 25% on that impression.

The Impact of High Political Budgets on Publishers

With political budgets hitting an all-time high, this influx of ad spend can be both a golden opportunity and a potential headache for publishers. 

The Upside:

1. Increased Demand: More political dollars chasing your inventory means heightened competition, which typically drives up demand and fill rates.
2. Revenue Boost: Those previously unsold ad slots? They’re now hot commodities, filling up quickly and boosting your bottom line.

The Downside:

1. Revenue Volatility: While demand surges, bid shading introduces a layer of unpredictability as bids are adjusted downward, making revenue streams less predictable.
2. Inventory Devaluation: As campaigns use bid shading to cut costs, the perceived value of your ad impressions might take a hit, impacting long-term revenue strategies.

Navigating the Risks of Bid Shading

Bid shading isn’t just a double-edged sword — it’s a whole cutlery set. Here are the risks you need to watch out for and how to handle them:

Lower CPMs:

Bid shading typically results in lower cost-per-thousand impressions (CPMs). Some publishers have reported CPM drops of up to 20% due to bid shading. This is a direct hit to your revenue as bids are systematically adjusted to lower amounts.

What to Do:

Consider implementing dynamic price floors that adapt to market conditions in real time. This ensures bids won’t drop below a certain level, protecting your revenue.

Inconsistent Revenue Streams:

The dynamic nature of bid shading means your revenue from political ads can fluctuate wildly, complicating forecasting and planning.

What to Do: 

Leverage advanced yield management tools to analyze historical data and market trends. This helps you understand and anticipate the effects of bid shading, optimizing your inventory pricing and placement.

Competitive Pressure:

With multiple campaigns vying for ad space, the pressure to lower prices further increases, risking a race to the bottom.

What to Do:

Enhance your auction strategies with techniques like header bidding. By involving multiple demand sources, you can drive up competition for your inventory, balancing out the downward pressure from bid shading.

Making Bid Shading Work for You

Bid shading isn’t all doom and gloom—there’s a silver lining if you play your cards right. Here’s how to turn bid shading into an advantage:

Leverage Advanced Analytics: 

Investing in tools that provide deep insights into bidding patterns can help publishers adjust their strategies in real time and identify opportunities to maximize revenue.

Enhance First-Party Data: 

Rich, accurate data about audience segments can command premium prices, even in a bid-shaded environment. Investing in data collection and analysis can increase the value proposition for advertisers.

Dynamic Price Floors:

Setting smart, dynamic price floors can help you maintain control over your inventory pricing. Adjust these floors based on real-time market conditions, like time of day, user demographics, and current events to prevent your CPMs from dropping too low.

Auction Strategies:

Don’t just rely on traditional auction setups. Incorporate header bidding to get multiple demand sources competing for your ad space. Increase competition for inventory and mitigate the impact of bid shading from any single source by relying on multiple SSPs and ad exchanges. This improves the likelihood of higher bids, even with bid shading in play. 

Yield Management:

Invest in robust yield management tools and expertise. These tools help you make data-driven decisions about your ad inventory, optimizing pricing and placement to counteract the effects of bid shading.

Collaboration with Buyers:

Build strong relationships with your advertisers. Educate them about the value of your premium inventory and work together to establish fair pricing and bidding practices. This collaborative approach can lead to more stable and beneficial outcomes for both parties.

When in Rome Leverage Bid Shading to Your Advantage

Bid shading is here to stay, especially in high-budget political advertising cycles. Publishers who adapt and strategically manage their ad inventory can thrive, capturing the full potential of these high-budget opportunities.

While bid shading presents both opportunities and challenges, strategic measures can mitigate risks and maximize revenue. Implementing dynamic pricing, enhancing auction strategies, optimizing yield management, and fostering collaboration with buyers is key to navigating bid shading complexities and staying competitive.

Not all of the predicted $12 billion election cycle budgets will be subject to bid shading. Direct deals, bypassing programmatic auctions, will also play a significant role. Publishers offering unique value propositions, like highly engaged audiences or brand-safe environments, can command premium prices despite bid shading tactics.

The post How Bid Shading and the $12 Billion Political Ad Boom Could Impact Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

In an era where technology shapes our daily lives, generative AI has emerged as a powerful force in the political landscape, and its role is both revolutionary and potentially dangerous.

With generative AI, politicians can create targeted campaign ads, amplify campaign messages, and engage voters, but there’s a downside. Consider how AI can also be misused for creating convincingly fake campaign ads, disseminating disinformation, and turning voter outreach into voter manipulation.

Dive in as Dinesen delves into the complex world of AI in politics, examining its benefits, risks, and the urgent need for regulation to protect the integrity of democratic processes.

Generative AI and Politics

OpenAI certainly changed the world in November 2022 when it introduced ChatGPT, the first popular and widely available generative AI tool. Public reaction was varied. Many warned it was the end of numerous careers (indeed, the Hollywood writers’ strike was partially due to fear that ChatGPT would eliminate their jobs).

And a great many experts worried that ChatGPT would usher in a new era of fake news, disinformation, and more believable scams as generative AI can create text that feels legitimate to the average person. This isn’t an idle fear as one study found that large language models (LLMs) can outperform human authors in terms of convincing people.

Election officials are sounding the alarm over the use of generative AI in creating political ads, phony but convincing campaign fundraising letters, as well as orchestrating voter outreach initiatives. These officials weren’t wrong; we’ve already seen generative AI used for such purposes. In January 2024, registered Democratic voters in New Hampshire received fake Joe Biden robocalls telling them not to vote in the primaries so that they could save their vote for November.

This is not to say that all use cases for generative AI in the political sphere are nefarious. Many legitimate political parties and candidates see generative AI as a useful tool in amplifying the impact of their political ads. For instance, they can use it to deliver highly targeted ads at the household level, including those encouraging voter turnout. In fact, generative AI can help less-resourced campaigns compete against well-funded ones.

That said, generative AI can (and likely will) have harmful impacts on elections across the world, and it’s well worth our time to be aware of its dangers, and take steps to mitigate them.

Insufficient Oversight in AI-Generated Political Ads

There’s no doubt that AI can create high-quality text that many people and voters find quite credible. But therein lies the danger. 

Most reasonable people assume that the ads they hear or see have been endorsed by a campaign and vetted by the media source that runs them. In the US, radio and television ads end with the candidate saying, “I’m [candidate name] and I approve this message.” Internet-based ads are exempt from this disclosure requirement, a loophole that the Honest Ads Act of 2017 sought to close (it didn’t pass).

Today, few regulations require political ads to disclose the role of AI in their creation. The one exception is the EU AI Act, which classifies AI systems used to influence voters in political campaigns as “high-risk” and therefore subject to strict regulations.

The United States government has failed to enact a national AI disclosure law, even as the 2024 presidential election looms. In the absence of a national law, a dozen or so states enacted laws regulating the use of AI and deepfakes (more on that later) in political advertising and requiring disclosure. Those states are California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. Additionally, Google said last year it would require AI disclosure on political ads, and Meta soon followed suit.  

But there are challenges to these efforts. Common Cause, an advocacy group focused on promoting ethics, accountability, and reform in government and politics, says the Florida law is too weak to be effective as it imposes fines, but no mechanisms for removing offending ads. In Wisconsin, the Voting Rights Lab warns that the state law is too narrow, regulating only candidate campaigns and not special interest group ads.

The bigger challenge is that it’s up to the ad creators to self-disclose, an unlikely event for people bent on fear-mongering, and even if an ad is deemed violative, it will still be in circulation for it is spotted and identified. In other words, AI-generated ads with misinformation will still have ample opportunities to be seen and believed by a great many voters.    

Generative AI Hallucinations

Another challenge is AI hallucinations. Most AI tools warn the user that responses may contain incorrect information (see graphic below), which means a campaign may willingly or inadvertently create campaign ads containing false information.

This isn’t a theoretical concern. Research from a European non-profit organization, AI Forensics, found that one out of three answers provided by AI was wrong. Microsoft’s Bing search bot gave wrong answers when asked basic questions about elections in Germany and Switzerland, often misquoting its sources.

In the United States, misleading and incorrect responses from chatbots threaten to disenfranchise voters. AI-generated responses told users to vote at locations that don’t exist or aren’t official polling stations. Columbia University tested five AI models, and all failed to provide accurate responses to basic questions about the democratic process.

In the U.S., misinformation about voting times and locations is a tried-and-true voting suppression tactic, so it’s concerning that generative AI will allow its practitioners to be more effective.

Inherent Bias of Generative AI

All AI is trained on data; the accuracy of the AI is wholly driven by how well the training data is vetted and labeled. Data is often inherently biased for many reasons. In the political sphere, LLMs are trained on news stories that concern elections and candidates, but liberal news sites block AI bots as a matter of course, whereas right-wing ones welcome them. The result is that the AI models are trained on data skewed to a particular point of view that may not reflect a total body of opinion. 

Going further, some people intentionally seek to influence the responses of a chatbot. In 2023, The New York Times reported that David Rozado, a researcher in New Zealand, used prompt engineering to create right-wing ChatGPT. This revised chatbot was intentionally designed to give right-wing answers

Political Manipulation

Perhaps the biggest concern is that AI will be used to manipulate the voter, as the fake Biden robocalls sought to do.

This isn’t a new fear, of course, as we’ve seen AI used in political manipulation long before the widespread availability of ChatGPT. For instance, in the 2018 midterm elections in the US, election officials were warning voters to be aware of deep fakes. To raise awareness of just how realistic deep fake videos can seem, Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele created a video in which a fake Barack Obama says “stay woke.” The message is clear: don’t believe what you hear on the internet.

Despite the warning, deep fake videos and images appear in the media.  In June 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign shared fake AI-generated images depicting Donald Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and someone who Trump came to loathe. Trump supporters targeted African Americans with fake AI images, as part of a strategic ploy to convince voters that Trump is popular among Black voters.

Deep fakes also played a key role in the 2023 Argentine elections. Candidate Sergio Massa’s team created a video featuring his main rival, Javier Milei, describing the revenues that could be gained by selling human organs and suggesting that parents could consider having children as a “long-term investment.” Despite the video’s explicit AI-generated label, it was quickly shared on different platforms without disclaimers.

Over in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s staff shared a video depicting his main rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, receiving the endorsement of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a designated terrorist group. Although this video was clearly fabricated, it didn’t stop voters from viewing and sharing it widely. 

Given what we’ve already seen occur, it’s no surprise that election experts call generative AI a “political super-weapon.” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, takes it one step further, saying that AI poses “epoch-defining” risks, including the widespread proliferation of disinformation.

When People Aren’t Real: The Rise of Bots & Psychochats

There’s one final threat to consider: AI posing as humans to sway how people think and ultimately vote. Once again, nefarious players have access to sophisticated tools to help them deploy their schemes.

For instance, bots have been effective at disseminating disinformation with a great deal of speed and efficiency. In 2019, The New York Times reported that Epoch Media Group created over 600 fake media profiles, all featuring profile photos generated by AI. Those profiles were then deployed to distribute fake news and disinformation.

It’s not that hard to come up with AI-generated profile pics; a simple Google search serves up numerous sites allowing you to create realistic headshots and photos for social media. These bots can then be used to engage with voters who may be on the fence or provide people, who are intent on voting, to go to a non-existent polling station.

Psychochats goe one step further. These are avatars of candidates and are deployed online to interact with potential voters. It’s only a matter of time before psychochats are used by campaign opponents to spread misinformation on their rivals, similar to Sergio Massa’s smear campaign against Javier Milei.

Think this is too outlandish to be true? Politico reports that Meta is already experimenting with licensed AI celebrity avatars. And, Hello History invites users to “have in-depth conversations” with historical people of the past.

Democracy in Peril: Why We Must Act

When elections are marked by rampant misinformation, the very foundation of democracy is compromised. At the end of the day, misinformation leads to the formation of governments formed under false pretenses. Chaos results when governments lack the necessary legitimacy to govern effectively. 

The erosion of trust brought on by deep fakes, AI-generated lies, and psychochats undermine the democratic process, ultimately threatening the stability of societies. Never has it been more important to protect the integrity of information during election cycles. AI tools are cool and offer tremendous benefits to everyone in the digital media industry. But we must also acknowledge their potential for abuse, and work tirelessly to control how they’re used.

The post AI’s Role in Political Manipulation appeared first on AdMonsters.

This poses a significant question to advertisers: are you prepared for the effects that this year’s election has on your pre-existing media plans? As the competition for linear spots in late 2024 continues to increase, advertisers should look to scale alternative channels such as Connected TV (CTV) to avoid dark periods in their marketing efforts.

Let’s take a deeper look at the three key trends that advertisers are facing this election cycle.

Political Advertising’s Historical Focus on Linear TV

In addition to the divisive choice for president, there are 33 U.S. Senate races, 14 state gubernatorial elections and 435 congressional seats up for grabs. Most of these politicians will focus their advertising efforts on local broadcast TV where viewers tend to be older, more engaged with local politics, and as a result, more likely to vote.

There is also a “we’ve always done things this way” mentality endemic to political advertising, and campaigns often stick with the linear TV advertising that they know. While overall trends in the advertising industry show a growing shift from linear TV to CTV and streaming, political advertisers still believe that local TV is more efficient for disseminating the messages and platform of a politician’s campaign as quickly as possible.

Political Advertisers Take Priority

As many TV companies and local networks anticipate a busy and chaotic election cycle, they begin setting aside a large number of spots for political advertisers. These campaigns are historically given priority for TV placement, resulting in non-political advertisers being bumped to later months with more ad space. This presents a significant challenge for verticals such as retail, CPG and entertainment, who rely on linear TV advertising as part of their broader media plans to promote timely initiatives and offerings.

These advertisers are facing a Catch-22: they must choose between paying a premium price for spots or going dark on linear until after the election. Advertisers should begin planning for the upcoming political climate and exploring alternative channels, such as CTV, to achieve lower CPMs and greater return on ad spend (ROAS).

CTV Shines Through

Even though views on streaming services surpassed those of broadcast and cable TV for the first time in 2023, local TV is often still favored by political campaigners. This presents an opportunity for non-political advertisers to effectively shift their linear-planned dollars to CTV campaigns and drive better reach and measurable ad performance than traditional linear buys. And, through the activation of a brand’s first-party data, CTV placements provide advertisers with more control in targeting and reporting than Linear TV.

Now is the time to act. Doing nothing risks getting your campaigns bumped and your brand going dark during the highly coveted holiday shopping season. Talk to your advertising partners today and take control of your schedule for the fall of 2024.

Investing in CTV is the solution for all advertisers — political and non-political — far beyond the election this fall. Marketers should rise to the moment, capitalize on these massive tailwinds behind CTV to accelerate brand growth and efficiently execute their KPIs for the coming year.

The post Advertisers, Are You Ready for This Year’s Election Cycle? appeared first on AdMonsters.

2023 felt like the beginning of the end. It was like the perfect maelstrom.

A recession was forecasted. Oh no, no it wasn’t. Ad spend was plummeting. Oh wait, it started inching back up again.  For publishers, there was just no way to make heads or tails out of the year that was the last before the 3P cookies’ demise.

Political ad spend is on the rise, but there are ad quality challenges for any publisher wanting to jump into that pool. We’ve got a playbook for navigating those waters.  Targeting and metrics are getting a remix and creative could use a facelift. We’ve got a playbook to guide you through attention’s dominance.

What about bad ads, are they tarnishing consumers’ perceptions about your media properties? We surveyed 250 consumers to give it to you straight — along with publishers’ tips for cracking down on those bad actors and making the user experience a priority.

And finally, we took a deep dive into how widely contextualized AdOps data shared with sales and ad product teams. The truth is, AdOps teams are rock stars (party on) but sales teams might not be taking full advantage of their data stardom. We’ve got a playbook for that too. All it involves is making meaningful workflow changes to focus on revenue-generating tasks.

You really should download one of these (if not all of them).

AdMonsters Publisher Playbooks of 2023

AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom?

AdOps teams are data superstars, sitting on a treasure trove of information that contains rich and nuanced context. Many can say which ad units perform best, by format, section, industry and vertical. Some can accurately predict the ROAS advertisers can expect to see from their campaigns.

This is the kind of data that attracts advertisers, especially during a recession when their budgets are smaller and all focus is on performance and business outcomes.

But are publishers taking full advantage of these amazing resources? Our survey indicates they are not. There’s not enough collaboration between AdOps and the sales, product, and business intelligence teams. This is caused by a combination of tech limitations and interdepartmental inefficiencies.

More worrisome, only 22% of AdOps teams say they have access to a wealth of data and insights, which means the remaining 78% can’t help their colleagues succeed in their jobs to the fullest possible extent.

Now that advertisers are cutting back on campaigns, publishers need to work harder to attract brands to their sites. Detailed performance data distributed to all the teams that need it can help publishers win more business and revenue. As it stands, they’re leaving money on the table. Download this playbook now!

How Bad Ads Affect Consumer Perception of Publishers

Publishers have always struggled with bad ads. Nefarious players and scammers, who sought to exploit the digital advertising ecosystem to steal money or data from consumers, have been around almost since the first ad was placed.

But as the world became more digitized, and as global wealth (and access to it) went online, bad actors stepped up their game. Online scams beginning with a digital ad are now dizzyingly complex, with fraudsters going to great lengths to appear legitimate to their victims.

Not surprisingly, malvertising is now a major crime, with 46% of consumers saying they, or someone they know, has fallen prey to a scam. According to the FBI, American consumers lost $10 billion to online scammers in 2022, and 2023 promises to be an even worse year for consumers.

Malvertising and malware are upending digital advertising, with the FBI warning consumers to install ad blockers, and the New York Times telling its readers that “if it’s advertised, you probably shouldn’t buy it.”

Programmatic advertising burst onto the scene in the mid-2000s promising better monetization opportunities for publishers and better access to audiences for brands. That promise led to a robust industry; in 2022 global revenues topped $173.74 billion worldwide.

The scales have tipped, and programmatic has become more of a liability than an asset. Last year, Bloomberg News made headlines when it announced it was pulling the plug on open programmatic, citing bad ads and the impact they had on the reader’s experience.

They’re hardly alone. Jared Collett, Sr. Director of Ad Operations and Analytics, Major League Fishing, also said his company changed who they work with as a result of bad ads. “We’ve had to sever relationships with various programmatic partners and ad networks because they couldn’t get control over the bad ads they were sending us. I would rather serve a house ad, or no ads than serve a bad ad.”

Worse, bad ads are eroding consumer trust in publishers. For 77% of consumers, a bad ad is a signal that the publisher cares more about making money than it does about their safety. Another 64% say that seeing a bad ad on a single site tarnishes the entire industry. It’s fair to say we’re at a crisis point.

“This finding is really important. It brings home the point that rightly or wrongly, the reputation of the advertiser and the reputation of the publisher are really tied together. This is something media organizations will need to address.” said Amnon Siev, CEO, GeoEdge. Download this playbook now!

Targeting and Metrics Evolution: Are Publishers Ready for Attention’s Dominance?

Our survey results reveal that 2024 promises to be a year of rapid innovation, with publishers rethinking what’s possible:

The New Metric: Attention. As the digital advertising landscape undergoes transformations that limit the use of traditional identifiers, publishers are adapting their measurement practices to meet their advertising clients’ expectations. Driven by advertising demand, 82% of publishers said that attention metrics, which evaluate the amount of attention a consumer spends with content, are important or very important to their organizations. We see new metrics emerging, and publishers reporting some success, but new tools and education are still required.

Innovative Ad Formats & Ad Placements. Publishers are realizing that there is a significant opportunity to drive higher attention rates by experimenting with new and innovative ad formats (45%) or ad placements (55%), signaling a new era in which the advertising sector turns its focus from innovating in targeting to innovating in creative and placement.

Targeting Capabilities. While cookie-based targeting was mediocre at best, it did enable advertisers to scale their campaigns and develop proxies for their ideal audiences. Today, however, publishers are seeking privacy-compliant ways to home in on receptive audiences. Key among them: leveraging their first-party data.

Indirect Monetization. Some publishers appear open to granting permission for indirect representation of their inventory, allowing marketers to access approved pathways via ads.txt and other sources, even from non-direct partners. To maintain and optimize the list over time, publishers implement monitoring, regular communication, audits, and data analysis. This ensures a strong ecosystem of indirect partners, maximizing monetization while maintaining control and quality assurance. Download this playbook now!

Navigating Political Ads for the 2024 Season

A staggering $10 billion will pour into the political advertising arena to sway American voters during the 2024 Election cycle. While $10 billion is a boon for digital media stakeholders, that money comes with severe risks.

Navigating misinformation and disinformation will be a key challenge of this election cycle, driven by the widespread availability of sophisticated AI tools. Digital publishers and CTV stakeholders face direct and negative effects on their business, from drops in user engagement to broader societal mistrust.

The proliferation of generative AI, deepfakes, and sophisticated malvertising tactics have empowered fraudsters and foreign governments to distribute deceptive ads via programmatic channels. This alarming trend has forced digital media entities into a rapid and rigorous process of establishing, overhauling, and strictly enforcing political ad quality policies.

Ultimately it falls to publishers to serve as the final bastion of defense for their audiences. Publishers must undertake the critical task of determining whether specific advertisers and promoters of sensitive, hot-button issues can be permitted to run ads on their sites and under which conditions, while simultaneously ensuring malicious actors are kept at bay.

This Playbook provides a robust framework for an ad quality strategy, essential for setting up robust election advertising guidelines. It delves into the tools available to publishers for increased visibility and control, shedding light on challenges in the upcoming election cycle. The Playbook’s goal is to empower publishers to guarantee that political ads on their platforms are informative and accurate and enhance both user experience and their reputation. Download this playbook now!

The post AdMonsters Publisher Playbooks of 2023: Political Ads, Attention Metrics, Bad Ads, Ad Ops Are Rock Stars appeared first on AdMonsters.

Navigating misinformation and disinformation will be a key challenge this election cycle, driven by widespread availability of sophisticated AI tools. Digital publishers and CTV stakeholders face direct and negative effects on their business, from drops in user engagement to broader societal mistrust.

Ultimately it falls to publishers to serve as the final bastion of defense for their audiences. Publishers must undertake the critical task of determining whether specific advertisers and promoters of sensitive, hot-button issues can be permitted to run ads on their sites and under which conditions, while simultaneously ensuring malicious actors are kept at bay.

This Playbook, created in partnership with GeoEdge, provides a robust framework for an ad quality strategy, essential for setting up robust election advertising guidelines. It delves into the tools available to publishers for increased visibility and control, shedding light on challenges in the upcoming election cycle. 

Enter your info to download your copy below!

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So why are we talking about it now, five months after its introduction? Well, Facebook is under new scrutiny for how political data company Cambridge Analytica pulled in millions of Facebook users’ data without their knowledge or consent, and that’s amplifying any unsettled transparency issues the social platform is facing, including the “Russian interference” question.

Let’s take a look at what’s in the Honest Ads Act. It’s a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA, and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee), John McCain (R-AZ) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Its goal is to regulate political campaign ads and “issues” ads (ads that address policy, but don’t necessarily mention a specific candidate). It would require companies to disclose who bought the ads, how much the ads cost, and how the ads were targeted, and it proposes the ads and information around them be stored in a sort of public cache.

Political ads in print, TV and radio already have to include a “Paid for by…” disclosure, and the Honest Ads Act proposes bringing that same standard over to the internet—not much of a stretch, in theory. But this particular bill is under fire from multiple sides. Lobbyists for the major platforms, including the Internet Association (of which Facebook, Twitter and Google are members), are not keen on the ad cache, arguing it’ll be prohibitive to create and maintain such a thing. These groups also don’t want the platforms themselves to be liable for any shenanigans or dishonesty their ad buyers get up to. Even the IAB has said it’s best to leave the digital industry to self-regulate—an argument we’ve been hearing for years, and of course we can ask ourselves how well that’s worked for us so far. While those entities agree that transparency is important, they don’t think the Honest Ads Act is the answer.

Others say the act doesn’t do enough to combat the real problems we see in ad fraud. Take Russian troll farms, argued Bloomberg View’s Leonid Bershidsky: The very business of troll farms is to evade, to appear legit, and to skirt laws instead of clearly breaking them whenever possible. By this argument, the bill’s proposed solution has holes in it bad actors walk through every day.

Supporters of the bill say that even if it’s not perfect, we have to start somewhere. That said, the Honest Ads Act hasn’t gotten us there yet—but other bills seeking to disclose more information about the real buyers behind political ads have been introduced in state legislatures and even some cities. And for whatever “self-regulation” is worth, Mark Zuckerberg was on CNN on March 21 voicing support for some of the basic ideas behind the Honest Ads Act. “If you look at how much regulation there is around advertising on TV and print, it’s just not clear why there should be less on the internet,” he said. “People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook, and you should be able to go to any page and see the ads that people are running to different audiences.” Well, that’s exactly what the act proposes.

Zuckerberg added Facebook has already been testing out a program for such disclosures in Canada, and that he hopes it’s running in the U.S. by the midterm elections. If they stick to that timeline, it seems safe to predict get to a solution before Congress does.

AdMonsters Resources:

Will Cambridge Analytica Hurt Facebook Ad Business?
Targeting Consent Is a Publisher/Vendor Team Effort

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