Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
No Eye For IDs
Amazon launched a new ad product called Ad Relevance yesterday.
It’s part of the same product suite as Amazon’s Performance+, which means the platform AI oversees campaign optimization and placements.
Though, unlike Google’s Performance Max, Amazon Performance+ reports impression placements.
Ad Relevance is for buying inventory that doesn’t carry an ID in particular. Many brands restrict their bids to impressions with identifiers because they feel strongly about reach and frequency, for instance.
“Hey, ad identifiers are great,” Brian Tomasette, director of product and engineering for the Amazon DSP, told AdExchanger. “But to replace cookies with a single ad identifier is not a viable long-term strategy.”
Besides, Ad Relevance also reports reach and frequency (although it is a modeled version).
Putting your faith in an ad identifier may lead to less precise outcomes than trusting the platform’s modeled conversion of reality, according to Tomasette. “Relying on all the information that we have about requests, ad cadence and ad interactions – and using machine learning to identify addressability – is a better way to go.”
Third-Party Chess
App store operators face increased oversight in another major market. Japan will enact its own privacy and antitrust legislation next year, The Asahi Shimbun reports.
The law singles out companies that are influential in four verticals: smartphone software, app stores, web browsers and search.
In other words, Apple and Google.
These companies must allow third-party app stores, billing systems and web browsers. They also have to allow an app to link to third-party sites via a real browser (not an in-app version).
But how much will Japan’s new law really affect Apple and Google?
Not much, writes Eric Seufert at Mobile Dev Memo. Apple and Google have both already laid out their plans for compliance with the EU’s similar Digital Markets Act, although regulators have concerns about these plans.
More importantly, both companies have introduced measures to skirt the intent of such regulations by making it practically impossible for third-party competitors to take root in their systems. For example, Apple implemented a new fee for third-party app installs.
Japan adds some extra muscle behind international enforcement. But does anything really tip the scales?
A Credit Edit
Fun’s up.
Google Ads is giving advertisers until the end of July to switch from credit card payments to bank-based payments, Search Engine Roundtable reports.
It feels intuitive that cutting off credit card payments hits fraudsters and general bad actors, who rely on credit cards rather than bank accounts.
On the other hand, Ginny Marvin, the Google ads product liaison and a trusted interlocutor, doesn’t justify the change on those or any other security-related grounds. She tweeted that the idea is “to deliver a more consistent billing experience across our advertisers.” Which is like eating air.
This change seriously ticks off advertisers big and small. Many save money on credit and sometimes put those budgets toward cash-back offers or benefit programs with their cards.
Google also does earn more this way. It saves a few percent on credit card fees (which is real money at Google’s scale).
Perhaps more importantly, Google has replaced much of its human account services with machine-learning-based software. Sometimes it’s a chatbot or a familiar prompt-and-response experience, such as consumer AI products like ChatGPT.
The internal support for credit card processing no longer exists.
But Wait, There’s More!
Meta unveils Threads API and new AI tools. [Adweek]
LinkedIn eyes B2C marketers as it looks to increase ad dollars. [Digiday]
YouTube’s algorithm is more likely to recommend users right-wing and religious content, research finds. [NBC News]
Washington Post CEO Will Lewis had to cancel his “seriously glam dinner” at Cannes amid controversy over his and new editor Robert Winnett’s past reporting. [NYT] (h/t Peter Kafka)
You’re Hired!
Linda Boff, GE’s longtime marketing chief, is the new CEO of the agency Said Differently. [WSJ]