Advertiser Platforms
Business Wire | October 10, 2023
Streaming TV advertising is taking a step toward the future. This week, TV advertising agency Marketing Architects launched a new platform for CTV advertisers called Annika Streaming. Based on technology initially developed for linear TV, Annika Streaming buys CTV and streaming inventory more efficiently than current marketplace offerings allow. This enables performance brands to capitalize on streaming’s potential.
Annika’s development began six years ago when Marketing Architects built an AI-powered DSP for linear TV. The platform was designed to evaluate custom audience and performance criteria, set it against market trends and historical data, then calculate which media buys will drive the best ROI for individual brands. The result was a linear TV marketplace that delivered premium inventory for TV advertisers without premium price tags.
But as viewership shifted to streaming and connected TV, it was essential brands follow consumers to the channel. Unfortunately for performance marketers, streaming’s promise of advanced targeting and measurement capabilities has been overshadowed by its high prices, typically 5-10X higher than linear TV.
To close this gap, Marketing Architects spent the last two years building a proprietary streaming capability, bringing the efficient prices Annika achieved in linear into streaming and CTV. Now, Annika Streaming solves some of the biggest challenges for performance marketers on the channel.
Pricing: Annika Streaming obtains rates significantly more efficient than industry-leading third-party DSPs. These are achieved through a data-driven approach that benefits streaming publishers and advertisers alike.
Targeting:The platform offers several layers of contextual, geographic, and dayparting targeting capabilities, plus retargeting.
Distribution: Annika is fully integrated with dozens of streaming publishers and buys inventory available on Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, and smart TVs.
Measurement: With Annika, advertisers get access to multiple measurement models running in parallel, including IP address tracking and holdout groups for incrementality testing.
Marketing Architects clients had first access to Annika Streaming, which they are currently using to complement linear TV campaigns. The platform is available to select new brands starting this week. Learn more by visiting marketingarchitects.com/streaming.
About Marketing Architects
Marketing Architects is an All-Inclusive TV agency that rebuilt the traditional agency model to help brands drive profitable growth. Founded in Minneapolis, Marketing Architects has spent 25 years building homegrown technology to solve TV's pricing, measurement and scale challenges. For more information, please visit www.marketingarchitects.com.
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Ad Tech and Martech
Integral Ad Science | October 19, 2023
Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), a leading global media measurement and optimization platform, today announced a new Made for Advertising (MFA) AI-driven site detection and avoidance product. The company's MFA site technology aims to improve transparency into advertiser campaign quality, identify where spend is being allocated, and inform optimizations to minimize waste on MFA sites.
MFA sites are web pages featuring low quality content (e.g. spam sites, or ad farms) created solely to serve ads, and are optimized to perform well against traditional verification metrics, such as viewability. However, advertising spend on these sites does not drive meaningful outcomes, such as conversions or brand lift.
IAS's new product leverages AI to uncover MFA sites at scale, allowing advertisers to take back control of their media quality and cut down on wasted spend. During Alpha testing, IAS delivered comprehensive campaign analysis demonstrating superior MFA site identification for some of the world's largest advertisers and agencies.
IAS's product supports the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) recent definition of MFA sites and incorporates characteristics such as ad-to-content ratio, ad refresh rate, and the source of the traffic coming to the site to classify a site as MFA. According to the ANA's Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, 21% of all advertisement impressions measured were served on MFA sites.
Our MFA product was built to deliver unprecedented transparency to advertisers and provide them with the ability to both detect and avoid MFA sites in order to redirect their ad spend to publishers that drive a return, said Yannis Dosios, Chief Commercial Officer, Integral Ad Science. The industry faces a significant challenge in combating MFA sites. By leveraging AI, we have developed a scalable way to identify these low quality sources of inventory and improve overall campaign performance.
Advertisers and their agencies need confidence that the industry is converging on agreement about the specific websites that compose the MFA category. By training its model against Jounce Media's widely adopted list of MFA domains and incorporating signals from Sincera, IAS has developed the industry's first pressure tested solution for detecting and blocking MFA at scale.
"Advertisers should recognize that MFA websites can account for a significant portion of their overall campaign and should determine, independently, if MFA sites fit with their brand suitability standards for content and user experience. We applaud IAS for taking action after we released the findings from our programmatic transparency report and for supporting our definition of MFA," said Bill Duggan, ANA group executive vice president. "We have found that awareness of MFA sites among the ANA community of media professionals to be limited – which is surprising. We look forward to further developments from IAS around MFA site identification and ad spend optimization to help better educate and inform buyers."
The IAS MFA product completed alpha testing in early October 2023, and is available now as a beta measurement offering for select customers. General availability is expected to expand to all customers in early 2024.
About Integral Ad Science
Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a leading global media measurement and optimization platform that delivers the industry's most actionable data to drive superior results for the world's largest advertisers, publishers, and media platforms. IAS's software provides comprehensive and enriched data that ensures ads are seen by real people in safe and suitable environments, while improving return on ad spend for advertisers and yield for publishers. Our mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality. For more information, visit integralads.com.
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Advertiser Campaign Management
Business Wire | September 11, 2023
LG Ad Solutions, a global leader in connected TV (CTV) and cross-screen advertising, today announced the appointment of Michael Hudes as its new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Hudes will also serve as a member of the company's board of directors.
Hudes is a visionary leader with a distinguished career spanning multiple companies in the digital and CTV advertising ecosystem, bringing to LG Ad Solutions an unparalleled breadth and depth of industry expertise across all digital screens.
Prior to joining LG Ad Solutions, Hudes was a co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Zenapse. He has also held prominent roles in several leading organizations including Lyft, YuMe/RhythmOne, Clear Channel, and Organic, marking a significant impact in the digital and advertising landscape during the course of his career.
“Michael's rich experience and proven track record in the digital and CTV advertising sphere makes him an invaluable addition to the LG Ad Solutions leadership team,” said LG Ad Solutions Board Chairman Matthew Durgin, Vice President at LG Electronics USA. “We've witnessed the strides the company has been making under the existing executive leadership team and we expect to accelerate this momentum even further with Michael at the helm.”
Hudes’s appointment comes at a crucial juncture for LG Ad Solutions as the company continues to solidify its position as a CTV industry leader.
“I am both thrilled and honored to join LG Ad Solutions during such a transformative period for our industry,” said Hudes. “The opportunities ahead for LG Ad Solutions are vast, and I am deeply committed to steering the company into its next chapter of scale, innovation and industry leadership. Working alongside the talented team here, I am confident we can architect a future that defines success in the CTV and cross-screen advertising domain.”
Prior to Hudes taking this CEO appointment in a permanent capacity, Adam Sexton was Acting CEO and COO.
For more information on LG Ad Solutions, please visit https://lgads.tv/
About LG Ad Solutions
LG Ad Solutions is a global leader in connected TV and cross-screen advertising, helping brands find hard-to-get unduplicated reach at optimal frequency across the fragmented streaming TV landscape. We bring together LG’s years of experience in delivering world-class smart TVs to consumers worldwide with big TV audience data and Video AI designed to connect brands with audiences across all screens.
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