Meta | March 31, 2022
A lawsuit accusing Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook of overstating its advertising audience got a lot bigger Tuesday when a court expanded the pool of plaintiffs to include more than 2 million small ad buyers.
Dismissing what he called a “blunderbuss of objections” by the company, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the case can proceed as a class action on behalf of small business owners and individuals who bought ads on Facebook or Instagram since Aug. 15, 2014.
The decision is another setback for the social networking giant after court filings in 2021 revealed that its audience-measuring tool was known by high-ranking Facebook executives to be unreliable because it was skewed by fake and duplicate accounts.
Facebook’s lawyers argued in filings that the social media company has made “updates” to improve its user estimates. They also pushed back against the request for class-action status, saying the ad buyers didn’t show that all class members uniformly relied on the metrics to increase their spending and had ad budgets of various sizes.
“It may be that class members differ in advertising budgets and scope of purchases, as Meta suggests, but Meta has not shown that these differences” make the case unsuited to be a class action, U.S. District Judge James Donato said.
“It may be that class members differ in advertising budgets and scope of purchases, as Meta suggests, but Meta has not shown that these differences” make the case unsuited to be a class action, U.S. District Judge James Donato said.
User metrics have also been at the heart of challenges against other social media companies. LinkedIn is facing a suit accusing it of inflating video-viewing metrics to lure and overcharge advertisers.
Snap Inc., the parent of the Snapchat social media app, was sued in 2017 by a former employee who claimed the company was inflating growth metrics ahead of its initial public offering. The case was moved into closed-door arbitration and court records don’t indicate how it was resolved.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to a $40 million settlement of a class-action suit brought by advertisers who claimed they overpaid for video ads based on overstated video-viewing metrics shared by the company.
The current case was filed in 2018 by an e-commerce business that spent more than $1 million on ads and a seller of firearm accessories who spent around $350.
Facebook executives, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, knew the user metric called “Potential Reach” shown to digital ad buyers to help them set their target audience and budget was inflated and “not based on people,” the advertisers said in their complaint. As a result, advertisers ended up buying ads at a premium price, they said.
“For years Facebook repeatedly confronted a choice between telling customers the truth or preserving its revenue: at every turn, Facebook chose its revenue,” lawyers for the ad buyers said in a court filing.
Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The case is DZ Reserve v. Meta, 18-cv-04978, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
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ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
Gannett | March 10, 2022
Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) today issued a response to a story published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 8 that implies Gannett intentionally shared inaccurate information to advertisers over a period of nine months.
Gannett sincerely regrets inadvertently passing along the incorrect data parameter. This human error was immediately rectified when the Company independently discovered the issue. The data parameter issue was caused due to a caching error when the Company implemented changes to how data is passed from the publisher to the ad exchanges.
It is important to note that the revenue associated with third-party programmatic advertising exchanges that potentially used the incorrect data parameter in question was less than $10 million in total over the impacted period. Also, none of Gannett’s direct sold digital advertising or direct sold programmatic advertising were affected.
No user level data was impacted and there was no impact to geo-specific ad placement or user data targeting and in all cases ads remained within the USA TODAY NETWORK of sites. Only select exchanges have adopted this specification, which greatly reduced the potential impact. Likewise, Gannett believes the number of advertisers impacted from this error was nominal in relation to Gannett’s overall programmatic advertising universe.
Gannett has fully evaluated the quality assurance program relating to product releases and is implementing procedures to ensure that an error such as this does not occur again in the future.
ABOUT GANNETT
Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is a subscription-led and digitally-focused media and marketing solutions company committed to empowering communities to thrive. With an unmatched reach at the national and local level, Gannett touches the lives of millions with our Pulitzer Prize-winning content, consumer experiences and benefits, and advertiser products and services. Our current portfolio of media assets includes USA TODAY, local media organizations in 45 states in the U.S., and Newsquest, a wholly owned subsidiary operating in the United Kingdom with more than 120 local news media brands. Gannett also owns digital marketing services companies branded LOCALiQ, and runs one of the largest media-owned events business in the U.S., USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures. To connect with us, visit www.gannett.com.
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AD NETWORKS
NEW YORK LIFE | February 16, 2022
New York Life, America’s largest1 mutual life insurer, today debuted Our Product, the latest advertising creative of the company’s “Love Takes Action” campaign. “Love Takes Action” reminds Americans that they have the power to act on their love to build better futures and protect loved ones. The first creative of the campaign, Agápē, launched in January 2020 in coordination with pro football’s championship game.
Our Product highlights the core of what New York Life delivers: agents who maintain caring relationships with clients and deliver guidance throughout their lives. The creative depicts long-standing traditions of New York Life’s diverse and industry-leading2 agents meeting with families and being there when they’re needed most.
This latest creative emphasizes the strong presence of our agents in their clients’ lives throughout all that life brings. The ‘Love Takes Action’ campaign is rooted in New York Life’s long-held core values of integrity and humanity, and the company’s purpose - to be there when our clients need us. By highlighting our agents’ caring role in supporting Americans as they act on their love, we believe the campaign continues to convey the message of love taking action in a meaningful and memorable way.”
Kari Axberg, co-head of marketing at New York Life.
Our Product will be seen regularly during Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and Pac-12 college basketball games, among other national broadcasts. The campaign features the hashtag #lovetakesaction.
Anomaly led the creative and production for the spot, which was directed by Spencer Creigh of Superprime.
ABOUT NEW YORK LIFE
New York Life Insurance Company (www.newyorklife.com), a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest1 mutual life insurance company in the United States and one of the largest life insurers in the world. Headquartered in New York City, New York Life’s family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments, and long-term care insurance. New York Life has the highest financial strength ratings currently awarded to any U.S. life insurer from all four of the major credit rating agencies3.
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ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
MiQ, Scope3 | April 25, 2022
As companies target ways to minimize their carbon footprints and achieve climate goals and commitments, global programmatic media partner MiQ has announced that the company is working with agencies and brands to execute carbon neutral digital advertising campaigns. This new offering, powered by Scope3 – the source of truth for supply chain emissions data – delivers the ability to measure, report, reduce, and offset carbon emissions across the supply chain, helping customers make carbon-aware decisions regarding their digital advertising spend.
To date, MiQ has measured the carbon emissions of more than 300 million ad impressions using Scope3's data platform.
"Digital advertising is a $455 billion industry that has been overlooked as a source of significant supply chain emissions,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO of Scope3.
"Digital advertising is a $455 billion industry that has been overlooked as a source of significant supply chain emissions,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO of Scope3. “The reality, however, is that the ecosystem relies on millions of servers to power ad serving, real-time bidding, machine learning, and a myriad of related functions. As more and more companies look to fold digital into their climate goals, sustainable advertising has and will increasingly become part of that equation. Scope3’s data platform powers the carbon-aware planning, reporting, data integration, and decision-making capabilities partners need to drive innovation and climate accountability into every engagement.”
MiQ and Scope3 combine the strengths of deep programmatic advertising data with Scope 3 emission modeling to ensure clients have complete visibility into their digital ad ecosystems, programmatic supply chains, and overall contributions to Scope 3 emissions. MiQ’s granular data from customer campaigns identifies exactly where and when ads run online and is paired with Scope3’s accurate, comprehensive, and independent emissions modeling data for clients to effectively assess, reduce, and offset their carbon emissions.
“The advertising industry has discussed sustainability for years, but in 2022 and beyond, innovating and advancing the way we actually achieve this will be paramount to long-term change for all,” said John Goulding, global chief strategy officer for MiQ. “MiQ is committed to fulfilling this mission and creating more eco-conscious and carbon-efficient strategies for brands and their advertisers. As such, we believe that the future of campaign measurement must include the ability to understand and minimize the environmental impact of digital advertising, and we’re excited by what we’ve started to accomplish thus far.”
Continued Goulding, “That said, we’re only just getting started, and we’re working toward a future where advertisers can actually reduce the impact of their creatives, steer money towards publishers who are responsible and who optimize their sites, and the cultivation of an ecosystem rooted in sustainable business practices from the onset. We look forward to leading these efforts industry-wide and making this a reality for all.”
About MiQ
We’re MiQ, a programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies. We connect data from multiple sources to do interesting, exciting, business-problem-solving things for our clients. We’re experts in data science, analytics and programmatic trading, and our team of people are always ready to react and solve challenges quickly, to make sure you’re always spending your media investments on the right things in the right places.
Headquartered in London, MiQ has offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. We work with the world’s leading brands and media agencies such as Marriott, Dell, Mercedes, Microsoft, GroupM, Dentsu and IPG. We were named to AdExchanger's Programmatic Power Players list in 2021 and 2020, were awarded Most Effective Use of Data at The Drum’s Digital Industries Awards 2021 and named 4th in The Sunday Times International Track 200 for 2019. MiQ operates globally from 18 offices located in North America, Europe and APAC.
You can find out more here: wearemiq.com.
About Scope3
Scope3 is the source of truth for supply chain emissions data. For organizations seeking to make carbon-aware business decisions, Scope3 is the standard that delivers an accurate, comprehensive, and independent emissions model for every company in the digital ecosystem. Today, companies rely on Scope3 to measure, report and offset their carbon emissions from digital initiatives and move closer to achieving net-zero carbon emissions goals.
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