Uncomfortable Questions

Ad verification tech is under fire, as marketers question whether old-school tools can keep up with modern fraud.

BeReal Cashes Out

BeReal — the mobile app once thought to be a potential Instagram killer — has been sold off to a mobile apps and games publisher.

The app became popular for its take on authenticity. At launch, it only let you take one photo a day, there were no filters, and both the front and back images were taken. Everyone was prompted to take their daily photo at the same time, so it became a kind of unglossed look at someone’s life — a welcome counter to Instagram’s traditionally poised and polished look.

The app’s founders also said they wouldn’t put ads in the stream, which led some people to wonder how it would support itself. In time, the app tried to become a little more mainstream in its features and add some things that brands could do.

But in the end they could only get to 23 million daily active users and perhaps that wasn’t enough to keep chugging.

What’s next for the app

It’s not being shut down though — the new owner, Voodoo, paid a half billion Euros for it.

The news release had the usual spin — they’re excited… next step in the journey… blah blah blah.

The co-founder will sticl around for a transition period then leave the company.

It’s possible that Voodoo will sink some time into scaling it; but if the history of similar acquisitions are anything to go by, the next six months will make or break the app.

Google Says Penalized Sites Can Recover. Maybe.

Google says web sites smacked by last year’s search algorithm update — which it called the helpful content update — will be able to recover some of their lost ranking on the next core update.

Posting on social media, Google search spokesperson Danny Sullivan said:

So while that’s good news, there’s a lot we still don’t know.

What we don’t know

We don’t know when the next core update will happen.

We don’t know what it’s going to be focused on.

Most notably, we don’t know what Google’s code will be looking for to determine if your site has “improved” enough to be pulled back up higher in the rankings (other than the usual “just focus on your audience” advice)

How long does it take to recover?

Google’s help pages have some guidance on this:

SERoundtable in its coverage of this this morning reported that it believes no sites at all have recovered from that September update — not even after this past March’s core update.

Ad Verification Under Fire

An interesting thinkpiece today on Digiday reports that ad verification technologies are facing intense scrutiny from ad executives these days.

The executives Digiday spoke with say they’re increasingly frustrated that as mature as the ad tech space has gotten, issues like fraud, ID spoofing, and shady sites still cause a significant amount of grief to marketers.

Those companies say they’re not designed to catch every issue.

But that’s not enough for some marketers, who are rethinking whether to use verification tech at all. Instead, they are exploring other options, such as buying entirely curated ad inventory or opting for authenticated reach only.

Some in our industry advise clients to use analytics platforms like Adalytics and Fou Analytics instead of ad verification companies.

While this approach might help you avoid wasting ad dollars on sketchy sites, it also raises concerns about brand safety and the potential for tone-deaf messages.

It is an interesting piece and has a lot to say about whether our industry will tweak expectations around what ad verification tech can accomplish or move in a completely new direction.

Their post is on Digiday.com — it’s called Ad verification is under fire.

Global Ad Spend to Reach $1.1 Trillion by 2025

Marketers are spending more and spending faster, with global advertising expected to grow 7.8% and reach almost $1 trillion by the end of this year.

This according to new numbers from GroupM's Global Midyear Forecast.

And while next year’s growth is expected to slow to under 7%, spending will hit a new milestone of $1.1 trillion.

What’s driving the growth?

According to the analysis, the rapid expansion of retail media and the influence of China-based companies like Temu and TikTok are driving the growth.

The U.S. and China markets will represent 57% of global ad revenue, with the U.S. growing at a 5.8% rate and China at 14%. Other emerging markets like Brazil and India are also contributing to the growth.

Digital, of course, makes up most of advertising spend, with media buyers sticking to the big players.

Connected TV and retail media

The shift to newer channels like connected TV is expected to continue, and retail media should hit a 17.5% growth rate this year and 13.5% next year.

Are OG Hashtags Coming to Threads?

Meta’s Threads app shook up the world of social media managers when it announced it wouldn’t use hashtags.

Rather than using words with the pound symbol in front of it, which has been a social media staple since forever, it introduced “topic tags” — one or two words which when tapped would find other posts using that tag. But there was no hashtag, and you could only put one tag in your post.

Now, it’s possible Meta is backtracking on their attempt to kill the hashtag.

One app researcher has found code in the app suggesting it will return to using the hashtag mark in front of linked topics, and it will return to calling them hashtags.

Are hashtags even necessary?

Hashtags used to be an essential part of a social media post. But now, with machine learning and smarter content discovery algorithms, most platforms say they’re not really needed.

When you upload a video to YouTube, the help text under the tags section reads:

This is, for the time being, just buried in the code and not released yet, but when we see this stuff in the back-end, it almost always means it’s on its way.

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