In this Week in Review: Adobe goes programmatic and Google faces allegations of bot fraud. For your weekly summary of industry news and other VAN interviews and videos, sign up to the weekly Video Round-Up.
Google Adwords Charges Advertisers for Views it Knows are Derived from Bot Traffic, Claims Report
Google Ad-Words is reportedly able to charge advertisers for views on YouTube that can be identified as bot traffic, a study has found. As the FT reported, the researchers then bought ads on the platform, targeting videos they uploaded. Then they created some bots and directed them to the videos.
When the researchers sent the bots to visit two particular videos 150 times, YouTube’s public view counter identified only 25 of the views as real. However, AdWords, Google’s service for advertisers, charged the researchers for 91 of the bot visits. Google said they would work with researchers to improve their performance.
Online Video is Booming in Europe
Revenue across Europe from online video has jumped to €375 million in 2015, a report from IHS and SpotX has found. The report forecast that over half of all online video advertising revenue will be generated programmatically by 2020.
Highlights from the report include:
- The German online video advertising market will be worth €331 million in 2015 establishing it as the number three video advertising market in this study, behind the U.K. and France.
- France is a ‘programmatic pioneer market’ according to Eleni Marouli senior analyst at IHS Technology. IHS forecasts that by end of 2015, 18.6 percent of all video advertising revenue in France will be generated by programmatic means, placing it third behind the Netherlands and the U.K. in terms of market penetration. By 2020, 54 percent of all French video revenue will be generated via programmatic channels.
- Italy is ‘a programmatic video market waiting to happen’, and IHS expect the market to ‘explode in late 2016 and 2017’ acccoring to Daniel Knapp, Director of Advertising Research at IHS.
- Daniel Knapp also said, “We consider the revision of European data protection regulation and the establishment of the EU Digital Single Market as major drivers for improving volume, quality and utility of available data. The Italian market will rapidly scale to a strong middle position among European markets by 2020 when programmatic video will fetch 46.6 percent of all video advertising revenue.”
LiveRail Announces Partner Programme
LiveRail has created a partner programme, highlighting demand partners on LiveRail’s platform including, AudienceScience, ONE by AOL, TubeMogul, Turn and Videology.
Altice Aquires Cablevision
French communications company Altice has become the fourth largest cable provider in the U.S after acquiring Cablevision for $17.7 billion.
Adobe Unveils Programmatic Advertising Platform
Adobe has launched its new programmatic self-serve platform, after their initial move to upgrade its demand-side platform (DSP), Adobe Media Optimizer.
Facebook Launches 360 Video
360-degree videos have begun showing on Facebook’s News Feed. The company will also be offering a premium buying choice in order to improve viewability for brands across their site.
Unruly Launches Video Lab to Combat Ad Blocking
Unruly has launched a new lab, based in London, to provide brands and agencies with real-time data and targeting strategies designed to get through the ad block shields. The move follows a survey that found that that 90 per cent of US consumers would consider using ad blocking software in the future.
ITV Launches ‘ITV Hub’
ITV is bringing together all of its online services, TV channels and on-demand under a single brand, The ITV Hub. When it launches later this year, the Hub will supersede ITV Player and ITV.com on PC, mobile and internet-connected TV.
Instagram Has 400 Million Users
Instagram has announced that the image-sharing website has now got over 400million followers, with 75 percent of users living outside of the U.S.
Watchwith Bring Native and Interactive Ads ‘In-Programme’
Watchwith has announced it will enable TV networks to deliver ‘in-programme’ advertising relevant to the context of their shows. Networks will be able to automate the deployment of in-program ads against metadata within shows.
Digital Video In-Stream Ad Guidelines Amended
IAB have announced that they have revised their Digial Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines and Best Practices with the aim of improving the digital video experiences of users.
Video Ranked as ‘Most Trusted’
Video has been chosen by 76 per cent of consumers as their preferred source when consuming brand information, a study from Brightcove has found. Almost a quarter also said that video was their ‘most trusted’ source of brand content.
Video Streaming Apps Experience Boom in Use
The U.S and China are showing a surge in use of video streaming apps whilst the apps experience significant revenue growth, new research from App Annie has shown. The UK showed relatively flat growth over the same period.
Advertising Spend Growth Expected to Grow
Growth in the U.S for ad expenditure is set to be decent but slower than expected, media agency network Carat has found. The report indicates continued optimism through positive global and regional outlook and solid growth in Digital and Mobile.
Brands Using Video Grow Faster
Brands that rely on video for marketing are growing their revenue 49 per cent faster than those that aren’t, a study by the Aberdeen Group has found.
Millennials At the Forefront of Mobile Usage
Millenials have been found to spend an average of 3.25 hours a day online via their mobiles, a report by GlobalWebIndex has found.
Tablets and Phones Become More Popular for TV
Watching television is increasingly moving to tablets and smartphones, Hub Entertainment Research’s annual Finding Input One study has found.
Global Broadband Growth Slows
Broadband is near-saturation in the richest parts of the world, but isn’t reaching those who could benefit from it the most, the 2015 ‘State of Broadband’ report from the UN Broadband Commission has found.
Children Spend Money on Downloads Without Parental Permission
Half of parents don’t allow their children to spend money on digital downloads, despite 84 per cent of children saying they spend money on downloads, according to the latest research from the Halifax.
Connection Speeds Boost for Video
Global average connection speed for broadband has increased 17 per cent year-on-year, Akami’s latest ‘State of the Internet Report’ has shown.
Europeans More Likely to Block Adverts
Europeans are twice as likely to block adverts as their American counterparts, a study by comScore and Sourcepoint has found.
BT Announces Vision for Britain’s Digital Future
Telecommunications company BT’s CEO has announced that he hopes BT will have a universal broadband speed of 5-10 megabits per second for all homes and businesses.
Mobile Web Overtakes App Traffic
The mobile web is growing on average twice as fast as traffic to apps, a report by comScore has found
Group M Requires Partners to Use TAG
WPP’s Group M has announced that its expectation is that all its partners comply with new anti-piracy guidelines in order to prevent brands from advertising on sites that host stolen data.
Social Network Ad Spending Accelerates Faster than Expected
Social media ad spending has surged faster than analysts have previously predicted, according to eMarketer’s latest report. Facebook leads the charge, as it is expected to receive 64.8 per cent of total ad spend globally.
AdsNative Raises $8.5 Million Series A To Take On DFP Ad Server
AdsNative added $8.5 million in Series A funding on Thursday as it moves to offer an alternative to widely used ad server, Google-owned DoubleClick for Publishers.
Nielsen and Integral Ad Science Partner
Nielsen and Integral Ad Science have expanded their relationship to offer viewability measurement by demographic,
TabMo Launches in UK
French mobile video programmatic platform, TabMo, is expanding to the UK. The company is primarily targeted at trading desks and aims to simplify the mobile video ad buying process for advertisers and agencies.
Verizon Launches Free Mobile Service
Verizon have announced a free mobile video service that will contain original content from providers such as ESPN, Comedy Central and Discovery, plus chosen YouTube channels.
Altitude Releases ‘Filtering’ and Targeting for Video
New technology that claims to filter viewable ads from non-viewable ads has been announced by Altitude Digital, an independent video supply-side platform.
Totalplay Becomes First Latin-American Carrier to Offer 4K
Latin Americans can now access 4K, thanks to Totalplay. The carrier service has become the first of its kind to offer 4K to its Latin American customers, thanks to an Ultra HD PVR designed by Sagecom.
Amazon Releases 4K Fire
Amazon’s Fire TV has seen an update with technology that supports 4K Ultra HD now available.
Latin America’s OTT Generates Over $500 Million
Over $500m worth of revenue has been generated by Latin America’s OTT VOD services, according to a report by Dataxis. This figure is set to grow by 262 percent by 2018.
Netflix Accounts for 4.8 Per Cent of European Web Traffic
Netflix now dominates nearly 5 per cent of European web traffic, the latest ‘Global Internet Phenomena’ from Sandvine has found.
Overnight and Early Morning Digital Video Viewing Surge
Video usage on personal computers, tablets and smartphones has increased nearly 20 percent year-on-year, with a larger percentage using digital video during the night or early in the morning, Nielson’s ‘Total Audience Report’ Q2 results have shown.
UK to Lead ‘Big Five’ on Broadband
Over the next five years the UK is expected to outperform other European countries on a range of fixed telecoms measures to become one of the best performing countries worldwide by 2020, a report by Analysis Mason has found.
Nigerian Frustration Over Video Streaming
Poor download speeds and inflexible data plans are frustrating Nigerian broadband customers and restricting their video-streaming ability, a study by Ericsson’s ConsumerLab has found.
This Week on VAN:
VivaKi’s Bertozzi: Great to See Exchanges Cleaning Up But it Should Have Happened Two Years Ago #Video@Dmexco, read more on VAN
RTL Group’s Noelke: TV is Now a ‘Global Race’, read more on VAN
Spotify Finds Users Understand the Advertising Value Exchange, read more on VAN
GroupM’s Rob Norman: Large Video Platforms Need to Be More Transparent on Actual Usage, read more on VAN
Ad of the Week: Snickers, Who Are You When You’re Hungry? Walter Arnett
The winner of Snickers’ amateur video maker competition for the ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ has got us giggling (and it’s maker, Walter Arnett, $50,000).
