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Facebook Firefights the Latest Fallout |
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Hello CMOs. A fun stunt to see you into the weekend. Burger King wants to give you a free Whopper...but it wants other brands to pay for it.
The “Whopper Shopper” website plays on the affiliate marketing model by hosting a repository of banner ads from brands ranging from Macy’s to Target and Sears. When a user makes a purchase, Burger King will return the affiliate fee it receives from the retailer in the form of a Whopper voucher.
A couple of caveats for all you ravenous Whopper fans out there: You’ll need to wait for your Whopper gift card to arrive in the mail. And you’re limited to just three vouchers.
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Join the #cloud conversation this week with Deloitte. |
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Join the #cloud conversation this week with Deloitte. |
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Facebook once again shifted gear to crisis communications mode on Thursday. The company was looking to contain the fallout following the New York Times investigation that alleged its executives “ignored warning signs” of various crises on its platform and “sought to conceal them from public view.”
After publishing a rebuttal to several claims in the story, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg hopped on the phone with reporters, saying that while the social network had been slow to spot Russian interference on the platform, any allegation the company was uninterested in the truth “is simply untrue.” Facebook’s board also released a supportive statement, saying claims Mr. Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg tried to ignore or prevent investigations into what had happened “is grossly unfair.”
Two bits of news: Facebook says it is training its AI systems to better detect “borderline” sensationalist content, so it can downrank it in the newsfeed. Facebook is also establishing an independent body that will hear appeals related to the company’s decisions on troublesome content. Speaking of independence: when asked if he plans to step down as Facebook chairman, Mr. Zuckerberg said he is “focused on introducing independence in different ways.” So, no, basically.
What of the Definers Public Affairs firm that NYT said helped Facebook craft opposition research against its critics? Mr. Zuckerberg said neither he or Ms. Sandberg were aware of the partnership (that seems...troublesome. Does your CEO know of all the PR firms you work with?) and that the company will “need to go through and look at all the relationships that we have and see if there are other ones like this.” (Facebook ended its contract with Definers this week.)
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PHOTO: ALEXANDER POHL/ZUMA PRESS
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What are marketers saying about Facebook's latest fallout? Rishad Tobaccowala, Publicis chief growth officer, was particularly stern in his criticism of the company following the NYT report: “Now we know Facebook will do whatever it takes to make money. They have absolutely no morals." (He followed up afterward saying while the individual people at the company have morals, “as a business, they seem to have lost their compass.”)
Rob Norman, senior adviser at GroupM, suggested Facebook should be required to report “its risks to society versus just financial risks to the business.”
But while we’ve heard harsh words from the advertising community toward Facebook before, advertisers tend to keep spending on platforms that allow them to reach large audiences and deliver a return on their investment. There hasn’t been any suggestion yet that marketers would shift their dollars elsewhere in moral protest.
Speaking of ad spend, if you read the Times investigation, you’ll have learned about the NTK network, an affiliate of Definers that ran pro-Facebook stories and negative articles about its rivals. (Facebook said it didn’t ask Definers to write articles on its behalf or communicate anything that wasn't true.) A former staffer, speaking anonymously to NBC News, described NTK as an “in-house fake news shop.” Guess what else you’ll find there? Plenty of ads from big-name
brands! Brand safety: the story that keeps giving.
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| I'm Gonna Get Myself Connected |
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You can’t move for new direct-to-consumer streaming services nowadays. Around one in two (55.5%) people in the U.S. use the internet through a connected-television device at least once a month, according to eMarketer, and that is expected to rise to 60.1% of the population by 2022. As audiences grow, so do the advertising dollars.
And, so do the crooks. Verification company DoubleVerify has uncovered a fraud scheme that specifically targeted connected-TV devices. The fraudsters created a bot network and spoofed real publisher URLs, to send false signals to ad servers that impressions were coming from devices like gaming consoles and smart-TVs.
Ad fraud can thrive in video environments as the CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) tend to be higher than elsewhere. Ad-intelligence firm Pixalate estimates ad-fraud rates in the over-the-top TV environment average around 19%.
It doesn’t help that industry initiatives like Ads.txt—the file publishers display on their websites to signal the legitimate sellers of their inventory to ad buyers—doesn’t really translate to connected TV apps yet (the IAB Tech Lab released a proposal for Ads.txt for mobile apps in the summer). Yet another hazard of the online advertising wild west for marketers to keep tabs on!
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PHOTO: TIKTOK.COM
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If you’re a regular YouTube user and of a certain demographic you may have noticed the video site has been flooded with ads for short-form video app TikTok recently. YouTube creators and lots of Reddit users certainly have.
Brief history lesson: Musical.ly, the lip-syncing app popular among teens and tweens, was acquired by Chinese news and information site Beijing Bytedance Technology for as much as $1 billion last year. In August this year, Bytedance absorbed Musical.ly into its TikTok video broadcasting app.
TikTok is booming. Known as Douyin in China, the app was pulling in 500 million monthly users in June. TikTok surpassed 6 million downloads in the U.S. last month, propelling it to the top of Apple’s App Store. Now celebrities are taking notice. The Verge reports Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk have both recently joined the app.
Next up: More brands? What’s your TikTok strategy? (And keeping with this newsletter’s theme today, a reminder that an app populated with user-generated content, largely from teens, carries all the usual brand-safety considerations.)
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“Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, people will engage with it more on average—even when they tell us afterwards they don’t like the content.”
| — --Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing in a blog post about the company’s “blueprint for content governance and enforcement" |
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Inside Nike’s new flagship store in New York, where shopping revolves around the smartphone. [Bloomberg]
NBC is making a push to court direct-to-consumer advertisers [Ad Age]
Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun predicts there will soon be mergers between consultancy and advertising groups. [Reuters]
Another prediction for you: The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green thinks Netflix will launch an ad-supported option. [Recode]
Facebook is spending big on TV to promote its video chat device Portal. [Digiday]
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