| | Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | | | | | #1 Adform Uncovers Fake-Ad Operation | | Denmark-based ad tech company Adform says it has discovered a large, sophisticated advertising-fraud operation in which fake websites and infected computers were used to scam advertisers and publishers out of more than $500,000 per day, The Wall Street Journal reports. Adform called the scheme "Hyphbot" and says it has been going on since at least August. Adform says the fraudsters created more than 34,000 different domain names and more than a million different URLs, primarily in the U.S., designed to fool advertisers into thinking they were buying ad inventory from major publishers including The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and CNN. In the domain spoofing scheme, the perpetrators generated a wave of nonhuman bot traffic which made money through the sale of video ads. The suspicious URLs were presenting themselves in ad auctions in at least 14 different ad exchanges at a rate of up to 1.5 billion requests to ad buyers a day. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Ad fraud continues to be a huge problem for the ad industry and costs advertisers and online publishers billions of dollars annually. But Adform says much of the impact of the scheme could have been mitigated if publishers and their ad-tech companies had implemented the new ad industry initiative called Ads.txt, which was created to expose domain spoofing. Jon Slade, chief commercial officer of the Financial Times, says, "We are urging all actors in the supply chain to urgently implement and adopt the Ads.txt standard. It's one of the best bets for a cleanup that we have." Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones has also recently implemented Ads.txt standards, but says solving the problem "requires the participation of all parties involved." | | A Take: WSJ | | | | #2 Oprah's Podcast Sells Out in 24 Hours | | Oprah Winfrey launched her podcast called Oprah's SuperSoul Conversation on Aug. 7 but had no ads or partners until the show collaborated with Midroll Media in late October, Adweek reports. With Midroll's help, Winfrey opened up her podcasts to advertisers and most of the fourth quarter ad avails sold out in about 24 hours. Response has been so strong that Winfrey and the show producers had to use a process of elimination to pick those advertisers who could get in. Also a concern was that the right advertisers were selected as being appropriate for the audience. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Korrie Kolsea, head of sales for Midroll, says while some brands have been hesitant to embrace the podcast space, "this type of content eliminated that hurdle of trust for them." Kolsea adds that Oprah's podcast show can be a pivotal moment for podcast advertising. And Kate Mitchell, senior VP and head of sales for Winfrey's company OWN, says several of OWN's larger brand advertisers are now starting to ask about getting involved with the podcast. And she says these of advertisers that "haven't been spending money in podcasts before." | | A Take: Adweek | | | | #3 Anti-Smoking TV Campaign Labeled Bland | | Ad Age is running a sampling of the anti-smoking TV ads that the major tobacco companies will begin running next week, and the publication says there are a lot of critics who say the ads are too bland to be effective. The tobacco companies were ordered by federal court to run the ads as a culmination of an 18-year legal battle in which the federal government sought to recover billions of dollars in health care related-to-tobacco-caused illnesses. The ads will run on the major broadcast TV networks and in newspapers over the course of the next year. Robin Koval, CEO of Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco advocacy group, says, "[The tobacco companies] fought very hard to make these ads as invisible and unwatchable as they possibly can be." She also says the media placements are going to miss the main target – young people and millennials. "There are not a lot of young people watching ABC, CBS and NBC in primetime anymore or reading a daily newspaper," she says. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: The purpose of the court-ordered anti-smoking ads is to inform potential smokers of the health risks involved, but the tobacco companies seem to have weakened the initiative through their constant legal battles. While they say they have fully met their legal obligations with these ads, if you compare them to ads that sporadically appear on TV by anti-smoking advocacy groups, the tobacco company ads are very bland. They do offer some data on how many people die from smoking every day, but it's done in a very pedestrian way. | A Take: Ad Age
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| | 1.4 | | Percentage of advertisers who have taken steps to bring programmatic campaigns in-house, according to a poll by Infectious Media. That percentage goes counter to reports that a much larger percentage of advertisers want to take programmatic advertising efforts away from agencies and bring them under their own roof. The IM poll indicates that advertisers have multiple concerns, including technical expertise, about bringing programmatic buying in-house. | – Reported by eMarketer
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| | NBC Wins With 'Chicago Med' Return | by Michael Malone
Thanks to a strong return from Chicago Med, NBC took top ratings honors Tuesday, scoring a 1.8 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and a 7 share. That topped the 1.3/5 put up by ABC. The Voice dropped 15% to 1.7 on NBC. This Is Us was off 4% to 2.5 and the third season premiere of Chicago Med did a 1.3, a tenth of a point better than its May finale. ABC had The Middle at a flat 1.3 and Fresh Off the Boat up 10% at 1.1. The Dancing with the Stars finale did a 1.3, same as its finale last spring. CBS rated a 1.1/4, as NCIS fell 7% to 1.4 and Bull was down 8% at 1.1. NCIS: New Orleans was off 18% at 0.9. Fox scored a 0.8/3, with Lethal Weapon at 1.0 and The Mick at 0.7, then Brooklyn Nine-Nine at 0.6. All three were flat. The CW rated a 0.6/2. The Flash dropped 11% to 0.8 and DC's Legends of Tomorrow posted a level 0.5. Telemundo did a 0.5/2 and Univision a 0.4/2. | |
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| • MEG WHITMAN is stepping down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. She will be succeeded by ANTONIO NERI, who is currently the company president and who will now handle the dual role. Neri has been with HP since 1995.
• FRANK DATTALO was named executive creative director at digital agency Organic's new Los Angeles office. He was most recently a creative director at R/GA, and prior to that worked as a creative exec at Apple and Deutsch.
• MICHAEL TREFF was promoted to president of digital agency Code and Theory's New York office. He was previously a managing partner. Also at the agency, MARISA ELENA TODD was named managing director of its London office. She was previously a director with MET Ldn in London. • DWAYNE RAUPP has joined Huge Detroit as executive creative director. He was most recently a senior VP at GTB, the WPP agency that handles Ford advertising. Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be off Thursday and Friday. See you Monday when we restart our diets. | |
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| Technology Leadership Summit
February 28 – March 1, 2018 | Raleigh, NC
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