ADVERTISING

Horizon Media is the first media agency to subscribe to Nielsen Advanced Audience, announced the measurement company. The suite of technology solutions (forecasting and posting) is aimed at unifying the planning, activation and measurement of audiences beyond age and gender. “For many years we have been believers of the importance of advanced audiences and have heavily invested time and resources to provide our clients a more holistic view of their total consumers,” said Michele Donati, SVP, Managing Director of WHERE, Horizon Media. “This agreement is an evolution of our commitment to advertiser-defined audiences.”

Videa, an online marketplace for automated TV advertising, launched two new features for its platform: a forecasted ratings tool, and the ability to avail a full market regardless of the sell side’s access to Videa’s platform. “One of the most laborious and data-intensive processes for researchers and analysts is forecasting ratings,” said Shereta Williams, president, Videa. “When they are inaccurate, increased makegoods and more under-delivered spots can result…We’re making analysts more productive, giving them the information they need efficiently and most importantly, without sacrificing accuracy.” Another pain point is the ability to avail a full market, notes Mary Barnas, VP of platform adoption at Videa: “That’s why we’ve created this feature for the Videa platform that will give media buyers the ability to avail full markets without the need for the station they’re buying from to be associated with Videa.”

Premium Media 360, the advertising data automation company offering pre-flight and in-flight campaign validation solutions for local broadcast, is partnering with Mediaocean, the foundational software provider for the advertising world. The collaboration is aimed at making media agencies’ local activation teams more efficient by automating the identification of campaign transaction errors and facilitating resolution, before the station invoice is created.

Influencer marketing platform AspireIQ released Brand Access Manager, a solution to empower brands to turn branded content into paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. Brand Access Manger is complementary to tools like Instagram’s recently announced Branded Content Ads and is intended to build on top of these features, giving brands more options for partnering with influencers and creators to leverage original content as part of their paid social effort.

Vistar Media announced a partnership with GroupM and Kinetic as a preferred platform for digital outdoor media investment in the UK, delivering technology for data-driven campaigns. GroupM and Kinetic, a planner and digital innovator of OOH advertising, will be utilizing Vistar Media’s technology to deliver campaign execution capabilities which enable real-time decisioning. GroupM will be using Vistar’s demand-side platform (DSP) to purchase digital outdoor media programmatically. “With the rapid digitisation of assets, advancements in automation and shift to digital spend, the UK OOH market is primed for the next phase of growth, fueled by programmatic technology,” said Dominic Dunne, Managing Director, EMEA, Vistar Media.

Comparing year-over-year native advertising statistics from 1Q18 to 1Q19, MediaRadar found that 34% of companies running native ads in 1Q18 also did so in 1Q19. However, of the top 30 native advertisers from the quarter in 2018, all but one ran native ads in Q1 of 2019. The majority of advertisers who dropped off were smaller brands that use the format sparingly. The top three buyers of native ads in 2019 were Progressive, HomeServe and LendingTree. Looking at how the ads were being placed, “Our study found that the percentage of companies placing native ads programmatically is increasing,” said MediaRadar CEO Todd Krizelman. “In fact, 76% of native advertisers placed native ads programmatically in Q1 of 2019. In comparison, just 62% did so in Q1 of 2018.”

SOCIAL MEDIA

Second quarter results for Facebook, posted after close of trading on Wednesday, beat Wall Street expectations, with earnings per share hitting $1.99, versus a forecast of $1.88, and total revenue of $16.6 billion, up 28% over the previous year. The news came after the social media giant was hit with a record $5 billion fine as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over its privacy policies. The FTC also mandated that Facebook create an independent privacy committee on its board of directors to remove “infettered control” by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In separate action on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it is charging Facebook with making misleading disclosures about the risk of misused user data. Facebook will pay $100 million to settle the charges, an SEC record.

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. also bested Wall Street’s Q2 forecasts, reporting a loss of 6 cents a share and revenue of $388 million. The company’s revenue estimate was for a shade less than $360 million. Snap reported it added 13 million daily active users during the second quarter, reaching 203 million—the biggest gain for the company since Q2 2016. Snap shares closed at $17.58 on Wednesday, the first time they topped the IPO price of $17 in over a year.