GDPR mayhem: Programmatic ad buying plummets in Europe
The arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation’s enforcement May 25 has hurled the digital media and advertising industries into a tailspin. Since the early hours of May 25, ad exchanges saw European ad demand volumes plummet between 25 and 40 percent in some cases, according to sources. Ad tech vendors scrambled to inform clients that they predict steep drops in demand coming through their platforms from Google. Some U.S. publishers have halted all programmatic ads on their European sites.

It’s here! The winners and losers of GDPR
As with anything, there are winners and losers. Bluntly speaking, any business that doesn’t have a direct relationship with users is in for a difficult time. Among those coming out on top are Google and sizeable publishers.

‘No one thinks this is a good idea’: Some frustrated publishers are sitting out Google’s GDPR meetings
Google had meetings this month with media trade associations and various publishing company representatives to address their concerns about Google’s position on the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation. But the meetings themselves have become a flashpoint of controversy, dividing publishers.

Digital agencies struggle with a new market reality
Digital agencies, once fast-growing upstarts stealing business from lumbering incumbents, are at greater risk of slipping in relevance themselves in a fast-changing market — and are now scrambling now to add other services, like strategy, consulting and even media in order to keep growing.

Ad agencies are forced to adjust to a new California freelance worker restriction
Agencies have long relied on freelancers to fill their ranks, but that is about to get tougher in California. Freelancers are a regular facet of agency life, offering the workers freedom to take on projects as they wish and employers needed flexibility to manage costs and boost utilization, not to mention skirt paying benefits. Changing the status of freelancers under a new law could hit agencies hard.

Facebook’s big threat isn’t Cambridge Analytica, it’s advertisers questioning ROI
Advertisers are more concerned that they are wasting money on Facebook than they are about the platform’s privacy lapses. They are unhappy about how expensive it’s gotten to advertise on a platform that has openly admitted it hasn’t always charged the correct amount for ads. Combine that with lower-than-expected return on investment from pricey inventory like video, and some of those companies are starting to question why Facebook dominates so much of their media plans.

‘A fun adventure, not a business’: The Weather Channel stopped publishing video on Facebook
The Weather Channel is no longer publishing videos to Facebook. “[Facebook video] hasn’t been beneficial,” said Neil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel, during a speech at the Digiday Video Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It has been good for Facebook, but it hasn’t been good for us.”

Sources say Adidas has paused its video ads on Facebook while it reviews their efficacy
The marketer’s media team stopped buying video ads on Facebook and is reviewing whether to cut its spending there due to concerns that people aren’t regularly viewing its ads there, according to three separate agency executives, speaking on condition of anonymity. The executives said Adidas is frustrated about the limited amount of data Facebook shares with its marketers to verify the efficacy of their ads, even as it becomes more expensive to advertise on the site.

Behind the fall of Videology
Videology raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding and collected a string of investors, including Comcast Ventures and GroupM. In a dramatic fall from grace, which Videology blamed on the market’s slower-than-expected adoption of programmatic TV, the video ad tech firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month, owing GroupM more than $35 million. Last year, it had to cut costs by shedding 6 percent of its global head count.

Digiday+ Research: How companies prepared for the GDPR
At the Digiday Hot Topic: GDPR event in May in London, we surveyed 22 companies on their readiness for the General Data Protection Regulation. We found that 36 percent of respondents said their company hasn’t hired anyone to help prepare for GDPR.