A bipartisan Senate group is supporting a bill aimed at reducing the online advertising dominance of Big Tech platforms like Google, Meta and others. Introduced last week by Mike Lee (R-Utah) and championed by Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), the AMERICA Act — short for Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act — the bill prohibits companies that “process more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions” from owning multiple parts of the digital ecosystem presenting the advertisements. Proponents say the AMERICA Act could radically reshape the advertising framework that underpins the Internet economy. Continue reading AMERICA Act Proposes to Curtail Big Tech’s Ad Dominance

Ad tech company DoubleVerify is launching the DV Attention Lab, a new measurement system designed to provide advertisers with more accurate engagement data, an alternative to cookies that the company says will help prevent third-party fraud. More than 50 data points power DoubleVerify’s Authentic Attention metrics, which analyzes ad exposure and consumer response analyzing campaign effectiveness in real time. “Disruption from regulatory shifts to cookie deprecation is hindering how brands can use existing tools. With that in mind, we are confident that privacy-friendly attention metrics will become the industry’s new performance currency,” DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski says. Continue reading DoubleVerify Offers Brands New Way to Measure Campaigns

Streaming is booming, accounting for 53.7 percent of Internet bandwidth traffic, up by 4.8 percent for the year according to Google, which anticipates continued growth as gaming, social networks, AR and VR experiences take hold. To service those needs, the Alphabet unit is officially launching Media CDN, an extensible Google Cloud platform for the distribution of streaming content. At the 2022 NAB Show Streaming Summit this week, Google touted Media CDN as a more affordable and efficient way for media and entertainment companies to deliver immersive streaming experiences globally and at scale. Continue reading Google’s Media CDN Provides Content Streaming Automation

Apple released an iPhone software update, iOS 14.5, that includes the privacy tool App Tracking Transparency, intended to give users more control over how their data is shared. Now, when an app wants to share information about a user’s activities, a window will pop up asking for permission to do so. Privacy advocates are rejoicing, but many digital advertisers are declaring the tool harmful to small businesses. Facebook is chief among them, although the privacy setting is also likely to hurt its business as well. Continue reading Apple Debuts App Tracking Transparency with Its iOS Update