The digital advertising business is often opaque, and now 16 companies, banded together as Source, are calling for a more transparent pipeline as well as standards and best practices for sharing data on fees and authenticating content. Oracle and News Corporation, among the other ad agencies, publishers and ad tech firms, hope their efforts will boost digital advertising beyond behemoths Facebook and Google. Publishers have long stated that middlemen take too much of the pie in an expensive, clunky supply chain. Continue reading Publishers Plan to Bring Transparency to Digital Advertising

In the wake of admitting it had overstated how long users spend watching videos on its site, Facebook is taking steps to regain credibility among advertisers and publishers. The company, which apologized in September, will now rely more on third-party measurement services — including comScore, Moat, Nielsen and Integral Ad Science — to ensure accurate metrics on display and video ads. Other moves include the formation of a “measurement council,” composed of ad agency execs and marketers, to develop more relevant metrics. Continue reading Facebook Moves to Fix Metrics Bugs and Assuage Advertisers

Adblock Plus, from German firm Eyeo, is now on 100 million active devices and close to a billion downloads, says Eyeo co-founder/chief executive Till Faida. That’s significant growth from the beginning of the year, when the company reported 500 million downloads and 50 million active users. Adblock Plus also launched its “Acceptable Ads” program targeting larger websites; by whitelisting ads, Adblock Plus receives 30 percent of the additional revenue. Faida reports that 40 out of the top 100 U.S. websites are participating. Continue reading Adblock Plus Reaches One Billion Downloads, Spars with IAB

More than a third of Americans reportedly use an ad blocker on their Internet browsers, and many of them probably have no idea that they are costing publishers billions in lost advertising revenue. Randall Rothenberg, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, urged publishers to develop their own technology and methods to stop ad blocking software. Meanwhile, Samsung is following Apple in enabling an ad blocking plugin for the Internet browser on its mobile phones. Continue reading Few Publishers Trying to Recover Revenue Lost to Ad Blockers