CDP Institute

We can always find something about ad fraud. Here’s a DoubleVerify report that ad fraud on connected TV grew 161% from May 2019 to April 2020, reflecting fast growth of the medium and lagging anti-fraud technology. On the bright side, over-all ad fraud was down 35% and display ad viewability improved 9%. They also report that consumers like contextual ad targeting, a fairly fraud-safe approach that DoubleVerify happens to offer.

Continuing in our glass half empty/half full mode, Adobe found mixed reports from workers stuck at home: 32% said they were more productive and 23% said they were less productive than they were in the office. The remaining 45% saw no difference. The most missed features of office life were team collaboration and informal chats with co-workers. Bosses may be sad to learn the least missed was direct access to their supervisor.

That rasping sound you hear is me scraping the bottom of the news barrel, Dear Reader. Best I can offer today is an announcement from no-code integration platform SnapLogic of new enterprise automation capabilities including an AI-powered visual interface, prebuilt process automations, and quick-start features for data warehousing.

If you’ve been wondering how much mobile device usage grew during the pandemic, App Annie has some answers: mobile hours were up 25% compared with the second half of 2019 and ad placements in June 2020 were 70% higher than June 2019. PubMatic’s quarterly mobile ad report found similar growth and a surge in ads bought through private marketplaces: these are expected to account for 51% of programmatic mobile ad spending, exceeding the volume on open exchanges. Private marketplaces offer less risk of inappropriate placements than open exchanges.

A cynic would argue that Facebook has limited some groups fostering QAnon conspiracy theories because QAnon’s extreme craziness alienates slightly-less-crazy voters inclined to support Republicans. A true cynic would say they did it to give the rightists something to rally against, while noting Facebook’s actions are far from a complete ban. Either way, before you cheer Facebook’s sudden lurch towards responsibility, remember they have fostered hate groups for years and bent their rules to favor rightist misinformation.

In more cheerful news, AudienceProject reports that self-reported use of ad blockers has dropped from 52% of U.S. respondents in 2016 to 41% in 2020. They also note that data based on actual sessions, as opposed to user surveys, shows no more than 20% of sessions are in fact blocked. Lots of interesting details including results from other countries, the impact of ads appearing near offensive content, and changes in annoyance about ads in general.

Finally, SnapLogic reports IT leaders say the average company has connected just 49% of its 115 data sources. This isn’t entirely for lack of trying but it still means the average employee loses 4 hours per week resolving data issues and that 42% of processes which could be automated are still done manually. Biggest obstacles are legacy technology, complex data types, data siloes, and regulatory requirements.