Outbrain is a native advertising platform, which means it posts those click-baity stories crowding the margins of many web sites. They’ve just partnered with Assertive Yield, which analyzes the revenue those stories generate. The deal will let Outbrain’s clients optimize their content selections based on real-time performance. It’s one more example of combining data from two sources to tie ads to results.
Anti-trust rules are tougher outside the U.S. Google Play Store has been required by both EU and UK regulators to allow alternative payment options for in-app purchases. Google resisted, of course, but they ultimately have to comply. They just released a proposal for doing that in the UK. App owners will be incented to favor the Google payment system but aren’t required to use it.
More than 60 million sites use Google’s fonts, which are free. Now, an investigation has found data from site users is being harvested and sold. Data collected via fonts includes IP addresses and browsing history, which Google then cross-references with other data it holds and sells to advertisers and marketers.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.