Tighter money calls for better measurement. DoubleVerify has launched a new “Attention Lab” that looks beyond clicks and viewability to assess exposure and engagement. These are apparently less disrupted by new privacy rules and, one hopes, do a better job of predicting business impact.
LUMA reports that martech mergers and acquisitions continue their downward trend, with the number of $100+ million deals falling from nine in the Q3 2021 to three in Q3 2022. LUMA’s index of public martech stocks is down 56%, far worse than the S&P 500 (down 17%) or Nasdaq 100 (down 27%). Private financing is also down from the end of last year but, ever hopeful, LUMA reports there continues to be “significant” investor interest in the category.
IAB Tech Lab is doing its part to improve measurement by extending its Open Measurement SDK to cover Connected TV. The SDK helps publishes integrate with multiple measurement providers, making it easier for advertisers to apply their measurement tools of choice. I needn’t remind you that Connected TV is one of the hottest, and most fragmented, new advertising categories. But I just did.
Unauthorized training data isn’t an existential threat to generative AI but it’s certainly a headache for users and developers alike. Most developers are trying to exclude materials that creators have explicitly labeled as unauthorized and citing “fair use” as justification for copying everything else. Getty Images has taken an opposite approach, building its gen AI tool only on materials that are explicitly licensed. It’s possible that tracing the provenance of training data will become a standard, similar to how organic food producers trace the origins of their ingredients.