Also cheery: this GeoEdge study finds that slightly more advertising said ad quality challenges got better (40%) than worse (35%) in the past year. By next year, more expect contextual fit to be their biggest challenge (51%) than brand safety (43%). This reverses years of increasing concern. Concerted industry efforts get credit, and let’s note that IAB Tech Lab has just launched a Transparency Center to further improve ad reliability.
We have (mostly) good news about adtech today, Dear Reader. We’ll start with a nice acquisition: brand safety vendor DoubleVerify is expanding in the European market by buying Meetrics, a Berlin-based firm with somewhat similar offerings. Separately, DoubleVerify announced a partnership with Taboola, which will give Taboola’s advertisers more control over where their ads are placed.
A bit ambiguous: Moloco reports that mobile acquisition costs have grown by more than 200% for tracked users and 155% for non-tracked users since Apple introduced its enhanced privacy controls in iOS 14.5 in April. That’s bad news for advertisers but good news for consumers whose privacy preferences are being respected. Two thirds of ad bids (67.5%) now come from users who have opted out of tracking.
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.