I could find another piece of obscure data technology news but you wouldn’t read it. Instead, here’s an especially fine survey from Econsultancy about marketing attribution, sponsored by AdRoll. It’s your chance to wallow in glorious details about uptake, methods, goals, benefits, challenges, channels, effectiveness, regional differences, and more. Just in time for the weekend!
Just how much of your Web behavior is actually tracked by data aggregators? Well, Google and its affiliates alone track visitor identities on nearly two-thirds (64.4%) of worldwide Web browsing, according to a study by anti-tracking vendor Ghostery. Facebook trailed with trackers for a mere 28.8% of all page visits. Ghostery found 77.4% of pages had at least one tracker while more than 15% of pages had ten or more.
Here’s an alliance between data vendors. Time Inc.-owned Viant, which has an advertising audience database of 1.2 billion registered users, is adding information from retail data aggregator IRI. Marketers will get a clearer picture of advertising results at fine levels of detail, although not tied to identified individuals.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.