I vaguely recall a satire where ads were inserted at contextually relevant spots in movies, such as a cellphone ad when ET calls home. Wait, that’s the example given to explain an utterly serious announcement last week of a new ad placement option from Roku. “Roku’s artificial intelligence searches the Roku library for iconic plot moments that match a brand’s message and place their ads in real time.” So horrifying it might just work.
We reported last week that nearly half of advertisers and publishers expect Google to delay cookie deprecation again. That hasn’t happened yet, but they did just announce they are rolling out First Party Sets, which loosens the rules a bit by enabling related websites to share what would otherwise look like third-party cookies for limited purposes such as shared sign-on. Hmm.
Elon Musk may have pretty much destroyed the value of blue checkmarks at Twitter, but others think they’re worth doing right. The latest convert is Google Gmail, which is offering a blue checkmark on emails from brands that use its BIMI authentication service. Other recent checkmarketeers include Google Ads, LinkedIn, and Meta.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.