News You Can Use: The Rise Of Outstream & The Need For Ads.txt

Each and every week Unruly scours the web, Twitter feeds and latest events for the biggest stories in programmatic advertising – so you can catch up on anything you missed before the weekend.

In this week’s round-up we’ve got more interesting statistics around the growth of mobile, further proof that ads.txt can protect against ad fraud, and news that outstream is now advertisers’ first port of call when it comes to video.

Elsewhere, Apple’s new cookie policy is affecting publishers, and the programmatic industry is gearing up from Programmatic I/O in New York next week.

So get reading!

5. Global smartphone boom reaches new heights in APAC

Global smartphone ownership will reach 66% across 52 key markets in 2018, according to Zenith’s Mobile Advertising Forecasts 2017. This is an increase from the projected 63% this year, and 58% in 2016, and further bolsters the idea that a strong mobile strategy is now a key part of any marketer’s toolkit.

More specifically, mobile seem to be booming in Asia-Pacific, with two APAC markets among the five expected to reach 90%+ smartphone penetration over the next 12 months.

4. Outstream booms as video overtakes display ad spend in the UK

UK video ad spend has overtaken banner ads for the first time in the UK, rising 46% year-on-year to £699m during the first half of 2017.

According to the PwC / IAB UK Digital Adspend report, video now accounts for 35% of display advertising spend and is now the fastest-growing ad format.

The IAB’s report also revealed that outstream video spend nearly doubled, making the format the most popular choice for advertisers. Outstream now accounts for 52% of video spend (£363 million), overtaking pre-and post-roll ads, which account for 44% (£309 million).

3. AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Kicks off next week

AdExchanger’s annual programmatic advertising conference, PROGRAMMATIC I/O, kicks off in New York next week and will run from October 25 – 26.

The summit regularly attracts 1,000 – 1,500 marketing executives across two days of programming, 70+ industry speakers and a variety of networking activities.

Heading to Programmatic I/O? Us too! Reach out at hi@unrulygroup.com.

2. That’s the way the Cookie crumbles

Last month Apple updated its Safari browser to prevent third parties from tracking users for more than 24 hours after a user visited a website. This move appears to be affecting programmatic revenue for certain publishers, although those who sell their inventory directly are not affected.

Paul Bannister, founder of CafeMedia, spoke about the move to Digiday. He said: “It has already had an impact on our revenue, and that will only be compounded as adoption [of Safari’s update] increases.”

1. The risk of not incorporating ads.txt

Forensiq, an ad fraud detection company, this week uncovered a bot responsible for sending fraudulent web traffic to all 32 NFL team sites, as well as bigger sports sites.

The exposé highlights the need for more transparency in the advertising supply chain – exactly the kind of thing that the IAB’s ads.txt initiative was designed to improve. Ads.txt works by providing DSPs with a list of supply partners who are allowed to sell a publisher’s inventory – making this sort of domain spoofing impossible.

Speaking to Adweek, David Sendroff, CEO of Forensiq, said: “Perhaps some of this injection would be cut down [if publishers implemented the tool].”