News You Can Use: South-East Asian Ad Spend Booms & Snapchat Turns Upside Down

Each and every week Unruly scours the web, Twitter feeds and 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 some news of some surprising new ad formats on the horizon, platforms tackling their fake news problem – and some handy guidelines and descriptions from Integral Ad Science on how to categorise brand safety risk.

Elsewhere, Snapchat and Netflix team up for the first sponsored ‘World Lens’, while emarketer reveal that ad spending has grown substantially across the South-East Asian region.

So get reading!

5. All Aboard! Digital Bus Ads Have Arrived

We’ve all been there – you wait 20 minutes for a bus, and then three turn up at once. Well, how about if there were ads on those buses?

Exterion Media and Talon are launching digital screens on buses which display geo-targeted messages to audiences across London. Sophie Pemberton, strategy director at Talon, explained: “Digital buses provide a brilliant opportunity to create a brand new digital channel that can deliver both broadcast and smart messaging throughout central London.”

4. Google & Twitter Tackle Their Fake News Problems

Google this week announced it will partner with Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network to train more employees in fact-checking news. Meanwhile, Twitter says it will ban advertising from RT and Sputnik, Russian news outlets that targeted Twitter ads to US voters last year.

3. IAS breaks down different levels of brand safety risk

Understanding the different levels of risk associated with brand safety can be tricky. This easily digestible snapshot breaks down the difference between low, medium and high risk.

2. Strange Things Afoot: Netflix Nabs Snapchat’s first sponsored World Lens

After announcing its World Lens AR platform at Advertising Week New York, Snapchat has revealed Netflix is the first advertiser to use the new format. The campaign is timed for the highly-anticipated launch of the second season of hit TV show ‘Stranger Things’, and will allow fans to step into an ‘upside down’ version of Joyce Byer’s famous living room.

1. Ad Spending grow across Southeast Asia

eMarketer estimates that various South-East Asia markets (including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) will experience total media ad spend growth this year for the first time since 2013. The report reveals that spending in those countries will total $2.05 billion by the end of 2017, an increase of 21.8%, driven by expanding ecommerce and mobile activity.