CTV momentum at CES, Reddit’s move into media buying and Google’s contested antitrust ruling

Welcome to January’s Spotlight, your recap of some of the main headlines from across adtech and digital marketing.

What we have for you today: Reddit takes on Google, publishers look to CTV, and ad fraud raises its ugly head once again.

CTV hits big at CES

Every year, January plays host to CES, one of the largest technology shows in the world. This year, CTV was seemingly everywhere, with big announcements made around everything from next-gen CTV measurement and interactive CTV ads to content discovery and optimisation.

Clearly CTV is having a moment. For advertisers looking with renewed interest in this area our advice is to seek out the best data partnerships to enable access to accurate, privacy-first audiences at scale. The potential for CTV is huge, but, as in digital advertising, success will come down to effective and compliant user verification, personalisation and re-targeting..

Reddit takes on the adtech incumbents

In a welcome sign of added competition in adtech, Reddit has announced plans to take on the likes of Google and Meta with a new media buying tool. Reddit is looking to differentiate its AI-powered (naturally) solution by offering greater transparency while activating its own first-party data (i.e. Reddit user conversations).

There’s a lot to like here. We welcome any new player to the adtech ecosystem, particularly one that promises to add transparency to what was an all too opaque industry. We are also pleased to see publisher data being put to good use (so long as the usual privacy caveats apply). We have long said that the future of digital advertising is greater competition. If this is also supported by interoperability, then we will have an adtech ecosystem that is much better suited to the needs of all major stakeholders.

What next for the open web?

January is the time of year when industry experts dust off their crystal balls and make predictions for the year ahead. This year is no exception. One particularly eye-catching prediction is that given the deleterious effect of AI overviews on search engine traffic to publisher sites, publishers and adtech companies are going to diversify through CTV.

While we agree that there will be a significant uptick in CTV campaigns this year, publishers will not be ready to write off their open web properties just yet. Instead, expect a rigorous focus on quality and understanding users like never before to better cater to their needs. Activating first-party data effectively will, of course, be central to meeting these aims.

Opening up Google

Google is appealing a US district court judge’s finding that it monopolised search. It is doing so on the basis that the mandate would jeopardise user privacy for hundreds of millions of Americans, as it would require the private search queries of Google users to be shared without their consent.

It’s good to see that the company which let its users be tracked for years before GDPR and CPRA came into force is now such a prominent privacy advocate. However, it does beg the question of why consent for tracking cookies remains opt-out in Chrome when moving it to an opt-in mechanism would do so much more to protect privacy.

Regardless of Google’s apparent cynicism, this case does highlight just how important consent is to data processing. Brands would be wise to opt for mechanisms that have privacy baked in by design (clue: that’s not third-party tracking cookies).

Cracking down on ad fraud

New data from Lunio suggests that 8.51% of all paid ad traffic is invalid, meaning that nearly one in every 12 clicks doesn’t come from a real user. That amounts to a staggering $63 billion in wasted global ad spend last year.

In the age of AI and bots, making sure that ad budgets are not wasted is more important than ever. That means not only reaching real people but also the right people. Brands should look for solutions that can provide audiences that are 100% verified at source, such as telco-verified IDs. Doing so will end the source of ad fraud while also improving the performance of campaigns.

More from Novatiq

If you’re looking for comment and thought leadership on some of the biggest trends in digital advertising, then swing by our blog.