Your Tech Story

Ads

Amazon Prime Video Content to Include Ads Starting Early 2024

Amazon Prime Video Content to Include Ads Starting Early 2024

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

In a strategic move aimed at fueling further investment in captivating content, Amazon.com Inc. announced on Friday that it will introduce limited advertising to its Prime Video service beginning in early 2024. 

Amazon Prime Video Content to Include Ads Starting Early 2024
Image Source: brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com

This decision comes as Amazon joins the growing ranks of streaming platforms opting for an ad-based tier to bolster revenue streams. According to the company, the primary objective behind this move is to sustain its commitment to delivering high-quality content to its subscribers. In a blog post, Amazon stated its intention to maintain significantly fewer ads compared to traditional linear TV and other streaming providers, underscoring its dedication to a premium viewing experience.

The rollout of ads on Prime Video will commence in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada in early 2024, with additional markets, including France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia, set to follow later in the year.

For viewers who prefer an ad-free experience, U.S. consumers will have the option to pay an extra $2.99 per month. International customers can expect this ad-free choice to become available at a later date.

Amazon’s Prime Video has been making waves in the entertainment industry, receiving an impressive 68 PrimeTime Emmy award nominations this year. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” a beloved streaming comedy, has garnered an impressive 80 nominations over five seasons, solidifying Prime Video’s presence in the highly competitive streaming landscape.

This announcement follows in the footsteps of Netflix Inc., which recently introduced an ad-supported tier to its lineup after years of resisting such a move. Netflix’s Chief Financial Officer, Spencer Neumann, noted that a substantial proportion of accounts are transitioning to the ad-supported option, acknowledging the challenges of building an advertising business within the streaming realm.

Read More: Infosys and NVIDIA Collaborate to Help World’s Enterprises Boost Productivity with Generative AI

Both Amazon and Netflix find themselves navigating the challenges brought about by the ongoing strikes within the entertainment industry. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have engaged in bargaining talks, aiming to reach a resolution that would bring an end to the production standstill. The strikes, with the Writers Guild of America beginning in May and actors represented by SAG-AFTRA joining in July, have disrupted the industry and heightened the importance of alternative revenue streams like advertising.

As the streaming giants adapt to evolving viewer preferences and revenue models, the inclusion of ads on Prime Video represents Amazon’s commitment to maintaining a diverse and competitive streaming ecosystem while continuing to invest in high-caliber content for its global audience.

Google Tweaks Ad Auctions to Hit Revenue Targets, Executive Says

Google Tweaks Ad Auctions to Hit Revenue Targets, Executive Says

Leave a Comment / Ad manager, Google, News, Tech News / By

Alphabet Inc.’s tech giant, Google, has come under scrutiny as it was revealed in a federal antitrust trial that the company has been making adjustments to its advertising auctions to ensure it meets revenue targets. Jerry Dischler, the Vice President for Google’s advertising products, disclosed on Monday that these tweaks sometimes result in ad price increases of up to 5%, impacting advertisers and businesses relying on Google’s advertising platform.

Google Tweaks Ad Auctions to Hit Revenue Targets, Executive Says
Image Source: business-standard.com

While Google frequently fine-tunes the algorithms governing its ad auctions, it has been customary for the company not to inform advertisers about pricing changes. Dischler’s testimony shed light on internal communications, including a May 2019 email, in which he discussed the need to make changes to meet quarterly revenue targets set by Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat. The fear of disappointing Wall Street was a strong motivator, as Dischler expressed concern about potential stock price losses and their impact on morale and the sales team.

The Justice Department has accused Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly in online search through agreements with web browsers and smartphone manufacturers. These arrangements ensure Google’s search engine is the default option for users, effectively limiting competition in the search market. A significant portion of Google’s revenue, over 60%, comes from search ads, amounting to more than $100 billion in 2020.

During cross-examination, Dischler emphasized Google’s commitment to delivering “honest results” and a clear separation between paid and organic search results. He maintained that financial incentives did not compromise the quality of search results.

However, Dischler did admit that some auction changes had led to price increases of up to 5% for typical advertisers, and in some cases, as much as 10%. Nevertheless, he expressed concerns that a 15% price hike might drive advertisers to competitors like Meta Platforms Inc. or TikTok.

Google currently boasts around 5 million advertisers, significantly fewer than Meta’s 10 million. Retail advertisements constitute the largest category, comprising approximately 35% of Google’s search ad revenue. Dischler acknowledged that Google faced increasing competition from newcomers like TikTok and Amazon.

Also Read: Microsoft’s Nadella and Oracle’s Ellison Discuss the Future of Cloud and AI

Interestingly, Amazon’s growing success in retail advertising is attributed to its ability to provide advertisers with superior data on ad effectiveness compared to Google. This has prompted some consumer goods makers to contemplate shifting their advertising budgets away from Google and toward Amazon.

One notable change that boosted Google’s revenue involved RGSP (Runner-Up Gets Top Slot), where the second-place bidder was given the top ad slot. This innovative strategy flipped the convention, often placing major advertisers like Amazon in the second position, thereby increasing Google’s revenue.

As the trial continues, the focus remains on Google’s practices in shaping the digital advertising landscape and its potential impact on competition and market dynamics.

The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk – A Jeff Green Founded Successful Start-Up in the Digital Marketing Space.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By

Advertising in the digital era fuels the branding of each and every business. Jeff Green and Dave Pickles decided to found The Trade Desk when they detected a gap between marketers and the right information they needed to build an ad. If one doesn’t have plenty of accurate data to forecast and analyze the behavior of the target audience, it is not possible to create an ad that will resonate with their needs or pain points. Both Jeff and Dave realized that this unavailability of data is giving a hard time to the marketers as well as content creators to monetize their platforms. And, The Trade Desk was founded in 2009 as a solution to this problem, helping digital ad buyers around the world.

About The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk is a successful company in the digital advertising sector that focuses on data-driven advertising campaigns for digital ad buyers. TTD offers one-of-a-kind SaaS which is also the largest independent demand-side platform (DSP). The company is based in Ventura, California. TTD has three main products to offer advertisers at various companies and agencies. Let’s have a look at the services provided by TTD.

The Trade Desk
Image source: businesswire.com

Services of TTD

First, the demand-side platform is all about using data in the smartest possible way. The clients use data to derive accurate information that gives a better idea for strategizing ads. This helps the businesses plan in a way to reach more audiences before pouring heavy amounts of money into creating ads. The demand-side platform helps a client to build a complete planner only by providing information like goals and budgets. With the help of cross-device targeting, your ads reach the right kind of audience for your product or brand. The AI-driven technology of TTD also helps gain recommendations and insights based on the type of data you are looking for or your goals.

Second, the data management platform works with the existing data of a client and provides insights about who could be your potential customers. The data management platform of TTD helps a client to discover new people who they can approach to increase the customer base. There can be many new businesses, where the company hasn’t hired any in-house data researcher or analyst. So, TTD will help to surface the right type of data and create new relevant audience profiles for your company.

Lastly, TTD APIs is also a choice for the company’s clients if one is interested in building customized solutions. This will increase the efficiency of a company as one will create a personalized solution depending on more parameters of the company. It means a company will use more of its data to create a competitive advantage and hence will gain clearer insights about its customers and workflow.

Behind the Scenes

Before co-founding TTD, Jeff Green established an online auction advertising company called AdECN. Microsoft acquired the company in 2007 and Dave started working for the company right after that. This is how the two of them met and founded TTD, a new adventure in 2009. In 2010, the company successfully raised $2.5 million from investors like Founder Collective and IA Ventures. Jerry Neumann and Josh Stylman are two angel investors that backed TTD in the early days.

TTD was established in the sector of digital marketing where the opportunities for growth were unscalable especially in this digital age. The company succeeded very quickly and in 2015 TTD was featured in Forbes as one of the Top 10 America’s Most Promising Companies. The same year both the co-founders were named Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year. In 2018, the company launched two AI-based tools, namely, Koa (An AI forecast engine) and The Trade Desk Planner. With these two innovative products rolling out in the market, TTD acquired the second position in the list of 100 Best Medium Workplaces by Fortune.

About the Founders

Jeff Green studied marketing communications at the University of Southern California. He started his career in Microsoft and founded AdECN, a demand-side advertising platform in 2003. Two years after Microsoft acquired the company, Jeff built a new start-up focusing on the buy-side platform, which is none other than TTD.

Dave Pickles is the current CTO of TTD and also a board member. Dave studied Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He started working for AdECN after Microsoft acquired it. Before that, he was a senior engineer at CallWave, an internet telephony startup.

Google Ad Sense Policy violations- How to avoid from being banned?

Leave a Comment / Ad manager, Adsense, DFP, Google, how to, Tech tips / By

If you are a AdSense publisher, you must be aware of AdSense program guidelines. AdSense program guideline comprises of content policy and rules to detect  fake, fraudulent clicks on Ads.

Any violation of any of these guidelines can result in either a ban on your AdSense account or stopping Ad serving on the website violating the policy guidelines. AdSense publishers are supposed to run ads on a website which has family safe content (no porn or obscene content, images or videos) with no copyright infringement.

Google ads aren’t permitted on sites that contain harassing or bullying content, or on content that incites hatred or promotes violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity. Additionally, Google ads may not appear on content that incites or advocates for harm against an individual or group.



Off late Google has gone quite aggressive in implementation of AdSense policy guidelines. Google has been disabling Ad serving for any website which has nude or porn content. If you’re using AdSense and have such content which violates AdSense policy, don’t wait for warning notification from Google.  Either remove ads from such content or remove such content from your website. Now a days Google instead of disabling AdSense account, disables ads on domain itself. In such scenario you won’t be able to runs ads even if you have another AdSense account.


Steps to follow if your AdSense account or website is banned

In case Google has already disabled ad serving on your website or blog, do following in order to get Ads enabled-

  • Take steps to remove violation- either remove such content or remove Google Ads
  • Disallow such URLs and keywords for AdSense bot in Robots.txt.
    Example- User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
    Disallow: /*xxx
  • Make internal process comprising automated as well human resources to check content quality including that of images and videos
  • File an appeal with Google using this form

Google AdSense policy review team would review your website for violations and if they find everything fine, Ad serving would start.  Normally this process takes around 5 to 6 days before you get to hear from policy team. See it as an opportunity to improve content quality on your website or blog which will not only earn you more from Ads, but also good ranking in search engines.

 

If you are using Google DFP, you might find it difficult to get AdSense Ads enabled since most of the time policy team fail to find AdSense code in HTML sources of your pages. If your account is eligible you can send an email to AdSense support as well using this page.

 

If your account is disabled due to some unethical activity or clicks, file an appeal here.  For more details on AdSense policy guidelines visit AdSense support page.

How to verify your Google DFP Ads from other countries?

Leave a Comment / Ad manager, DFP, Google, how to, Tech tips / By

One of the challenges that Google DFP (Ad manager) account managers especially those who are new often face is to set up different Ad banners for different regions or countries and to test them out. The challenge is not to set up different Ad banners since that can be easily done by creating different line items and selecting target criteria and setting Geography. Challenge is to verify whether correct banners appear in targeted region or country?

One can easily verify the Ad banners for the country or region he or she is browsing in but to verify Ad banners in other countries either you need a remote server in all those regions or countries or use some good proxy. You may also seek help of your friends if you are lucky enough to have friends in all those countries.

If you don’t have access to all the things mentioned above, try this simple technique and you would be able to see Ad banners from most parts of the world. Visit some performance testing website which has option to select country and which also provides screen shots in result set.

Two such websites are http://www.webpagetest.org/ and http://loads.in/. By using these websites you would be able to verify which Ad banners appear in different countries. Using this technique you can test any public web page and make sure that Ad is rendering fine without any hiccups.