VAB halts ANA talks—TV trade group cites Google and Meta’s influence on marketer group

The Video Advertising Bureau, which represents TV networks, has paused talks with the Association of National Advertisers on funding a cross-media measurement panel and participating in ANA pilots, citing signs of undue influence on the nation’s leading marketer organization from Google and Meta. VAB CEO Sean Cunningham said the group is demanding a commitment from the ANA to measurement standards that treat all publishers and platforms the same—including full transparency throughout the supply chain and equivalent third-party measurement. An ANA spokesman declined to comment. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Cunningham pointed to the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, which will kick off today in Orlando, Florida. Google and Meta executives will have prominent speaking slots at the event, which Cunningham claims stems from their sponsorships. He acknowledged that other media companies, including VAB member A+E Networks, iHeartMedia and the U.S. Postal Service, are also sponsoring major portions of the ANA’s flagship event. Cunningham pointed to the ANA’s public silence in response to controversies regarding Google’s video ad placement practices by independent research firm Adalytics and the absence of any planned discussion of digital ad fraud at ANA events, including this week’s conference. Networks’ battle with YouTube, in particular, has been at the heart of much of the controversy over TV and connected TV measurement in recent years. Google has advocated for a base level two-second viewable impression as the basis for video audience measurement everywhere, including on big screens in living rooms, where YouTube has made growing inroads against VAB members as the largest ad-supported platform in connected TV in recent years. VAB members have argued for a higher standard based on duration of views, which, like the two-second impression, is part of Media Rating Council cross-media standards. Executives from NBCUniversal and Paramount, in particular, have argued that Google is looking to bend rules to monetize as much low-budget user-generated content as possible at rates equivalent to premium network content. ANA’s silence on digital platforms Cunningham specifically criticized the silence of the ANA publicly in the wake of two high-profile reports in recent months from independent research firm Adalytics alleging issues with Google’s YouTube ad practices. One report alleged advertisers paid premium prices for Google Video Partners video that rendered in low-quality off-stream placements outside YouTube, and the other claimed advertisers were targeting adult-oriented ads to kids on children’s content. Google has disputed both reports, citing what the company argues is flawed methodology. “I just assumed that Masters would be a good forum to address [the Adalytics reports] and the overall size and importance of the issue of fraud in the global digital media supply chain,” Cunningham said. Behind the scenes, the ANA did weigh in with the Media Rating Council with concerns about the reports, which the industry body has followed up on as it seeks to address some gaps in measurement and accreditation, according to MRC CEO George Ivie. And Cunningham acknowledged that based on his discussions with ANA executives they’ve been raising concerns with platforms privately. Cunningham also praised the ANA’s report on the digital supply chain, but that focused on programmatic buying in the open web, not through the big platforms. A second phase of that study, which was supposed to focus on buying through the big digital platforms, has yet to be released, though that was originally set to happen last year and it’s unclear when it will be released. The ANA’s consideration of an industry watchdog for social media akin to the National Advertising Review Board discussed in early 2022 in the wake of controversies surrounding Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram never went forward; the ANA has declined to comment on what happened to the initiative. The VAB backing away from cooperation with the ANA follows Cunningham delivering a manifesto at Advertising Week New York last week calling for equal transparency and measurement of all video platforms. He also outlined a power shift in the marketing industry away from marketers toward the giant digital platforms, with Google and Meta alone accounting for 40% of the global media market. “You now have entrenched this double standard,” Cunningham said. “Where the entirety of the ad process had been completely transparent and had been with multi-screen TV, you now have an opaque process. Part of it is transparent. Big parts of it aren’t.” Ad Age World’s Largest Advertisers 2023 Ad spending, rankings and analysis for the top 100 advertisers Click here Cross-Media Measurement stalled The ANA Cross-Media Measurement initiative, which the VAB had been part of discussions, has apparently yet to begin more than two years since it was first announced. While one person close to the ANA said CMM is moving forward with an alpha test of pilots that have been in the works for years, the ANA declined to confirm that, and the pilots also aren’t set for discussion during this week’s conference. The ANA originally announced pilots with Comscore and VideoAmp in 2021, with plans to begin by mid-2022. A component of those pilots was to be a calibration panel that would, among other things, help establish a virtual ID to replace cookies. The VAB and ANA have been screening candidates to run that panel and talking about funding it for nearly two years. More recently, the digital platforms became part of the process as potential funders as well, Cunningham said. “Until such time as all the partners who are going to be in this project are on one transparency standard, we’re on pause with respect to consideration of investing in that audience calibration project or the cross-media measurement initiative as a whole,” Cunningham said in an interview. “Funding that with someone who’s just been revealed to be burning you in the marketplace through fraud and data abuse, that put us on pause.” Cunningham said the VAB is still considering setting up a panel on its own that would be available to measurement firms. But he said the vision has been scaled back from earlier thoughts of a panel akin to Nielsen’s 41,000-household panel, to a much smaller one that would focus on measuring audiences not measured well or at all by big device data sets, such as households that only watch TV from broadcast signals. Google’s outlook and VAB test A Google spokeswoman said last month that Google supports third-party measurement and MRC accreditation, including of its first-party co-viewing methodology, though that audit is not yet underway. Google also has extensively disputed both of the Adalytics reports Cunningham cited. Cunningham noted that the VAB conducted its own brief test regarding the report on “made for kids” placement on YouTube. In the test, a $10 buy aimed to avoid parents or behavioral and affinity segments that would be relevant to kids, but it still ended up with some impressions running on YouTube channels rife with “made for kids” content. The video the VAB promoted with the test was an innocuous one featuring “brand safe” animal and nature content but was labeled in campaign options as “not made for kids.” The VAB did not receive back any personally identifiable data about kids, said Benjamin Vandegrift, VP of measurement solutions and innovations. A Google spokesman said the VAB follow-up appears flawed in ways similar to the original Adalytics report. Regardless of questions about guardrails around targeting advertising to kids on YouTube, there’s the question of why a tiny campaign, whose targeting parameters specifically sought to avoid parents and product segments of interest to kids, still would place impressions on YouTube channels laden with kids’ videos. Google’s spokesman said some videos on channels with made-for-kids content are actually aimed at adults, including those channels where the VAB’s ads ran, and that while the video the VAB promoted with its ads was labeled as not made for kids, the VAB may not have selected an option to avoid all made-for-kids channel placements. “We have long offered advertisers a one-click content exclusion setting that allows them to opt out entirely of having their ads served on made-for-kids content,” the spokesman said. Vandegrift said the VAB did not click that content exclusion, but also didn’t see the option offered during the campaign set up. He also cited a prior Google statement from 2019 that no personalized ads would be served on made-for-kids content. But the Google spokesman said ads placed using affinity segments, such as those in the VAB campaign, may be placed on made-for-kids content based on context, not behavioral data. MRC’s outlook and CTV issues The MRC’s Ivie weighed in on the made-for-kids issue in August, and noted that just because ads appear on kids’ content doesn’t necessarily mean they are targeting kids. The ads could be aimed at adults watching the content. He also said CTV publishers have similar issues with ad placements aimed at adults showing up in kids’ content. “You can be on a children’s program, watching ‘SpongeBob,’ and you can get an ED commercial,” Ivie said. “The MRC doesn’t audit any brand safety in the advanced TV environment for any of those providers. So when Sean, for example, says the television business is clean about this, that it’s totally transparent and safe, well that’s not true, because in advanced TV, there's no brand safety.” Cunningham acknowledged that adult-targeted ads can end up on children’s programming in connected TV, but he said those placements come in open exchanges, not in direct or private marketplaces. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

VAB halts ANA talks—TV trade group cites Google and Meta’s influence on marketer group

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