Two tech firms, MobileFuse and LiveRamp, have expanded their strategic partnership in an effort to help 

publishers deal with the pending loss of third-party cookies and increase their fill rates. 

Publishers will need to drive results without third-party signals as Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation, which has been delayed, reaches its final stage.   

LiveRamp offers what it calls an Authenticated Traffic Solution. This connects the first-party data of publishers and marketers via RampID, the firm’s privacy-compliant identifier. 

The solution enables publishers to create authenticated audiences at scale, the company claims. These addressable and measurable, it adds.  

MobileFuse seeks to become “one of the largest providers of unique IDs, and to ensure our partners have what they need to reach critical business objectives,” says Ken Harlan, founder and CEO of MobileFuse. 

The company is one of the largest adopters of in-app RampID. The new arrangement allows publishers to share authenticated inventory with more than 450 leading advertisers across multiple bidding platforms. 

Users have seen large increases in monetization when RampID is present, it argues. 

“Many publishers recognize the urgency of losing signals such as third-party cookies and mobile identifiers but may overlook the ability to reach more addressable audiences today, which also enables marketers to target their most relevant consumers,” says Luke Fenney, SVP, Connectivity & Ecosystem, Publishers, Europe & Americas, LiveRamp. 

Fenney continues, “We believe that it’s critical for publishers to start testing and benchmarking as early as possible, unlocking the immense benefits of authenticated identity now, and the availability of solutions like MobileFuse’s help to make this easier and quicker for publishers.”

In it's first-ever NewFronts presentation, mobile carrier T-Mobile unveiled an expansion of its advertising solutions unit, boosting both digital and brick-and-mortar retail media, mobile app, and CTV inventory.

The expansion includes T-Mobile owned-and-operated inventory across its in-store retail media network, as well as more than 20,000 screens via T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile retail locations nationwide.

The expanded ad inventory supply also includes advertising served to 7 million users vis a vis the carrier's "T Life" app, as well as a partnership with CTV platform Plex.

T-Mobile said the aggregate reach across its screens currently is 240 million-plus screens, which can be targeted and served ads vis its "Magenta" ad platform.

A divided Federal Communications Commission on Monday ordered Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to pay more than $200 million total for sharing customers' location data.

The order comes more than four years after the Trump-era FCC first proposed the fines by issuing a “notice of apparent liability.”

“The Commission has long recognized the importance of ensuring that information about who we call and where we go is not for sale,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel stated Monday. “By following through with this order, we once again make clear that wireless carriers have a duty to keep our geolocation information private and secure.”

Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissented from the decision to impose fines.

The order requires AT&T to pay around $57 million, Verizon around $47 million, and T-Mobile $92 million (including $12 million for Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile after the FCC first proposed the fines).

The FCC said in a “notice of apparent liability” issued in 2020 that the carriers sold access to geolocation data to aggregators that resold the information to outside companies. That notice came around one year after Vice Media's Motherboard (which stopped publishing new stories in February) detailed how a journalist was able to pay a “bounty hunter” $300 to track a phone's location to a neighborhood in Queens, New York.

The major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Carr, who voted in favor of the notice of apparent liability four years ago, stated Monday he believes the FCC lacked authority to impose the fines. 

“Given the nature of the services at issue, the Federal Trade Commission, not the FCC, would have been the right entity to take a final enforcement action, to the extent the FTC determined that one was warranted,” he said in a written dissent.

Simington stated in a separate dissent that the FCC could have worked with the carriers “to issue consent decrees to promote best practices to develop further safeguards around location-based and aggregation services.”

AT&T said it expects to appeal after completing a review of the decision, while T-Mobile and Verizon said they plan to appeal.

“In this case, when one bad actor gained unauthorized access to information relating to a very small number of customers, we quickly and proactively cut off the fraudster, shut down the program, and worked to ensure this couldn't happen again,” Verizon spokesperson Rich Young stated.

Young added that the order concerns an old, opt-in program that “was intended to support services like roadside assistance and medical alerts.”

“Unfortunately, the FCC’s order gets it wrong on both the facts and the law, and we plan to appeal this decision,” he added.

T-Mobile also said the decision was “wrong” and the fine “excessive.”

An AT&T spokesperson added that the order "unfairly" holds the company responsible for a third-party's violation of a contractual requirement to obtain consumers' consent to disclose location data.

The order "ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company’s failures, and perversely punishes us for supporting life-saving location services like emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC itself previously encouraged,” the spokesperson stated.

Separately from this order, the FCC is expected to soon issue new privacy rules for broadband carriers.

Rosenworcel, who last year established a privacy task force at the agency, previously supported regulations that would have required internet service providers to obtain subscribers' permission before harnessing data about their web activity and app usage for ad targeting. (Those rules were later repealed by Congress.)

Sending mom flowers this Mother’s Day? Probably, yes. But ad campaigns from Teleflora and DoorDash show just how different that can be.

Both companies are launching new marketing efforts as Mother’s Day season kicks off in earnest. The National Retail Federation recently released the spending forecast for the holiday, predicting that America will pour $33.5 billion into celebrating Mom this year, making it the second highest on record. And – as ever – flowers are the most popular gift, chosen by 74% of the people in this year’s survey. Mother’s Day, often called the Super Bowl of the floral industry, is expected to garner $3.2 billion in flower sales this year.

Teleflora is marking this year’s event with a campaign that celebrates who Mom was before she had you, back when she was wild, willful and possibly jumping out of airplanes. The campaign, “MotHER: A Teleflora Love Story,” stresses that while people feel parenthood is an essential part of their identity, it’s important to focus on pivotal moments that shaped them ahead of motherhood. “Before she was a mother, she was her,” the ads explain.

“The demands of motherhood can be all-consuming at times, making it challenging to have a sense of personal identity,” says Danielle Mason, vice president of marketing at Teleflora, in the announcement. “This campaign reminds us to celebrate every magnificent part of Mom – who she is now and the past that shaped her.” 

The ad, created by the Wonderful Agency, Teleflora’s in-house agency, runs on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Media buys also include connected TV, digital, and mobile.

The campaign also includes a contest on Instagram, with people building their own Reels using the company’s template. Twenty winners will get Teleflora bouquets.

DoorDash is going a different way, targeting zillenials missing their mom. Working with DEPT, the digital ad agency, it cooked up a stunt to send four lucky mom-sick young adults home. Videos caught them ringing their mother’s doorbells just as Mom was video-chatting with the DoorDash team about what their far-off child means to them.

The content series stars Allison Kuch, the TikTok personality, and the cast of the "Basement Yard "podcast. They ask and answer deep (and occasionally awkward) mom/child questions, like “What’s my worst texting habit?” and “What did I do to deserve flowers?”

The effort also includes an AR lens that allows people to connect to the moms in their lives, prompting them with the same questions.

“At DoorDash, we’re always looking for unique ways to help our customers build meaningful connections with their loved ones during the moments that matter,” says Mariota Essery, the delivery brand’s executive creative director, in the announcement. “Whether that’s helping you find the perfect bouquet to show Mom you’re thinking of her or creating engaging ways to get to know her better, we know moms are a gift that should be celebrated.”

The DoorDash campaign is scheduled to run through mid-May on the company’s owned channels and via paid social media.

The NRF predicts total spending will fall just short of last year’s $35.7 billion. Conducted with Prosper Insights & Analytics, the survey finds that 84% intend to mark the day somehow, often with cards and gifts for women in their lives with mom-like influence. On average, those celebrating will likely spend just $254 per person. Those between 35 and 44 are the biggest spenders, with an average budget of $346.

Microsoft on Monday announced the general availability of Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform and said it will soon unveil ways to gain additional insights to help advertisers tackle reporting more quickly and easily. 

The company said in a few weeks it will begin piloting a feature that can summarize the performance of a specified campaign directly from conversational chat. 

Alt text within Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform conversational chat will have the ability to answer a campaign performance summary question, for example. 

Comscore now includes generative AI (GAI) search in its overall search-market measurement analysis.

In that report, Comscore estimates that total market search volume rose more than 5% with Bing capturing the lion's share of growth. 

As search habits shift, the consumer journey within Microsoft Copilot continues to evolve opportunities for advertisers and publishers.

Since its inception, Microsoft say, Copilot has logged more than 5 billion chats.

People use Copilot to explore and make sense of the world's information through longer, more detailed searches -- and by including citations in responses, it is helping drive traffic directly to advertisers and publishers, according to Microsoft.

The signals from Comscore show how people continue to actively engaged in this new way of searching with strong growth on PC and accelerated usage on mobile. 

The data shows the significant change in consumer behavior, and Microsoft said it has observed several interesting insights.

For starters, the volume of consumer journeys that now include Copilot has grown four times faster than journeys with only traditional search. The company also sees about 80% higher engagement on ads being shown in Copilot, as compared to standard search ads.

When user journeys incorporate both Microsoft Copilot and traditional Search, there is a 30% lift in aggregate click-through rates (CTR), indicating that the synergy between the search experiences drive more value.

Some 40% of Copilot conversations initiated from a standard search query indicate a growing interest in transitioning to more engaging AI-driven conversational experiences.

Within these interactions, most ad clicks are for non-brand terms, suggesting that users are engaging with a wide range of content and exploring new topics within their conversational journeys.

In addition to longer chat prompt queries and chat messages with conversational search, 82% of ad clicks came from short chat communications in less than 60 seconds, suggesting that high-visibility strategies can quickly help advertisers deliver an engaging consumer experience.

User feedback also indicates the integration of ads is not negatively impacting their experience in Copilot.

All these signals, Microsoft said, are just the start of growth opportunities for web publishers and advertisers to engage users in this new era of AI.

Remember back in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s when traditional media companies were looking to diversify -- expanding out of movie studios and traditional broadcast TV networks to buying cable networks, radio stations, video-game businesses, book publishers, and even DVD rental companies? (Hello, Blockbuster Video)..

Growing out of its core cable TV system business of TV networks, Comcast has added broadband, wireless, mobile, and ownership of TV network/movie studio company NBCUniversal.

Initially it was tough sledding after starting up  the purchase of NBCUniversal in 2009, obtaining full ownership in 2013.

There were some synergy and cost issues. But the company figured it out all the while Comcast was growing its broadband business to complement its video business, which showed signs of weakening.

AT&T must have been very envious over the performance -- because of its tough history in owning and selling off cable systems, DirecTV (a satellite pay TV provider) and lastly Warner Bros. Media.

Yet now Comcast seems to be hitting a wall. After ongoing subscriber loss, now broadband is beginning to see a decline in subscribers -- although revenues keep growing as ARPU (average revenue per user) climbs, up 4.2% to $73.92 per month. 

On top of this, NBCUniversal is still a work in progress when it comes to Peacock, which continues to endure nagging losses. In the first quarter, EBITDA losses were at $639 million, which is still at the same level -- more or less since the fourth quarter 2022 ($614 million).

Craig Moffett, co-founder, principal at MoffettNathanson Research, reflects on Comcast's long-time position of perhaps being the last of a dying breed.

He recently wrote: “Comcast’s diversification wouldn't be helpful if the businesses that are currently out of favor continue to struggle forever. But if Comcast believes -- as we do -- that the outlook is better than the market perceives, their diversification can provide a welcome balance while they wait.”

Moffett believes Comcast will that somehow things will change -- for one that competitive pressure on its broadband business has peaked, that the business could re-accelerate.

But about more losses coming and linear, legacy TV networks in trouble, as well as some lingering questions about its European pay TV Sky business.

Laurel Rossi, chief revenue officer at Infillion, says the company's plan is to bring new options to the programmatic marketplace through the relaunch of MediaMath technology will support the fastest-growing sector in advertising: retail media.

All these are more test races to observe from the stands.

Good news: Comcast has a track record. 

Alphabet and Microsoft reported earnings on Thursday. Both had a better-than-expected Q1 2024.

Alphabet reported results for the quarter ended March 31, 2024. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the "results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud."

Revenue from Google Search & Other areas reached $46.2 billion -- above consensus expectations of $45 billion, accelerating to more than 14.4% year-over-year versus more than 12.7% in Q4, wrote Baird Equity Research Analyst Colin Sebastian in a research note published today.

The push into generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has forced Google to follow consumer online behavior more closely, to avoid falling behind Microsoft. 

Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Google Search, told employees last month there is a need to rapidly invest in AI. And that need has changed the market, meaning the company must move faster.

Google added several GAI features to search in the quarter -- highlighted by the launch of Circle to Search, which uses highlighted words or images from a screenshot and transcribes them into a Google search. 

Alphabet’s Google, which has developed a fair amount of the underlying technology being used in AI today, announced its first-ever dividend of 20 cents per share, despite spending billions of dollars on data centers to catch up with rivals like Microsoft.

Both companies have integrated GAI into products ranging from web search to the suite of enterprise software.

Microsoft said its revenue for the quarter ending in March reached $61.9 billion from $52.9 billion -- a much better result than analysts expected.

“Microsoft Copilot and Copilot stack are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.

During the quarter, the company introduced Surface PCs with a key for quickly accessing the Copilot chatbot. The company began selling access to the Copilot for small businesses with Microsoft 365 productivity software subscriptions. 

The company also hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of artificial intelligence lab DeepMind, to run a new Microsoft AI group.

“Alphabet and Microsoft share a common goal to promote the view that generative AI is both economically viable and safe,” Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst Andrew Frank told Media Daily News in an email.

“As we move past the technology’s peak of inflated expectations, I believe it’s essential that they prioritize addressing market-wide risks, both social and environmental, rather than taking a traditional competitive posture.”

Frank hopes the companies will move toward more concrete assurances that they are addressing the necessities of self-regulation alongside commercial goals.

Microsoft has been signing a series of high-profile AI deals. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that Coca-Cola had signed a five-year, $1.1 billion contract with Azure for AI and cloud computing services. 

Coca-Cola also will test and roll out Copilot under Microsoft 365 to improve workplace productivity. The brand has been innovating with Microsoft GAI for nearly a year. 

During the past week, Microsoft introduced of a small AI model for mobile devices, which suggests the company has a better chance of competing with Google for advertising dollars in the mobile market. 

Gen Z may have many attributes that are not easy to discern.

But here’s one thing that comes in clearly: Email is their preferred means of communication, according to a study by SheerID.  

Of the Gen Z consumers polled, 48% prefer email for hearing about offers from brands, followed by text/SMS (46%), social media (43%), online ads (24%) and brand websites (18%). 

And 40% Gen Z likes the occasional 20% discount and 10% off every purchase — but they appreciate freebies most.

Gen Z particularly welcomes discounts for takeout/food delivery.

What’s their favorite type of exclusive offer? Free shipping was cited by 60%, and 52% say a free gift. (47%). apparel (42%), beauty/personal care (40%), gaming (39%) and electronics (39%).

The least popular choice was online news subscriptions (10%). 

But here’s some bad news: Only 30% of Gen Z consumers are optimistic about the economy — and they are being frugal.

Gen Z college students feel good about the economy — 71% are planning to seek discounts, while stretching their budgets.  

How has the economy affected their spending habits? Groceries and mobile phone/wireless were the only two categories where Gen Z is spending more than in the past.  

In contrast, 36% are spending less on takeout/food delivery, gaming, electronics and online news.  

“While economists say that the economy is getting better, Gen Z is not convinced,” says Jake Weatherly, CEO of SheerID. “Our research indicates that, in fact, young people are careful and purposeful with their spending.”

And there is one warning for brands: Be careful how you go about verifying that someone is indeed part of Gen Z.  

For 25%, having to create a separate account on a Gen Z deals website would have a negative impact. And 42% feel the same about having to share a document to prove their eligibility.  

On the other hand, 59% of Gen Z and 66% of Gen Z students would welcome d being instantly verified as a member of their group without sharing their data with other brands.  

What should companies do? Brands that provide exclusive offers “show a company’s dedication to recognize and help people,” Weatherly says. 

"We recommend brands invest in multi-touch point campaigns that combine digital and face-to-face interactions to effectively stand out in a noisy marketplace,” adds Gavin Aldrich CEO of Campus Group. “Brands that take an integrated approach to demonstrate and authentically communicate their external values hold the key to attracting Gen Z customers."