Publishers are not faring well in today’s digital economy. The proof is in the continuing newsroom layoffs and the siphoning off of ad revenues by third-party platforms that function as news distributors. 

Then there are the addressability issues like the loss of established signals via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and lack of visibility into advertisers’ audience data. 

But there are ways of dealing with such challenges, according to Addressability In The New Digital Landscape, a paper by PubMatic. 

The paper offers five strategies for building addressability strategies.

The common sources of first-party data are: 

- Registration and Login Systems 

- Website Analytics and Content Engagement 

- Email Marketing 

- Mobile Apps 

(On another front, the paper notes that there are “dozens of alternative IDs in the market, including LiveRamp’s RampID and The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0, that can be used to scale and enrich a publisher’s first-party data”). 

Publishing Second-Party Data: Putting Advertising Data to Work — Publishers can work with clients on data collaboration, including audience matching, campaign measurement, or advanced analytics.

Publisher Third-Party Data: A Privacy First Path Forward — Third-party data is here to stay, but the sources must be built in a privacy-first way.  That means third-party data partners must be reputable and adhere to all privacy standards. In addition, they should bring dimension that reflect rising consumer behaviors.

Publisher Contextual Data: Increasing Relevance Through Relevance — Contextual allows brands to “deliver targeted advertising that is non-intrusive and, when done right, a valuable enhancement to a user’s content experience,” the paper says. It adds that  “69% of consumers are more likely to look at an ad if it is relevant to the content they are viewing,” the paper says.  

Addressing Industry Shifts: Embracing New Open Web Standards—Publishers may feel less in control of their destinies in today’s digital ecosystem. But they can take measures to position themselves for the future. For instance, they should support and not try to circumvent Google’s Privacy Sandbox and initiatives by other digital platforms. 

Add it all up, and publishers  have “a unique opportunity to better position themselves within the advertising ecosystem,” says Jaan Janes, vice president of publisher partnerships at PubMatic.

Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission ordered Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to pay nearly $200 million total for sharing customers' location data.

The companies, which paid the fines under protest, now want appellate courts to reverse the FCC's ruling.

“The Commission’s forfeiture order is unconstitutional, inconsistent with the limitations of the Communications Act, and arbitrary and capricious,” AT&T writes in papers filed this week with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC fined AT&T around $57 million, Verizon around $47 million, and T-Mobile $92 million (including $12 million for Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile in 2020).

The agency handed outthe fines more than four years after alleging in a “notice of apparent liability” that the carriers sold access to geolocation data to aggregators that resold the information to outside companies. The FCC issued the notice around one year after Vice Media's Motherboard reported that a journalist had been 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.

An AT&T spokesperson said earlier this year that the FCC had "unfairly" held the company responsible for a third-party's violation of a contractual requirement to obtain consumers' consent to disclose location data.

The fine "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.

AT&T argues in its appeal that the fines should be vacated for numerous reasons, including that the FCC imposed the fines without either conducting an in-house hearing or proving the allegations in court.

The company also says the agency lacked authority to issue the fines because the location data at issue wasn't tied solely to voice services, like telephone calls. Instead, the location information was tied to non-voice location-based services such as the Life Alert program, which sends medical help to people, or roadside assistance company AAA, the telecom argues.

“Location-based services can be used by data-plan customers who do not even have voice services with AT&T, like many tablet or smartwatch customers,” AT&T argues.

“Notably, the location information AT&T provided was not call location information, i.e., records of 'the customer’s location while making or receiving a voice call,'” the company adds.

AT&T says the distinction between “call information” and location information not tied to phone calls is critical, arguing that the FCC is only authorized to police the confidentiality of “call information.”

Verizon is appealing separately to the 2nd Circuit, and T-Mobile is appealing to the District of Columbia Circuit.

T-Mobile indicated in court papers filed this week that it plans to make arguments similar to AT&T's.

Verizon said in its petition seeking review that the FCC's order is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion,” and is also “contrary to law and unsupported by substantial evidence.”

The FCC imposed the fines by a 3-2 vote, with Republican Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting.

Carr stated in his dissent that 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 said 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.”

Samsung's foldable Galaxy Z Flip series smartphones double as police bodycams, according to the technology company, which says it is expanding its initial pilot program to 25 metro police departments across five states -- marking the first time a foldable mobile device has been used by police as a bodycam.

Two years ago, Missouri's Kimberling City Police and Indian Point Police took part in Samsung’s pilot program involving the Galaxy Z Flip smartphones, testing whether or not the devices could improve the forces' daily operations.

Samsung says this included using the phone “as a body-worn camera to promote transparency.”

Samsung says the six-month program was successful and has since allowed the company to expand it to additional police forces.

The phone series, according to the company, was chosen because of the foldable design and specific features such as extended battery life, durable construction, automated recording abilities and high-speed activations created in collaboration with Visual Labs, a body camera solution provider.

In addition, Visual Labs technology makes it possible for video data collected by the Galaxy Z Flip series to be stored in the cloud instantaneously, allowing footage to be livestreamed to the police force's command center and viewed in real time.

Attempting to further its marketing efforts around the phone as a suitable bodycam, Samsung also highlights the Flip's digital camera that can be used to take photos of crime scene evidence, the audio recorder for witness interviews, a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS, and the support for agency-specific apps like computer-aided dispatch, criminal-justice database queries and the push-to-talk feature.

“These features provide police officers with additional methods to promptly begin recording their surroundings, enhancing their ability to capture critical events,” Samsung explained in a recent blog post, adding that its device is less expensive than other bodycams.

Samsung, however, is not the only tech company marketing smartphones as police bodycams. Visual Labs has also partnered with T-Mobile in an effort to provide Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement in a similar deal. 

The news comes at a time when bodycam footage can provides crucial evidence in major cases involving alleged police brutality and civilian casualties at the hands of law enforcement.

But despite Samsung's promise of automatic cloud-based uploads, it has been proven that local police organizations in certain states and counties can prevent the release of the footage, according to last year’s report by ProPublica and The New York Times.

Expanding its deal with YouTube beyond connected TV platforms, Comscore says it will now offer video advertising measurement across desktop and mobile browsers, as well as mobile apps.

Comscore says it is the first measurement service to offer a complete view of ad traffic across desktop, mobile and connected TV.

Previously, YouTube had been a customer of Comscore Campaign Ratings.

Comscore's Video Metrix Multi-Platform now includes YouTube CTV data, inclusive of co-viewing, in the U.S.  Comscore clients will have the ability to access “traffic sharing” in YouTube CTV measurement -- viewership on specific content distributed on YouTube to the content creators.

It then reports on the total unduplicated audience for those content creators across their owned and operated platforms, YouTube and other distribution channels.

Some countries outside the U.S. will see the total YouTube audience view beginning in 2025 -- including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Spain and the UK. 

First-quarter revenues for Comscore were down 5.2% to $86.8 million compared to a year ago, largely attributable to a decline in its cross-platform product, which was down 9.7% versus a year ago.

Comscore attributes the first-quarter revenue decline to lower national TV revenue. This was partially offset by growth in its movie business.

Nvidia-backed Perplexity later this quarter will allow brands to purchase “related follow-up questions” that will appear below the initial answer to user queries.

Perplexity will clearly label the "sponsored" post. The brand will pay Perplexity an undisclosed fee for every thousand user views of the sponsored question. When a publisher’s content is used in Perplexity’s answer to the sponsored question, it earns an undisclosed “double digit” percentage of ad revenue.

Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com are some of the publishers that are launching with the program. 

Time Chief Operating Officer Mark Howard told Perplexity that the program supports the publication's commitment to new technologies and platforms to provide trusted journalism for audiences.  

Partners will have free access to Perplexity's large language model (LLM) APIs and developer support, allowing publishers to create their own custom answer engine on their websites.

Visitors to participating publisher sites can ask questions and receive answers that cite only content from that publisher’s site. Technology that enables visitors to ask related questions will become available for direct integration into their stories.

Employees of publishers will have access to Perplexity's Enterprise Pro offering with enhanced data privacy and security capabilities for one year.

Nearly all AI platforms have of late experienced substantial increases in mobile and desktop monthly active users, according to data from Datos, a Semrush company.

ChatGPT has a user base that comes close to some of the other search incumbents. It is by far the largest of the five, experiencing a combined desktop and mobile web MAU growth of 25% between May 2023 and May 2024, but the total number of monthly active users of Perplexity increased 3.4x in the same time period.

Datos’ report — Customer Search Behavior: What’s Changing and What’s Not in the Age of AI — analyzes how generative AI influences consumer search behaviors

Perplexity worked with ScalePost.ai to streamline collaborations between content publishers. It also provides AI analytics for publishers.

The announcement comes days after OpenAI went public with its own AI web search tool now being tested with a small number of users.

Cricket Wireless has debuted "Jawsome," its latest national campaign.

Since 2013, the agency has produced 100+ campaigns for Cricket Wireless and won a Cannes Lion en route.

Hemant Jain, Argonaut head of creative, told Agency Daily: “We believe Cricket is the best value provider in the wireless category and wanted a creative idea that would feel fresh and get this message across in a fun way. We enjoyed bringing some classic, physical comedy to these characters — and we’ve only scratched the surface of what they’re capable of doing for the brand.”

Cricket says it added more prepaid phone customers than any other major provider in the U.S. year-over-year, recently surpassing 14 million subscribers. That's more than tripling its growth since the brand-agency partnership began.

"Consumers are actively seeking out value from brands they choose to engage and spend their money with. Pairing the speed and reliability of our nationwide 5G network with the Samsung Galaxy truly is jaw-dropping value. We love the way we’re bringing that to life with our characters in this work,” added Cindy Rozier, AVP, marketing at Cricket Wireless.

Apple Intelligence will miss its initial launch date to give the company more time to fix bugs and flaws.

The company reportedly will begin rolling out the product in software updates by October, arriving several weeks after the launch of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

Stability and the need for more testing of the features contributed to the delay, Bloomberg reports, citing people with knowledge of the situation.

Apple Intelligence could become available to software developers for early testing as soon as this week via iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 betas.

The platform includes features such as prioritization of key notifications, web page and voice note summaries, and tools to improve writing. The most fascinating improvements revolve around Siri and integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the partnership with OpenAI at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

At that time, Cook said Apple would integrate ChatGPT into iOS 18, allowing users to ask questions and receive text-generation assistance without needing a separate account. Apple emphasized that privacy will remain a cornerstone for its users, ensuring interactions with ChatGPT will not be stored.

Cook described “Apple Intelligence” as a “personal intelligence system” based on Apple’s own generative AI models and its custom semiconductor chips, with privacy among the most important features of his transition.

“Apple Intelligence will most likely re-define how we interact with AI on our mobile devices and strategically deepens its moat around mobile users to redirect them toward Apple services,” said Ed Haslam, CMO of Aarki.

The move prioritizes on-device processing to support privacy, redefining the way consumers interact with technology and Apple devices.

But if Apple is looking for use across its devices and technology, it may take time. Only 18% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, according to data from AnalyticsIQ.

Baby Boomers were the least likely to use ChatGPT. Those who have been to college are more likely to have used ChatGPT than those who have not, the data shows.

Some 87% of U.S. adults reported they have used some type of AI in the past 12 months.

It’s important to note that AnalyticsIQ collected the online survey in August of 2023. All participants were compensated for their time. They were asked a series of questions regarding their recent AI use, ChatGPT use, and their emotional reactions to both.

Millennials and Gen Z used more AI products than Gen X and Boomers at the time, and those who have attended college used more AI products than those who have not.

Survey participants also cited the types of AI technology they used in the last 12 months. Some 47% used AI in personalized video content or virtual assistants such as personalized video content recommendations from platforms like Netflix, while another 47% used it with virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa, and 36% with facial recognition from personal devices like the iPhone.