- interesting but misses some of the main points

Facebook added video ads to its Messenger chat app that automatically start to play when a mobile user scrolls through the inbox section, according to Recode. The addition of video comes 18 months after Messenger started selling static ads.
The video ads, which appear alongside messages from friends and other contacts, are like those on Facebook properties including News Feed and Instagram, per Ad Age. Messenger won't allow users to opt out of seeing them, but they can be hidden by tapping on a three-dot icon.
Facebook is slowly rolling out the ads in Messenger, which has 1.3 billion monthly active users, while the company monitors consumer reactions. The company announced the new video ads at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France.

My argument is that brands now are built online or in person rather than on TV screens or billboards. I’m sad for the demise of great ads, but the upside is that now, the playing field is much more level. You no longer need an ad agency to build a brand, just a Twitter account and a brain. BrewDog has 124,000 Twitter followers. Stella Artois UK has 25,000. Even I’ve got as many followers as the official Budweiser UK account. 

Of course, just as there can be good and bad TV ads, there can be good and bad pump clip designs, events, social media feeds and sponsorships. That’s why, in 2016, we started the Beer and Cider Marketing Awards, to celebrate the best marketing across the industry, now that the best can come from anywhere. 

The campaign is built around Kiip’s new blockchain product, which is designed to enhance transparency and tackle issues like mobile ad fraud by keeping the campaign database available to all players in mobile ad sales.
The campaign uses nascent technology, in the form of Kiip’s new “Single Ledger” blockchain product, to address fundamental issues, such as mobile ad fraud. Single Ledger enables all players in mobile ad sales chain to view and audit campaign data directly. The technology allows for simple and clear reconciliation of campaign performance data among all parties, eliminating potential for fraudulent reporting by third parties and ad servers, and streamlining what has historically been a painful, laborious reporting and payment process. In addition, Kiip’s Single Ledger helps AB InBev deliver on its commitment to ensuring every ad dollar is well spent on establishing meaningful connections with consumers in moments that matter, and at the times they are most likely looking to engage with AB InBev’s brands.

JOHN GAPPER

When the biggest platforms seem to be flailing or punting on problems, it’s often because they’re trying to address broad social issues with market solutions. They’re rediscovering, at scale and at great expense to their users, the ways in which a society is more than a bazaar, and the pitfalls of allowing human attention to be sold and resold as a commodity. If a platform is addressing a collective problem in a maddeningly strange way, consider that it might see itself, or only know to govern itself, like an eBay. If it can’t keep bad actors from using the service to exploit other users, that’s because it’s modeled after a system in which finding the highest bidder — or the biggest sucker — is gamely understood to be the point.

Deutsche Bank said its advertising system checks had shown that the purge of 583 million fake accounts following Russian interference in the US election has had "little to no impact on audience reach."

Ad fraud is at its all time high; both in rate and in dollars. Here's the evidence, you decide for yourself.

I get asked to share spam at least twice a week. It's very annoying

Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have pledged to stop providing information on U.S. phone owners’ locations to data brokers, stepping back from a business practice that has drawn criticism for endangering privacy.

None of the carriers said they are getting out of the business of selling location data. The carriers together have more than 300 million U.S. subscribers.

IBM iX and Mediaocean have lifted the lid on a blockchain network geared towards bringing greater simplicity to the digital media supply chain with brands and publishers including Kellogg's, Kimberly Clark, IBM Watson Advertising and Unilever all on board at launch.
The pair made the announcement as the second day of Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity kicked off.
They claimed that the existing manual auditing solutions currently on offer to the market are too siloed and leave marketers exposed to the risks of fraudulent actors in the market. The newly unveiled program, which is powered by the IBM Blockchain Platform and built on top of Mediaocean’s campaign management platform, looks to solve this when it launches in July.
The platform records all media transactions – from issuing of the purchase order, to the execution of media and payment – in a secure, standardized, and comprehensive manner – made possible by the use of blockchain, with IBM claiming it will provide a “sing source of truth for every media buy”.

“It is a commitment that addresses what every client has said to us: ‘Tell me more of my funds are going toward creativity. That’s what I want from you. That the unique value that I think you can add’,” she explained.

Part of this process will involve delivering the “flattest, simplest access to the broadest, most diverse creative minds”, Reiner told the 4A’s assembly.

“It is about creating a creative culture that is magnetic, that the best creative people are proud to call home, and the best creative people that we don’t yet have want to come join.”

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As one example, meetings will have to be tighter, quicker, and more selective in their mix of participants. “Our clients can’t bring a plus-one [each] to every meeting,” Reiner said.

To make certain the right people are showing up at the right table, Reiner continued, “We all need to be really clear on what unique value we each bring to the party.”