Ad tech platform Vibe has raised $22.5 million in a Series A funding round led by venture firm Singular. Vibe plans to use the funds to “continue building a more efficient streaming TV advertising ecosystem and become the No. 1 connected TV ad resource for small and midsize businesses,” or SMBs. Vibe, which calls itself the “Google Ads of streaming,” says its technology “radically democratizes access to streaming TV advertising for SMBs with an easy-to-use ad platform mimicking the power and ease-of-use of Google or Meta, but for CTV and OTT.” Continue reading Ad Firm Vibe Looks to Serve as the ‘Google Ads of Streaming’

Google’s multimodal Gemini large language model will offer chat capabilities that help advertisers build and scale Search campaigns within the Google Ads platform using natural language prompts. “We’ve been actively testing Gemini to further enhance our ads solutions, and, we’re pleased to share that Gemini is now powering the conversational experience,” Google said, explaining the functionality is now available in beta to English language advertisers in the U.S., UK and will be rolling out globally to all English language advertisers over the next few weeks, with additional languages offered in the months ahead. Continue reading Conversational Chatbot Optimizes Google Ads, Search Results

Google is launching an Ads Transparency Center. The “searchable hub” rolls out to global users in the coming weeks and lets anyone look up who’s behind an ad, which ads an advertiser ran and where across Google Search, YouTube and the Google Display Network. Additional details are provided for political ads, including the amount spent, number of impressions and any location targeting criteria. In 2020 Google began requiring that advertisers verify their identities, and a year later began letting users access some ad info, but its transparency move follows Facebook’s similar offering, which launched in 2019. Continue reading Google Ads Transparency Center Offers Searchable Ad Data

Google is adding a host of new advertising features. The Alphabet-owned company has introduced an asset library that makes it easier to organize and access assets across multiple teams and campaigns, as well as a new video creation tool designed to make it simple for anyone to be able to create YouTube-worthy ads. In addition, the company announced that the Google Ads Creative Studio tool for churning out original ads at scale is out of beta and generally available to all advertisers. The company also debuted a new text-to-voice-over feature. Continue reading Google Launches New Advertising Tools and Creative Studio

YouTube’s Brandcast presentation at the TV upfronts focused on the platform’s massive consumer reach, popular influencers and technology solutions. In a Tuesday evening presentation at New York’s Imperial Theatre, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki messaged that now “YouTube is the mainstream,” a contention supported by Nielsen findings that in October the video streamer reached about 230 million U.S. viewers 18 and older. Leveraging sisterly synergy, the company unveiled a new ad frequency cap that lets marketers use Google Ads to set limits on how often ads will stream to specific IP addresses, which has ramifications for services beyond YouTube. Continue reading Upfronts: YouTube Promotes Talent, Google Advertising Tech

Google-owned YouTube is introducing 15-second audio ads on its video-sharing platform, the first such format aimed at those who listen to music or podcasts in the background. It is also enabling advertisers to make buys across “dynamic music lineups” such as Top 100 charts and collections of channels in genres like Latin or Country in addition to buys targeting moods or interests such as fitness or relaxation. But ads running on creators’ videos won’t generate a profit for them if they’re not big enough to be in YouTube’s Partner Program. Continue reading YouTube Intros Audio Ads, Targeting Based on Music Genres

After the cancellation of the Game Developers Conference, Google went online to release information about its cloud infrastructure, Google Play and Stadia cloud gaming services. Stadia head of product John Justice reported that Google Ads campaigns have thus far resulted in 27 billion game installs, that mobile gaming is “on track” to reach $100 billion in 2021, and that Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and North Africa will drive mobile game growth going forward. There are 2 billion daily active users on Android. Continue reading Google Unveils Details on Google Play, Stadia, Google Cloud

While streaming your favorite show on Netflix via an Internet-connected smart TV, your data is being collected, according to a new study from Princeton University, which found that smart TVs are equipped with data-collecting trackers. Researchers built a bot that installed thousands of channels on both Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices and mimicked human behaviors like watching videos and browsing. When the bot ran into an ad, it tracked what data was collected. Researchers claim there’s little consumer awareness of this activity.

Continue reading Princeton Study Shows Smart TVs Are Collecting Your Data

According to NetMarketShare, Google controls 81+ percent of the mobile search market, which is why many businesses believe buying ads on the platform is necessary to stay in business. Appearing on top of search results is critical for many companies, and buying ads is the best way to achieve that. The urgency heats up when it comes to branded keywords, whereby companies must bid on their own names or see their rivals capture the space. If Lyft, for example, doesn’t buy the ad, Uber likely will, and grab the top spot. Continue reading Companies Bid On Their Own Brands For Google Search Ads

YouTube just added 360-degree functionality to its TrueView ads, and Budweiser tried out the new feature for its “Whatever USA” campaign. The 360-degree feature enables users to watch a video from any chosen angle by dragging the mouse along directional arrows to change the view. YouTube first debuted the 360-degree videos in March; now advertisers can bring that experience to TrueView ads, with the intent of fully engaging mobile consumers. Over half of YouTube’s views are now accessed from mobile devices. Continue reading YouTube’s 360-Degree Video Now Available for TrueView Ads