Last Week In Adops #22 | week ending: November 19, 2017



a weekly email mocking the bullshit in ad tech. sent out every week so you have something to read with that first beer/coffee (I don't judge)

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WSJ And The Late Breaking News





The reason this newsletter is so late is in one part because I’m a natural procrastinator but also because of some big and late hitting news requiring me to totally scrap what I had written. (sidenote: WSJ has just been killing it with the breaking news and exclusives in our industry of late. Big kudos to them for all of the work they do and their fantastic coverage and newsletters)



Let's run down the list. First Mashable sold for $50MM to Ziff Davis (WSJ). Some context, Mashable has raised $46MM in VC funding and their last valuation was $250MM. I don’t know of a way to spin this positively. They needed money and couldn’t raise it so they were forced to a firesale.



Next, Buzzfeed joins Vice as a recent media darling with IPO aspirations who have announced they are going to miss revenue projections this year (WSJ). Buzzfeed is going to miss by 15 - 20% so it’s not a little miss. The low end of that is a $50MM miss. Vice took a large sum of private equity money recently in a deal I called out as suspicious due to the lack of any other follow-on investors.



The news keeps coming as Univision is looking to sell a portion of Fusion Media Group for $200MM (recode). Based on the above news my guess is that number is just the high mark for negotiations I’d bet that $200MM is closer to the total valuation for the group than what a minority investment gets. Still, no one sells a portion of their cash cow, one can only assume the costs associated with running the group are more than Univision is currently comfortable with. Here's hoping they find a minority investor because the alternative is rarely "everyone gets a raise".



Meredith also submitted a takeover bid for Time Inc valuing the company at almost $2B (WSJ). This looks like a classic “efficiencies” play where Time Inc fits with the rest of the Meredith portfolio and gives them some new blood, especially since Time has seen a little bit of traction on digital recently.



The cherry on this shit sandwich is news that Oath is laying off over 500 people (digiday) because… well, my guess is they think it’d be buried under all the news above.



All of this news above really makes me think of a classic Paul Graham article about startups (link). For those that don’t know Paul Graham is an iconic figure in the Silicon Valley startup world. His seed fund YCombinator is among the most highly regarded with alumni including Reddit, Dropbox, Stripe, Twitch, Airbnb, Docker… the list really goes on. But the article in question is titled “Default Alive or Default Dead?”.



When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know is almost always the same. Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it's been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die?

If the above news hasn’t made it clear allow me to if you are a media company not named Snapchat or Axios and you’re not Default Alive you’re dead. You may not realize it yet but sure as the day is long, you’re dead. Take the cash in the bank, divide it by your monthly burn rate, divide it in two. That’s how many months you have to get to alive. You can’t assume funding will be there. Shit you can’t even assume an IPO will be there.



Want to know why I think adtech is important? This is it. Our ability and efficiency can decide if your company is dead or alive.

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Interesting Development





Google Increasing In Referral Traffic







Keep an eye on this one. It could just as well be titled "Facebook referrals fall off a cliff". It could also be selection bias by whoever is in this Parse.ly customer base.

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Other Articles





🚨 🚨 Scoop: Bloomberg Expects Eight Figures For New Twitter Network 🚨 🚨 // AXIOS

This is pretty impressive. Impressive enough to be this week's less obvious BFD. Though part of me wonders if this was just an add on to existing TV buys. Lets everyone get their name in the trades without much risk. Lets Bloomberg make a splash. Maybe I’m just old and cynical. Regardless it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Back to what I said about Snapchat. One time stuff is infinitely easier than follow on buys. I personally don’t watch video on twitter nor do I know anyone who does but who knows? Maybe they can figure out a way to make this happen.

VPAID Is Out, And The IAB Tech Lab Says It Has Its Replacement // ADEXCHANGER

Listen no one is happier than me to rid us of VPAID but let’s not start celebrating yet. VAST 4 is only in beta in DFP and despite one support page saying IMA 3 supports VAST 4 the actual IMA 3 compatibility chart doesn’t even mention VAST 4. What I’m saying is if we’re not even to the stage where support pages mention VAST 4 then we’re many steps away from killing VPAID. Shit I know some video SSPs that switched from VPAID 1 to VPAID 2 this year. I’m guessing we’re probably a year away from this being a reality for most publishers.



That said I wrote VPAID a eulogy and Billy Crystal was kind enough to deliver it:





Snap Has Acquired Metamarkets For Less Than $100m To Step Up Its Ad Tech Play // TECHCRUNCH

“Shit so we’re going to a programmatic model”

“Shit, really? What does that mean?”

“Fuck if I know. What kind of reporting do we need?”

“I make sunglasses how the hell would I know?”

“Can we do it with what we have now?”

“No chance”

“What do we need to do?”

“No clue”

“Well who does? Let’s just buy someone cheap and use their shit”



::lights dim, curtain down::



The End

How Adtech Players Are Approaching Consent In GDPR And Whether They Will Be Compliant In Time // THE DRUM

(I feel like I'm being super preachy this week. I'd apologize but I'm genetically incapable.)



Hey here’s a thought. GDPR might be the best thing to happen to publishers. This is our chance to take control of our ecosystem. Truth be told I haven’t paid much attention to GDPR until recently so I’m sure I’m not the first person (I might be the last) to have this thought. That said I don’t often hear GDPR talked about with any optimism so I’d like to bring a different tone.



I’ve never been more proud of publishers as I’ve been with the group’s diligence and pride in holding the line on ads.txt. Time and time again I’ve seen publishers push back and refuse to enter anyone as a RESELLER or even question the exchanges they work with on why they need multiple lines. There is a pride in product that bridges publishers and it’s nice to see everyone in lockstep on it. I think GDPR might be able to take it an extra step.



It’s scary because we as publishers are the most on the hook (and the fines are just insane) but we also have the control. Consent cannot come from third parties or advertisers. They NEED us to get that for them. Think of that for a moment. They may hold the purse strings but we hold the power in our domains. If publishers hold the line in data the way they’re holding the line in ads.txt we have the chance to change the data conversation. Instead of stealing our user data (leakage) now these advertisers and vendors need to come to us hat in hand and ask our help getting user consent. We have the power in this negotiation. Let’s use it.

Blaming Programmatic: Snapchat Goes To An Old Publisher Script // ADEXCHANGER

Yeah it could be programmatic, sure. But I have to ask. Why would anyone move 60% of their direct IO business to programmatic by choice? Obviously it wasn’t a choice. This is what happens when you’re the hot new thing in advertising. You can get a big chunk of everyone's experiment budget. The problem (and I believe I mentioned this in Newsletter #07 in May, in Podcast #4 in April, and oh that’s right 2 years ago in this post… check the tags at the bottom) is getting them to keep spending. And when they don’t you need to get that revenue somewhere. Welcome to the layer cake Snapchat.

The Purchase Data Playbook For Marketers // ADEXCHANGER

An alternate title for this could be “Holy Shit If People Knew What We Have Data On They’d Storm The Gates… For Marketers”

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Quick Hits



It’s Time Marketers Realize That Supply Is Not Unlimited // ADEXCHANGER



Lets Settle This Once And For All // TWITTER



AdColony Cuts 125 Jobs, Shuts Down AdMarvel Ad Server And Mediation Business // ADEXCHANGER



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Shameless Self Promotion

Finally decided on a reasonable timeline for season two of the podcast. It'll be back in January. Between football and a new job and... oh you don't care the reasons just know that it's going to be amazing and here's the list of people I'm trying to interview. If you know any of them and can hook me up with an intro (or you are any of them) throw me an email at happensinadops@gmail.com.







Thanks for reading and have a great week! Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.





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