“We’re not trying to be TwitchTok”: Twitch adds new short‑form video feature
Twitch launches a short‑form video format for creators, simultaneously opening new ad inventory. Brands can now place bite‑sized ads alongside short videos, reaching the platform’s highly engaged, younger audience.
Twitch's launch of short-form video features and new ad placements, allowing brands to reach engaged young audiences, highlights the growing importance of short-form video content and adjacent ad formats. As we scale live commerce and creator partnerships via Meta/YouTube, we should explore incorporating short-form video strategies and optimizing ad placements within such content to tap into similar highly engaged audiences.
→ Read on digiday.com
The future of CTV lies in standardization
Industry leaders argue that unifying CTV ad formats, measurement standards, and transaction protocols will simplify cross‑platform buying and enable clearer performance comparison. Standardization is positioned as a catalyst for scaling CTV spend.
Industry consensus that standardization of ad formats, measurement, and transaction protocols is crucial for scaling CTV expenditure highlights the broader importance of unified frameworks in attracting advertising spend. As we pursue brand budgets and enhance our video offerings, we must advocate for and implement standardized metrics and processes within our own platform and external partnerships to simplify buying and enable clear performance comparisons.
→ Read on digiday.com
Lyft Is Testing a Prominent New Ad Placement
Lyft is piloting a new ad unit that gives brands near‑full ownership of the home‑screen users see before booking a ride. The placement sits at the top of the app, reaching users at the decisive moment of ride intent. Take: We can leverage this premium mobile‑first inventory to boost upper‑funnel exposure, but we must secure inventory caps and build robust measurement to prove incremental impact.
Lyft's testing of prominent, full-screen home screen ad units, reaching users at a critical moment of intent, demonstrates the value of premium, mobile-first placements for upper-funnel exposure. We should explore analogous high-impact, contextually relevant ad placements within our Rakuten Ichiba app, ensuring we can secure inventory and establish robust measurement to prove incremental effectiveness for our merchants.
→ Read on Adweek
Featured Offer (Buy Box) — Amazon’s algorithm for the “Add to Cart” button
Amazon’s Featured Offer, commonly known as the Buy Box, decides which seller’s “Add to Cart” button appears for a product by scoring price, delivery speed, and service quality. Winning the Buy Box is critical for sales, pushing sellers to optimise pricing and fulfillment.
Amazon's "Buy Box" algorithm, which heavily influences sales by evaluating price, delivery speed, and service quality to determine which seller's offer is featured, highlights the critical interplay between ad product visibility and marketplace operational excellence. We should continuously emphasize to our merchants the importance of optimizing these core fulfillment aspects to maximize their chances of being featured and benefiting from our ad products like RPP and CA.
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Celeb‑bait Scam Ads
Scam ads that use deep‑fake celebrity endorsements are on the rise, and platforms have introduced facial‑matching technology to detect and block such fabricated content. Advertisers must heed the stricter review standards when employing AI‑generated celebrity material.
The rise of AI-generated celebrity deepfake ads and platforms' counter-measures using facial recognition technology highlight the critical need for strict content verification. As we scale live commerce with creator partnerships and utilize AI for creative generation (TDA), we must implement robust internal checks and educate merchants on platform guidelines to prevent fraudulent content and protect brand integrity.
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Public Figure Impersonation Ads
Ads that falsely claim endorsement by public figures are being aggressively policed, with Google now suspending them without warning. This creates a sudden‑stop risk for campaigns that misuse personalities.
Google's policy of immediate account suspension for ads impersonating public figures or celebrities, without prior warning, underscores the severe consequences of policy violations in digital advertising. We must implement stringent content review processes for all ad creatives, especially those from TDA, and clearly communicate these strict guidelines to our merchants to prevent sudden account suspensions and maintain platform trust.
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Egregious Violation – Immediate Account Suspension
Google defines “egregious” policy breaches that trigger instant account shutdown with no prior strikes, and it is automating detection of such violations. A single serious breach can strip an advertiser of all delivery rights.
Google's strengthened automated violation detection and immediate account suspension policy for severe policy violations highlights the harsh reality that advertisers can lose ad rights with a single infraction. We must implement clear, proactive policy compliance education and robust monitoring systems within our platform and for merchants operating through external media partnerships like TDA-EXP or RPP Evolution, to minimize this risk.
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Likeness Detection Scans for AI‑Altered Videos
New face‑matching tools now automatically scan uploaded videos for AI‑altered likenesses, allowing the depicted individual to request removal. This raises legal exposure for advertisers using AI‑generated person footage.
The introduction of facial recognition technology by platforms to scan AI-modified videos and allow individuals to request removal underscores the emerging legal risks associated with AI-generated video in advertising. As we scale live commerce and video initiatives, we must establish strict guidelines and verification processes to ensure any AI-generated video content complies with consent and intellectual property laws, protecting both our platform and our creator partners.
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Nothing changed but the price: B2B Google clicks cost 21% more
An analysis of 14 B2B advertisers shows non‑brand CPCs rose 36% after budget/account moves, resulting in an overall 21% increase in click cost. The piece highlights the volatility and limited transparency of Google’s B2B pricing.
The reported significant increase in Google's B2B CPCs, coupled with a lack of transparency and predictability, highlights a critical challenge for advertisers reliant on external platforms. As RPP-Ex redesign removes CPC caps and connects to external media like Google, we must proactively manage these partner negotiations and develop robust internal bidding strategies to ensure our merchants' budgets are optimized efficiently and transparently within our new external delivery framework.
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Silence in the bidstream sends 62% of CTV buyers elsewhere, CIMM finds
A CIMM survey of 50 CTV buyers reveals only 8% say DSPs always receive the required signals; missing bidstream data drives 62% of buyers to alternative channels. The industry is calling for a shared trading baseline.
CIMM's finding that a lack of crucial data signals in bidding streams diverts a significant portion of CTV buyer budgets to other channels underscores the vital importance of consistent and rich signal flow in programmatic advertising. For our external ad products like RPP-Ex and TDA-EXP, we must work closely with our external media partners to ensure robust signal sharing, maintaining competitive advantage and maximizing budget consumption for our merchants.
→ Read on PPC Land
Supply cost
Supply cost refers to the price a DSP pays for an impression before adding technology, data, or agency fees. Amazon uses this figure as the baseline for calculating agency mark‑ups.
Supply cost, defined as the price paid for an impression before additional fees, is a fundamental metric for understanding the true cost of media, as demonstrated by Amazon's use of it for agency markups. In our internal L3 negotiations and the RPP-Ex redesign, we must ensure clear visibility into supply costs to accurately assess profitability, manage partner allocations, and communicate transparent pricing structures to merchants.
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Principal media
Principal media describes inventory that an agency purchases on its own account and then resells to clients at an undisclosed price, shifting the agency’s role from adviser to reseller.
The practice of "principal media," where agencies buy inventory on their own account and resell it at undisclosed prices, highlights a potential lack of transparency in the agency model. As we engage in external media collaborations and internal negotiations with the Market Advertising Division, we must advocate for clear, ethical pricing structures to ensure our partnerships prioritize merchant value over opaque reselling practices.
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Manager account
A manager account is an umbrella ad account that lets agencies control many client accounts from a single login, handling billing, access, and reporting in one place. It supports scaling of ad operations while reducing management overhead.
Manager accounts, which allow centralized billing, access, and reporting for multiple client accounts, offer significant benefits for scaling ad operations and reducing management costs. We should consider implementing a similar hierarchical account structure for our larger merchants or agencies, especially as we enhance our cross-product reporting, to streamline their management of RPP, TDA-EXP, and other offerings, ultimately improving their efficiency and satisfaction.
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Markup
Markup is the amount an agency, trading desk, or reseller adds on top of media costs, often undisclosed, which fuels media‑cost disputes. Lack of transparency can erode trust between partners.
The lack of disclosure surrounding agency markups on media spend, leading to trust issues in media transactions, is a critical concern for any platform engaging in external partnerships. In our external media collaborations and internal L3 negotiations, we must insist on full transparency regarding markups to build and maintain trust with our partners and ensure our merchants receive fair value for their ad investments.
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Agency fee
Agency fee describes what advertisers pay agencies for planning, buying, and managing media, expressed as a commission, labor‑based fee, or DSP‑percentage. Understanding these models influences media‑cost calculations.
The various forms of agency fees, from commissions to percentage-based charges, underscore the importance of accurately understanding cost structures in external media partnerships. When strategizing our external media collaborations and negotiating with agencies for products like RPP-EXP and TDA-EXP, we must meticulously analyze fee models to ensure optimal budget allocation and clear ROI for our merchants.
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Forward‑deployed engineer
A forward‑deployed engineer is a software engineer embedded within a customer organization to integrate a vendor’s product into the client’s systems, a practice pioneered at Palantir. It accelerates adoption and customization.
The role of forward-deployed engineers, who embed with client organizations to accelerate system integration and customization, offers a valuable model for enhancing our own external media partnerships. To accelerate the ramp-up of new integrations for TDA-EXP (like Criteo and SmartNews) and the RPP Evolution project, we should explore leveraging or adopting similar dedicated technical support structures with our key partners.
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Line item
A line item is the smallest unit in an ad server or DSP that holds a buy’s dates, price, targeting, and creatives, sitting beneath its parent order or insertion order. It enables granular campaign control.
Line items, as the smallest unit holding campaign details within ad servers and DSPs, enable granular management of purchase schedules, pricing, targeting, and creatives. As we refine our ad product offerings and improve auto-optimized delivery for RPP Evolution and TDA-EXP, we must ensure our internal systems support this level of detailed configuration to maximize campaign performance and provide precise control to our merchants.
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Insertion order
An insertion order (IO) is the signed agreement in which a buyer commits to purchase ad space at set prices, dates, and volumes; DSPs also use it as a budget level. It serves as the contractual backbone of media buys.
Insertion Orders (IOs), formalizing the price, duration, and volume of ad inventory and serving as budget caps within DSPs, are the legal backbone of media transactions. In our external media collaborations and the RPP Evolution redesign, which locks external budget at a fixed share, we must ensure our IO processes are robust and clearly define terms to protect our interests and provide a stable operational framework for our partners.
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Role‑Based Access Control (RBAC) Overview and Application to Ad Platforms
RBAC assigns permissions based on job roles, eliminating the need for individual user configurations. Applying it to DSPs and ad account structures can centralize agency and client access, improving security and auditability.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), which centralizes access and enhances security by assigning permissions based on job roles, is a critical consideration for our ad platform infrastructure. Implementing RBAC within our systems for managing RPP, TDA-EXP, and other products would streamline access for our internal teams and external merchant partners, improving security, auditability, and operational efficiency across our diverse offerings.
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Service Account: Automated Access to Ad Platform APIs
A service account is a non‑human identity that calls APIs without a person signing in. It enables automated campaign creation, reporting, and bulk operations, reducing operational costs.
Service accounts, enabling automated API access for campaign creation, reporting, and bulk operations without human sign-in, are essential for reducing operational costs and increasing efficiency. We should leverage service accounts to automate various processes within our ad platform, streamlining campaign management for RPP-EXP and TDA-EXP, and accelerating the development of our cross-product reporting initiatives.
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Google Marketing Platform: Latest on the Integrated Buying, Serving, and Measurement Suite
Google Marketing Platform unifies DV360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Analytics 360 into an enterprise‑grade ad suite. Advertisers can conduct media buying, ad delivery, and performance measurement through a single UI.
Google Marketing Platform's integration of buying, delivery, and measurement tools into a single enterprise-grade suite sets a high bar for user experience and efficiency. This integrated approach aligns with our strategic priority of providing merchants with a unified performance view, reinforcing the need to accelerate the development of our own consolidated attribution dashboard across RPP, TDA, and other ad products to match industry benchmarks.
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Apple’s German ATT Deal Lets Apps Re‑Ask Users Who Already Said No
A new German settlement allows apps to present a second consent prompt for IDFA after a user has opted out. The agreement also bans charging for IDFA for seven years and imposes a 15‑business‑day review deadline.
The German ATT settlement, allowing apps to re-prompt for IDFA consent even after initial opt-out, suggests a nuanced evolution in privacy regulations that could slightly alleviate signal loss in specific markets. While this offers a potential avenue to improve data collection for our external ad products like TDA-EXP, we must continue to prioritize privacy-centric solutions and adaptable measurement strategies, recognizing that the core challenges of user privacy remain paramount.
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