Claudia Perlich, chief scientist for audience targeting firm Dstillery, says entities whose sole purpose it is to pursue fraud are good at faking almost any metric that marketers use to allocate money. Perlich tells eMarketer Senior Analyst Lauren Fisher that she's wary of "jumping on viewability as a solution to bot traffic, because that is and will be gamed just as much as any other metric."

DigitasLBi has named Emily Macdonald as head of programmatic, a newly created role. "Macdonald will help to further develop DigitasLBi’s programmatic capabilities across the whole agency, helping its clients to navigate the ad tech landscape in order to gain competitive advantage. Having spent 18 years working in digital media and ad tech, Macdonald has held positions at the likes of WPP, News UK and Microsoft. Most recently, she spent two years working as an independent consultant, advising Ebiquity and Global Radio on digital technology and data investments," The Drum reported.

Business Insider reports on the ping pong volley that's occuring between Facebook and Adblock Plus since the social media giant took an Aug. 9 stand against ad blockers by preventing ad blocking software from working on its desktop site. But, "behind the scenes, Facebook has been locked in a back-and-forth battle with the ad blocking community ever since. Adblock Plus published a blog post on Thursday showing how the 'ping pong' match has been playing out so far.... Just two days after Facebook's announcement, AdBlock Plus noted that a new filter was added to the popular list most ad blocking extensions use, …

Pinterest is getting into video advertising, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. "The image-discovery service said it would begin displaying promoted videos, allowing marketers to pitch their wares in video spots that can run as long as five minutes. ...Pinterest will present the ads differently than on Facebook and Twitter where the ads automatically start playing without sound as users encounter them within their news feeds. On Pinterest, the video ads that appear as previews in a user’s feed would play as quickly or slowly as the page is scrolled, stopping when the scrolling stops."

U.S. digital ad professionals within the publishing industry are most concerned about viewability, attribution, and measurement this year, according to an eMarketer article. More than two-thirds said they were extremely worried or very worried about these areas, according to April research by Mixpo.

TechCrunch reports that "Adblock Plus launched a workaround to Facebook’s ad block bypass that ham-handedly removes posts from friends and Pages, not just ads." But Facebook is battling back. TechCrunch reported a source close to Facebook says the company will push an update to its site’s code that will nullify the workaround. "Apparently it took two days for Adblock Plus to come up with the workaround, and only a fraction of that time for Facebook to disable it," the TechCrunch report said.

Adblock Plus has come out swinging after Facebook's announcement that it will circumvent ad-blocking technology that's preventing consumers on its desktop site from seeing ads.  "In a blog post on its website, Adblock Plus outlined instructions for its users to tweak their ad-blocking software to once again begin blocking Facebook ads, and included a screenshot it said proves its software can still provide an ad-free Facebook," according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The post stated: "Two days ago we broke it to you that Facebook had taken ‘the dark path,’ and decided to start forcing ad-blocking users …

The programmatic marketplace continues to grow, a new study on global automated trade market suggests. PerformanceIN reports: "Following a strong start to 2016, which saw a 217% boost in global media auction volume year on year, the numbers just keep growing. According to the research, the trading volumes have increased by 151% year on year in Q2, both globally and across Europe." Accordant Media's Programmatic Market Pulse story found the trend has brought more transparency to the space, further increasing viewability and signaling a decline in non-human traffic. Within Europe, the U.K. accounted for 17% of the programmatic ecosystem in EMEA …

Programmatic spend on video is set to rise over the next year, with over 80% of respondents to a survey conducted by The Drum in association with The Trade Desk expecting to increase budget allocated to it. The growth in programmatic advertising spend is likely to migrate from display advertising, followed by linear TV and print, according to the new report.  However, the report's findings indicate that "despite the huge potential for growth, programmatic technology has yet to fulfil its potential as a mainstream way of purchasing video inventory with clients still too cautious about cost, viewability and wastage, according …

An eMarketer article reports that according to July 2016 research, more than a quarter of U.S. internet users claim they've used an ad blocker on their desktop or laptop. In June, the Interactive Advertising Bureau surveyed 1,292 U.S. internet users ages 18 and older about their experience with ad blockers. The data  showed that the majority (37%) of respondents said they don't use an ad blocker and don't plan to in the next sixth months. But another 26% said they do have an ad blocker on their desktop and laptop.