The way that Facebook and Google implement tracking code from third-party measurement companies is at the center of tensions between ad buyers and the giants of the digital ad business, according to a
Wall Street Journal report. "Ad buyers want more transparency into how third-party data is collected on Facebook and Google’s YouTube, and ideally more oversight over the process since
it helps them determine where and how to spend their video marketing money. Meanwhile, Facebook and Google—which reeled in 68% of spending on U.S. online advertising in the second quarter,
according to Pivotal Research—argue that they provide and allow for plenty of measurement, just with some restrictions to protect users’ privacy and to keep pages loading quickly." Ad
buyers send publishers tags, "or lines of code that enable them to track the performance of campaigns, like how many times an ad is delivered and whether people click on it. In recent years, concerns
have risen about whether digital ads can actually be seen on various screens, so ad buyers have also taken to bundling in additional code to track viewability.However, Facebook and YouTube have never
allowed agencies to use their own tags or to collect their own viewability data on web video campaigns," the
Journal reported.
Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »
