CLEANING UP THE DEFINITION OF IMPRESSION DELIVERY:  Apologies for going deep AdTech on a Friday morning, but there’s a small but important change happening in digital media measurement.  First let me set up the problem.  Over the past few years inconsistencies have started to crop up over the definition of serving a digital impression.  Should publishers get delivery credit for fetching the ad, serving the ad, or when the ad renders?  Right now every agency, tracking vendor and publisher has their own answer to that question, which creates a messy situation when trying to reconcile impression totals and viewability percentages on campaigns.  To address this issue the MRC has proposed a change to the definition of impression delivery, by taking the word “served” out and replacing it with the term “count-on-begin-to-render” (which is a geeky way of saying when the ad begins to appear on the user’s device).  If this is confusing MediaPost has a solid breakdown in the attached link.  I know this may seem like techie minutia, but standardizing the way impression delivery is counted is way overdue for the entire digital media industry.

TECH HARDWARE TAKES ON RETAIL SOFTGOODS:  Of all the predictions eMarketer makes about purchase trends during the upcoming holiday season in the attached link, the most interesting observation is also the least expected.  Could the launch of the iPhone X actually drag down “soft goods” sales in Q4?  Soft goods are things like clothing, bedding, home décor, etc., compared to hard goods which are TVs, refrigerators, etc..  Soft good are generally considered a “want” and not a “need”.  For instance, you may want that new cashmere sweater but you absolutely need a new fridge if your current one breaks down.  Since Want items are discretionary if something else comes along which you want more, like say the new iPhone X, you’ll reprioritize your purchase decision.  And since the X is very expensive ($999), eMarketer estimates that $30B of discretionary spending could be absorbed by Apple this holiday season.  Who ever thought the humble sweater maker would find themselves in competition with Apple?

IT’S TIME TO GET THAT CYBER SECURITY DEGREE:  Yesterday Facebook announced another stellar quarter of user growth and revenue performance during its Q3 earnings call.  But the most interesting comments CEO Mark Zuckerberg made were around the challenges of site security and FB’s planned expansion in cybersecurity, as explained in the attached AdExchanger link.  According to Zuck FB plans to have 20,000 full time cybersecurity-related employees hired by the end of 2018.  For context right now they have roughly 23,000 employees total – so 14 months from now almost half of FB’s employee jobs will be based on protecting the platform?!?  Granted FB has a wide array of security challenges, which include everything from guarding users’ data, to blocking Russian hackers from buying ads to hijack our elections, to terrorist groups uploading nefarious content.  Just the idea of that stat is a sign of the times in an increasingly dangerous online world.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!