Martech survey, Australia passes media code: Friday’s daily brief

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Good morning, Marketers, can we get to know each other a little better? 

I’ll go first. My name is Meg, and I’m new here. As an editor at MarTech Today, I’m excited to advocate for you by telling stories that answer your questions, offer solutions to your toughest problems, and help you meet your goals.

Now it’s your turn. What drives you? What drives you crazy? What gnarly problems have you solved in innovative ways that you want to share with your colleagues? Please feel free to reach out to me directly at mryan@thirddoormedia.com. (And be sure to take our survey below!)

Meg Ryan,

Editor

What martech tools are you using in 2021?

The pandemic has changed the way we work in many ways. It’s changed the way we collaborate, it’s shifted budgets — so we’d like to know: How has it changed the martech tools you or your team are using? Have you tried new solutions because of an extended trial period or a freemium offering? Will they end up as trusted parts of your stack? Please take our quick Marketing Technology survey.

Take our MarTech survey   

Australia media code passes with input from Facebook  

We learned from CNET that Australia passed its news-bargaining law on Wednesday after rewrites with input from Google and Facebook earlier this week. The News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code requires Google and Facebook to negotiate licensing agreements with publishers for news articles that appear in the tech giants’ search and feed.
The revised code was hammered out by Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, FB’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google head Sundar Pichai. 

After Facebook cut off Australian users from news last week and Google worked out multimillion-dollar deals with Australian media organizations including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp during the code’s six-month journey into law, the code was finalized with three key edits: 

• In order to be designated a digital platform that’s subject to the new law, a company has to be determined to have “made a significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry” 
• Companies designated as digital platforms will get a 30-day notice to allow time to negotiate with publishers
• The code now applies only to platforms that make news content available intentionally (effectively creating a loophole for platforms such as Facebook to claim the news content it posts is incidental)

Facebook promised to lift its blockade in Australia but reserves the right to re-block its content. In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s Nick Clegg admitted its original block went too far, but maintained the company’s “it’s not us, it’s you” stance, writing, “It is understandable that some media conglomerates see Facebook as a potential source of money to make up for their losses, but does that mean they should be able to demand a blank check?” 

Why we care. While Australia is not alone, the law’s scope and potential impact — remember, Australia is the home of Rupert Murdoch’s massive News Corp — has inspired similar legislation worldwide. Canada and the UK are considering ways to seek parity between tech giants and news and content creators. France has a copyright law on the books similar to Australia’s. With consumer privacy laws starting to be considered more closely at the state level, it may be only a matter of time before this trend hits the U.S. too.

Virginia passes its own consumer privacy protection law    

The Virginia legislature overwhelmingly passed its Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) this week, AdExchanger reported. The CDPA is similar to California’s Consumer Privacy and the EU’s GDPR (and now DSA 2.0) in that they’re intended to protect people from having their information captured unawares, the Virginia law draws some bright lines that CCPA, for example, doesn’t. Instead, it allows users to access, correct, delete, or move their information. Also unlike the California law, which applies to all businesses with gross annual revenue of at least $25 million, CDPA goes by location and units. It applies to… 

• any entity conducting business in Virginia that also
• handles personal data of at least 100,000 consumers or 
• generates more than half of gross revenue from either the sale or processing of data of 25,000 or more consumers – which the law defines as individuals who live in Virginia.

The law also can only be enforced by the commonwealth’s attorney general.

Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to sign the bill sometime in the next few weeks.

Why we care. If state-by-state privacy laws turn into a trend, expect new tools to help you parse data, customize permissions, and maintain compliance. In the longer term, look for GDPR-style legislation to be introduced at the federal level. 

Programmatic aggregators push past premium publishers 

The number of impressions on videos placed through media aggregators exceeded those that were placed directly through premium publishers, according to the Q4 2020 Video Benchmarks report by TV and video ad asset management platform Extreme Reach. Impressions from media aggregators rose from 22% of placements in Q1 to 52% in Q4. That’s a pretty sharp rise.

Other findings include:

• CTV remains in the lead, holding a 35% share of the impressions across all devices;

• The 30-second ad remains dominant, with 79% of all impressions in 2020 (and up from 67% in the full year 2019); and

• Average video completion rates (VCR) dropped 10% year over year (to 80% in 2020); premium vendor VCR remained strong at 91% in Q4. 

Why we care. With concern throughout the video space over ad fraud in programmatic media aggregators, it appears that 2020 was the year that digital marketers gained trust and saw results. The impressions speak for themselves. And if the content is solid, the old classic 30-second ad continues to hold viewers’ attention no matter what size screen they view it on.

Quote of the day

“A genius is someone who can tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty while generating as many ideas as possible.” ― Marty Neumeier, author, The Brand Gap and The 46 Rules of Genius: An Innovator’s Guide to Creativity

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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