Advertising news today: Ads on Facebook’s lobbying site, OTT ad fraud

Facebook
cofounder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify
before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing
in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018
in Washington, DC.
Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images

Big advertisers may have supported Facebook as it embarked on an
aggressive lobbying campaign to combat its critics — and they
probably don’t even know it.

According to a bombshell
New York Times report published Wednesday, Facebook
hired the conservative lobbying firm Definers Public Affairs in
the midst of its PR crisis in October 2017, which, among other
tactics, ran a news site called NTK Network as part of its
operations — described as an “in-house fake news shop” by
sources to
NBC News.

Facebook said it ended its relationship with the firm Wednesday.
But a day after the report, advertisers like Pringles, Cheez-It,
Oscar Mayer, and Hertz, to name a few, continue to run ads
on NTK
Network, Business Insider has found. Kellogg’s is
the parent company of Pringles and Cheez-It while Kraft owns
Oscar Mayer.

To read more about how brands like Kraft and Kellogg’s have found
themselves on the wrong side of brand safety again, click here.

In related news: 

Sheryl Sandberg says she also didn’t know about a
Facebook smear campaign, as Mark Zuckerberg throws the firm’s
comms team under a bus. In a Facebook post,
Sandberg said she had no idea Facebook hired a public-relations
firm to smear the company’s critics, including the billionaire
George Soros, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook’s
communications team was to blame.

Several top marketers were openly critical of the tech
giant, a day after the investigation, The New York Times
reports. The revelations may be “the straw that
breaks the camel’s back,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth
officer for the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s biggest ad
companies.

In other news:

Scammers have accelerated their attacks on connected-TV
and OTT devices, marking a whole new front for advertisers and
publishers to combat ad fraud. Verification
company DoubleVerify recently uncovered a new fraud scheme, in
which a botnet specifically targeted connected-TV devices.

Quartz’s new app is banking on big names like Richard
Branson to help create a ‘constructive and civil’ alternative to
Facebook and Twitter. After being acquired by
Uzabase for between $75 million to $110 million in July, Quartz
has relaunched the Newspicks app as a standalone app.

‘Dealers who do not sell mobility will soon be history’:
AT&T’s satellite strategy is shifting after a dismal quarter
for pay TV. AT&T has made a number of
changes to DirecTV dealer contracts in recent months that
indicate its satellite business could be becoming less of a
priority.