Google Accused of Breaching Video Ad Deal Standards; NEAR & Alibaba Cloud Partner to Accelerate Web3 Adoption

by Hannah Dillon on 28th Jun 2023 in News

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: new research suggests Google breached its own standards for placing video advertisements on third-party websites; the NEAR Foundation collaborates with Alibaba Cloud to enhance Web3 adoption in Asia and the Middle East; and British households are expected to spend more on SVOD services than traditional TV packages by 2025.

Google accused of violating its own standards for ad deals

Google may have violated its own guidelines when serving video ads on other websites. That’s according to new research from performance optimisation platform, Adalytics, which has accused Google of placing ads in small, muted, automatically-played videos on the periphery of web pages that violate the company’s standards for monetisation. The findings raise questions about how transparently the tech giant operates its online ad business. Google responded to Adalytics’ report, stating it “makes many claims that are inaccurate and doesn’t reflect how we keep advertisers safe.”

NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud team up for Web3 adoption

The NEAR Foundation has partnered with Alibaba Cloud to accelerate the adoption of Web3 technology in Asia and the Middle East. The collaboration will give the Switzerland-based non-profit access to Alibaba Cloud’s developer ecosystem across both regions to attract more developers to the NEAR Protocol, a decentralised app platform and Ethereum competitor focused on developer- and user-friendliness. Following the announcement of the partnership, NEAR’s value soared by 12%.

Britons forecast to spend more on SVOD than linear TV

A report from PwC predicts that Britons will spend more on video streaming services than traditional TV packages by 2025. The research anticipates British consumers will spend £4.2bn on subscription video on-demand services compared to £4.1bn on TV subscriptions, highlighting the surge in popularity of SVOD in the UK in recent years – as recently as 2018, spend on SVOD services in the UK was under £1bn. The findings give credence to suggestions that the UK’s video streaming market is recovering following a challenging year.