Weekly Roundup - 11/17

∞ Adidas announced it is abandoning TV advertising, choosing instead to rely solely on digital channels to capture and engage with young consumers.
[CNBC]

∞ Despite popular consensus, there seems to no objective evidence that human attention spans are shortening. One oft-quoted statistic - that current average human attention span is down to 8 seconds - turns out to be unreliably sourced; following the citation trail throws up no research backing the claim. (1/2)
[BBC]

∞ Moreover, according to attention researchers "average attention span" is a pretty meaningless term. Attention is heavily task dependent, and the notion that there's a typical length of time for which people can pay attention is simply untrue. (2/2)
[BBC]

∞ A new study concluded that $12.48 billion (20% of global digital ad spend) was lost to ad fraud in 2016, nearly double that of a previous estimate made by ANA. Fraudulent traffic and clicks manufactured by bots are expected to cost advertisers $16.4 billion in 2017.
[Business Insider]

∞ A study covering 1500 brands, reaching out to 300,000 people and spanning over 33 countries found that 84% of consumers expect brands to produce content but consider 60% of all content created by brands to be "poor".
[AdNews]

∞ Google tested playing unsolicited ads on Google Home, its smart home speaker, (and also on Google Assistant on some Android smartphones) by integrating a promo for a new Disney movie with daily updates. (1/2)
[MarketWatch]

∞ Amid pushback from Google Home owners, Google made some conflicted statements that tried to assert the intrusion wasn't an "ad" - but ended up outlining what in plain English would be considered an ad. (2/2)
[The Verge]

∞ Around 79% of publishers offering native advertising solutions use paid distribution to get scale for branded content, with about half using paid social on all their campaigns.
[Digiday]

∞ Pandora is offering advertisers the ability to personalise ads based on listeners' gender, age and ZIP code, while also taking into account variables like the weather and time of day. Additionally, the sequential messaging feature allows story-telling or unfolding information over a period of time.
[Adweek]

∞ Players of Pokémon Go have collectively walked nearly 9 billion kilometres since the game's launch last year.
[The Economist]