Verify Or Bust

Verizon’s five-month YouTube boycott is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean the telco is relaxing its push for better measurement standards. The telco brought on Integral Ad Science and is testing its ability to monitor YouTube, Chief Media Officer John Nitti told Ad Age. Verizon, the sixth-largest US ad spender, is demanding third-party verification across all media partners, P&G-style. It’s newest initiative requires publishers to bill based on third-party measurement and accept tags from IAS and other providers. "This is an overall industry issue that Verizon is trying to address across the board, not just with Google and YouTube, but with all of our partners," Nitti said. "The need to have consistency and measurement and for us to deploy the Verizon standard is pinnacle to get to the transparency that every marketer deserves." More at Ad Age.

Just Business

LinkedIn lost a court case on Monday that could set an important precedent for social media data mining. The case was brought by LinkedIn, Microsoft’s career-oriented social platform, against hiQ Labs, a tech startup that scrapes public user data to predict when individuals are looking to leave their jobs (and are thus entering the lucrative headhunting-commission funnel). HiQ says it limits tracking to only data visible without a LinkedIn account, about 175,000 of more than 500 million LinkedIn profiles, reports The Wall Street Journal.  And the judge took hiQ’s side on the idea that if LinkedIn blocks others from ingesting public data while absorbing private and public across its own platform, it could “(leverage) its power in the professional networking market for an anticompetitive purpose.” More.

Serve Me A Tune

Facebook Messenger has integrated Spotify with its intelligent assistant, M, which can now make music recommendations based on user conversations. A user can type into Messenger “find me some music,” and M will serve a link to Spotify that says “find music.” Messenger already has similar integrations with Food Network to dish up recipe suggestions and Delivery.com for delivery offers. Spotify has been increasing its Messenger integrations this year, launching the ability for users to share songs and create and share playlists through the platform. More at VentureBeat.

Field Leveling

As Amazon grows, it inadvertently exerts its influence over other companies and some direct competitors, and others not so much. Seeking Alpha noted that Amazon was cited in over 100 earnings calls last quarter, from CVS to McDonald’s. Digiday’s Ilyse Liffreing outlines how the ecommerce giant has changed the way other companies do business. For instance, Amazon’s same-day delivery service puts enormous pressure on US retailers and fashion designers to match the offering, particularly in major cities. McDonald’s rolled out delivery service with UberEats in response to Amazon infringing on quick-serve food, but has to deal with new complications around fulfillment (e.g., if UberEats orders get preference to meet delivery times, then you create in-store waits)