YouTube Music this week launched YouTube Charts as playlists. Youtube Music is available in 29 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States. Users in those countries can explore the hottest songs and videos both globally and locally.

The playlists available, per country, are what is trending, the most viewed music videos and the most played songs this week. There are also global playlists.

Elliott Breece, Product Manager at YouTube Music, at Google wrote that “fans can also add their favorite charts to their library so they can stay up-to-date on what’s trending on the platform.”

Top Songs Chart

The Top Songs chart combines the number of views of a song on YouTube (including the official music video, official song used in user-generated content and lyric videos). The Top Songs chart is updated weekly on Sunday at 12 p.m. PST.

Each country will get both a global and country-specific version of this chart.

Top Videos Chart

The Top Music Videos chart goes beyond the song and gives fans the chance to dive into the most viewed official music videos on the platform.

Top Videos is updated weekly on Sunday at 12 p.m. PST. Each country will get both a global and country-specific version of this chart.

Top 20 Trending – Country chart

The new Trending chart is updated multiple times a day to provide a unique, real-time view of the hottest new music fans are enjoying in a specific country.

The Trending chart is YouTube’s first dedicated external signal of the most-viewed new music on the platform, providing an instant snapshot of what is driving music culture.

Google this week introduced Lime scooters, pedal bikes and e-bikes on Google Maps. Lime scooters and bikes on Google Maps, are available on Android and iOS in Auckland, Austin, Baltimore, Brisbane (AU), Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, San Antonio, San Jose, Scottsdale and Seattle with more cities coming soon.

Vishal Dutta, Product Manager, Google Maps, at Google, wrote that Google’s intent is to help users to “find a better way to travel short distances.”

To search for a Lime scooter or bike, users need to navigate to the destination and tap on the transit icon to see the nearby options. If a Lime vehicle is available, the user will see how long it’ll take to walk to the vehicle, an estimate of how much your ride could cost, and the total journey time and ETA. Tapping on the Lime card will take the user to the Lime app, where the exact location of the vehicle will be available and the option to unlock it. If the user doesn’t have the Lime app installed, the link will redirect to the App or Play store.

Google this week announced that the old interiors of the National Museum of Brazil, located in Rio de Janeiro, are now available on Google Maps, via the Street View imagery. This announcement happens now, after the fire that struck the National Museum of Brazil and destroyed around 20 million pieces of Portuguese and Brazilian history. The pieces included indigenous artifacts, dinosaur remains and the oldest human skeleton ever discovered in the Americas.

In 2016, Google Arts & Culture started working with the museum to bring their collection online—so that anyone, anywhere in the world could see and learn about these ancient artifacts. Now for the first time ever that is possible.

Chance Coughenour, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture, wrote that “unfortunately, the destruction of collections like these reminds us of the diverse threats that exist to the world’s heritage—and how important it is to protect it.” He added that “advances in technology—like high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning, and virtual and augmented reality—have not only introduced new forms of art, but help us preserve the world’s most precious heritage. Even though images cannot replace what has been lost, they offer us a way to remember.”

Google this week announced that Facebook Audience Network, AppLovin, and Rubicon Project are joining the open bidding beta program, following the first participants: OpenX, Index Exchange, Smaato, Tapjoy, and AdColony.

Developers monetizing their apps with AdMob Open Bidding “are already seeing more ad revenue and less latency for their users,” wrote Vishal Kumar, Senior Product Manager, AdMob, at Google.

Publishers using AdMob Open Bidding have multiple demand partners bidding with app advertising on their ad inventory, in real time, driving higher CPM and more revenue.

“AdColony is excited to join forces with Google to move the app monetization ecosystem forward with Open Bidding. AdMob’s scale of advertiser demand and ease of integration provides a tremendous opportunity for app developers to drive more revenue and operational efficiency.”
David Pokress, EVP Publishing & Account Management at AdColony

Google says is continuing to add new features to Open Bidding based on feedback from our beta participants, including support for all ad formats like interstitial, rewarded, banner, which are all available today, and native, which will be added soon.

In addition to asking for more formats and advertising demand, developers participating in Google’s Open Bidding beta have asked Google for transparency into who is bidding on and buying their ad inventory. In response to that, Google just announced that will be adding a new auction report that allows developers to understand how their different advertising partners are performing. The Open Bidding Auction Reports will be available to beta participants early next year. Here a preview:

ironSource today announced the launch of a ROAS Optimizer tool. The ROAS Optimizer tool enables user acquisition managers to automatically bid on dynamic CPI (cost-per-install) rates to reach the desired ROAS goal.

ironSource says there are 3 main issues preventing user acquisition managers from executing efficient strategies:

* Their limited capacity to update and optimize bids on a large scale. * The complexity in finding an efficient methodology to optimize towards true ROAS. * Lack of accurate user-level ad revenue data, which would provide them with complete ARPU data to better understand the true value of their users.

The launch of ironSource’s User-Level Ad Revenue solution last month gave app developers the ability to accurately measure ad revenue on the user level, and link that data to the marketing channel which brought in that specific user. According to ironSource, the ROAS Optimizer has resolved the other two issues by leveraging the power of the User-Level Ad Revenue solution. Knowing both the in-app revenue and the ad revenue, its algorithm works out the optimal bid and automatically updates thousands of bids a day, replacing the current inefficient methodology.

ROAS Optimizer tool optimizes towards three data sets:

* In-app purchases* User-level ad revenue * The combination of in-app purchases and user-level ad revenue

ROAS Optimizer tool makes real-time changes with multi-bids according to multiple optimization dimensions; it instantly analyses new supply that joins the network and implements it into its complex algorithm, speeding up an otherwise lengthy process; it utilizes the insights from ironSource’s mediation to run category clustering which looks for data from similar games to decide on the right bid for each user; and it works on many other dimensions to optimize ROAS.

“There’s no difference between advertising in-app and advertising in traditional channels. In both, there are different qualities of users stemming from a variety of different factors, and advertisers must know how to bid according to those users. The first step involves correlating two different user behaviors – IAP and ad revenue. With that visibility, optimizing a campaign that may reach tens of thousands of different bids is impossible to do manually. ironSource created the ROAS Optimizer to solve this challenge. And its immediate success is already apparent in the ironSource network, with the most successful titles using our ROAS Optimizer tool.”
Tal Shoham, COO Developer Solutions at ironSource

DoubleVerify this week announced a partnership with InMobi. DoubleVerify will provide always-on fraud filtering and measurement for mobile in-app advertising campaigns across the InMobi Exchange globally.

The integration with InMobi covers pre-bid targeting for all InMobi Exchange impressions within the mobile in-app platform, as well as monitoring of post-bid fraud activity, such as spoofing – enabling InMobi to continuously refine the quality of its mobile ad inventory.

“InMobi is committed to providing transparency, building trust and delivering business results to our advertisers. This partnership, along with our support for DoubleVerify viewability, is a giant step toward that. InMobi is proud to partner with DoubleVerify in this critical battle against mobile app fraud. We strongly believe that only through open collaboration will the industry be able to eliminate fraud.”
Anne Frisbie, SVP, Global Programmatic, and North America at InMobi

DoubleVerify identifies and screens the most comprehensive types of in-app fraud, including background ad activity, hidden ads, app misrepresentation (spoofing) and measurement manipulation. In March 2017, DV received Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for its technology to detect and block sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) for mobile app video and display advertising.

“DV’s partnership with InMobi demonstrates our commitment to provide consistent, comprehensive quality coverage for global brand advertisers. With ad spend increasingly concentrated in mobile, it’s imperative that brands have transparency into the quality of mobile app inventory. We are proud of our partnership with InMobi, which expands the footprint of our fraud prevention capabilities and further distinguishes DV as the leader for mobile app verification.”
Matt McLaughlin, COO at DoubleVerify

Adform this month decided to postpone the IPO and has withdrawn its application to Nasdaq Copenhagen to have its shares admitted to trading and official listing on Nasdaq Copenhagen.

Adform said it has postponed the Initial Public Offering on Nasdaq Copenhagen “due to the continued uncertainty and volatility in the financial markets and given the existing shareholders and the Company’s desire to achieve a successful IPO with an orderly aftermarket.”

Adform’s first day of trading was scheduled for Wednesday, 5 December 2018. The announcement of the decision to postpone the IPO was released one day before.

“I am honoured by the response, we have received from domestic investors, but the current volatile and uncertain market conditions do not allow us to complete the IPO and achieve a smooth transition into the public market. Our growth strategy is unchanged and we hope to be able to return to the public market at a later point in time.”
Gustav Mellentin, Adform’s CEO

DoubleVerify is now able to measure brand safety on campaigns running on YouTube. DoubleVerify says Brand Safety and Suitability controls give advertisers access to DV monitoring against 11 categories that can severely challenge brand safety, such as violence, hate speech, and pornography.

“We are excited to enter a new phase of partnership with YouTube. Today, brand suitability is a core advertiser expectation – across all media types and buying platforms. With our expanded partnership, DoubleVerify is ensuring brand suitability on the world’s leading online video platform.”
Wayne Gattinella, CEO of DoubleVerify

Advertisers using DV now are able to receive detailed insights into the appropriateness of the media on which their video campaigns are running, creating a continuous feedback loop that improves campaign targeting. Advertisers can opt into 10 additional Brand Targeting categories, such as pets, automotive and travel – based on relevance to the brand.

“We are giving advertisers comprehensive intelligence and actionable insights to help them avoid off-brand media,” added Gattinella. “Whether content is damaging to brand equity or simply irrelevant, we are helping advertisers maximize campaign success on YouTube.”

DoubleVerify’s content classification system extends across devices – mobile, desktop and CTV – and 20 different languages. Brand Safety and Suitability controls are available via DoubleVerify’s flagship service and performance platform, DV Pinnacle® – for YouTube Auction and YouTube Reserve inventory, including TrueView, Bumper Ads and Google Preferred.

In October 2016, DoubleVerify and YouTube partnered for viewability and fraud measurement across the platform. The addition of brand safety and suitability lets DV measure delivery of the DV Authentic Impression® – a proprietary, MRC-accredited metric of media quality and effectiveness – on YouTube. To be counted as Authentic, an impression must be fully viewed, by a real person, in a brand-suitable environment.

iSpot this week announced that is now able to causal impact of TV to conversion events like at Point-of-Sale (POS), from call centers, in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data, and location services.

iSpot present an example of a retailer for high-end jewelry running a national TV ad campaign with a call to action to visit a brick-and-mortar location for a specific promotion. Without iSpot, the retailer can track in-store interactions at POS providing a degree of insight into the overall impact of the promotion.

However, iSpot says the retailer doesn’t have specific insight into the causal impact of TV versus their digital campaigns or other activity like normal foot traffic. When the retailer connects their first-party POS data to iSpot, the retailer can match the prospects who were exposed to the TV ad campaign and then responded to the call-to-action.

According to iSpot, this enables digital-like attribution to TV so the retailer can allocate, optimize, and plan their future campaigns in a way that maximizes their TV ad spend.

Cetera Technology last month launched a news content curation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Limelines was officially launched to the public on November 27, 2018. Cetera Technology is a Beirut-based digital startup, in Lebanon, curating content from RSS feeds into web, and app environments – iOS and Android. Limelines is a competitor to Google News, Apple News, and Taboola News in MENA region.

“Limelines was built with publishers in mind: Big and small publishers, newspapers, magazines, professional bloggers, and other expert writers around the MENA region. They can simply submit their content to our platform and benefit through its machine learning capabilities that will automatically tag and place their features and articles under one of our categories. The reception from our first group of publishers has been amazing, and we are looking forward to our continued partnership and collaboration with them.”
Rime Diab, Chief Executive Officer at Limelines

Limelines curates and offers its readers topic-driven stories. This enables them to move to a new era of news consumption that satisfies their information needs. Limelines also allows its users to collect and share the stories they read with their community. Limelines says the AI-driven content channel is not only expected to disrupt online reading but will also introduce ‘social’ interactivity to the classic news reading behavior.

Limelines research revealed that in addition to news, sports, business, economy, culture, finance, entertainment, as well as tech, art, and health, represent the MENA region’s top interests. Thus, the platform strives to highlight these topics among over 40 additional ones and present them in a new mold through its partnership with publishers.

The digital platform has kicked off in English first and is expected to release Arabic and French versions in early 2019.

“Our market research shows that 59 percent of the MENA region’s publishers write in Arabic, 43 percent write in English, while almost 15 percent publish in French. This diverse and cosmopolitan audience requires a platform that reflects it, and that’s what Limelines aspires to offer,” Diab explained.

Limelines is a brand of Cetera Technology SAL, a Lebanese tech startup founded by Khalil Abou Chawareb, Peter Jaber, and Chady Semaan, and initially funded by Abou Chawareb. In 2018, Cedar Mundi joined and funded the company under the Central Bank’s Circular 331, a national initiative aiming at the creation of a knowledge economy and the development of startups. The company’s team consists of 20 professionals, including administrative, development, business, design, and content creation skills.