Avast, ye mateys. Piracy streaming sites appear to be siphoning millions of dollars from advertising budgets that could have otherwise gone to real publishers, according to a new report.

Last year, an estimated $50 million was spent on ads that ran on sites classified by OpenSee as “ad-supported piracy domains,” according to a report published by the ad-tech consultancy Jounce, which used bidstream data to audit the programmatic supply chain. While $50 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the $148 billion digital display advertising market, it’s still considerable enough to highlight some potentially serious gaps in ad-tech transparency.

• Ads for brands including JetBlue, Mint Mobile, Fender, Tampax, Paramount+, and Mack Weldon, which were served by Google and the DSP RTB House, appeared on two of the sites named in the report when Marketing Brew visited them last week.
• “JetBlue partners with a widely used industry ad tech and verification partner to ensure our ads show on suitable pages. We have reached out to our partners as our team works to determine why this ad showed up and to rectify the situation,” Derek Dombrowski, a spokesperson for JetBlue, told Marketing Brew.
• Mint Mobile, Fender, Tampax, Paramount+, and Mack Weldon did not return Marketing Brew’s requests for comment.

The issue isn’t only that ad dollars are being routed to these sites. Exchanges selling this inventory are funding sites that appear to stream content illegally, which could run afoul of contractual agreements between advertisers and their ad-tech vendors, not to mention that many of the sites themselves likely violate US copyright law, Chris Kane, the founder of Jounce, explained.

“What we’re saying in the report is that many exchanges failed to meet and continue to fail to meet [basic compliance] standards,” he told Marketing Brew.

Keep reading here.—RB

After a pandemic-driven surge, mobile gaming is coming back down to earth, according to mobile analytics and measurement company AppsFlyer, which last week released its State of Gaming App Marketing report.

A key finding: Gaming advertisers spent $26.7 billion on app install ads prompting users to download their mobile games in 2022, according to the report, which pulled data from 38 billion installs across more than 18,000 apps. That spend capped a “golden age of gaming” that ran through 2021 and into 2022 but has since begun to slow down, Shani Rosenfelder, director of market insights at AppsFlyer, said in a press release. The US represented nearly half of that spend at $12.2 billion.

In 2022, overall Android gaming app installs grew 8% year over year, while iOS gaming app installs dropped 5%, as Apple’s privacy changes have made it tougher for mobile advertisers to track user behavior.

• The difference is even starker when comparing gaming app installs in the US last year—19% growth for Android versus a loss of 1% for iOS.

Compare that to 2020, when Android gaming app installs jumped 60% year over year and iOS increased nearly 20%, because playing Subway Surfers is way easier than learning how to bake sourdough.

Ad spend: On iOS, the average cost per install increased 35% year over year in Q4 to $3.80. Meanwhile, the cost per install on Android has “steadily hovered” around $0.70 since Q3 of 2021, the report found.

Zoom out: It’s not just downloads that are slowing; consumers are also spending less on games. Earlier this year, mobile analytics firm Data.ai’s head of insights told CNBC that the “biggest hit” to app spending was happening within gaming. According to Data.ai’s State of Mobile report, mobile game spending dropped 5% last year.—RB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Feature: Adweek explains “why brands should be thinking more about community.”

In your DMs: The case for why marketers should pay attention to messaging on social media.

Write it down: A list of 20 tools that can be useful for content marketers lives here.

to DTC: Retail Brew connected with top retailers—Mejuri, Casper, and Peloton—to talk about DTC marketing strategies they use to keep customers coming back. Check it out.

Branding takes the wheel: Is your brand’s messaging breaking through? Uber achieved stronger levels of cohesive communication with a brand hub built with Frontify, unlocking consistency, accessibility, and scalability for their brand. See how it happened.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

The Brief, a one-day summit, is coming back to NYC! Get ready to network and hear from top marketing leaders such as Joe Anthony, CEO and founder of Hero Collective.

Joe is a marketer, innovator, and entrepreneur who built Hero Collective, a Black-owned creative and digital innovation studio.

Reflecting on his several years of insights from working with influential brands, Joe will sit down with some of his peers in a discussion titled “David vs. Goliath: How Agencies are Faring in the New World Order.”

Sound too good to be true? Find out yourself at The Brief.

Stat: Ad revenue for video games increased 7% in 2022 compared to the year before, according to eMarketer data cited by Ad Exchanger. However, social media revenue grew 16%, and CTV revenue jumped 32% year over year during that period.

Quote: “If they can somehow turn it into a ritual, and it becomes more habit rather than the occasional thing, they’ll start getting their repeat purchases.”—Nicholas Fereday, executive director of food and consumer trends at Rabobank, about cereal expanding into a late-night meal, to the Washington Post

Read: “The Impact of Inflation on Advertising” (Madison and Wall)

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Agencies are still split on what the future of work looks like
• When it comes to women’s sports, leagues and brands are thinking beyond traditional sponsorship and marketing efforts
• What it takes to build metaverse fashion week