Edited from the Your Week in Performance Marketing Newsletter

Quantcast is back once again, back once again with the web behaviour, that is according to an announcement made by the analytics company early last week. It has returned to bring web and app user behaviour tracking together under one slick platform.

Having all that data is all well and good, but it is imperative that you put it to good use. Is it not? Of course it is. May we suggest a portion of personalisation with perhaps a side of mouth-watering app optimisation. You could always follow that up with a sliver of sweet CRO.

Bad data can be a real thorn in the side of the ad industry and there is nothing that will curdle your analytics report more than some filthy bot traffic. It is a problem that comCast has had to contend with, but has now purchased MdotLabs to alleviate the issue.

A time for financial scrutiny

Early August is a period when PerformanceIN gets giddily excited as we pore over the financials of your favourite advertising and media companies. We take a peek into the balance sheets of these companies and share them on the site.

Criteo was the success story of last quarter. It turned around its post-IPO slump to record some impressive figures, which hinted at some serious growth over the coming months as we enter a particularly busy period for the entire industry.

Agencies Netbooster and SYZYGY Group also fared well during the first half of 2014, while voucher behemoth RetailMeNot had some good and some bad aspects to its own financial posting.

Companies likely to be filed under ‘room for improvement’ in the half term reports of analysts are Coupons.com for its failure to post a profit in the last three years and Tradedoubler as it continues a company-wide restructure.

Google gives web security a nudge

Google Search is making waves again as it keeps the global web-building community on its toes by making the decision to penalise sites with a potential drop in rankings if they do not adhere to new HTTPS guidelines.

This news followed an announcement by European publisher and broadcaster Bauer Media, which decided to better Google in the startup arena by stumping up well over €100 million to help the growth of small businesses.

Finally, allow us to finish on a note that has left everybody here at the PerformanceIN news desk with our mouths open, aghast. The population at large now prefer branded digital content to that delivered by publishers such as ourselves.