This week, Facebook informed advertisers that a “bug” in its measurement system had resulted in an undercounting of ad performance among some iPhone 12 users since February. The problem, which was resolved on August 20, involved app-install conversions and how Facebook interacts with Apple’s privacy-focused measurement solution SKAdNetwork. According to Facebook, approximately 10% of total SKAdNetwork conversions were not reported.

Unlike some of Facebook’s previous measurement blunders, which resulted in refunds to affected advertisers and even lawsuits, the company isn’t talking about making goods this time, as it was understating rather than overstating its performance.

In its early years, Amazon took a “slow and steady wins the race” approach to the ad business, but more recently, it’s had its foot on the gas, and it shows no signs of slowing. The company increased ad revenue by more than 50% to approximately $21 billion in 2020, increasing its share of the US digital ad market above 10% for the first time.

It doesn’t end there. In an interview this week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated that the company planned to hire 55,000 people in tech and corporate jobs around the world, including a surge in hiring in its advertising division. The company appears to be moving quickly. On Thursday, a cursory search of Amazon’s careers page yielded over 1,900 job postings in Amazon’s Advertising business category.

Interested? Before you apply, read this Insider report by Ashley Stewart and Eugene Kim. They talked to insiders about Amazon’s intense “Escape Velocity” executive-onboarding program, which is designed to immerse top-level new hires in the company’s culture.

On July 1, the NCAA lifted long-standing restrictions, allowing college athletes to sell their name, image, and likeness in endorsement deals with brands for the first time. Degree launched its “Breaking Limits” campaign right away, featuring a roster of college athletes from a variety of sports and universities. Degree added five more college athletes to the team this week, bringing the total to 19.

Unilever and Degree have a long history of working with college athletes, and we wanted to set a positive precedent for continuing to work with and fairly compensate college athletes in terms of NIL. We wanted to move in as soon as it became available.

Working with any athlete follows the same set of criteria. There must be standing, as well as the types of brands that might be a good fit, and there must be a platform. In this case, it can really help to motivate people to do more.

Given that most college athletes do not have access to agents and are almost certainly having their first experience partnering with brands, we took it upon ourselves to meet with each of them one-on-one, ensuring that their parents and guardians [had resources] available to them.

For example, as part of our agreement, in addition to ensuring that they are partnered with a brand, there is a mentorship program in which they are exposed to deeper, exciting challenges to help them as they progress with their careers, potentially outside of sports.

We are dedicated to inspiring everyone to move more, and we are dedicated to using our scale to do better. So the most important KPI here is impact: how many people can we inspire with this program? That’s why we’re not just asking these student-athletes to go there and showcase a product and tell people how many hours it’s effective for, but to inspire people with their stories of overcoming adversity – and their stories are absolutely incredible.

Nonetheless, data from ad-analytics platform AdImpact shows that there are more back-to-school ads on TV this year than last, with most advertisers in the sector presumably anticipating pent-up demand for stationery and lunchboxes as many children return to school. AdImpact monitored the number of ad airings on broadcast and cable television.