Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Off Topic
The ad industry isn’t sold on the Topics API, which becomes widely available in Chrome’s update July 12.
The Topics API is “slightly less creepy than storing every last behavioral detail about someone centrally,” Luke Regan, UK managing partner at performance marketing agency DAC, tells The Media Leader. But “even your topical interests could be sensitive, and actually it’s not too difficult to track back to an individual,” he says.
Even supporters of Topics, like Kevin Joyner, director of data strategy at digital agency Croud, concede that the API is not “100% watertight privacy protecting.”
According to the Movement for an Open Web, an advocacy group that opposes browser operators consolidating power over online advertising, the Privacy Sandbox “is about Google retaining control over people’s intimate data whilst using Topics to restrict interoperability for others.”
Google has also failed to persuade the W3C to back Topics, and for good reason, perhaps.
Alexandre Gilotte, senior data analyst for Criteo, says the Topics API could be exploited to fingerprint users.
Google’s current “solution” to protect against fingerprinting is … to ask developers to promise not to do that. (On the other hand, Apple, known as the most aggressive privacy protector, does much the same.)
The Collabs Lab
Shopify is opening up Collabs Network, a way for merchants on its platform and social media content creators to link their accounts for affiliate marketing to sellers and influencers in the US, Canada and UK.
Influencers must have a public social media account and at least 1,000 followers, and those are pretty much the only requirements, other than adhering to basic standards for brand safety.
Beyond being a handy new tool in the creator revenue toolkit, the Collabs Network is also a useful search and discovery mechanism for influencers and merchants. Social creators can see merchants that are in the network, the rates they set for sales and the products they carry, and therefore find items they can sincerely recommend to their followers. Creators can also apply directly to merchants through the network.
Shopify will expand the Collabs program to other countries as merchant adoption grows. The Shopify Twitter handle informed one customer that the rollout will be based on the number of opted-in merchants per market.
Burnt Batch
And now back to Google: Can Google pull off third-party cookie deprecation?
Third-party cookie removal is part of an overall privacy trend, but there are increasingly strong antitrust forces pushing in the opposite direction.
Without third-party tracking, advertisers and other ad tech would be more dependent on Google to measure and optimize web campaigns at a time when international antitrust regulators and the DOJ are calling for Google to divest pieces of its ad business. Google’s control over ad buying and selling also forces publishers to sell cheaper ad space to Alphabet, hence the lawsuit Gannett filed against Google last week.
And if publishers are speaking up, you can bet ad tech vendors will seize the opportunity to throw a dart or two.
“I believe that what Google has proposed to the ecosystem is that they retain a Ferrari and give the rest of the world a bicycle,” The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green tells Digiday.
But Wait, There’s More!
NBCUniversal and Blockgraph, the TV data collaboration business, partner for first-party data activation. [Adweek]
Bloomberg will push more of its radio and audio content to YouTube. [The Information]
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick says the company will move on if the FTC blocks the Microsoft deal. [Bloomberg]
Google launches a new shopping tab for purchases and rentals on Android TVs. [TechCrunch]
McDonald’s tries to strike a balance with its “Grimace’s birthday” campaign, a viral hit on TikTok because customers are putting the new shake in horror-film death scenarios. [CNN]
You’re Hired!
Conversational messaging platform Gupshup makes Mike Donohue its SVP of global sales. [Adgully]
M&C Saatchi Performance promotes Kabeer Chaudhary to global CEO. [release]
