Criteo To Collabo On Unified ID 2.0; French Ad Trades File Antitrust Complaint Over IDFA

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Unified

Criteo and The Trade Desk might be competitors by day, but the future of identity, privacy and the open internet calls for collaboration. The day after TTD partnered with LiveRamp on the Unified ID 2.0 initiative, Criteo said that it too will lend a hand. Unified ID 2.0 is an effort being spearheaded by The Trade Desk to devise a replacement for third-party cookies by using encrypted email. Read the release. But there’s a missing piece: the consumer-facing UI. And so Criteo has signed on to help develop the sign-on solution and transparency portal that will support Unified ID 2.0. The portal will give consumers control over their advertising experience and the ability to opt in – or out – of data sharing, both key concepts underpinning the new open source ID. Criteo’s contribution to Unified ID 2.0 will also incorporate elements of its own homegrown User-Centric Ad ID solution, which includes a revocable identification system. In other Criteo news, the company reported earnings on Wednesday, with revenue of $470 million ($186 million minus traffic acquisition costs). Criteo CEO Megan Clarken emphasized the company’s commitment to its retail media business, which she called “a central piece” of Criteo’s commerce media platform.

Antitrust Complaint Du Jour

Les hackles are up. A group of French trade organizations, including IAB France and the French arm of the Mobile Marketing Association, filed a complaint against Apple on Wednesday over the forthcoming privacy changes it’s making to its iOS ecosystem. At issue is the fact that, starting next year, publishers and developers will be required to collect consent before using Apple’s proprietary device ID. The companies behind the complaint, which was lodged with France’s competition authority, argue that few companies will agree to tracking and this will make it extremely difficult for publishers to sell the personalized ads they’ve come to rely on for their revenue. (Oh, and the middlemen would be SOL, too.) If the government pursues the case, it would represent one of the first legal challenges to online privacy measures on antitrust, according to The Wall Street Journal. “This is a novel case – a truly important case – because it deals with the use of privacy as a sort of fig leaf for anticompetitive conduct,” said Damien Geradin, the competition lawyer representing the coalition of industry groups.

Execs On The Grill

Lawmakers interrogated the chief executives of Google, Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday during a Senate committee hearing focused on their moderation practices, The New York Times reports. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bristling about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a piece of legislation that shields internet companies from liability for content created by their users. The hearing was a repeat performance before Congress for Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. With the Nov. 3 election less than a week away, all three are facing mounting pressure to manage misinformation without exerting unfair influence on the voting process. Republicans, yet again, accused the execs of selective censorship. Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, challenged Twitter’s handling of the New York Post’s controversial Hunter Biden article after the platform initially restricted its spread. Cruz, never one to turn down an opportunity to grandstand, was blunt: “Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?”

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