IAB Seeks To Ease Apple's Cookie Crunch; PE Mergers Are Coming On Strong

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One-Track Mind

The IAB Tech Lab published a blog post Monday laying out ways to mitigate the effects of Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), a new policy curtailing the cookie-based tracking Apple allows on its browser. Since ITP caps the amount of time a third party has to view a tracking cookie placed by a first-party client (like an online merchant allowing a retargeting vendor or SSP to tag its site visitors), Tech Lab general manager Dennis Buchheim suggests IAB members across the exchange space “develop a common, consolidated ID routed through a single domain.” By sharing a cookie pool, supply chain vendors can keep tabs on an individual when that identity would evaporate for a company tracking on its own. Demand and supply-side companies have found common ground recently on cookie collaborations, but that common ground has quickly created new competitive friction. AdExchanger has more on that.

Auctioneering

Paul Gubbins, an ad tech consultant, published a LinkedIn post rounding up the recent SSP and exchange product responses to demand-side concerns over the quiet shift from second-price to first-price auctions. AppNexus, for instance, committed to signaling to all DSP partners whether an auction is first-price or second-price by displaying a “1” or “2” in a field on all OpenRTB bids. AppNexus has also experimented with soft-floor pricing, a hybrid approach that accounts for different auction models, and recommends bidding for soft floors as if they’re first-price. Rubicon Project and OpenX have been out in front on the issue too, releasing their auction-pricing products and preferences. More.

Rising PE Tide

The digital media investment banking firm Luma Partners released its quarterly report documenting M&A trends across the marketing technology and media landscape. One leading trend: publicly traded ad tech stocks being acquired by private equity firms and taken off the market, as happened with MaxPoint and Rocket Fuel. “The maturation of the Ad Tech space has drawn increased interest from private equity buyers who have previously focused more on SaaS software businesses,” according to the Luma report. After a slow second quarter, when there were only four ad tech deals, all for under $100 million, Q3 saw 22 total deals, seven of which topped $100 million. Related: AdExchanger spoke to Sizmek CEO Mark Grether about taking Rocket Fuel off the market and the value of a PE-backed approach.

Snap In The Face

EMarketer cut Snap’s 2017 global ad revenue outlook to $774 million from the $900 million it forecasted in March. It also lowered Snap’s US ad spend forecast to $643 million from $770 million, citing slower-than-expected user growth and concluding that the platform “remains in the experimental bucket for many marketers.” Meanwhile, Instagram, Snap’s biggest copycat and competitor, will rake in over $3 billion in US ad revenue this year. More.

But Wait, There’s More!