Can the IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server initiative really help restore publishers’ ownership of monetization and wrestle back control from Big Tech and walled gardens?
Programmatic promised clarity: automation, efficiency and measurable outcomes. What we got instead is complexity dressed up as optimization: a stack of acronyms performing trust theater.
As AI agents begin to mediate everything from search to purchase, marketers are being forced to confront the reality that they must treat machines as customers.
Ad spending across RMNs and CMNs is still hindered by incomplete data access and connectivity. Here’s how to bridge that gap.
We’re seeing the worst possible outcomes with the CPM-based buying approach. And Google’s recent decision to hang on to cookies indefinitely risks perpetuating the worst parts of the digital ad business.
The era of fragmented, adversarial ad tech is winding down. A new paradigm is emerging defined by AI-first, end-to-end platforms and collaboration among buyers and sellers.
Political advertisers, by necessity, have built precise, privacy-conscious targeting strategies that work without relying exclusively on third-party data like cookies.
Short-form video, infinite scrolling and hyper-targeted algorithms aren’t neutral mediums. They shape, and often compromise, the attention they harvest, creating compulsive habits that warrant serious reflection.
Transparency has become the currency of credibility in advertising. Larger holding companies and black box AI platforms must recognize that their opaque practices are no longer sustainable.
AI is being embedded in tools, tagged in decks and tossed into internal sprints. But for agencies, publishers, brands and platforms, there’s still no shared definition of success.
