Google recently began testing Topics API, the latest part of its Chrome Privacy Sandbox. It’s a significant improvement over FLoC, but it leaks audience information from trustworthy sites and enriches large platforms at the expense of niche or independent sites – especially sites that invest time and skill to cover categories in detail, writes Don Marti, VP of ecosystem innovation at CafeMedia.
For years now, the digital advertising industry has been talking about the premature death of the ad network, writes Omri Argaman, chief growth officer at Zoomd. But there’s a reason why ad networks have survived for so long – they have standardization and massive reach, and are primed to become major growth engines for certain channels (such as in-app and mobile gaming) compared with programmatic exchanges.
Ad exchanges used to be a regular feature of the ad tech landscape. Now? You can hardly find a stand-alone ad exchange because other ad tech players (including SSPs) and ad servers rolled all the exchanges into their service suites. And consolidation is a system in which the best company doesn’t always win, writes Jayson Dubin, CEO of Playwire. Publishers can protect themselves in the midst of disruption by taking a few easy steps.
Google’s decision to delay third-party cookie deprecation until 2023 came the day before Salon CRO Justin Wohl’s wedding. Salon had converted its ad business to an open-web programmatic model a few years earlier, so the brief reprieve from signal loss came as a huge relief and another reason to pop some champagne. Since then, Wohl has been laying the groundwork for effective post-cookie monetization on the open web.
As console gaming evolves, mobile provides a blueprint for solving the challenges around attribution, formatting, targeting and integration in free-to-play (F2P) games. To thrive, subscription-based gaming businesses need other means of monetization, and the F2P model is a viable alternative simply because it opens up many other opportunities for revenue besides in-app purchases.
Foundry, formerly known as IDG Communications, wants to shed its old identity and build a new reputation not as a digital publisher but as a provider of data and marketing tech, according to Foundry President Kumaran Ramanathan. Ramanathan spoke to AdExchanger about why Foundry walked away from open-web programmatic, how it’s fusing its first-party data with a marketing and data tech stack and its M&A ambitions.
The Trade Desk’s OpenPath gives advertisers a direct link with premium publishers, collapsing the supply chain from the DSP directly to the publisher’s inventory. While a win under the guise of supply path optimization, it also spells danger for SSPs, the traditional guardians of publisher inventory who now risk being squeezed out entirely, writes Joseph Lospalluto, US Country Manager of ShowHeroes Group.
Google’s new “reject all” cookies button is about to disrupt the entire ad tech ecosystem even more. The next era of ad tech is about user consent, not cookies, writes Joe Root, CEO of Permutive. And the age of opt-outs means publishers and advertisers need solutions to serve an ad without processing user data – and some are already making mistakes.
As an advertising vehicle, podcasts have yet to reach their full potential due to a limited array of formats and a relatively small amount of inventory. To take full advantage of ad monetization, the podcasting industry will need to “rip up its playbook,” writes Paul Kelly, Chief Revenue Officer of A Million Ads. But there are ways the industry can bring podcasting revenue to its full potential.
Google announced it will add the Optimized Pricing feature to its current ad inventory pricing model, Unified Pricing Rules (UPR), for all publishers. The idea is to protect the value of publisher inventory by preventing buyers from purchasing it for less than what it’s worth, writes Kean Wang, VP of product and strategy at Intowow. But how will Google determine inventory worth when it provides services for both publishers and buyers?
