Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Maybe Next Time
One painful aspect of Google’s third-party cookie deprecation delay is how acutely it affects companies making good faith efforts to support the Chrome Privacy Sandbox.
Criteo, OpenX, RTB House and others invested heavily in Privacy Sandbox testing and potential product development, including untold engineering hours. So when Google punts on third-party cookie deprecation – or, heaven forbid, is eventually foiled entirely by the UK’s CMA – the impact is felt hardest by Chrome’s best partners in the Sandbox.
In a cruel twist, one of the CMA’s antitrust concerns is the possibility that companies yet to invest in Privacy Sandbox development are disadvantaged by cookie deprecation. In other words, companies that are putting in the work suffer.
Which is why this Adweek headline, “Buyers Are Wasting Money on Alt IDs While Cookies Still Persist,” is the nightmare scenario for Privacy Sandbox advocates.
Unfortunately, however, it’s rather hard to run meaningful tests on just 1% of traffic, and the CMA won’t allow Chrome’s proposals to move forward without more testing. And without more testing, there won’t be more adoption. Yep.
“That’s the difficulty of our business,” ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche tells Adweek. (ID5 is a startup built for post-cookie identity.) “We need to convince everyone to integrate at the same time.”
From Wear Houses to Warehouses
American mall staples like Skechers and Levi Strauss are pursuing direct-to-consumer sales in an attempt to regain lost profit margin, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The problem is brick-and-mortar chains aren’t equipped for DTC, which is expensive and requires a totally different skill set.
Macy’s, for instance, is a forerunner for smaller mall-based chains, and it’s been testing DTC services for years. Before Macy’s added third-party programmatic last year, the Macy’s Media Network (its retail media biz) was more about employee time management, such as packaging items or channeling online shoppers to the store locations best suited to fulfill ecommerce orders.
Nike, meanwhile, went all-in on DTC, but cut bait last year and reverted to more wholesaling.
Retailers are jury rigging home delivery and ecommerce warehouse solutions onto their brick-and-mortar footprint. But stores weren’t meant to be hybrid warehouses, and associates are trained to create displays, not package up deliveries.
“You’ve got to have a supply chain that looks more like a retail supply chain than a distribution one,” says. “There’s a bit of a reinvention of the supply chain.”
Olli Olli Oxen Free
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is jumping on the first-party data bandwagon ahead of this year’s TV upfronts.
On Thursday, the studio launched Olli, a revamped first-party data product that pools WBD’s linear and streaming audience data, including from Max.
Olli is the offspring of Warner Media and Discovery’s ad tech stack consolidation, which has been a long time coming, considering the companies merged in 2022.
At this point, WBD considers its ad inventory and tech to be fully consolidated. “That’s what allowed us to launch Olli,” Ryan Gould, WBD’s head of digital ad sales, tells AdExchanger.
Olli powers WBD ad products for different use cases. Through an integration with VideoAmp, for example, advertisers can use Olli to shift spend from heavy TV viewers to lighter TV viewers or cord-cutters, who are often unreachable via linear-only campaigns. By doing so, Gould says, clients can reach incremental new audiences while reducing ad repetition.
But Wait, There’s More!
Meta gets slapped with a privacy warning in the EU over its use of sexual orientation data for targeting. [Bloomberg]
ByteDance is exploring scenarios for a sale of TikTok – minus the algorithm. [The Information]
Publishers who made bets on events and franchises this year are reaping the rewards. [Digiday]
You’re Hired!
Hero Digital appoints Brandon Rozelle as EVP of strategy. [release]
The Washington Post names Suzi Watford to be its chief strategy officer. [release]
