Privacy Prognostications
The first week of the new Trump administration was full of whiplash moments.
At the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, AdExchanger got the TL;DR from IAB CEO David Cohen about what all these changes might mean for the IAB’s lobbying efforts on the Hill, including a seven-year odyssey in pursuit of a national privacy law.
Cohen has four predictions. First, don’t hold your breath on that overarching federal privacy law. It’s far likelier that a narrower law with a specific focus on protecting kids and teens will happen first.
Second, the new crew at the FTC “will likely be friendlier to business” compared to the commission led by outgoing chair Lina Khan, Cohen says.
Third, by the end of 2025, we could see as many as 25 states with privacy laws, up from 20 today, including New York.
And fourth, even Section 230 could be up for revision to reflect a new era.
Strap in.
See You Later, Aggregator
A network of AI-generated newsletters is competing with local news orgs for readers and ad dollars, Nieman Labs reports.
The network, called Good Daily, boasts 400,000 subscribers in 355 small towns and cities across 47 states. But it’s a one-man operation, literally, run by NYC-based entrepreneur Matthew Henderson.
Henderson acknowledged to Nieman Labs that the newsletters are 100% AI-generated – although none of the newsletters disclose this fact to subscribers and advertisers.
The AI he uses aggregates content and links back to original sources. In Henderson’s view, this benefits traffic-starved local publishers and promotes journalism in news deserts.
Some publishers, unsurprisingly, see it otherwise.
“His claim is, frankly, horseshit,” says Rodney Gibbs, head of product and audience at a nonprofit called National Trust for Local News (NTLN). AI newsletters rely on the labor of human journalists, he says. Plus, he claims, referrals from Good Daily to NTLN’s network of 65 local papers totaled just four sessions in 90 days.
Advertisers aren’t buying it either.
After being contacted by Nieman Labs, Morning Brew terminated a program it ran through a third party that sponsored hundreds of Good Daily newsletters, saying “this is not the type of newsletter production that we would like to be associated with.”
Bog Standard
The IAB Tech Lab has been stepping up its production pace for new OpenRTB standards.
In the past, the Tech Lab was easily delayed by companies on the board – namely Google and Meta – that were in opposition to open ad tech and publisher execs.
Now, the Tech Lab is fired up about two issues in particular: supporting CTV ad infrastructure and moving the industry out of the browser and more toward the server side, CEO Tony Katsur tells Digiday.
CTV is a mess, with inventory spanning beyond TVs to include everything from screens on gas pumps and in taxi cabs to tiles on smart TV home screens.
But making CTV more transparent is a relatively straightforward endeavor compared with moving advertisers from browser-based tech, like third-party cookies, to publisher servers. That’ll take reengineering ad tech and force-shifting major changes in behavior.
Which takes us to the greatest challenge of all for the Tech Lab. Even when the group creates a standard that solves a problem (ID bridging, retail media and instream video classification, to name a few), there are few enforcement mechanisms.
So, although these solutions exist for anyone to adopt, many choose not to.
But Wait! There’s More
Marketers are rewriting the brand safety playbook for content creators in 2025. [Digiday]
Fox’s ad sales chief explains why brands are set to win the Super Bowl. [Adweek]
Senators revive a bill to ban social media for children under the age of 13. [WaPo]
LinkedIn removes profiles for Marketeam’s job-seeking “AI coworkers.” [404 Media]
Brian O’Kelley on what the rise of DeepSeek means for advertising and ad tech M&A. [LinkedIn]
You’re Hired
OpenX appoints Tyler Romasco as SVP of global publisher development. [release]
McDonald’s is promoting Alyssa Buetikofer, CMO of its Canadian business, to lead its marketing efforts in the US. [WSJ]
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