Data Privacy

For most of the last decade, privacy compliance lived in a gray zone. Companies could point to a cookie banner, update a policy and reasonably believe they were doing enough. Not anymore.

Former Texas privacy enforcer Tyler Bridegan breaks down how regulators decide which companies to target – and how a little common sense can keep you off their radar.

The year ahead in commerce, with insights from the NRF Big Show conference, where retailers congregate every January. Plus, the 2026 privacy policy cheat sheet.

Human-made creative is in again; The Atlantic accuses Google of (another) monopoly; and it turns out brands like to have a say in their sponsorships.

From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.

Publishers can reach relevant audiences at scale and with greater specificity through Optable’s new planner agent.

What’s one data privacy shift or regulation that will most reshape digital advertising in 2026 – and who will be most unprepared for it?

This year, programmatic companies faced tough decisions about privacy, awkward acquisitions and the cookie die-off that never quite happened.

From 2015’s ad tech gold rush to today’s cautious comeback, telcos are once again testing whether they can turn subscriber data into ad dollars – this time with privacy as the selling point.

The metaverse hype is over; Apple Maps forays into advertising; and streamers vie for HBO Max and the WBD studio archive.

Can more ads be better?; Speaking of, ChatGPT’s Android beta code reveals a looming ad business; The web’s new puppy dogs.

AudienceMix, a new curation startup, aims to make it more cost effective to mix and match different audience segments using only the data brands need to execute their campaigns.

Is TJX recession proof?; Amazon is blocking OpenAI; and Meta is in hot water with the US Senate.

The Trade Desk gets insistent with Korai again; the EU is rethinking hashed IDS; and is the AI industry becoming a cartel?

The publisher-focused DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial is finished. A judge will now decide the fate of Google’s sell-side ad tech business.

With privacy under unprecedented attack by data brokers and social media, it is the wrong time to weaken CIPA’s private right of action protections, as has been proposed in California Senate Bill 690.

Google recently settled a class-action lawsuit by agreeing to create an off-switch for data sharing in bid requests. Huge deal, right? So why isn’t anyone talking about it?

The phrase “caution is key” has become a totem of the new age in US antitrust regulation. It was cited this week by both the DOJ and Google in support of opposing views on a possible divestiture of Google’s sell-side ad exchange.

ID5 bought TrueData mainly to tackle what ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche calls the “massive fragmentation” of digital identity, which is a problem on the user side and the provider side.

It’s not that people don’t care about their privacy – they do. The problem is that protecting it is often difficult, inconvenient and confusing.

Publishers, brands and agencies today are navigating a new landscape. With rising consumer expectations and evolving regulations, delivering personalized campaigns requires a fresh approach.

As privacy rules tighten, M&C Saatchi built OneView to help marketers measure performance without relying on cookies or user-level data.

The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.

The fate of the open web will be decided on who controls the data that drives monetization and the AI that determines distribution. Google controls both, and proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly do not address this imbalance.

American publishers are hamstrung by antitrust law; should marketers lean into ragebait?; and Pexplexity is hitting pause on its ads business.

Publishers must coalesce to gain a credible bargaining position and stop the bleeding caused by AI search. From there, we must put the processes in place to actually operate a licensing mechanism.

The Trade Desk is facing class-action lawsuits claiming its “privacy-safe” Unified ID 2.0 is really just repackaged cookie tracking.

Law firms are targeting marketers for class action suits; Discord is trying to go mainstream; and ICE’s media presence is getting unavoidable.

Alvaro Bedoya shared his qualms with digital advertising’s more controversial targeting tactics and how kids use gen AI and social media.

Live from New York at Programmatic IO, the AdExchanger editorial team debriefs what ad tech’s brightest minds are saying and doing around AI and measurement.