Data Privacy

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Path Less Traveled More publishers have signed up for OpenPath, The Trade Desk’s direct buy-to-sell-side integration. Since launching in February, TTD says it’s “registered interest” (interesting turn of phrase) in OpenPath from more than 100 publishers.  The latest crop to, uh, register […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Squeaky-Clean Apple Apple was charged in the EU with boxing out wallet apps and payments, using its monopolistic power to force consumers to use Apple Pay, The Wall Street Journal reports.  Outside payment services particularly want access to one-touch or mobile contactless purchase […]

Amid the reeling following cookie deprecation, industry pundits are also sounding the alarm over the viability of IP addresses as an actionable identifier. But when it comes to streaming media advertising and monetization, which is largely underpinned by IPs, there’s still more good news than bad, writes Andre Swanston, SVP of Media & Entertainment Vertical at TransUnion.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sharpening Their Tools Privacy and antitrust enforcement is thorny enough. But coverage often misses the most important fact: Some companies are more popular targets, and others are not. A $75 billion Google or Amazon acquisition of Activision Blizzard would be challenged. Microsoft’s deal for […]

TikTok doesn’t compete with Facebook or Instagram. Neither does Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. Really. At least not according to the Federal Trade Commission in its antitrust complaint against Meta. But excluding TikTok is like a gift for Meta’s lawyers.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Movers And Shakers Did you feel that?  There have been some seismic moves lately in Ad Tech Land – not even counting M&A or privacy rules.  Stephanie Layser, longtime leader of News Corp.’s advertising technology, is taking her talents to the cloud. She […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Thinking Outside The Xbox Microsoft is evaluating vendors to help launch an in-game Xbox ad network for free-to-play titles, Insider reports. Rather than interstitials that appear between breaks in mobile games, the Xbox network would help place a snazzier type of ad, like a […]

The app-based phone service TextNow, which offers free calls and texting subsidized by ads, is especially vulnerable to the ongoing deprecation of mobile device IDs. So TextNow started testing alternate IDs, turning to InMobi’s UnifID and LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and RampID.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Can You Put A Price On … Price? Google is testing “Higher price” and “Lower price” indicators for shopping searches. Brian Freiesleben, an SEO industry observer and practitioner, spotted the badge in the wild on a $760 fireplace from Home Depot. It was […]

When it comes to privacy legislation, denial often comes before compliance. When GDPR went into effect back in 2018, some companies in the US simply ignored it, opting to shut down or limit operations in the EU instead of adjusting their data privacy practices. But with privacy legislation in California (CPRA), Colorado (CPA) and Virginia (VCDPA) set to go into effect 2023, American businesses will have no choice but to accept and act, says Ines Henrich, VP of sales planning and media strategy at Aki Technologies.

The Privacy Sandbox proposals are moving forward in an organization whose governance is in the air and whose leadership is disengaged. We unpack what’s going on at the W3C with working group member and IAB Tech Lab advisor Alex Cone. He also weighs in on what went wrong with FLoC.

The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), the main technical standards developer of the internet, will lose longtime university partner MIT as administrator and US host organization at the end of this year. Many W3C members are advocating for a new organizational structure as a non-profit funded by members and board members – a familiar structure for industry orgs. But there is no immediate solution and MIT won’t renew its host contract at the end of the year. The clock is ticking.

Lawmakers and enforcement authorities on both sides of the aisle and across the globe agree it’s time to rewrite the rules that regulate competition for a new internet age. Just last week, the EU passed sweeping antitrust legislation in the form of the Digital Markets Act, and the DOJ is backing a bipartisan antitrust bill currently wending its way through congress.

In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its guidance pertaining to the Health Breach Notification Rule, making changes that are significant for any company using health-related data. The new FTC guidance greatly increases the likelihood of enforcement actions against companies sharing health data for advertising purposes. David LeDuc, VP for public policy at the Network Advertising Initiative, breaks down the FTC’s new policy.

Although cookies will soon be off the menu and mobile identifiers are under fire, advertisers are taking their sweet time to cook up alternatives. Two-thirds of marketers say they’ve hit pause on actively transitioning from third-party identifiers, according to a new survey from Advertiser Perceptions.

“The best way for us to deal with this is not to complain, but to partner with the ecosystem,” says Alvin Bowles, Meta’s VP of business ecosystem partnerships. AdExchanger caught up with Bowles to talk about the metaverse, Facebook haters, the $10 billion in revenue set to evaporate due to Apple ATT and the rise of TikTok.

Marketers have recognized a 360-degree view of a customer isn’t the promised land it used to be. Rather than focusing on data volume, it’s more valuable for companies to ensure that whatever data they do possess is the correct data, says AJ Brown, CEO and co-founder of LeadsRx.

Earlier this month, ESP, not to be confused with PPIDs, entered open beta in GAM, so feel free to rev up your UID2s. In English: Google is moving forward with its solution, called encrypted signals from publishers (ESP), that allows publishers to share encrypted first-party signals, including Unified ID 2.0 identifiers, with buy-side platforms of their choosing via Ad Manager. Here’s the DL on all things ESP.

When brands need to better position their products and services, they turn to the advertising industry. So how did the advertising industry allow the term “surveillance advertising” to gain a foothold, not just with aggressive privacy advocates but with lawmakers and regulators, asks Davis+Gilbert’s Gary Kibel.

Google Analytics is removing the IP address from its global product. We get into the data privacy whys, as well as what Google Analytics is building in its place, in this week’s episode. Also: The EARN IT act and how American Express overhauled its attribution model in anticipation of loss of signal.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Courting Disaster A California district court judge has scathingly reprimanded Google’s legal team. Google requested to withhold 6,232 of 6,322 documents in a privacy suit brought by Chrome users.  Google “cavalierly” claimed the review was justified but had no justification to support its claim, […]

It was hard to imagine how mobile measurement platforms could survive Apple’s ATT changes. But the MMPs aren’t dying, they’re thriving, says Branch’s Alex Bauer, on the heels of raising $300 million.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. How “About” That? The Office of the California Attorney General issued a potentially impactful decision this week. Heads-up, ad tech companies: Inferences made about customers or consumers can be classified as personal information, even when the constituent data pieces aren’t personal or are gathered […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Erik Matlick, CEO and founder of Bombora. Marketers around the world are struggling with two competing truths. First, audience data has never been more important for delivering successful campaigns. At […]

Google’s communications on the Topics API in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox suggest a broad, coarse-grained approach to targeting. But the limited information shared to date leaves many questions unanswered, writes Eric Schmitt, research director at Gartner.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The “Go” In Google There are two important privacy issues at the top of EU regulator agendas right now: a GDPR case against IAB Europe and Schrems II cases targeting Google Analytics.  On the one hand, IAB Europe supporters seem heartened, counterintuitively, after […]

Who’s going to serve as the administrator for Unified ID 2.0? Not the IAB Tech Lab. Earlier this week, CEO Anthony Katsur noted in a blog post (almost offhandedly) that the Tech Lab has decided not to take on the technical admin role for UID 2.0 “at this point.”

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Not Kidding Around  During the State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden called on lawmakers to get cracking on legislation that bans ads targeted at kids. “It’s time to ban targeted advertising to children, [and to] demand tech companies stop collecting personal […]

A strange dynamic has emerged. Unsurprisingly, TCF detractors are in high spirits. The drum they’ve been banging has finally been acknowledged by a regulatory body. But proponents of the TCF – or at least those on the opposite side of the fence from Ryan and his crowd – seem curiously comforted by the DPA’s decision.