Data Privacy

Meta just got sued over an alleged violation of HIPAA. But where exactly does the health privacy law apply? With the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, it’s more important than ever for digital advertisers to understand how HIPAA protects (and doesn’t protect) the use of sensitive health data in ad campaigns. Plus: Understanding the resurgence of MMM and the rise of incrementality measurement.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Speak Softly, And Carry A Big Tech Big Tech is on the defensive in the US, where it’s become politically popular to take shots at Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. But events that have transpired over the past year abroad demonstrate how powerful those […]

Many publishers are betting big on seller-defined audiences (SDA) as a centerpiece of their post-third-party-cookie monetization plans. Problem is, although publishers are eager to test the performance of SDAs, there’s still very little demand from the buy side. AdExchanger spoke with ad agencies and buy-side tech platforms to get their side of the story.

The expiration date for third-party cookies has been extended for another year. We talk through what the delay will mean for ad tech. Plus, an entire corner of the LUMAscape now exists within the Tremor-Amobee deal, the ultimate example in ad tech consolidation.

Google released a batch of new monetization, targeting and measurement features for AdMob on Thursday, with a focus on (what else?) data privacy. “Everybody is thinking about how they can evolve in this new world,” David Mitby, Google’s senior director of product management for app ads, told AdExchanger.

Procrastinators are being given a gift (of sorts): Google is postponing its deadline for the phaseout of third-party cookies in Chrome by a year, until the second half of 2024.

Advertisers love a captive audience, and there are few audiences more captive than mass-transit riders. So it was perhaps inevitable that Intel-owned urban mobility app Moovit would launch an ad platform. Moovit’s advertising service is live for advertisers in Latin America, Italy and Israel, and the company plans to roll it out everywhere its app is used.

Google launched Google Analytics 4 (GA4) back in October 2020 to unify digital web and app analytics. Its push toward the new solution underscores the need for advertisers to implement a data strategy built on first-party data. But now the question is whether brands should prioritize the switch to GA4 before the sunsetting of Universal Analytics (UA) in July 2023 and what this transition means, writes Jessica Jacobs, global director of partnerships and growth at Incubeta.

Google is signaling it may spin off its ad tech business. A DSP and SSP change would create new winners and losers and potentially open up access to walled-off inventory, says our guest, Ari Paparo, founder of Marketecture. Plus: How Google Analytics’ coming change will affect publishers.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Death By A Thousand Subscriptions News subscriptions. OK. Entertainment subscriptions, sure. Gaming subscriptions … I can see it.  But subscriptions have now taken over the economy.  This year, Sweetgreen and Taco Bell started testing subscription offers, and Alaska Airlines also began testing a subscription […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get The Net Netflix isn’t just vetting third-party vendors for its pre-launch ad business (though it is vetting vendors, to be clear).  The streaming leader is on the hunt for an executive to lead its incubating advertising business, The Wall Street Journal reports.  […]

The impending Google customer force-shift from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) represents a major change to how advertising ROI will be measured via Google’s services going forward. But publishers that spoke to AdExchanger about their migration plans aren’t feeling the same pressure as with, say, preparation for third-party cookie deprecation, Google’s other major upheaval scheduled for next year.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Can A Tiger Change Its Stripes? Google offered to split its ad tech business into a stand-alone company (owned by Alphabet) as a concession to divert an antitrust suit, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s unclear which products Google would transfer – although […]

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.

With more eyes on consumer privacy than ever before, data clean rooms have become one of the hottest technologies in marketing when it comes to secure, modern data collection. But as clean rooms come to the forefront, many brands are finding that building and working with this technology requires a little acumen and a lot of planning. St.Clair McLean, VP of infrastructure and security at Alliant, shares three clean room approaches to consider as brands look to align the right capabilities with their needs.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Supremely Disturbing Apple and Google (although primarily Apple) have been roiling developers with anti-tracking policies and initiatives, like the AppTrackingTransparency framework on iOS and the Android Privacy Sandbox. But that hasn’t kept them out of the regulatory spotlight. Au contraire. Lawmakers are calling for […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get Connected The coveted prizes in programmatic right now are exclusive CTV contracts.  In Cannes, the crème de la crème for handshakers and lunch-takers is Netflix. Google is meeting with Netflix there, Ad Age reports, and is an obvious choice as Netflix purportedly […]

Google may open up YouTube to outside programmatic demand as a bargaining chip to EU regulators. And a looming recession won’t deflate digital advertising – although don’t expect pandemic-level growth.

Although Apple held off on dropping any ad tech industry-shaking privacy news at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week, it did publish documentation about the next version of SKAdNetwork – we’re up to 4.0 now – which includes a handful of new features that developers and mobile measurement providers have been asking for.

Three web standards organizations tasked with the online ad industry overhaul, the W3C, the IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org, called out for help this week during a series of presentations and a joint panel at the AdMonsters Ops conference in New York City.

Richard Russell, VP of omnichannel marketing at Deckers Brands, parent company of Ugg and Teva, has been on a mission to “wean people off of using return on ad spend as the end-all be-all metric” and to reorient the company’s marketing strategy to focus on getting the most out of first-party data.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. TikTok TV Last week, TikTok announced a new comedy docuseries you’ll have to pay to watch. Wait, what? It was only a matter of time before TikTok launched its subscription show. TikTok, which prefers not to be called a social media platform, thank you […]

We read between the lines of Google’s progress report to the UK’s antitrust regulator on its plan to remove third-party cookies from Chrome. Could Google miss its own self-imposed 2023 deadline? “Signs point to yes.”

You’ve probably heard (dozens of times) by now that first-party data will be the key to post-third-party-cookie ad targeting. But what exactly is first-party data? How does it differ from second-party, third-party and zero-party data? And what makes first-party data more suited to a privacy-centric ad experience?

The word “cookieless” crops up in virtually every conversation about the future of online identity. But what exactly do people mean when they say “cookieless”? Although the definition seems simple enough – the absence of cookies – it lacks the nuance to encompass the true complexity of signal loss. It’s also a misnomer.

Probabilistic attribution is a “stopgap,” says newly appointed Adjust CEO Simon “Bobby” Dussart. Using it for now is fine, but SKAdNetwork is the future of measurement on iOS – take it or leave it. Also in this episode: Remaining independent under parent company AppLovin.

Even if third-party cookies weren’t on Chrome’s chopping block, brands would need a strategy to navigate signal loss, says Spiceology CEO Chip Overstreet. Spiceology is working with digital identity management company Parrable and MediaMath to retarget users in environments where third-party cookies aren’t available.

Even the experts at companies whose future depends on explaining the value exchange of personalized advertising to consumers struggle to make a convincing argument. Part of the problem is that the ad industry’s MO has been to “overcomplicate” matters, said Lauren Wetzel, chief operating officer at InfoSum, speaking at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit earlier this week.

In today’s hybrid retail environment, customers can window shop in person or comparison shop online before completing their purchase in a store or on the internet. Or they partake in “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS). The need to capture the customer’s journey between online and offline behavior was the seed for Foursquare’s new Closed Loop feature, the location data platform’s latest addition to its attribution product

Apple’s ATT rollout triggered an industry-wide freakout among mobile ad tech companies. But surprisingly, over the past year Apple has gotten “more accessible,” says Omer Kaplan, CRO and co-founder of ironSource. Also in this episode: Being a newly public ad tech company in a tricky market.