Data Privacy

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.

As brands build out their first-party data strategies and work to assemble post-cookie capabilities, many are “in-housing” to remain in control of their data. But to ensure success, they need to accomplish a few important tasks, writes Nancy Marzouk, CEO of MediaWallah.

A rundown on the state of TikTok’s ad platform, including its attribution woes. (But you’d be crazy not to advertise there.) And location-data-related privacy issues that will crop up should Roe v. Wade be overturned.

Google is launching a new preference center so people can more easily manage their privacy settings, opt out of personalized advertising and specify whether they want to see fewer (or more, ha) ads on a given topic.

We need to find a balance between privacy and sustaining an ad-supported digital media ecosystem, writes Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab. But no one will tolerate half measures going forward. To that end, IAB Tech Lab and its members are developing a portfolio of practical technical standards meant to help the ad industry adapt to evolving consumer expectations, regulations and related browser and OS changes.

Criteo is still using third-party cookies while it can. Why not? But “if tomorrow we don’t have access to them, then we’ll have to use something else,” said CEO Megan Clarken. What sort of “something else?” Criteo has been testing what it refers to as “more privacy-enabled, controllable and reliable signals.”

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.