Data Privacy

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is nearing its final form. With the close of the state legislature’s 2019 session on Friday, no more bills can be introduced this year, and the handful of amendments that did pass the Senate are now headed to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for a signature. Newsom has until […]

Usually, you’ve got to pay lawyers for legal advice. But between sessions at Fordham University’s annual conference on international antitrust law and policy in New York City on Friday, there was lots of informal chatter about Google’s growing list of antitrust inquiries. The takeaway: This isn’t Google’s first antitrust rodeo, but it might be different […]

“Break up Big Tech” is a good sound bite for presidential candidates on the stump. But antitrust regulators in the United States and around the world aren’t rushing to sharpen their scalpels just yet. While there’s no denying that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and even Netflix “are extremely strong,” their size in the […]

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. CCPA Crunch Time Lobbyists, cool your jets. The California Consumer Protection Act is nearing its mostly final form. The legislative session closes on Friday the 13th (that’s not ominous), which is also the deadline for lawmakers to pass any outstanding bills. Hail Mary lobbying […]

The data-management platform (DMP) was sold as a tool with the power to turn publisher data into dollars. Vendors wooed publishers into signing multiyear contracts to use the technology. But the expectations didn’t match reality. As those contracts have expired, especially this year, many publishers aren’t renewing them. Just as marketers are moving from the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. GDPR Who? GDPR hasn’t stunted the growth of programmatic revenue in Europe. An IAB Europe programmatic sales report finds the category grew 33% in 2018 to $18.4 million, The Drum reports. Even excluding the impact of social media ads, programmatic revenue was up 26.6% […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grabs most of the attention, but other state privacy laws are cropping up across the nation. More than a dozen states either have new data protection regulations on the books or in committee, from Nevada, Maine, Pennsylvania and Connecticut to Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland, said Gary Kibel, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Obscura Procura Airbnb is leading a $20 million investment in Atlas Obscura, a travel and local oddities media company. More than half of Atlas Obscura’s revenue already comes from the booking of trips and tour experiences, so it’s a natural strategic partnership. The site […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Trust Me, This Is Bad Fifty – count ’em, 50 – attorneys general are planning to work together on a sweeping joint antitrust investigation into Google. Google’s dominance over the online ad market will be the probe’s first priority, the Republican Texas AG told […]

Facebook has warned investors to expect a pronounced revenue slowdown in the second half of the year and into 2020 thanks to “ad targeting-related headwinds.” And Instagram can expect to weather the same challenges. Instagram has been a growth driver for Facebook, both in terms of engagement and ad spend. The two share data between […]

New York Attorney General Letitia James is leading a bipartisan investigation into whether Facebook engages in anticompetitive behavior to drive up ad prices. James, a Democrat, is being joined in her work, which will also look into whether Facebook’s actions have endangered consumer data and reduced the quality of consumer choice, by eight other state […]

By Allison Schiff and James Hercher Are Google’s cookie syncing capabilities a violation of consumer privacy or are they common industry practice? The answer to both could be “yes.” This new data debate, which fired up the ad tech industry, was sparked Wednesday when ad browser Brave’s chief policy officer, Johnny Ryan, asserted that Google’s […]

Cookies: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Well, that depends on who you ask, and the experts disagree. This week on The Big Story, the team examines both sides of the heated debate on the value, or lack thereof, of third-party cookie tracking. On one side of the fence, a study from May […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. An Endless Conquest  Google’s allowance of aggressive conquesting on search results is becoming a headache for companies relying on organic search. Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, sounded off about the practice on Twitter this week after his company showed up below four paid ads […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Divesting Ad Tech  News Corp has hired bankers to oversee the potential sale of Unruly, a video SSP the news company acquired four years ago for about $140 million, Sky News reports. Terms of the potential deal are still unknown, but News Corp’s decision […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is researching the privacy practices of AppNexus, Oath and other advertising subsidiaries owned by broadband companies. The agency is in the midst of examining the privacy policies, procedures and practices of broadband providers as part of an overarching study into how telecom companies are morphing into vertically integrated behemoths that […]

After more than a year of tinkering, Facebook is rolling out a long-promised tool that lets users see the data about them that third-party apps and websites pass to Facebook, and then decouple that data from their Facebook account. Starting Tuesday, users in Ireland, South Korea and Spain will be able to access the feature, […]

Apple shed light on its policy on cross-site tracking prevention last week and, if you read between the lines (and use a magnifying glass), it’s leaving the door slightly cracked on a potential workaround for certain tracking-related use cases. The document, posted on Wednesday, is designed to make plain, if it wasn’t already, Apple’s intentions […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) could disrupt audience-based TV advertising before it really has a chance to take off. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 – less than 140 days from now – is chock full of language and requirements that TV broadcasters and their data partners need to pay attention to. […]

Every state in the United States, plus Washington, DC, has an attorney general tasked with regulating, investigating and enforcing against noncompliant marketing practices. They’re known colloquially as “baby FTCs” – but don’t be fooled. They’ve got teeth. “Think of state attorneys general as the top cops in their respective state; they’ve got active consumer protection agendas […]

Twitter is planning to eliminate third-party customer data sources from its ad-buying system, a shift that’s strikingly similar to the action Facebook took following Cambridge Analytica. Advertisers will still be able to use third-party data, they’ll just have to buy it themselves and Twitter reserves the right to approve the data sources. Twitter told The […]

In May, during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the impact of data privacy and competition policy on the digital ad ecosystem, former AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley told lawmakers that Google and Facebook deserve to be broken up. “Let’s apply some common sense to the regulatory process just by acknowledging that consumers pay […]

It’s a cliche to say that data is fuel but, in GasBuddy’s case, that’s literally true. The GasBuddy app, which helps drivers crowdsource information about cheap fuel prices, has access to opted-in location data from more than 15 million monthly active users. Users are more than willing to share their data, because they’re receiving a utility […]

Real-time bidding (RTB) is a flashpoint in the debate over the future of programmatic advertising. But whether the practice of using personal data in a real-time ad auction is lurching toward its deathbed in Europe, thanks to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or whether companies will just need to update how they collect consent […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Spoiled For Choice Vestager strikes again. Starting next year, Google will show a new “choice screen” to Android smartphone owners in Europe that prompts them to choose a default search service from a set of four companies – initially Google, Yahoo, Qwant, a French […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Without Peer Sizmek offloaded its contextual advertising company Peer39 to private equity firm O3 Industries for $18 million, Business Insider’s Lauren Johnson reports. O3 reportedly beat out other bidders including The Trade Desk and Zefr. So what’s the future of Peer39? Mario Diez, whose […]

“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 Gary Kibel, a partner in the digital media, technology and privacy practice group at Davis & Gilbert. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) were a private business, it would be having […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pulling The Plug Companies that use a plug-in to display Facebook’s ‘like’ button on their websites are jointly liable for any customer data transferred through the widget under GDPR, the EU’s top court ruled on Monday. The court was looking at the case of […]

Facebook is getting poked by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, but that doesn’t mean it’s facing two separate antitrust probes in the United States. “It would be unprecedented, not to mention duplicative, for the DOJ and the FTC to be investigating the same company for essentially the same conduct,” said […]