Data Privacy

Real-time bidding is under the gun in Europe. On Wednesday, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) opened a formal investigation into whether Google’s ad-exchange data-processing practices violate the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR celebrates its first birthday on May 25. A complaint filed in September 2018 with regulators in Ireland and the United Kingdom triggered […]

The programmatic advertising ecosystem is a mess – even its main architect agrees. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Brian O’Kelley, founder and former CEO of AT&T-owned AppNexus, shared a three-pronged proposal for how he’d start to fix the tangled web he helped weave. First, give consumers control and transparency over their data. […]

Quantcast began monetizing its consent management platform (CMP) business for the first time on Thursday with the launch of Choice Premium, a paid version of the publisher tool. Quantcast Choice was released about a year ago with the introduction of the IAB Europe’s CMP registry and the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the collaborative industry […]

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

Browser fingerprinting isn’t a new tactic, but it’s newly in the headlines as all of the primary web browsers – Safari, Firefox and now Chrome – crack down on the practice in the name of privacy. The main problem with fingerprinting from a privacy perspective is that there’s no way for a consumer to opt out or to […]

Google Chrome is making it easier for its users to block cookies and harder for ad tech companies to do fingerprinting. But Google’s dominant position in online advertising means even small changes will unleash a cat-and-mouse game with ad tech companies, who may choose to sidestep the new restrictions. There’s also the concern that consumers […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act is regulation in flux. A flurry of amendments to the law are now wending their way through the California State Assembly that would, if passed, either clarify certain aspects of the law or defang it – depending on whom you ask. “It’s all part of the philosophical debate between the […]

Google Chrome is increasing its privacy controls for users and will scramble efforts by third parties to identify users via fingerprinting, making it the last major browser to strengthen its privacy protections for users. The changes, formally unveiled during the Google I/O event Tuesday, will roll out in coming months. Chrome will make it easier […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A man walks into a bar after seeing a TV ad … but there’s no way for the advertiser to prove it ever happened. On Tuesday, TV data company Alphonso inked a partnership with PlaceIQ to use the latter’s location data as a bridge between sitting on the […]

Outside of the office, Amanda Betsold may be found running in an Ironman competition, scuba diving with leopard seals in Antarctica or attempting to climb the seven summits. “I never choose the safe bet,” said Betsold, a programmatic lead at iCrossing. “If I’m going to put effort into something, I want to make it worth […]

Regulation Nation The Federal Trade Commission is in negotiations on a settlement deal with Facebook that would install a federally-approved privacy official at the highest ranks of the company and launch an independent privacy oversight committee. CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be responsible for enforcing privacy at the company, and Facebook will still have to pay […]

“Today, we’re going to talk about building a privacy-focused social platform,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared, with only a mild sense of irony, as he kicked off the F8 developer conference in San Jose on Tuesday morning. One would be forgiven for wondering if Facebook is even capable of such a pivot, and Zuckerberg recognized […]

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

The IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab on Thursday released a second version of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), which publishers and technology companies use to pass consent data for online advertising while still complying with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The TCF update will be in a public comment period for […]

Facebook set aside $3 billion for a potential FTC fine, the company revealed Wednesday when it announced its first quarter earnings. Facebook estimates the fine, which stems from its privacy practices, could range from $3 billion to $5 billion. “We are focused on building out our privacy-focused vision for the future of social networking and […]

With its $4.4 billion acquisition of Epsilon/Conversant, Publicis Groupe becomes a data controller – and that ups the regulatory ante under the General Data Protection Regulation and, likely, any other privacy legislation that comes down the pike. Controllers, in GDPR parlance, determine how and why personal data is processed. Controllers are also required to establish a […]

BuzzFeed thrives on using data to inform its advertising programs, social strategy and editorial. But its cookie-dependent data-management platform (DMP) had too many holes in how it collected data. So the publisher switched to Permutive, a next-gen DMP that uses a browser’s local storage to find patterns in how its users engage with content and […]

LiveRamp has acquired the consent management platform (CMP) Faktor, the company said Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But LiveRamp will take on Faktor’s 11-person team in Amsterdam. Faktor was founded in 2017, in the run-up to the European Union’s implementation of GDPR, when publishers reevaluated their data collection and privacy policies. LiveRamp […]

Johnny Ryan, chief policy and industry officer at Brave, filed a complaint late Tuesday with the Irish data protection commission arguing that the cookie wall on IAB Europe’s website is “illegal” under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The IAB Europe’s site gives visitors three options: agree to the use of cookies and third-party tracking; […]

IAB Europe has notified vendors of changes to its consent management platform (CMP) program, which registers companies that collect and manage consent data for publishers, and is narrowing the gap between its GDPR framework and Google’s GDPR consent standards. These changes also come with a significant price increase. Last week, IAB Europe notified CMP vendors […]

National Football League players train during the offseason – and so does the NFL’s marketing team. From January through July, Aaron Jones, the NFL’s director for club and international marketing, is busily stress-testing his marketing stack and experimenting with new tools to prepare for August and September, when it’s all about activation. “Then, it’s like Black […]

Looking for AddThis audience data in the EU? You won’t find it. Oracle Data Cloud has quietly pulled the plug on that business line. Although Oracle declined to say exactly when it began shutting down AddThis, the process started at some point in the last number of months. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, unconsented […]

Mark Zuckerberg penned a lengthy post last week laying out Facebook’s vision for a “privacy-focused” future – but it’s not going to change Facebook’s business model. Although Zuckerberg expends a lot of ink on the importance of data security and protecting messaging with end-to-end encryption, he doesn’t mention the interest and user-related data that powers Facebook’s […]

Big Tech can’t catch a break in DC … actually, scratch that. If Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is elected to the White House in 2020, she’s got a plan to break up Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. And her proposal specifically targets Google’s ad platform business. On Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate laid out how her […]

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

“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. Sir Francis Bacon is often credited with the phrase, “Knowledge is power.” It is […]

While Facebook’s earnings last Tuesday prove that marketers still spend, some wonder if consumer backlash against the platform could one day damage brands advertising on it. “The slow stream of press has caused more angst and questions,” said James Douglas, executive director and head of media at performance agency Reprise. “Every day it seems like […]

Since GDPR came into effect last year, Google has been at the center of two connected issues around resolving identity in digital marketing. First, it planned to remove the DoubleClick ID (now the Google ID) from its log files, preventing ad tech and analytics companies from using the ID to track campaigns across the web. […]

For many app publishers, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was an opportunity to examine each of their many SDK integrations and ask, “Does it spark joy?” The answer, in many cases, was no: It sparks the potential for data leakage and compliance headaches. In 2018, the number of unused SDKs – those that a publisher […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The New News News industry downsizing continued last week with layoffs at Vice and buyouts at McClatchy, close on the heels of similar painful cuts at BuzzFeed, Verizon Media and Gannett. “We are changing the size of the workforce to align with the revenue,” […]