Data Privacy

Major brands and global holding companies are preparing for a world without the Google ad ID. A month before GDPR, Google announced that in Europe it would no longer distribute the Google ID, an identifier attached to its ad server log files used to measure campaigns across the web. Any measurement of Google audiences in […]

Some apps don’t seem to be taking GDPR seriously – or maybe just don’t realize how much they’re leaving themselves exposed. Although mobile apps aren’t necessarily more at risk of GDPR violations, they do have specific and nuanced tasks they must complete in order to comply, and many are noticeably behind. Mobile apps that rely on […]

Advertisers that want to exclude people interested in “Passover,” “Native American culture” or “evangelism” from seeing a campaign on Facebook will soon be out of luck. On Tuesday, Facebook said it’s planning to remove more than 5,000 ad targeting parameters that could be used to discriminate against minority groups. The targeting options will be unavailable […]

Drawbridge is one of the cross-device OGs, but it’s in the midst of a pivot. The company revealed $15 million in new financing on Monday from existing investors Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Northgate. The money, which brings Drawbridge’s total funding to $70 million, will be immediately invested into a product road map focused on non-advertising-related […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world.  Lindsay Pattison isn’t messing around about increasing diversity in WPP’s top ranks. The former global CEO of GroupM agency Maxus was promoted to chief transformation officer of WPP last year. While the job’s purpose […]

Acxiom had a solid quarter – although it would have been a bit more solid if it still had its Facebook relationship. On Thursday, the company reported earnings for its fiscal quarter ending June 30, with total revenue clocking in at $227 million, up 7% year over year. If Partner Categories, Facebook’s now-retired feature for third-party […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Back To The Bench The US Justice Department is appealing the decision by Senior US District Court Judge Richard Leon to allow AT&T to acquire Time Warner. “Most legal observers believe the government faces an uphill battle in overturning the ruling,” reports The Wall […]

Bonjour, GDPR enforcement. Google and Facebook may have bullseyes on their backs in Europe, but it’s two mid-sized French startups that received the first warning shots from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – and that shouldn’t be surprising. “GDPR is not just there for the big guys,” said Ronan Tigner, an associate at Morrison […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Going Once, Going Twice … Later this year the FCC will hold two wireless-airwave auctions – the mechanism for telcos to license broadband spectrum from the government – and the Sept. 18 deadline for applicants is heating up the already boiling media M&A market. […]

Crimson Hexagon is back in business on Facebook and Instagram – mostly. The social analytics platform, which uses AI to analyze public data across social networks, said Friday that most of its customers have had their access restored to both Facebook and Instagram data since the end of last week. The process was far swifter for […]

The Trump administration’s Commerce Department is in talks with tech and internet providers, including Facebook, Google, AT&T and Comcast, to craft a proposal addressing online privacy. The Washington Post reported the news Friday. Why now? The administration is succumbing to pressure amid global criticism that a lack of online privacy regulation led to foreign meddling […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.  Today’s column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an independent audience strategy consultant.  Today’s increasingly enhanced privacy era requires a closer collaboration between media companies and their audiences, based on a true value exchange, trust and transparency. Users who […]

Even Facebook isn’t impervious to the downstream effects of repeated scandals, macro privacy trends and the law of large numbers. With Cambridge Analytica, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and flatlining use in North America, which is Facebook’s most lucrative market, the buck had to stop, or at least stall, sometime. It did so on Wednesday […]

Federal Trade Commission members said during a House hearing Wednesday that the FTC does not have the authority to adequately punish companies that misuse consumer data. Several data privacy scandals over the last year and a half prompted the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. Equifax’s data breach in 2017, for example, released personal information […]

Google was hit with a $5.1 billion fine by the European Union on Wednesday for antitrust practices around the Android mobile operating system – a move that underscores Europe’s willingness to issue steep financial penalties for bad behavior. And there’s another bludgeon in the EU’s cache that Google – and the advertising world in general […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grow Big Or Go Home HBO is at a crossroads and its new corporate manager plans to make a change, a recording from a recent company-wide town hall meeting suggests. John Stankey, the AT&T executive who now oversees the Time Warner media properties, says […]

The 2018 World Cup has featured an exciting range of upsets and contenders, but some World Cup marketers see early signs of trouble thanks to GDPR throwing a wrench into digital advertising and the absence of the US team. GDPR, which became law less than a month before the soccer tournament, is especially painful for […]

Summer Of Our Missed Consent Google is causing consternation and potential GDPR violations by delaying its implementation of the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework, a collaborative model for publishers to gather consent and transmit that consent up the supply chain, Reuters reports. Google promised to fully integrate with the industry framework by August, but […]

The sweeping California privacy law, AB 375, that was rushed onto Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his 11th-hour signature last week won’t go into effect until 2020. The new law gives consumers a host of new rights, including the ability to compel companies to share what data has been collected about them, the right to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. In-House Helpers Consultancies are cashing in on in-housing. Firms like PwC, Accenture and Deloitte are using the media transparency debate to position themselves as in-housing experts, picking up marginal revenue – and helping brands cut out agencies in the process, reports Digiday. Because consulting […]

 Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The GDPR Pipe Cleaner Programmatic ad spend has rebounded a bit in Europe after contracting a month ago when GDPR came into effect. Clients cut programmatic by as much as 50% in the days following enforcement, since many publishers lacked consent technology and advertisers […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Weed Whacks Influencers Influencer marketing has a fraud problem, and Unilever CMO Keith Weed has had enough of it. At the Cannes Lions festival, Weed said Unilever will no longer work with influencers who buy followers to inflate audience and engagement metrics. Unilever will […]

Advertisers know linear TV spots drive store visits. Proving it is another story. On Tuesday, Snap-owned location company Placed released a tool that attempts to tie the two together. To power its offering, Placed is licensing viewership data from Inscape, the data division within smart-TV manufacturer Vizio, which has access to around 8 million opted-in […]

While both the California Consumer Privacy Act and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation address the collection of personal information by businesses, they are actually quite different. Here’s where they diverge and why the advertising trade orgs are lobbying like bandits to block the California act’s passage. The IAB, DMA, ANA, 4As and NAI decried the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The House Always Wins As YouTube keeps dialing up brand safety protections, creators in marginal or disreputable categories are feeling the brunt. A relatively small but active group of creators who stream from inside casinos (because people like to watch others gambling) have found […]

Google is reversing its policy for its consent management platform (CMP) that initially capped at 12 the number of vendors a publisher can list in opt-in messages, following critical feedback from publishers and the ad tech industry. The platform now has no limit. “The change being made now is in line with our priority of […]

Emodo, Ericsson’s mobile ad platform for telcos, is aiming to boost the quality of location data in the ad ecosystem with a tool launched Thursday that uses carrier data to verify mobile audiences on a pre-bid basis. Marketers are shelling out for bad targeting and it’s akin to flushing their budgets down the toilet, said […]

Even if Google registers its entire product stack with the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), there will still be important differences between Google’s GDPR solution and the programmatic ecosystem. Google has a huge advantage because of its end-to-end status in the online supply chain, said Blake Brannon, VP of product at the privacy […]

Social plugins, your cookie-dropping days are numbered – on Safari, at least. At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced that the third-party widgets that litter the internet will no longer be able to place cookies on visitors using Safari. “We’ve all seen these like buttons and share buttons and these comment fields,” said Craig […]

Apple is reportedly headed once more into the fray with the launch of a contextual ad network that could include inventory from Pinterest, Snap and a collective of other apps in the App Store. The move, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, may seem strange in light of macro events like Facebook’s data scandal […]