Identity

A picture – or a comic in this case – is worth a thousand words. But each of our most popular comics of 2021 illustrated a key development in the world of advertising and media this year, from the end of last-click attribution and the growth of CTV to mega media mergers and the birds in Google’s Privacy Sandbox. These are the stories behind our top comics of the past year.

The ripple effects of Google’s decisions dominated AdExchanger’s top story list in 2021.

That’s A Wrapped If you were on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok last week, you probably saw the Spotify Wrapped feature, an annual breakdown of each user’s most listened to songs and programs for the year. That roundup is then shared on social media, with captions like, “Spotify thinks I need therapy.”  Every year, Spotify […]

Criteo is buying IPONWEB, the engineering company that built most of the underlying infrastructure for the ad tech ecosystem. The deal represents a huge chess move on the part of Criteo. So, what does Criteo get from acquiring the company responsible for building the foundation of programmatic advertising as it exists today?

Amazon The Impervious Google and Facebook are reeling from data privacy changes. Tim Cook warned investors that Apple underestimated part shortages and would not meet demand until next year. Macy’s slimmed its store inventory. Disney’s production schedules are delayed by months and even years. And Amazon is – doing great. The ongoing supply-chain drama, COVID-19 fallout […]

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the tentpoles that kick off that final stretch of Q4 spanning Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this Black Friday/Cyber Monday combo was not as record-setting as in years past, according to Adobe and others who track sales data. There are many reasons behind this change. Not only has the pandemic […]

Roast turkey wasn’t the only thing to gorge on this Thanksgiving weekend. On Friday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s top antitrust regulator, published a 125-page document outlining the next phase of its ongoing antitrust investigation into Google’s Privacy Sandbox. (You can read the whole shebang here.) The document contains an updated set […]

Although privacy and online advertising are often framed as mortal enemies – or at least mutually exclusive – it doesn’t have to be the case, says Lindsey Shepard, CMO of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser. “The advertising ecosystem online is fundamentally broken right now – I believe that,” says Shepard (although, you can call her “Shep”). […]

The Location Equation Location data companies have seen an uptick in inquiries from government officials and public health groups, The Washington Post reports. It’s no surprise – health officials and local governments had to track the effects of quarantine measures as well as next-order impacts on public services, such as transportation. Though the applications are […]

The direct-to-consumer cookware company Made In noticed its social media dashboards went a bit screwy after Apple tightened its privacy controls this year. Luckily, Made In uses all of its own dashboards – which didn’t go haywire – and tracks identity changes closely, CEO Chip Malt shares as special guest on this week’s The Big […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Game Amazon CEO Andy Jessy (Jeff who?) issued a bold statement at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle this week. “In the case of games, we have a belief that that could end up being the largest category in entertainment over a long period […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Creative Galaxy Snap is fending off competitors with new money-making tools for creators, Variety reports. Next month, Snapchat will launch Spotlight Challenges, cash bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 for accounts with top views in categories like “Best Trick Shot.” The tool is a […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Andrew Frank, VP distinguished analyst at Gartner. As yesterday’s cross-domain tracking methods fade into history, the entire digital ad community is casting around for a suitable replacement – and marketers trying to navigate through the […]

With your permission, please endure yet one more Privacy Sandbox-related bird reference: Chrome’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposal will not fly in its current form. “We’ve got a long road to hoe before it’s possible to prove this can be a working model for advertising,” said Todd Parsons, chief product officer at Criteo. The […]

What is privacy? Turns out, there’s no easy answer, even for David Temkin, Google’s senior director of product management for ads privacy and user trust. “Privacy is not itself quantifiable. It’s a subjective sense; it’s relative to people’s expectations,” Temkin says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “[Privacy is] relative to what they understand […]

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AVOD FTW When people think of Amazon video assets, it’s Amazon Prime, Twitch and Fire TV. But IMDb TV, formerly Freedive, has quietly become an important piece of Amazon’s video strategy, and may even be a golden goose of its own someday, VideoWeek reports. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tale Of Two Internets Apple’s and Google’s user privacy rules have caused distress among advertisers and might reshape the internet itself, The New York Times reports. Audience-targeting tech (i.e., site tags and third-party cookies) helped morph many ad tech and social media platforms into […]

Facebook said on Thursday that it’s testing and introducing a batch of new products and tools that aim to help businesses personalize the experiences they offer on Facebook without resorting to targeted advertising. The products also make it easier for businesses to manage their day-to-day interactions with customers across Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and the big […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Contextual Seed The contextual ad tech startup Seedtag raised $40 million, Business Insider reports. The Spanish company plans to add 30 employees and expand its US footprint. Before this round, Seedtag had raised $6 million to date. But contextual targeting is a buzzy category, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Party Line The Washington DC Attorney General’s office expanded its antitrust suit against Amazon. The complaint initially targeted Amazon’s third-party seller policies and now also encompasses first-party seller deals. The crux of the AG’s case against Amazon’s first-party seller policies is the “Minimum […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Podcast Talk Podcasting has heated up, with big M&A deals in recent years, including Amazon’s acquisition of Wondery for $300 million and Spotify’s $235 million deal for Megaphone. Podcast advertising is forecasted to exceed $2 billion by 2023, according to emarketer, which revised up […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The SPAC Attack Online publishers are popular takeover targets for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which promise a route to IPO without the typical pre-IPO roadshow – the well-known brand merges with an already-public shell company. First-party data and ad tech companies have boomed […]

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Everything Store Adds More Audio Amazon is new to podcasting but it’s moving fast, borrowing from Spotify’s playbook. After scooping up podcast publisher Wondery eight months ago, it’s now signing exclusive distribution and ad deals with buzzy podcasts like SmartLess (hosted by Jason Bateman, […]

Ad verification and measurement provider Integral Ad Science held its first earnings call after going public just over a month ago. Revenue increased 55% to $75.1 million year-over-year. That growth was largely fueled by programmatic revenue, which jumped 94% to $31.8 million compared to the same period last year. Programmatic accounts for 42% of total Q2 revenue, as […]

Ad verification company DoubleVerify recently shut down a new type of scheme in connected TV that uses screensavers to hijack streaming devices in order to generate fake ad impressions – even when the screen is off. DoubleVerify estimates that the scam, dubbed “SmokeScreen,” is bilking advertisers out of more than $6 million a month and […]

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

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Just Browsing The only browser operators with the resources and potential building blocks to compete with Google Chrome are Microsoft Edge (which is built on Chrome’s open-source code) and Apple’s Safari WebKit. So really that just leaves Safari. And Apple has given up on […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Deadlines, Give Or Take Google Chrome has updated the timeline for its Privacy Sandbox proposals, its developer test kit for identity and measurement products meant to replace the purposes served by third-party cookies. The deadlines are quarterly benchmarks, not set dates à la GDPR. […]