Opinion

Here are some key challenges preventing retail media from reaching its full potential, with some ideas for how to overcome them. 

The rapid growth, nearly ubiquitous use, and public interest around generative AI – alongside a shifting social media landscape and divisive political issues – will present new challenges for voters, platforms, media and marketers.

There are over one billion connected TVs globally, with US advertisers expected to spend nearly $27 billion on Connected TV (CTV) in 2023 alone. And as the rise of CTV disrupts the industry, it’s generating new marketing opportunities for advertisers.

If ad tech were a medical patient, a doctor would diagnose it with, among its other ailments, a bloat problem – specifically, bidstream bloat.

Third-party cookies, once widely used by marketers to track consumers online and target and measure digital ad campaigns, have fallen out of favor with international regulators keen to protect consumer privacy. Since Google originally announced its intention to phase out the use of third-party cookies on its market-leading Chrome browser, the ad tech industry has been developing ways to ensure that marketers and publishers can continue to deliver effective and measurable advertising, while respecting user choice and rights through consent.

The second round of ad fraud (and worse) alleged by Adalytics on the part of Google/YouTube provides yet another definitive example of the problem with mega walled gardens.

Brands need to start preparing for a contentious election season, crafting strategies for how they’ll deal with hot-button issues.

In the context of TV advertising, clean rooms offer privacy-compliant software that enables advertisers and publishers to match user-level data without actually sharing any personal information or raw data with one another. 

MediaMath failed to introduce essential product features demanded by trading desks, especially in view of an increasingly competitive DSP market.

To get the most out of SKAN 4 and prepare for future advancements, advertisers should focus on these four areas.

Google’s protestations about TrueView’s media quality aside, two questions remain: Why is any of this happening, and why is change unlikely in the short term?

YouTube is very much in the hot seat. However, let’s zoom out and consider all of the different media companies and platforms that are doling out “grab bags” of video inventory.

These strikes will impact content generation for the foreseeable future. Media buyers need to think about how that will impact their jobs.

Publishers aren’t just off-setting losses with direct-sold programmatic; they’re unlocking the 70% of consumers brands can’t reach in the open marketplace.  

The current model for ads.txt isn’t helping the industry understand how publishers are working with sellers and resellers, writes Rotem Shaul, co-CEO of Primis.

How retailers and ad tech interact will determine whether retail media can avoid the same predatory practices that have led to traditional media becoming commoditized.

Discrepancies across the various attempts to quantify the issue with YouTube TrueView have just raised more questions about measurement failures.

There is no shortchanging the complexity of today’s media industry or the impact that the ever-expanding range of choice has on effective cross-media measurement. That complexity, however, doesn’t grant marketers any leeway when it comes to delivering on business objectives. In reality, increased complexity amplifies accountability.

The last few years saw the app giants take over the mobile app ecosystem, wielding brute strength to overwhelm the smaller publishers whose innovation and risk-taking historically drove things forward. But generative AI is leveling the playing field, giving small and midsize app developers the ability to create new apps and innovate on existing platforms dramatically faster with substantially fewer resources.

In a wildly exciting and inventive sector, YouTube is merely meeting the status quo – with scope for so much more.

Having time to prepare for major changes is generally regarded as a good thing, both in life and the digital advertising industry. But when it comes to preparations for a privacy-first, post-cookie world, there’s been far too much talk about preparation and far too little action. This is hurting advertisers’ results today, not just in some theoretical future.

A significant number of solutions that claim to be cookieless, including unified IDs and cohort-based targeting, still rely on IDs. These solutions will find it extremely difficult to achieve the scalability required to become a true successor to cookie-based advertising.

The Washington Post is looking to capitalize on a resurgence in advertiser interest in news content, and the AI trend, to create new opportunities for brand collaborations.

The more time the marketplace has to evaluate the Privacy Sandbox – and, particularly, the Topics platform – the worse those platforms will look.

When an ad tech company goes belly up – and its destiny is being decided by indifferent creditors – it becomes difficult for unfamiliar bankers to capture (or preserve) the value.

It’s only fitting that YouTube, which has long coveted TV’s ad dollars and advertisers, should find out what it feels like to be treated as if it were TV.

U.S. state privacy laws are multiplying at a dizzying rate. Here are the key points to know for the collection and processing of sensitive information for the rest of 2023.

Based on the growing flurry of lawsuits against creators, it’s clear that many of them are dangerously unaware of the legal risks involved in influencer marketing.

Publishers who have strong first-party relationships with loyal user bases are at an advantage – and the homepage is where that relationship thrives. 

The alleged independent third-party ad verification on YouTube and across its network does not actually meet the standards any rational being would have for “independent” or “verification.”