Opinion

Over the years, publishers have accused advertisers of prioritizing the wrong metrics. But that’s only one side of the story – as gatekeepers of quality media environments, publishers and media owners have a massive responsibility to focus on quality, too, writes Alessandro De Zanche, audience and data strategy consultant.

By Anders Pilgaard Andersen, senior vice president, general counsel, Adform  Recent decisions by multiple EU data protection authorities signal the use of Google Analytics violates the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These decisions sound a warning not only to the many companies using Google Analytics but, more broadly, to any company using US-based ad […]

For all Android 12 users, regardless of their opt-in status, advertising IDs will be zeroed if developers have not integrated new permission levels into their apps. In other words, writes Chris Farm, CEO of Tenjin, advertisers won’t know the advertising IDs of Android 12 users after April 1 if certain SDK changes haven’t been implemented at the app level.

“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 Erik Matlick, CEO and founder of Bombora. Marketers around the world are struggling with two competing truths. First, audience data has never been more important for delivering successful campaigns. At […]

By Kristina Prokop, CEO and Co-founder, Eyeota  Now that Google has scrapped its plans for Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) in favor of its proposed Topics API, the buzz around “cohorts” is fading. But cohorts remain a powerful path forward for advertisers in a cookieless world. That’s because the strength of cohorts extends well beyond […]

CTV is the hot new programmatic media channel, but it suffers from fraud, a lack of clear media-buying signals and a hodgepodge of approaches to measurement. The lack of standards is hampering market growth – but rather than waiting for standards to be handed down, publishers can create positive momentum with media buyers now, writes PubMatic’s Nicole Scaglione.

As an industry, we’re guilty of procrastination. With just months until third-party cookies are deprecated, so many advertisers are still twiddling their thumbs. But procrastinating is a curious and dangerous approach, writes Nitin Rabadia, commercial director of Kepler Group.

To better monetize branded content, the Financial Times is investing more in brand lift measurement. FT is partnering with analytics provider Brand Metrics to implement the firm’s ad exposure algorithms into FT’s multiplatform approach to branded content, said global insight director Enzo Diliberto.

By Stephanie Himoff, VP of global publishers and platforms at Outbrain This article is sponsored by Outbrain. Already battered by years of marginalization from walled gardens, media owners on the open web are looking over a cliff. The deprecation of third-party cookies promises to hamper targeting on their sites, threatening to wipe out 52% of […]

Google’s communications on the Topics API in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox suggest a broad, coarse-grained approach to targeting. But the limited information shared to date leaves many questions unanswered, writes Eric Schmitt, research director at Gartner.

Many US companies, including video ad platform Innovid, strengthened their commitments to DEI over the past two years. There’s been “a ton of conversation” about diversity, equity and inclusion-related issues that are finally “turning into action,” but there’s still a long way to go, said Innovid’s CMO Stephanie Geno.

The Weather Company is a large publisher with lots of first-party data and, with investments from IBM Watson Advertising, it’s using AI technology to mitigate bias in advertising. The goal is to use both to monetize quality content above short-term gains in ad revenue, says CEO Sheri Bachstein.

The rising value of first-party data has created a bit of a “gold rush” mentality. Companies are hearing that first-party data represents unrealized marketing value, so they’re mistaking the goal as amassing as much first-party data as possible.

While marketers have spent years perfecting their attribution models, once cookies are gone – and it’s coming sooner than you think – multitouch attribution (MTA) models will be obsolete, says Jason Wulfsohn, CEO and co-founder of AUDIENCEX.

TV is finally beginning to mine the powerful digital marketing capabilities that big search engines and social networks offer. But there’s a long history of trust issues in digital advertising, writes Jason Fairchild, CEO of tvScientific.

In a cookieless world, attribution is old news. To future-proof, it’s time to focus on incrementality: the measure of supplemental business results that a campaign drives in aggregate, says Ryan Green, vice president of marketing and innovation at Coegi. 

Pharma’s digital transformation has accelerated media spending on video across devices. And media buyers in the pharma space have ways to overcome the additional challenge of needing to adhere to numerous regulations, writes Kelly McAloon, Associate Media Director of Programmatic at Good Apple.

Apple’s ATT framework continues to make user acquisition and retention campaigns more difficult to deploy, track and measure. In light of this, app marketers must find new avenues for maintaining an engaged audience. The number of available advertising IDs on iOS (IDFAs) is decreasing, and Apple’s native tracking and attribution solution, the SKAdNetwork, has serious limitations for app marketing campaigns.

A strange dynamic has emerged. Unsurprisingly, TCF detractors are in high spirits. The drum they’ve been banging has finally been acknowledged by a regulatory body. But proponents of the TCF – or at least those on the opposite side of the fence from Ryan and his crowd – seem curiously comforted by the DPA’s decision.

Consolidation is a natural and necessary part of a maturing industry’s life cycle. But not all consolidation yields the same outcomes, particularly when it comes to mobile gaming, writes Itai Cohen, head of marketing and corporate strategy at Digital Turbine.

When first-party data became the center of every marketing conversation, every CMO I talk to started asking the same questions: How do I achieve return on marketing investment in a cookieless world? How do I navigate evolving data governance and privacy concerns and meet customer expectations for hyper-personalized experiences?

As CTV grows, advertisers are looking to allocate more marketing dollars to the channel. But advertisers should be strategic about how they spread out their spend, writes John Hamilton, CEO of TVDataNow.

Most of the time, advertising is reacting to a changing world. Brands have precious few tools to balance reach and brand safety, and keyword blocklists are at the top of that short list.

Spurred by the rapid global changes of the last two years, the use of keyword blocklists is at an all-time high. But as brand safety tools reached ubiquity in response to changing global conditions, they lost much of their elegance and with it their ability to help brands lead the way on important, salient topics.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Bob Walczak, CEO, MadTech Advisors.  The future is cookieless. This we all know. But the industry faces a long road ahead before cookieless audience targeting becomes the norm. Sure, context and cohort targeting provide […]

Ad tech companies are partnering up left and right to aggregate as much TV data as possible. But for media buyers, TV inventory also needs to be alike and accessible across channels – which is possible through an end-to-end platform, said Jessica La Rosa, VP of partnerships and data at Tremor International.

The Trade Desk’s OpenPath demonstrates supply path optimization (SPO) is moving from concept to reality. But what does it practically mean for publishers or yield teams tasked with driving business KPIs? The question is to whom SPO is important, writes Emry DowningHall, SVP of programmatic revenue and strategy at Unwind Media.

This year is forecasted to see healthy growth in ad spend thanks to the continued surge in digital advertising. Case in point: eMarketer projects that $239.89 billion will be spent on digital advertising in 2022, a 13.6% increase from 2021. Some of the largest ad-holding groups recently posted strong Q4 and overall 2021 earnings fueled by growth in digital ad spend.

Over the past few years, several factors created a storm that forced marketers to reexamine digital targeting and measurement, consumer consent and the technologies that power each of these functions. With change as the only constant, Gary Walter, CEO and president of Infutor, offers five predictions for the year ahead.

From AI technologies and machine learning to the growth of OTT video platforms, mobile games and more, ad tech continues to thrive as the world goes digital. It’s why programmatic media buying is going to push CTV out of the Wild West, writes Jeremy Fain, co-founder and CEO at Cognitiv.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Julie Rubash, chief privacy counsel at Sourcepoint.  Dark patterns – or website designs that manipulate users into performing specific actions – are widespread these days. In fact, one recent study from Princeton examined 11,000 shopping […]