Opinion

While Topics API is a significant improvement from Google’s initial proposal, FLoC, there’s a more efficient and privacy-compliant window into interest-based advertising, says Stephanie Layser, News Corp’s VP of data, identity and ad tech. The answer? Seller-Defined Audiences (SDA).

In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its guidance pertaining to the Health Breach Notification Rule, making changes that are significant for any company using health-related data. The new FTC guidance greatly increases the likelihood of enforcement actions against companies sharing health data for advertising purposes. David LeDuc, VP for public policy at the Network Advertising Initiative, breaks down the FTC’s new policy.

The lines between traditional and connected TV are getting blurrier. YouTube’s Brandcast event will be the same week as the Upfronts. Is it a move to declare the end of traditional TV? Probably not, writes Lauren Douglass, Channel Factory’s SVP of global marketing – perhaps it’s YouTube’s way of asking everyone to “stop treating CTV and linear TV as two completely separate entities.”

Marketers have recognized a 360-degree view of a customer isn’t the promised land it used to be. Rather than focusing on data volume, it’s more valuable for companies to ensure that whatever data they do possess is the correct data, says AJ Brown, CEO and co-founder of LeadsRx.

There’s an industry-wide scramble to replace third-party cookies – but it’s unreasonable to expect that just one solution will become a silver bullet, writes Garrett McGrath, SVP of product at Magnite. Solving for identity will require a range of solutions and more involvement on the sell side.

TV measurement providers in the streaming era have quite a lot of boxes to check. But according to Samba TV, all is naught without incremental reach. Marketers are missing out because the current CPM model “doesn’t deduplicate across screens,” said Samba TV’s CEO, Ashwin Navin.

Brand advertisers want the chance to engage with consumers in the metaverse. But platforms and publisher reactions are more … “meh.” The media industry should be cleaning up our current digital environments before “mucking up the metaverse,” writes Gavin Dunaway, product marketing lead at The Media Trust.

As ecommerce continues to boom, AI technology promises to revolutionize nearly every aspect of a retailer’s operations. Yet, the human aspect of tastemaking has never had more influence, says Catherine Leung, managing executive director, head of activation, Hearts & Science.

When brands need to better position their products and services, they turn to the advertising industry. So how did the advertising industry allow the term “surveillance advertising” to gain a foothold, not just with aggressive privacy advocates but with lawmakers and regulators, asks Davis+Gilbert’s Gary Kibel.

As the consumer journey has grown more complex across a fragmented ecosystem, attribution has become much more challenging – particularly in CTV/OTT advertising. Enter multi-touch attribution (MTA), the only effective way to fully understand the customer journey, writes TJ Sullivan, EVP of strategy at Digital Remedy.

If you know the brand Ibotta, you’re likely thinking of the popular cash-back app. Users upload receipts of in-store purchases and redeem credit for products listed for promotion in the app. But while that business still exists – and still represents the majority of Ibotta’s revenue – the company is shifting from DTC app to B2B2C performance marketing network.

Ask five people about the potential of connected TV (CTV) and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. That’s because CTV is massively misunderstood, even though it’s one of the fastest-growing channels in digital advertising, writes Michael Tuminello, VP of strategy at Mediaocean.

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.