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The DOJ And FTC’s New Antitrust Heads Plan To Overhaul M&A Review (Someday) New W3C Group Aims To Dial Back The Rhetoric And Get Practical About Post-Cookie Tech The Future Of Retail Media Platforms Will Split From Walled Gardens, Says IRI’s Pelino Disruptel Partners With TCL To Bring Contextual Awareness To TV T-Mobile Acquires Octopus Interactive And Says It’s Still Committed To Ad Tech Here’s How Instacart Plans To Become A Major Ad Platform Big News In Ad Fraud Land, As Human Raises $100 Million And IAS Makes Another Acquisition Campbell Soup’s New Sales Transformation VP On Testing Instacart’s Free Sample Ad Pilot Xandr, Formerly AppNexus, Is Now Formerly AT&T, After Its Acquisition By Microsoft

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T-Mobile Chucks Apple iCloud Private Relay; The Easy-Peasy, Hands-Free CMP Illusion

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2022 at 12:03 am.

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Relay Interference

Mobile carriers hate Apple iCloud Private Relay, an iOS 15 feature that encrypts location data, IP addresses and Safari traffic so that no companies, including Apple, can track web usage.

In Europe, four carriers – T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and Telefónica – are pressing the European Commission to block Private Relay, alleging it will “impair others to innovate and compete in downstream digital markets,” The Telegraph reports.

With its growing multibillion-dollar services business, Apple is increasingly more competitive with carriers for mobile ad dollars, app installs and payment services – the list goes on.

Apple doesn’t track Safari traffic to target web ads anyways. But tracking customer web traffic and location is an important ingredient for many of the services a mobile carrier provides.

The EU is unlikely to step in to stop Apple’s Private Relay, although there are other things carriers can do. T-Mobile, for instance, disabled iCloud Private Relay on its US network, 9to5Mac reports.

But although T-Mobile can flip that switch, Apple gets the last laugh, since it owns the interface.

Now an error message in the Apple Settings section for US T-Mobile and Sprint iOS 15 users reads: “Your cellular plan doesn’t support iCloud Private Relay. With Private Relay turned off, this network can monitor your internet activity, and your IP address is not hidden from known trackers or websites.” Oof.

Disruptel Partners With TCL To Bring Contextual Awareness To TV

by Alyssa Boyle // Posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2022 at 9:00 am.

Usually, when people talk to their TV screen, they don’t expect to get an answer back.

Voice assistant and smart TV startup Disruptel is aiming to change that with a contextual awareness product for smart TVs called Smart Screen. The company has been beta testing the software, which answers a viewer’s questions about their programming using voice-activated queries, since December 2020.

On Tuesday, Disruptel announced a partnership with TCL, the world’s second-largest TV manufacturer, to integrate the product into its Android TVs. Disruptel expects to see its Smart Screen software on the big screen before the end of 2022.

A global consumer electronics manufacturer allows for the level of distribution that’s mission critical to turning smart TV innovation into a scalable reality. Just look at Roku after partnering with TCL in 2014.

“This [will] mark the first time that TVs truly understand what’s [happening] on their own screens,” said Alex Quinn, founder and CEO of Disruptel.

Living Under Apple’s Thumb, With AppsFlyer CEO Oren Kaniel

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2022 at 6:00 am.

To say that 2021 was a weird and stressful year for the mobile app measurement ecosystem is an understatement.

But it’s not like privacy as a concern only came on the scene last year with the release of iOS 14.5 and the requirement from Apple to request permission before collecting a user’s IDFA.

“Privacy is not new for the industry,” says Oren Kaniel, CEO and co-founder of mobile attribution platform AppsFlyer, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.

“The whole thing really reminds me of UDID when the iPhone was first launched,” he says.

As a refresher, amid complaints about user privacy, Apple banned the use of its unique device identifier, UDID, in 2013, and later replaced it with the IDFA, which was created specifically for advertising.

But anyone who didn’t see the writing on the wall about the IDFA’s eventual fate probably wasn’t paying attention.

Apple has been instituting data collection restrictions for apps and on the web for the better part of a decade. Just look at SKAdNetwork, Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Limit Ad Tracking.

Still, Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework was a very big deal. Although not out of character, Apple’s move “was a big surprise for the entire ecosystem” because of its magnitude, Kaniel says.

Wishful Thinking, Meet Pragmatic Planning: A Portfolio Approach To Addressability

by AdExchanger Guest Columnist // Posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2022 at 12:35 am.

"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 Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab.

Is anyone tired of articles claiming to know the key to the post third-party cookie future? Is it first-party data? Contextual? Is it integrating with browser or operating system ad tech? Should you just pack up shop on the web and mobile, then place all your chips on connected TV?

Maybe cynicism is the lens you use to filter these predictions. You feel the lure of the “this is unfair and isn’t about privacy concerns at all” narrative, which grows in popularity as we begin seeing impacts of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency program on advertising outcomes and quarterly earnings. Perhaps you assume with each passing week of all-talk-no-change that there’s no change actually coming. Or you’re simply hoping everyone is wrong.

Don’t be fooled. Change is coming.

What’s more, change is already here

Let’s acknowledge a few things. Yes, the platform privacy narratives may smack of cynicism, but that doesn’t mean they’re going away or the cat isn’t already out of the bag on real privacy concerns. Regulators are waking up to the unintended consequences of data protection and privacy law.

The Problem With Influencer Journalists; Industry Collabs Can Work (In TV)

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2022 at 12:03 am.

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News It Or Lose It

Influencer journalism is a dangerous trend, according to Jessica Lessin, editor-in-chief of The Information.

“Long term,” Lessin writes, “the current obsession with treating journalists like influencers isn’t healthy for journalism.”

For one, so-called “elite reporters” generally don’t abide by the same firewalls or church-and-state rules as traditional newsrooms. And while Substack is great, “we need smart influencer journalists to dissect and analyze and report,” Lessin says.

Measuring the impact of journalistic work needs to go far beyond the number of new newsletter subscribers, and publishers risk pursuing dead-end metrics or a slippery slope to sub-par standards if they focus too much on the numbers.

Although columns serve a purpose – and are eminently monetizable – there is also a cost to turning a sizable chunk of the world’s journalists into columnists or newsletter writers.

Not only do they need to build a dedicated readership, they’re measured – and sometimes compensated – based on engagement, loyalty and open rates. That means they have to spend a lot of time promoting their work on social media and elsewhere. “Most investigative and serious news reporting does not fit that model,” Lessin argues.

And it can all feel a bit icky. A Business Insider memo leaked to the Daily Beast last May revealed that the company scored reporters based on “impact points,” which tallied when influential outside journalists (those with a wide reach on Twitter, radio, TV or in the news generally) cited their work and drove traffic.

CTV And Mobile App Growth Are Behind 2021’s Sizzling Slate Of M&A

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, January 10th, 2022 at 4:13 pm.

2021 was brought to you by the letters M&A.

After a pandemic-induced lull in deal activity in 2020, last year was wall-to-wall consolidation across the media and marketing technology sectors.

Total deal-making activity in 2021 was up more than 82% year over year, according to LUMA’s 2021 market report released last week.

And you can expect more to come in 2022, said Conor McKenna, a director at LUMA.

“Based on the conversations we’re having and the announcements you’re already seeing in the market, it doesn’t feel like we’re slowing down anytime soon,” McKenna said.

The new year is less than two weeks old, and we’ve already seen acquisitions by Integral Ad Science (of French contextual advertising startup Context), Smartly.io (of London-based Google advertising specialist Ad-Lib.io) and Magnite (of cryptographic audience data startup Nth Party).

On Monday, T-Mobile acquired rideshare ad network Octopus Interactive.

T-Mobile Acquires Octopus Interactive And Says It’s Still Committed To Ad Tech

by James Hercher // Posted on Monday, January 10th, 2022 at 9:10 am.

It’s become a familiar tale over the years: a major telco makes a big investment in ad tech followed by buyer’s remorse.

AT&T and Verizon offloaded their respective ad tech stacks, Singtel is reportedly looking to divest Amobee and Telenor sold Tapad.

But T-Mobile is defying the trend.

On Monday, T-Mobile Marketing Solutions, its ad platform and data unit, announced the acquisition of Octopus Interactive, a rideshare-focused advertising startup that convinces Uber and Lyft drivers to install a tablet in the back of their vehicles that riders can use to play games, watch content and, of course, see ads.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although T-Mobile is extending offers to Octopus Interactive’s roughly 50 employees.

“We have an ambition to be a multibillion-dollar player in the ad tech business,” said Mike Peralta, T-Mobile’s VP of Marketing Solutions, who joined the company last June.

The CNIL Hits Google On Consent (Again); Will Ad Tech Rivals Ever Be Unified?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, January 10th, 2022 at 12:03 am.

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Ka-Thunk Goes The CNIL

The CNIL, the French data protection authority, fined Google $170 million and Facebook $68 million because they don’t make it as easy to reject cookies as it is to accept them. It takes multiple clicks to decline cookies – and just one to accept them.

“Since, on the internet, the user expects to be able to quickly consult a website, the fact that they cannot refuse the cookies as easily as they can accept them influences their choice in favor of consent,” the CNIL wrote.

But this isn’t Google’s first rodeo in France.

The CNIL tagged Google with a $57 million fine in January 2019 because its cookie consent request provided insufficient information about how data was to be used across sites and purposes. (So much for being able to quickly consult a website.)

The CNIL’s ruling this week requires Google and Facebook to adjust their cookie consent practices, although only in France – not the rest of the EU.

For now, privacy protections are balkanized due to regional rules, and not just in Europe. China, California, Colorado and Virginia are just a few of the regions that have their own regs. Maybe someday there will be a global privacy law … but don’t hold your breath.

GSTV Is Helping Find Missing Children Through The Power Of Digital Out-Of-Home

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Friday, January 7th, 2022 at 10:07 am.

People who pull off the road to a gas station are an audience both waiting and on the go.

Someone fueling up provides a good opportunity to serve video ads at the pump for candy and soda brands available at the convenience store invariably located a few steps away.

But gas stations are also one of the few places where missing children are sighted. Kidnappers or other predators stop there for gas. Runaways often come to use the bathroom or buy a snack at the service station.

Since 2019, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has been partnering with GSTV to display missing children posters on gas-pump screens across the country.

GSTV operates a national digital out-of-home network of pump-based screens at convenience stores and service stations, including Speedway, 7-Eleven, Chevron, Gulf, Sunoco and ExxonMobil. (GSTV rebranded from Gas Station TV in 2017.)

Today, there are 22,000 participating stations across the US, which gives GSTV’s network a potential reach of 96 million – more than one in three – American adults each month across 48 states.

CDPs Can Disrupt The B2B Space – Here’s How

by AdExchanger Guest Columnist // Posted on Friday, January 7th, 2022 at 12:35 am.

"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 Craig Howard, chief solution architect for Merkle B2B.

The customer data platform (CDP) market for B2B organizations has lagged behind the B2C space to date. But, at last, it’s starting to take shape. Going into 2022, we’re going to see a lot of B2B marketers contemplating whether – and how – a CDP might fit into their tech stack. Therein lies the potential for significant disruption.

As CDPs infiltrate the B2B world, they’re going to create a good deal of confusion regarding existing marketing automation platform (MAP) and account-based marketing (ABM) platform implementations. To be successful, CDPs will have to displace these platforms as B2B organizations’ top marketing technology priority. They’ll also need to absorb most, if not all, of their capabilities. That’s no small task, and it won’t happen overnight.

CDPs in the B2B space have the opportunity to avoid many of the pitfalls that their B2C counterparts encountered, many of which sparked confusion and buyer’s remorse by disrupting but not fully replacing other platforms. What are the essential requirements for a CDP if B2Bs want to achieve true sustainable disruption?

Let’s take a look.