Brave

Lesser-known browser Brave comes out of the woodwork; agentic chatbots require new ad practices; and private equity can endanger both brands and publishers.

Perplexity didn’t just try to buy Chrome; product placement in TV and film is on the rise; and the FCC is on one again.

Rival browsers raise an objection to Google being forced to sell Chrome; ad agencies pivot to software and services; and people are turning to chatbots instead of search, with error-filled results.

Recent moves by major ad tech players prove the industry doesn’t actually need cookies. But Chrome’s cookie pivot doesn’t clarify what will happen to the 1% of its audience that’s already cookieless or what will become of plans to deprecate the Android Ad ID on mobile.

There are other motivating factors for crossing the LUMAscape, besides increased efficiency and less ad fraud. These businesses are trying to position themselves to win in a transformative era that will make or break many ad tech companies.

If you’re looking for a think piece about what Google’s most recent third-party cookie deprecation delay means for the online ad industry – this isn’t it. 😅

In today’s newsletter: The CMA comes out with an updated evaluation of Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox proposals; the IAB talks Privacy Sandbox with Google; and Temu may be a shell company, but its ad spend keeps skyrocketing.

When Google first announced plans to disable third-party cookies on Chrome in January 2020, the news hit ad tech like an earthquake. But a lot has changed in the past four years. Now, as Google finally begins acting on those plans, the death of the third-party cookie is looking a lot more like opportunity than crisis.

Brave Software, which makes the eponymous browser and search engine, is taking the next step by opening a self-serve ad platform option.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let The Search Begin The long-dormant search category is rousing. Microsoft recently invested $10 billion in OpenAI, maker of machine learning content creation software DALL-E (for images) and ChatGPT (for text responses), with plans to test ChatGPT’s returns for Bing searches. Meanwhile, Amazon […]

The FTC enforces truth in advertising laws with special attention to ads that claim particular benefits to a person’s health or their bank account. But the FTC can only bring so many cases to trial. Which is where the National Advertising Division comes in.

After more than a decade of relative stasis in the search engine market – which is to say, Google cementing its dominance at every step – is there an opportunity for Google alternatives to gain share? Some big-name players in the space think so. In June, there was the public launch of Neeva, an ad-free […]

Johnny Ryan, a professional thorn in the side of big tech and ad tech, left browser company Brave this week to go nuclear on data rights. He’s now a senior fellow at Open Markets Institute, a think tank focused on antitrust issues, and a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, a Dublin-based […]

By Allison Schiff and James Hercher Are Google’s cookie syncing capabilities a violation of consumer privacy or are they common industry practice? The answer to both could be “yes.” This new data debate, which fired up the ad tech industry, was sparked Wednesday when ad browser Brave’s chief policy officer, Johnny Ryan, asserted that Google’s […]

Brave, a privacy-centric web browser, launched its advertising and user rewards platform on Wednesday. The Brave browser debuted three years ago and now has more than 9 million users. Its co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich created JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla, which operates the Firefox browser. The new Brave ads are more like browser notifications than […]