What captured our readers’ attention this year was both a continuation of and a departure from years past.
Our top 10 stories in the past year coalesce around two themes: kookies and kwality.
Ahem, cookies and quality.
Quality has been a theme for some time in programmatic – in every permutation possible. This year, quality had to do with rooting out made-for-advertising (MFA) sites, better understanding of instream and outstream video standards and understanding how bid duplication scrambles the signals of the programmatic supply chain.
Cookies. Oh, cookies. 2024 was supposed to be the year cookies went away. The year started with the IAB Tech Lab voicing its concerns over the Privacy Sandbox, Google’s cookie replacement. If cookies went away, the industry would be cooked if it had to rely on what was in the Sandbox, the report said. Two months later, Google said it wouldn’t pull cookies this year. Two months after that, Google said it might never remove cookies.
It was a dramatic reversal, but one that some in the industry had been predicting for years. Everyone who refused to believe that Google would actually remove cookies turned out to be right after all.
And there was more in store for Google. Two months after Google said it might never remove cookies, the who’s who in programmatic gathered in a courthouse in Virginia to discuss how the nuances of Google’s ad tech violated antitrust law and harmed publishers.
Rounding out the top 10 were two stories explicitly focused on TV. One story, published amid the chatter at CES, focused on VideoAmp’s fall from grace. The startup burned through hundreds of millions in capital in a bid to unseat Nielsen. But mistakes were made.
On the flip side, Netflix’s decision to build its own ad tech attracted the attention of the industry. Any frequent streamer can tell you that Netflix can deliver a crisp image over a wonky internet connection better than anyone else – so what happens when it puts that engineering muscle into the ad tech space?
From top to bottom, here are our most-read stories of the year:
IAB Tech Lab Says The Chrome Privacy Sandbox Is A Time Bomb That Will Break Real-Time Bidding (February) To quote the holiday classic “Home Alone”: “If Uncle Frank says no … then it must be really bad.” For a diplomatic and consensus-forming organization like the IAB Tech Lab to come out swinging against the Privacy Sandbox? Instead of finding a middle ground? Well, it must have been really bad. A task force analyzing the Privacy Sandbox found that only a handful of 44 basic digital advertising use cases would still work if Chrome pulled cookies. In retrospect, this report likely set into motion Google’s decision two months later to pull its 2024 cookie deadline.
Netflix Is Launching Its Own Ad Tech (May) Netflix has been full of surprises. Reversing course and launching an AVOD version of its product was one such surprise. Partnering with Microsoft to power their ad tech was another. In contrast, deciding to in-house its ad tech felt inevitable to many in ad tech, given the engineering prowess Netflix is known for. This story, which gave more details about Netflix’s ad tech ambitions, captured the attention of our readership.
Google Won’t Pull Cookies In 2024 (April) The four-year journey to remove cookies got a little bit longer in April. In the wake of the IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox report, and with uncertainty over the CMA’s decision to remove cookies, Google removed its self-imposed deadline to pull cookies from Chrome.
Google Says It Won’t Deprecate Cookies In Chrome After All (?!) (July) Instead of an indefinite delay, Google decided that, instead of pulling cookies, it would create an opt-out tool for cookies (which already exists, to be clear). The Privacy Sandbox would handle programmatic use cases for the pool of opted-out users.
Adalytics Report Torches Ad Tech For Touting MFA Prevention While Scarfing MFA Supply (March) Remember the “quality” theme? Adalytics has been responsible for a substantial portion of the quality and transparency-themed stories in recent years. And this report called out the duplicity of how the industry had been handling made-for-advertising inventory.
Why VideoAmp Stumbled In The Race To Replace Nielsen (January) After VideoAmp laid off 20% of its staff and recycled its leadership, inquiring minds wanted to know: What happened? Featuring on-the-ground reporting from CES, this story filled in the gaps that explained the startup’s missteps and miscalculations – a must-read for anyone fascinated by the ups and downs of startups.
The DOJ’s Witness List For The Google Antitrust Trial Is A Who’s Who Of Advertising (July) When the DOJ released its witness list, the names were overwhelmingly familiar to any reader of AdExchanger or attendee of our events – because they almost all have been featured in our coverage. Although not everyone ended up testifying, this story is an excellent primer for gauging where the epicenter would be of the Google antitrust trial.
Bye-Bye Sizmek! Amazon Advances Flashtalking And Smartly As Alternatives In Advance Of The Shutdown (January) Quick, name an ad server that competes with Google. Sizmek went bankrupt, and Amazon snapped up the tech before shutting it down. The lack of options, along with interest in Amazon’s acquisition, drew the industry to this piece about the evolving ad server space.
Google’s Adoption Of New Instream/Outstream Standards Could Spell Disaster For Some Online Video Platforms (March) Video inventory is incredibly valuable. And instream ads, which happen when people initiate watching videos, are the most valuable of all. New standards separated instream from three other outstream-like experiences, leading the industry to wonder if CPMs would plummet for the non-instream formats.
Attack Of The Clones: Programmatic’s Hidden Scourge Of Bid Duplication (January) The structure of programmatic can enable fraud, inefficiency or even (allegedly) an antitrust-level competitive advantage. When publishers used header bidding to sidestep Google’s advantage, they stumbled into something else: Not only is duplicating bids inevitable with header bidding, it was a great way to get DSPs to bid higher. Which has made this particular inefficiency challenging for the programmatic ecosystem to address.
