The Big Story is celebrating its 300th episode! Back when we started recording The Big Story in 2018, Oracle had just acquired Grapeshot, its last nine-figure advertising acquisition.
It would only take another six years for its advertising business to enter a decline and then get the axe on an earnings call on June 12.
On this week’s podcast, Senior Editor James Hercher details what he discovered about the advertising business’ demise from conversations with more than a dozen current and former Oracle employees. That ad business, by the way, still raked in $300 million per year. (For Oracle, of course, that’s a drop in a bucket.)
One big reason rose to the top: data privacy regulation spooked Oracle. The fear of a GDPR fine, and external questions about how a subsidiary’s data might end up in the hands of its advertising data business, meant that the $300 million was more trouble than it was worth.
Then, we talk about the challenges and opportunities around reaching LGBTQ+ audiences. Coming out of Pride Month, Senior Editor Alyssa Boyle shares why marketers should think beyond just June to reach gay audiences.
But she also talks about the perils of reaching gay audiences in a way that compromises their privacy or reveals sensitive information. Contextual rules over audience targeting. And on the programmatic front, history has shown that even sharing specific, unrelated information – like Grindr including location data in the bidstream – can in fact triangulate individuals, food for thought as programmatic enters its next era of data privacy.
