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The Big Story: Tax Time!

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Maryland isn’t a merry land if you make most of your money off of digital advertising.

This week, on The Big Story, we’ll look at the Old Line State’s new line of taxes. AdExchanger’s resident expert on all things legislative Allison Schiff drops by (Plot twist: SHE WAS ALWAYS HERE) to drop knowledge on how the tax will work and what the advertising community is saying about it.

Of course, the digital ad tax – the first of its kind, but not the first time digital goods are being taxed – faces a long road of litigation. It’s unreasonable to think Facebook and Google are going to let this enactment skate by without a tussle. 

And is it also unreasonable to think that, if this tax ultimately becomes the law of the land,  the digital ad giants won’t pass the bill to clients, who won’t pass the bill to consumers? We’ll examine that likelihood.

Next, we’ll look into why iHeartMedia paid $230 million to acquire the Greek god of the sea, Triton. Scratch that, we meant it acquired audio/podcast tech provider Triton Digital.

IHeart has programmatic on its mind, and we’ll take a look not only at how this acquisition fits into iHeart’s greater strategy, but also at the overall market for digital audio ad tech. Available vendors are starting to shrink, thanks to acquisition sprees not only by iHeart, but also by Amazon, Pandora and Spotify.

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