The digital advertising world is changing faster than the seasons.
At the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Randall Rothenberg, who held the top spot for 14 years, is stepping into an executive chairman role, while David Cohen, IAB president since March, is taking over.
Not only will Cohen become CEO of IAB, he also inherits that same mantle at the IAB Tech Lab, which develops ad industry standards. That confederation makes sense, with the worlds of privacy regulations, big tech policies and the need for common standards colliding.
Cohen has a big task ahead of him and we’ll outline his biggest priorities as he steers the IAB and the IAB Tech Lab into an uncertain future.
And also, Facebook in February 2021 will start limiting how many ads a page can run. Its rationale: It’ll help its proprietary machine learning understand which ads are effective if marketers throw less messaging onto Facebook’s walls, thus paving the way to improve performance and pricing.
Sounds like a win for marketers except, again, they’ll have to cede significant control to a walled garden. (Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.)
But as things change, they also stay the same. Taboola and Outbrain were once planning to merge to create the monster link recommendation site you’ve always wanted. Now, no more. The reported reason: business practices Taboola initiated that cost it some pretty big customers.
Tune in this week to hear how it all went down.
