Federal Trade Commission

“Esto perpetua” – let it be perpetual, in Latin – is the state motto of Idaho, but it doesn’t apply to the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Kochava.

Raashee Gupta Erry spent most of her career in the digital marketing industry at agencies and brands, including Essence and Volkswagen US. Then she took a job explaining ad tech to the Federal Trade Commission. “There’s a wind of change happening,” Gupta Erry says.

Pundits predicted Microsoft would use Xandr to create an ad-supported video game content fortress, with the ad tech business getting exclusive access to Microsoft’s gaming IP. Any ambitions in that direction may now be on hold.

Regulators have made it clear that they have their eye on how data flows between first parties and their partners – and that first parties are responsible for what happens when the data they collect is shared with others.

Health data and race are sensitive topics on their own. Put them together, and it’s easy to see why people struggle to thoughtfully tailor their marketing efforts to different audiences. Still, many health care marketers are opting in to race-based targeting to stay relevant and reach underserved populations.

There was hot ad tech legal drama in the Gem State this week.

A judge in Idaho intends to rule that the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Kochava can proceed. But the FTC may have to make some changes to its complaint before moving forward.

In 2022, top players in digital advertising finally started taking gaming seriously, and the groundwork was laid for programmatic in-game advertising to grow thanks to a long overdue update to the IAB’s and MRC’s in-game ad standards. The scene is also set for in-game advertising to expand into console gaming, and we might even see the debut of the first sell-side platform dedicated to gaming.

Mary Engle is EVP of policy at BBB National Programs, a nonprofit organization that’s helping keep self-regulation of the ad industry alive. She’s also spent more than three decades with the FTC. In this episode, Engle gets into the weeds on “commercial surveillance,” the nitty-gritty of ad disclosures, the FTC’s case against Kochava and more.

There are two sides to every story and two sides to every lawsuit. In late August, the Federal Trade Commission sued mobile measurement and data provider Kochava accusing the company of selling sensitive geolocation data. Here’s what Kochava CEO Charles Manning has to say about it.

Earlier this week, AdExchanger asked FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya during his keynote at the NAD’s conference on advertising law in Washington, DC, why the commission decided to sue Kochava rather than any other ad tech company with a location data business. And, according to Bedoya, Kochava was singled out for a reason.