Cheerio, Europe. Experian-owned Tapad is exiting its European business after seven years in the market. Tapad will stop the delivery and use of its graph in the EU by August 1. The company denies rumors that its move is a preemptive measure to avoid an investigation by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. “Our decision to […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Robin Caller, CEO and founder of Overmore Group. Fair warning, this essay is a bit of a rant. I mean no harm to any promoter of ad tech, martech, clean rooms or […]
Swaarm, a Berlin-based startup that helps advertisers, agencies and ad networks track their performance marketing, hadn’t yet launched in June 2020 when Apple first announced its plans to limit IDFA use. The timing was fortuitous. Rather than having to pivot like a legacy mobile measurement provider, Swaarm’s co-founders (who had been developing the technology for […]
Consider 2021 the age of consent. The end of third-party cookies is pushing nearly everyone in the supply chain to try to figure out how to get consumers to opt in – including a growing number of ad tech companies that are attempting to create their own consumer-facing consent mechanisms. It’s a new and largely […]
While Google is busy dismantling how the open web functions, the ad industry is busy trying to re-architect it. The IAB Tech Lab released several technical specifications for review on Tuesday in support of Project Rearc. The industry initiative began last year by developing a framework for online targeting without reliance on third-party cookies, including […]
Most advertisers and ad networks aren’t ready to support Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework or SKAdNetwork despite an impending “early spring” deadline. [If Apple is a stickler, the first day of spring is March 20.] Based on an internal audit of its clients and partners, mobile measurement provider Branch found that just 1.05% of advertisers are […]
Soon-to-be-president Joe Biden has a full plate, from ramping up COVID-19 vaccine distribution and dealing with the economy to addressing the stark polarization of the Trump years. So, don’t expect much movement on privacy and consumer protection during the first 100 days. But both are top priorities for the incoming administration. And there’s appetite for […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jordan Grossman, EVP of ad sales at GasBuddy. Remember back in the day when advertising was as simple as putting an ad up where you knew your target audience was going to be? It looks […]
The House’s antitrust report on big tech, released last week, described the lopsided power dynamic at the W3C, where several “market participants” interviewed by the subcommittee said that they felt “bullied” by Google. The report claims that Google uses Chrome’s dominance in the browser market to “effectively set standards for the industry.” First, Chrome has […]
The pandemic has turned Centro CEO and founder Shawn Riegsecker into a slipper-wearing night owl. When Slack and email goes quiet, Shawn gets busy, staying up until the wee hours. Working from home can do that to you. “There are too many pings throughout the day, too much mental confusion,” he says. “When everybody shuts […]
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the practice of real-time bidding. (Read the letter here.) In a letter addressed to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons on Friday, the group, led by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., decries what it calls a “widespread privacy violations by companies […]
The world is in a state of flux – but so is the ad tech industry. That’s why IAB UK created a new role in April focused solely on helping ad tech “build a more sustainable future,” said Tina Lakhani, who was elevated to fill the head of ad tech position. Lakhani joined IAB UK in […]
Mobile advertising IDs are probably not long for this world. Neither Apple nor Google – which is fresh off announcing its plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome less than two years from now – has taken concrete steps to eliminate their respective device IDs as of yet, but the app ecosystem should be preparing for that […]
Location data is a privacy landmine. But there are still buyers out there for providers, including Media And Games Invest (MGI), the public German conglomerate that acquired mobile location company Verve earlier this week. The last few years haven’t been kind to Verve. The company experienced multiple rounds of layoffs last year and closed its […]
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) officially took effect on Jan. 1, 2020, and now businesses must hustle to comply as a new clock begins to tick. CCPA enforcement starts on July 1. Here’s what you need to know to get up to speed: CCPA basics CCPA is for now the most stringent privacy regulation […]
If 2018 was the year of GDPR and 2019 was the year of CCPA-related anxiety, 2020 will be the year the digital advertising industry is forced to mature rather than just talk about it. The threat of severe penalties for noncompliance combined with inconsistent legal guidelines (and a lack of federal privacy legislation in the United […]
The programmatic ecosystem spent the last 10 years in a state of hyper growth, and programmatic spending surpassed $100 billion dollars globally for the first time in 2019. While the next 10 years will likely bring a slowdown due to market maturation and data regulations, it’s indisputable that programmatic buying and the rise of ad […]
Mobile data company Ogury raised $50 million in Series C funding on Thursday with an eye on international expansion and consumer privacy-related R&D. The round, led by existing investor Idinvest Partners, brings the company’s total funding to $92 million over the last six years, and follows a $21 million extension of its Series B in […]
Microsoft is planning to apply the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) across the entirety of its business and customer base in the United States. Why? Because Congress can’t get its act together (literally). In a blog post on Monday, Microsoft decried the fact that there’s been no serious movement to draft bipartisan federal privacy legislation. […]
Over the last year and a half, Facebook has been embroiled in so many controversial issues, it’s hard to keep track: privacy problems, the spread of misinformation, election interference, improperly secured data, antitrust concerns and, most recently, Facebook’s policy on paid political advertising, which is rubbing nearly everyone, including some of Facebook’s own employees, the […]
Alastair Mactaggart, the man behind the California Consumer Privacy Act, has a second act. Disturbed by the intensity with which ad industry and tech lobbying groups “explicitly prioritized weakening the CCPA,” as Mactaggart put it in an open letter posted to his website, he’s spearheading a new ballot measure for the 2020 California elections. The […]
“Break up Big Tech” is a good sound bite for presidential candidates on the stump. But antitrust regulators in the United States and around the world aren’t rushing to sharpen their scalpels just yet. While there’s no denying that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and even Netflix “are extremely strong,” their size in the […]
Facebook has warned investors to expect a pronounced revenue slowdown in the second half of the year and into 2020 thanks to “ad targeting-related headwinds.” And Instagram can expect to weather the same challenges. Instagram has been a growth driver for Facebook, both in terms of engagement and ad spend. The two share data between […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is researching the privacy practices of AppNexus, Oath and other advertising subsidiaries owned by broadband companies. The agency is in the midst of examining the privacy policies, procedures and practices of broadband providers as part of an overarching study into how telecom companies are morphing into vertically integrated behemoths that […]
Apple shed light on its policy on cross-site tracking prevention last week and, if you read between the lines (and use a magnifying glass), it’s leaving the door slightly cracked on a potential workaround for certain tracking-related use cases. The document, posted on Wednesday, is designed to make plain, if it wasn’t already, Apple’s intentions […]
Facebook’s stock dipped slightly on Wednesday morning after the Federal Trade Commission formally announced its $5 billion dollar fine over privacy violations. But by the time Facebook reported its second quarter earnings after the bell, the stock had recovered and then some. Facebook is up 3.2% after beating expectations and raking in the ad revenue. […]
After more than a year on ice, Facebook is bringing back reach estimates in Custom Audiences. Facebook suspended the metric, which advertisers would use to preview reach estimates for lists uploaded to Custom Audiences, in March 2018 when academic researchers from Northeastern University discovered a vulnerability. The exploit could have allowed someone to infer attributes […]
Privacy protection isn’t a tick-the-box exercise, and so policymakers need to think outside the box. At the Federal Trade Commission’s annual PrivacyCon event in Washington, DC, on Thursday, the agency invited nearly 20 privacy researchers and academics from around the world to dig into the nitty gritty on consumer privacy, data collection, security and the […]
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg went on a Cambridge Analytica apology tour. This year, he’s got a new theme: DC, bring on your regs. In the absence of regulation, “we’re going to do the best we can,” the Facebook CEO said Wednesday during a fireside chat at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival. But private companies, he […]
“Today, we’re going to talk about building a privacy-focused social platform,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared, with only a mild sense of irony, as he kicked off the F8 developer conference in San Jose on Tuesday morning. One would be forgiven for wondering if Facebook is even capable of such a pivot, and Zuckerberg recognized […]
