Identity resolution has become a Rubik’s Cube that everyone’s trying to solve.  

At AdMonsters Publisher Forum Boston, we got a front-row seat to the latest strategies and challenges in this space, thanks to a lively session with Christine Lee, Director of Data Partnerships at Fandom, and Tamir Shub, VP of Business Development at Intent IQ.

Addressability Meets Privacy: The New Balancing Act

Let’s face it: the identity game is rigged. Publishers are caught between the rock of addressability and the hard place of privacy. Lee laid it out clearly — Fandom, the world’s largest fan platform, is navigating a minefield of fragmented regulations and inconsistent user behaviors across devices and browsers. Think of it as trying to juggle on a tightrope while the wind’s picking up speed.

“We’re dealing with different browser types — Apple’s ATT, Firefox, Chrome, Safari — and each has its own set of rules,” Lee explained. She added, “It’s like trying to juggle different user behaviors across desktop, mobile, and mobile web while keeping an eye on the privacy landscape, which is extremely fragmented, not just globally but even within the U.S.”

Whether it’s Apple’s ATT or the ever-shifting sands of state-level privacy laws, Fandom is testing identity solutions to find that sweet spot where addressability meets privacy without losing sight of either.

Fandom’s Secret Sauce: Testing, Testing, and More Testing

But, with over 100 ID solutions on the market, not all options are worth your time. As Lee pointed out, “We’ve leaned into testing a variety of ID solutions in the space, including Google initiatives, Amazon initiatives, and our partnership with Intent IQ. But it’s difficult to compare apples to apples because every vendor has a different methodology.” The real challenge is figuring out which ones move the needle.

Fandom has actively experimented with many ID solutions, but they’re not just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. The key is to be selective — testing the ones that make the most sense for their audience and business goals.

By working with Intent IQ, Fandom saw revenue uplifts from 55% to a whopping 140% across different properties, proving that the right approach can help publishers thrive in this new identity landscape. But it’s not just about the numbers. Lee emphasized the importance of comparing these results side-by-side with traditional methods — a task easier said than done. Still, Fandom’s commitment to rigorous, strategic testing sets them apart from the pack.

Identity Graphs: The Backbone or the Achilles’ Heel?

If identity resolution is a puzzle, then identity graphs are the pieces that need to fit together perfectly. But, as Shub pointed out, not all graphs are created equal. The crux of the issue? Accuracy. Without frequent updates and a reliable truth set, you might as well be hiking with a faulty compass.

“Identity solution infrastructure is founded on its identity graph. But the accuracy is only as good as the graph and the data it uses,” Shub stated. “Without frequent updates, the data becomes irrelevant and misleading. That’s why refresh rates are critical.”

And let’s be honest: no one knows what a post-cookie world will look like. We’re all betting on a hypothesis. The regulatory landscape is murky, platform decisions are unpredictable, and consumer sentiment is a moving target. In this climate of uncertainty, it’s easy to get swept up in solutions that might not hold up under scrutiny.

There’s an urgent need for a standardized way to validate these graphs because trusting data without validation is like betting on a rigged horse race. It’s a gamble, and not one publisher can afford to lose. As Shub pointed out, “Currently, there’s no tool available that can validate data accuracy on a household level ID or person level ID.”

ID Bridging: A Savior or a Mirage?

With the deprecation of third-party cookies looming like a storm cloud, ID bridging has stepped into the spotlight. But as with any tech innovation, it comes with its share of controversy. Critics argue that ID bridging while promising, is fraught with transparency issues, potential fraud, and ever-present privacy concerns. Some in the industry see it as a Band-Aid on a bullet wound — helpful in the short term, but not the long-term solution we need.

ID Bridging is almost directly correlated to the impending demise of third-party cookies. While publishers and tech companies scramble to maintain addressability, there’s growing concern that with no universal standard, ID Bridging could create more problems than it solves. Shady practices, lack of transparency, and fragmented user data are just a few of the issues that put the buy side on edge.

Yet, this is where Intent IQ aims to stand out from the pack. Their technology is built with transparency and accuracy at its core. Beyond following the new IAB standards, the ad tech vendor sets a high bar for others to meet. By ensuring their identity graphs are refreshed every 48 hours and maintaining over 90% deterministic accuracy, they’re working to shut down skepticism and build trust on both the buy and sell sides.

The Buy-Side Perspective: Scaling the Heights with Alt IDs

While publishers are busy fine-tuning their strategies, the buy side faces another set of challenges. Shub gave us a peek into how agencies grapple with the scalability of alternative IDs. The promise is there, but the execution? Not quite hitting the mark — yet.

“Agencies report that alternative IDs didn’t generate the results they were hoping for,” Shub noted. “They’re saying the solution was promising but lacking scale. It’s not just about scale; it’s about having the expertise in identity — specifically.”

Intent IQ is working closely with agencies to overcome these hurdles, with successful campaigns already showing significant performance gains. “For example, we’ve delivered a successful campaign with Involved Media, leading to a 77% increase in leads for an education client,” Shub shared.

It’s a tough climb, but the right tools and partnerships are helping the buy side make headway.

Takeaways for Publishers: Test, Partner, and Evolve

The identity resolution space isn’t just evolving; it’s mutating at a breakneck pace. For publishers, the mantra is clear: test relentlessly, choose your partners wisely, and stay agile.

Lee’s advice? Don’t just look at the numbers—look at the whole stack, and make sure you’re not comparing apples to oranges. “Continue to test various solutions, and make sure when you measure, you’re looking at your entire stack, not just certain demand channels,” she emphasized.

And as Shub pointed out, identity solutions should work for everyone involved, creating a win-win situation for both publishers and advertisers. “Identity is sustainable as long as it works for both sides,” he concluded.

The post How Fandom Is Mastering the Art of Addressability and Privacy With an Assist From Intent IQ appeared first on AdMonsters.

In what could only be described as a Hail Mary pass, Google has agreed to cough up $250 million over five years to fund journalism and AI research in California. This deal was announced with much fanfare, and some might say a dash of self-congratulation. But before we start throwing confetti, let’s take a closer look at what’s really going on here.

The Big (and Not So Big) Picture

On the surface, this deal looks like a lifeline for local journalism. California’s newsrooms have been on life support for years, hemorrhaging jobs and revenue as the digital era reshaped the media landscape. The fund, administered by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, promises to inject much-needed cash into these struggling institutions. 

It helps Google paint itself as the savior of the free press while avoiding a dreaded “link tax” that could have forced the tech giant to pay publishers for linking to their content. This brings to mind California’s Journalism Preservation Act, which proposed to make Big Tech pay for news.

But here’s the kicker: $250 million over five years sounds like a lot until you consider that Google’s ad empire rakes in over $200 billion annually. To put it bluntly, this deal is a drop in the ocean for Google — a PR move dressed up as corporate responsibility.

Why It Matters: The Real Cost of Free News

For years, publishers have watched in horror as their ad revenues dried up while Google and Meta (Facebook’s parent company) turned into digital juggernauts. The relationship between tech platforms and news publishers has always been lopsided. Publishers create the content that drives traffic, but the platforms get the lion’s share of the ad dollars. This new deal doesn’t change that dynamic; it merely delays the inevitable. 

The idea of a “link tax” has been gaining traction globally, with Australia and Canada leading the charge. In those countries, Google and Meta were initially resistant, but eventually, they caved — well, sort of. In Australia, Google opted to pay selected publishers, while Meta briefly blocked news altogether before returning to the table. In Canada, Google agreed to pay $74 million annually to keep news content in its search results, while Meta decided to go the nuclear route and block news links entirely. The global push for Big Tech to pay for news mirrors what’s happening in California.

Google’s deal with the state allows the tech behemoth to avoid the more stringent regulations that would have come with the now-shelved CJPA. The CJPA would have forced Google and other tech giants to hand percentages of their ad revenue over to news publishers. Instead, we get a voluntary fund that’s easier for Google to swallow and far less beneficial for the publishers who need it most. The CJPA could have significantly shifted the balance of power, much like similar legislation in other regions.

The AI Angle: A Trojan Horse?

Then there’s the $62.5 million earmarked for AI research. Let’s not kid ourselves — this deal might seem like a bonus, but it’s worth asking whether it is really about saving journalism. Could it be more about Google bolstering its AI capabilities under the guise of public good?  While the idea of using AI to solve “real world problems” sounds noble, including AI funding in this deal is more about securing Google’s future dominance than helping the news industry.

As Google continues refining its AI-driven search features — like its Search Generative Experience — publishers are experiencing a decrease in traffic from organic search results, directly impacting their revenue. The rise of AI in search is reshaping the landscape, with AI-powered engines like Perplexity.ai offering revenue-sharing models that starkly contrast Google’s approach. 

Google’s move to include AI in this deal is less about journalism and more about maintaining its dominance in the search market. As Scott Messer recently pointed out in his analysis of Google’s latest SEO shake-ups, Google is playing a different game altogether. The company is not optimizing for sending traffic to publishers; instead, it’s focusing on maximizing its ad revenues, often at the expense of the very content creators it claims to support.

Critics, including journalists and labor unions, have called out the deal for what it really is: a backroom agreement that benefits Google far more than it does the struggling newsrooms of California. The Media Guild of the West, representing journalists in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas, was notably excluded from the negotiations, leading them to denounce the agreement as a “shakedown.” This isn’t the first time Google has been suspected of using its financial might to navigate legislative pressures.

Connecting the Dots: What Publishers Need to Know

For publishers, this deal is a double-edged sword. On one hand, any funding is better than none, especially in an industry that’s been in a death spiral for years. On the other hand, this deal sets a dangerous precedent. By allowing Google to dictate the terms of its support for journalism, California has effectively ceded control to a tech giant with little incentive to change the status quo.

Publishers should be wary of becoming too dependent on these kinds of deals. The digital landscape is shifting rapidly, and while Google’s money might keep some newsrooms afloat for now, it won’t fix the underlying issues that have led to the decline of local journalism. With AI companies like Perplexity.ai and OpenAI entering the scene with revenue-sharing models, publishers might need to start exploring these alternative sources of revenue to stay afloat — or, maybe not. The real solutions could lean more towards finding sustainable business models that don’t rely on the whims of Silicon Valley.

The Bottom Line: Google Wins Again

So, what’s the takeaway? Google has once again managed to sidestep regulation while presenting itself as a benefactor of the public good. The $250 million might help some newsrooms in the short term, but it does little to address long-term challenges. This deal is more of a Band-Aid than a cure.

As the dust settles, it’s clear that Google got the better end of this bargain. By agreeing to a voluntary fund, the tech giant has avoided the much larger financial obligations that would have come with the CJPA. Meanwhile, California’s newsrooms are left to grapple with an uncertain future, their fate still largely in the hands of the very platforms profiting from their decline. 

In the end, this deal is a stark reminder of the power imbalance between tech platforms and the news industry. Until that changes, we’re likely to see more deals like this — ones that look good on paper but ultimately fail to address the real issues at play.

The post Google’s $250 Million ‘Gift’ to California News – Is It Really a Gift or Just a Clever Tax Dodge? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Google has had a tough few months.

First, they announced an abrupt about-face in their years-long initiative to remove third-party cookies from Chrome. Barely two weeks later, they were officially declared a Search monopoly by a federal court in one of the most consequential antitrust losses in decades (with another concurrent antitrust case about Google’s AdTech business still pending.) 

As the CTO of Upwave (a Brand Outcomes measurement startup) I’ve spent the last decade doing what everyone in AdTech has to do – navigate cautiously and quietly around Google, for fear of drawing their ire (or simply being toppled by their massive wake.) I have spent years participating in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) discussions about Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and I’ve watched the cookie saga unfold with morbid fascination. 

One thing became clear very early in the W3C process – a small number of companies (particularly, but not exclusively Google) believed very deeply that they had both the power and the right to exercise pervasive control over the entire digital media and advertising industries. Now, it appears that Google may have finally found the limits of its influence: at the courthouse steps. 

But with or without third-party cookies, the web must go on. So where do we all go next?

The Privacy Paradox

The Privacy Sandbox initiative was Google’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable objectives: overcoming Apple’s privacy counter-positioning, maintaining ad revenue primarily generated by capturing and applying comprehensive behavioral data about its billion+, and preserving a sufficiently healthy web ecosystem (since what’s the point of maintaining a search monopoly if searchers have nothing to find?) 

However, Google’s approach was fundamentally flawed in its overly simplistic view of privacy, focusing solely on eliminating cross-site tracking. This narrow definition sidestepped uncomfortable conversations about Google’s data collection and use, but also set an unrealistic bar for the Privacy Sandbox APIs by demanding they facilitate effective advertising while rendering cross-site data sharing technologically unfeasible.

Google put a smart, capable team in the Privacy Sandbox, but their mission was impossible from the start.

The Monopoly Question

The recent court ruling confirming Google’s monopoly in search underscores the company’s immense influence in shaping the digital landscape. Google’s control of the most widely used web browser means that its decisions about cookies and privacy reverberate throughout the advertising ecosystem. And Google’s “walled garden” approach to its many interlocking properties has allowed it to build an unassailable flywheel by tightly bundling its proprietary data, unique scaled inventory, and ad tech stack. 

The Privacy Sandbox initiative, despite its stated goals, has always seemed more about protecting Google’s flywheel than about safeguarding user privacy. And whether the ongoing antitrust trial focused on Google’s ad tech business finds that Google’s dominance of the plumbing of ad buying and serving rises to the level of a monopoly, there can be no doubt that the entire ad tech industry still operates in Google’s long shadow.

Forging a New Privacy Path

Google’s announcement that they won’t entirely remove 3rd party cookies doesn’t mean cookies are safe. Industry analysts anticipate Google will likely implement a consent mechanism similar to Apple’s “App Tracking Transparency,” effectively decimating cookie availability without outright eliminating them.

This scenario presents significant challenges:

1. The industry loses momentum in its efforts to move beyond outdated tracking methods.
2. The Privacy Sandbox initiative risks fading into irrelevance without the urgency of imminent cookie deprecation.
3. Uncertainty surrounding the open web’s future continues to accelerate ad spending shifts toward walled gardens, paradoxically giving a few tech giants even more panoptical views of user behavior.
4. Google may decide it has bigger problems than the long-term viability of the open web and simply retreat into its castle, leaving everyone outside its walls to pick up the pieces.

The digital advertising industry stands at a critical juncture. It’s evident that where privacy is concerned, both industry self-regulation and unilateral decisions by tech giants have fallen short. 

So what’s next? In a world where big tech can no longer set the rules, what’s needed instead is a collaborative, multi-stakeholder effort to develop pragmatic privacy standards, practices, and enforceable guidelines.

It’s time for an international coalition to unite regulators, industry representatives, academic experts, and consumer advocates. Their collective task should be to craft a flexible, adaptable privacy framework that embraces a comprehensive view of privacy, acknowledging its contextual nature and the intricate realities of data usage in today’s digital ecosystem.

In the interim, we must prepare for a transitional period where cookie effectiveness wanes, but no clear alternative emerges. Advertisers must explore and evaluate various strategies, including refining contextual targeting, exploring emerging privacy-preserving technologies, and learning to think like marketing economists.

Google’s privacy misstep, combined with its antitrust challenges, presents an opportunity for industry-wide recalibration. By fostering collaboration, diversifying our approaches, and constructively engaging with regulators, we can work towards building a truly user-centric, economically sustainable, privacy-respecting digital ecosystem.

Ultimately, we have no choice. Google and the Privacy Sandbox are not coming to save us.

The post What Happens When Google Can No Longer Set the Rules for the Web? appeared first on AdMonsters.

At this point, it’s not news that years of ongoing changes in data privacy regulation have created massive amounts of change in the way that data is being used (or not used) across the advertising industry.

As IAB Tech Lab CEO, Anthony Katsur, often says, “Just like energy, finance, or healthcare, advertising is now a regulated industry.” As part of this trend, publishers face challenges in creating sustainable revenue growth.

Navigating Data Privacy in Advertising

Whether it’s the continuing decline in ad revenue that digital publishers are grappling with or the never-ending struggle that the streaming television industry is having to reach profitability it’s clear that owners and publishers of media are feeling the effects of these changes.

One of the areas where these changes are most visible is within the publisher’s data technology stacks. Increasingly, publishers are centralizing the many data sources they need for monetization within their data warehouse. While this evolution brings the promise of insights and connectivity, publishers also need a purpose-built application layer to help them activate and get the most value from their data.

DMPs: From Central Role to Obsolescence

For years publishers relied on DMPs to be at the center of their monetization efforts. As cookie-based monetization becomes less and less dependable and publishers’ distribution channels continue to fragment outside of the web these systems have failed to develop new solutions for key functions like app and historical data collection, 2nd-party audience enrichment, and programmatic activation.

This leaves most legacy DMPs relegated to web-based data collection, audience segmentation, and simple ad-serving activation. Additionally, traditional DMPs were not built with important capabilities such as data clean rooms, identity resolution, and PETs which are extremely important in our privacy-centric world.

Data Warehouses: A New Hub for Monetization

Many DMPs have responded by integrating large data sets through mergers and acquisitions to help fill gaps around identity, some are playing catch up by trying to build more privacy-centric features like identity and clean rooms, and others have decided to completely go out of the business. A response to this lack of innovation by DMPs in recent years has been more organizations investing in their data warehouse to centralize their various audience data sources. The question is, is the data warehouse alone enough?

The Missing Piece: Purpose-Built Applications

As we talk to customers in the market it’s clear that they need applications that can work with their data warehouse to create efficiencies and grow their revenue. One of the biggest challenges is actually activating data.

Data warehouses often rely on applications and integration providers to make data more actionable which leaves publishers building expensive custom solutions and navigating complicated operations.

Similarly to how the Composable CDP movement has stepped up to help marketers evolve how they activate data in their warehouse, media owners and publishers (and new companies like retail media) need solutions that are purpose-built for both the era of privacy as well as ad monetization use cases.

Embracing the Future of Audience Monetization

Audience monetization platforms of the future need to be able to combine the streamlined audience building and activation (in both programmatic and direct)  that legacy DMPs relied on, while also allowing for more complex tasks like normalizing various data sources, running complex identity resolution models and collaborating within data clean rooms.

As free and scaled 3rd-party cookie data goes away the monetization is shifting to the publishers and media owners who are investing appropriately in their 1st-party-data, and there’s a major opportunity to create profitable growth. Investing in technology to help power this growth is crucial and will separate the winners from the losers during this period of change.

The post The Data Warehouse Has Replaced Many DMP Functions, but Is It Enough for Publisher Data Monetization? appeared first on AdMonsters.

As much as we hate to admit, misinformation is a plague online. Any social media blogger or user can post a screenshot or salacious news without a fact check, and audiences will run with it. Now, with AI deep fakes becoming even more convincing, this problem is bound to get worse. 

Unfortunately, this has created a space for people to monetize and grow audiences based on the misfortune of others. For instance, Eric Posey, an Idaho drag performer who goes by the stage name Mona Liza Million, was paraded across alt-right media after an edited video made it seem like he was exposing his genitals at a drag show where kids were present. 

The video first started circulating after right-wing blogger Summer Bushnell posted a doctored version of Posey’s performance that blurred out his shorts to make it appear as if he was exposing himself to the crowd. With the rising rhetoric from the far right accusing drag queens of grooming kids at drag performances, this video made waves in right-wing media circles and thus defamed Posey’s characters. 

At the end of last month, the Kootenai County District Court jury unanimously found that Summer Bushnell defamed Posey and rewarded him with a $1.1 million settlement. While this was a clear victory for Posey, he still had to endure months of lies after Bushnell shared the doctored video that could have easily ruined his life. After Bushnell posted her edited version of the video in connection to the arrest of 31 white supremacists who were planning to protest the pride event Posey performed at, the video garnered thousands of views, national news coverage, and a police investigation. 

See how easily misinformation spreads? As ad ops and rev ops professionals who help create digital campaigns and generate revenue for your brands, it’s important that we keep a watchful eye on the spread of misinformation. 

The Plague of Online MisInformation and Advertising’s Contribution 

According to research from Nature, financial incentives often drive the production of misinformation. Websites that spread misinformation, posing as legitimate news outlets, remain prevalent due to the economic benefits.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a misinformation site operator admitted that income was their primary motivation. Media reports indicate that companies and digital platforms inadvertently support misinformation sites through advertising. Digital platforms manage most online display advertising, automatically placing ads on numerous websites, including those spreading misinformation. An industry estimate reveals that for every $2.16 spent on legitimate newspapers, $1 goes to misinformation sites.

Chris Kenna, CEO North America & LATAM BA Diversity Media Inc agrees that there are countless examples of publishers and tech platforms monetizing misinformation. 

“Big brands have found themselves funding trolling, hate speech, racism and misinformation about climate change, elections, the pandemic and the current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza to name but a few,” said Kenna. 

As seen through Eric Posey’s unfortunate situation, the spread and funding of misinformation can negatively impact people’s lives. Kenna points out that, according to a global UN staff survey, 80% of respondents said harmful information endangers them and the communities they serve. He adds that it’s time that the advertising and media industries ensured that human rights, privacy and safety were at the center of how we run campaigns and the partners that we choose to invest in.  

Efforts to combat online misinformation have mainly focused on reducing demand through fact-checking, crowd-sourced labels, and nudging users toward accurate content. However, addressing the financial incentives behind misinformation is crucial. Experts proposed policies to deter platforms from revenue models that support harmful content. 

Some digital platforms have tried to cut advertising revenue to misinformation sites, yet ads from reputable companies still appear on these sites, funding them. 

How to Regulate and Stop the Spread of Online Misinformation

To effectively combat the spread of online misinformation, it is crucial to address the financial underpinnings that allow these sites to thrive. A significant portion of misinformation websites’ revenue comes from digital advertising, where automated systems place ads across numerous sites without thoroughly vetting the content. This means that well-meaning companies with substantial advertising budgets may inadvertently fund misinformation by having their ads appear on these dubious sites. 

To combat this, Devon Johnson, Co-founder of BOMESI, warns that truth and the active pursuit of it must always be protected. 

“Brands and agencies must take a stand and not just buy ads for clicks and instead shift budgets and support to platforms that are honest, trustworthy and clean,” said Johnson. “Anything else is irresponsible and lazy.” 

Furthermore, digital ad platforms must enhance transparency, allowing advertisers to see where sites place their ads. This would enable companies to make informed decisions, avoiding ad placements on misinformation sites and, consequently, cutting off a major revenue source for these sites.

At BOMESI, Johnson does not partner with platforms that don’t align with the core principle of truth. That is through responsible and honest storytelling. It’s more important for him to align with the right side of history instead of lining his pockets.  

Another effective strategy is increasing consumer transparency about which companies are financing misinformation, knowingly or unknowingly. If consumers know a company’s involvement in funding misinformation, they can boycott these companies, creating a financial incentive for companies to be more vigilant about their ad placements. 

This dual approach of increasing transparency for both advertisers and consumers can significantly reduce the funding available to misinformation sites. By making it easier for advertisers to avoid dubious sites and for consumers to identify and boycott companies that support misinformation, we can work towards a more reliable and truthful online information ecosystem.

The post Misinformation is a Drag and a Threat to Digital Media appeared first on AdMonsters.

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The post Dive into the Future of Digital Media with the Ops 2024 Event Summary appeared first on AdMonsters.

The IAB Tech Lab Summit Day 1 was a whirlwind of innovation, insights, and forward-thinking strategies that are set to redefine the digital advertising landscape. From evolving identity solutions to sustainable advertising practices, the sessions were packed with valuable information and thought-provoking discussions. Here are five standout takeaways from the event that you need to know.

5 Key Takeaways from IAB #TechLabSummit Day 1

1. The End of the Beginning

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur’s opening set the tone with a nostalgic yet forward-looking take on the last 10 years of IAB Tech Lab. He emphasized the dramatic evolution in advertising technology, from the significant rise of mobile not so long ago to today’s explosion in CTV. Despite the decline in linear TV, Boomers and GenX are holding on, creating a convergence with CTV that’s ripe for Advanced TV’s interoperable measurement solutions and data-driven, cross-channel approach to planning and buying across both. Katsur’s message was clear: nothing will ever be the same again.

2. Registered Ad Creative: The Future of CTV

The session on the Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF) was eye-opening. Nada Bradbury from AD-ID and Dan Brackett from XR Extreme Reach discussed how creative IDs can revolutionize CTV advertising. Forget privacy surveillance; this is about simplifying ad management with unique IDs, making frequency capping, competitive separation, and cross-platform reporting seamless. Bradbury emphasized that implementing creative IDs brings much-needed transparency and accountability, making it a crucial step for cross-platform measurement.

3. Embracing New Identity Strategies

Gruia Pitigoi-Aron from The Trade Desk and Shailley Singh from IAB Tech Lab tackled the fast-evolving identity landscape. They discussed UID2, privacy regulations, and the critical need for reducing friction from the user experience. Gruia’s advice? Publishers should make it easy for users to provide their email addresses and he highlighted the importance of finding the right moments to communicate your value exchange. The goal is a sustainable, long-term identity solution that doesn’t rely on browsers or operating systems.

In a follow-up breakout session about building your identity strategy, Kanishk Prasad from The Trade Desk highlighted the need for publishers and advertisers to test and implement identity frameworks like UID2, RampID, and ID5. He emphasized that these solutions should be easy to deploy, scalable, and focused on enhancing user authentication and overall consumer experience, ensuring the open internet thrives.

4. Sustainability in Advertising

Bill Wescott’s session on sustainability was a wake-up call. The ad industry must play its part in tackling climate change. From individual consumption patterns to the collective power of advertising, Wescott highlighted the role of behavior change. His message? Climate risk is financial risk, and the industry needs to move faster. It’s not just about profit; it’s about purpose.

5. Kara Swisher’s Tech Take: Insights and Wit

The keynote with Kara Swisher and Anthony Katsur was electric. Swisher, known for her sharp insights on technology and media, didn’t hold back. She discussed the impact of technology on journalism and the importance of consumer protection around personal data. One standout moment was her remark on AI and self-driving cars, as noted by Mathieu Roche on X: “Technology is going to get better while humans stay terrible.” It was a fitting end to a day that underscored the transformative changes ahead.

Anthony Katsur and Kara Swisher. Photo by IAB Tech Lab

As Day 1 of the IAB #TechLabSummit wrapped up, it was clear that the future of advertising lies in embracing change. With the growth of CTV, evolving identity frameworks, and a strong focus on sustainability, the industry is on the brink of significant transformation. Get ready for a new era in digital advertising. #TechLabSummit #EndOfTheBeginning

The post 5 Key Takeaways from IAB #TechLabSummit Day 1 appeared first on AdMonsters.

In the introduction of this series, I raised the concern that the targeting, measurement and attributions arising in the wake of cookie deprecation won’t meet the consumer’s expectations of privacy. It’s a hugely critical issue, and one worth exploring in depth. This article does just that.

The Rise of the New Tracking Cookie

In the early days of digital advertising, nearly all ads were contextual; Google AdSense assessed web page content and if it matched the topic of an ad creative, Google would fill the impression. The challenge was that contextual targeting back then was rudimentary, leading to horribly embarrassing and often brand-safe placements. A few memorable ones include:

• A “put your feet up” ad for a travel company appeared next to an article titled “Sixth Severed Foot Appears Off Canadian Coast” on CNN.

• VacationsToGo.com banner ad over a photo of a cruise ship that sank in Italy

• Aflac, a service for employee recruitment and whose mascot is a duck and has a tagline of “We’ve got you under our wing” appeared next to a story about anatidaephobia, a disease where people believe they are being watched by a duck.

Marketers naturally wanted better tools for targeting, and deservedly so. By the mid-2000s, Web 2.0 was in full swing, with consumers increasing the amount of time they spent online and on social media, generating vast amounts of data. For marketers, it was the start of the data-driven revolution.

That revolution was powered by private signals, which are any and all signals that are tied to an individual allowing the industry to follow consumers as they go about their digital lives, whether that’s surfing the web, using apps on their mobile device, or streaming content via their smart TVs or radios. 

Initially, the main tracking device was the third-party cookie; little snippets of code dropped into the browser, unbeknownst to the user, so their every move could be logged and their future behavior monetized.

Ad tech companies and agencies retrieved that data from the consumers’ browsers and used it to make assumptions about people: users who visited a parenting site were women aged 25-to-35; users who read about new automobile models are actively in-market for a new car.

Here’s a true story about an American on the Digiseg team: She signed onto her health insurance account to check on something. Later, she saw an ad on Facebook that said something like, “Dr. Smith is in your healthcare network, schedule an appointment today.” This was far from a unique event.

For everyday citizens the message was clear: We’re watching you. For many, installing ad blocking software was an act of desperation. Such software didn’t end tracking, but at least they weren’t reminded of how much they were under the microscope of entities they didn’t know.

Consumers complained, of course. More importantly, they demanded regulators in their home states to end tracking. For the industry, that meant finding a replacement for third-party cookies, but not for tracking users.

But — and it’s a big one — blocking cookies and ceasing the tracking of users in this industry seem to be two different things, though why that is the case is beyond us. Users still emit private signals as they go online, and the industry is still collecting them. Consumers still have no control over the matter, which means brands and ad tech companies still follow them around, whether they like it or not.

The new crop of tracking signals stems from the user’s device or the single consumer, such as hashed emails, and CTV device IDs. Worse, they’re making it more difficult for users to protect their identity from prying eyes. 

Identity Resolution Graphs

Identity resolution graphs are seen as an important step forward in consumer privacy protection, but whether or not they respect a user’s desire for anonymity is up for debate. These databases are built on vast identity signals: email, device ID, cookie data, CTV ID, work computer, home computer, and even physical address. An identity resolution graph connects all known signals to a single ID that typically represents individual consumers.

The benefit of ID graphs is to allow marketers and data companies to “recognize” users across multiple IDs. Let’s say a site invites users to register for a free account and the site collects the user’s email address (i.e. first-party data). Next, the site purchases an ID resolution graph to recognize users when they visit the site via a mobile device or computer from work.

Are there benefits for the user? Yes, because it allows the site to know the user and display content of interest. But wouldn’t it be better to ask the user to sign in or register on the device? Or during the initial registration process, ask permission to recognize them on other devices? This is the type of behavior that got the industry in trouble before. How hard is it to request permission?

In worst-case scenarios, the site allows advertisers or partners to target those users across their devices — without the user’s permission or input.

The Myth of Anonymity

Signals can be anonymized; emails can be hashed, device IDs can be hidden in data clean rooms, but how relevant is that anonymity if the signal can still be used to track users without their permission and for purposes they never agreed to? We forget that cookie data was also “anonymized” but the consumer still complained vociferously about being tracked.

The new private signals don’t even guarantee anonymity. Take hashed emails, which aren’t so private when everyone has the same key. That key allows anyone to recognize a hashed email as a consumer who, say, purchased this dog food or subscribes to this streaming service.

As I mentioned in the first article in this series, this level of tracking is all in pursuit of one-to-one marketing, which itself is a bit of a myth.  

Digital as Mass Media

We’re pursuing a find-and-replace option for cookies, and in doing so, we are ignoring effective and truly privacy-compliant options in front of us: one-to-many ad campaigns. Two of those options include:

Contextual targeting, which has come a long way since the days of Google AdSense. We have numerous AI solutions to help avoid brand unsafe placements, including natural language processing, sentiment analysis and computer vision that can assess the true content of an article, and place ads accordingly. This segmentation method is inherently anonymous, eschews every form of tracking, and can achieve massive scale with the right approach.

Another option is using offline demographic data, that is collected, verified and anonymized by national statistics offices, ensuring it is both accurate and privacy compliant. Going further, with modern modeling and methodology, entire countries can be segmented into neighborhoods of as few as 100 households.

Ultimately, the evolution of digital ad tracking reflects the ongoing tension between technological advancements and privacy concerns. As the ad tech industry continues to innovate, the challenge lies in balancing effective marketing strategies with the imperative to respect user privacy. By embracing more privacy-compliant options such as advanced contextual targeting and offline demographic data, the industry can pave the way for a future where digital advertising is both effective and ethical. As we navigate this new era of surveillance capitalism, the need for transparency, user consent, and robust privacy protections has never been more critical.

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The latest spicy AI scandals involving Scarlett Johansson, Drake, and FKA Twigs reveal the AI frontier is still the wild wild west. What does all of this AI chaos mean for digital media, and is it time to call the sheriff to get things in check?

Scarlett Johansson’s AI Doppelgänger: Privacy in Peril

Can you envision waking up and finding your voice hijacked by AI? Scarlett Johansson lived that nightmare when OpenAI’s tech mimicked her voice from the movie “Her” without consent. Is AI playing ventriloquist with our lives? If it can happen to Johansson, it can happen to anyone. This incident slaps us with a harsh reality check on privacy and consent in the digital age.

But, the implications go beyond celebrity woes. We’re entering an era where your voice, likeness, and digital self can be cloned and used without your permission. It’s not just spooky — it’s a serious breach of personal boundaries, rendering our sense of privacy untenable.

Using AI to clone celebrity voices without consent raises significant privacy and ethical concerns. While OpenAI contends the voice is not a Johansson clone, the backlash prompted them to pull the plug, rethinking their approach and pausing the use of Sky — an AI voice assistant that sounds eerily similar to Johansson’s voice in “Her.”

Lest we forget, the film is a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming overly reliant on AI at the expense of genuine human bonds and emotional intimacy.

Drake’s AI Resurrection: Tupac’s Voice from Beyond

Johansson’s case isn’t the only one to call attention to the ethical challenges of AI voice cloning. Take Drake, for example. The rapper used some technological sorcery to drop a track featuring an AI-generated Tupac. He featured Tupac’s vocal likeness on his “Taylor Made” track amid his recent battle with Kendrick Lamar. The decision ignited a legal firestorm with Tupac’s estate, forcing Drake to remove the song. It also caught the attention of Congress.

This scenario suggests a future where AI resurrects artists to produce new works, raising profound questions about legacy, consent, and artistic integrity. On a recent episode of my podcast, Tech & Soul, with advertising futurist Tameka Kee, I discussed the potential for AI to exploit deceased artists’ archives, turning creative legacies into AI-driven revenue streams without due respect to the original creators. Interestingly, I used Tupac as an example given the prolific releases of his posthumous albums.

Imagine the estates of late artists, using AI to turn legacy into loot, while churning out new hits from their archives. It’s a vision of remix culture gone mad, risking the sanctity of artistic creation. What’s next — AI-generated Nirvana albums? It’s a precarious slope, folks.

FKA Twigs: Sounding the Alarm in the Senate

The societal ramifications of AI were further underscored when FKA Twigs took her concerns to the Senate. Testifying about the dangers of deepfakes and AI, the singer highlighted the urgent need for regulatory oversight. Her impassioned plea, spotlighted concerns about AI creating fake yet convincing content, blurring the lines of reality. It’s like living in a perpetual state of “The Truman Show,” where nothing is quite what it seems.

Twigs announced she developed a deepfake version of herself to handle social media interactions, emphasizing that this was done under her control and consent. 

This ties directly into the alarming rise of deepfake political ads and robocalls, which have the potential to mislead voters and disrupt democratic processes. States are already moving to label these deceptive practices, recognizing the urgent need for regulatory oversight.

Without proper oversight, AI can be weaponized to manipulate public opinion and undermine trust in the political system. Twigs’ testimony goes beyond protecting celebrities — it’s a call to action about safeguarding the integrity of intellectual property and information. Without proper regulations, AI can create a dystopian future where trust is a rare commodity, and anyone’s likeness can be hijacked for nefarious purposes.

Regulatory Tightrope: Innovation vs. Oversight

So, what does all this mean for digital media companies? The ethical implications of AI are vast, but the benefits for publishers are significant, from Forbes’ generative AI search engine Adelaide to traditional AI automating repetitive tasks. Publishers face a dilemma: embrace AI for its innovative potential or push back to maintain content integrity. The stakes are high, and the path forward isn’t clear-cut.

Do we corral AI with regulations or let innovation roam free? One camp argues that strict rules could stifle creativity, turning our digital gold rush into a bureaucratic slog. But without some form of control, do we risk descending into chaos?

In my chat with Dan Rua from Admiral about the generative AI revenue opportunity for publishers, he pointed out that regulation is inevitable but must be done right. We’re at the dawn of AI, and while lawsuits and licensing debates are on the horizon, the focus should be on responsible use rather than knee-jerk bans.

Some industry insiders advocate for flexible standards over rigid laws. Recent moves by tech giants like Meta, YouTube, and IBM to self-regulate hint at a middle ground. They’re introducing policies to disclose AI use in ads and videos, striving to build trust without crushing innovation.

But self-regulation isn’t a panacea. It relies on companies acting in good faith, which isn’t always guaranteed. That’s why a hybrid approach, combining flexible standards with targeted regulations, might be the best path forward. This approach allows innovation to flourish while protecting consumers and creators from the darker sides of AI.

The Road Ahead for AI in Media

As we navigate the complexities of AI, it’s clear that the stakes are high. The stories of Scarlett Johansson, Drake, and FKA Twigs are a wake-up call. 

These high-profile cases reflect the ethical dilemmas that digital media companies must grapple with as AI continues to evolve. The push for AI innovation often collides with the need to maintain content integrity and protect intellectual property. We’ve seen this dynamic play out as media companies scramble to strike deals with AI firms like OpenAI, sometimes at the cost of their content’s value and authenticity. By handing over content for AI training, publishers are potentially giving away the farm.

Publishers and content creators must advocate for strong standards and ethical practices that prioritize transparency and accountability. By pushing for comprehensive regulations, we can navigate the complexities of AI with a commitment to integrity and respect for the creative process. The future of digital media depends on our ability to harness AI responsibly, ensuring it serves as a tool for innovation rather than a means of exploitation.

The post Stakes Are High: The Wild West of AI in Digital Media and Celebrity Culture appeared first on AdMonsters.

Okay, that’s a lot to unpack, so let’s break it down. GDPR, CCPA, et al are a direct result of consumer blowback against constant online tracking. Private citizens felt that their every move was captured, recorded, packaged, and sold to anyone willing to pay. They weren’t wrong. Can we blame them for hating that level of snooping?

Inside the industry, we saw things differently. While consumers objected, we celebrated the age of data. Almost 100 years after John Wanamaker complained that 50% of his advertising was wasted, the digital advertising industry had devised a way to ensure every dollar an advertiser spent was targeted at a qualified user. We called it one-to-one advertising. 

Outside observers had a different name for our activities: surveillance capitalism. 

Surveillance capitalism, data-driven marketing, whatever you want to call it, we can all agree that it is essential to the constant bombardment of messages that influence consumer behavior. Some have deployed it to the point where consumers are prodded to buy things they don’t need (and will return to the retailer at some point at considerable loss), incur unmanageable levels of consumer debt, and rent self-storage units to put the stuff they buy but have no room for in their homes. 

And that’s just the start. Authoritarian figures and conspiracy theorists also use one-to-one messaging to proliferate their extreme beliefs that pose a serious threat to democracies all over the world.

So it’s no surprise that privacy regulations sprung up. But how effective are those regulations if we replace tracking cookies with other private signals (e.g. hashed emails, User ID resolution graphs) that allow for the same type of one-to-one targeting?

Let’s Face It: Cookies Were Not Effective

I find the private signals craze that has seized the industry to be rather puzzling. Big-time marketers, such as Kraft’s Julie Fleischer, made no bones about the sub-par quality of cookie data, telling attendees of a data conference that 90% of the data for sale is “crap.” Mind you, she said this back in 2014, when the so-called data revolution was in its heyday. Other studies during that time showed that up to 50% of audience segments for sale failed to reach the target audience. The cookie was never able to live up to its promise, as I wrote in 2022.

But we ignored the cognitive dissonance and dug into the tactic, relentlessly targeting consumers who felt like reading an article about a new car model with ads for new autos, based on the assumption that they must be in market for a new auto. Into countless auto-intender segments they went.

Consumers weren’t happy about it at all, and a few — Max Schrems in Europe and Alastair Mactaggart in California — began successful campaigns to regulate the collection and sale of user data. 

They were hardly outliers. Consumers began installing ad blockers, adopting VPNs, and downloading encryption software in a desperate attempt to protect their privacy. All they wanted was to be left alone to browse the internet in peace.

Given the consumer’s utter distaste for the incessant tracking, one must ask: Why did we go down this road?

The False Promise: One-to-One Marketing

To put it simply, we were led astray by a myth that one-to-one marketing was both possible and embraced by the consumer. We believed that everything the consumer did online — every click, visit, page view, video watched — revealed clues to the user’s predilection, brand preference, potential to buy, political outlook. 

By collecting, storing and analyzing every piece of data generated, we sought to influence what consumers buy and how they vote at scale. 

Worse, we believed that consumers saw the benefit of all this intrusion. We told ourselves that consumers expect highly personalized experiences and it was our job to provide them. After all, modern advertising demands relevance.

There are alternatives, of course, which we’ll explore in later articles.

The Great Accelerator: AI

The whole data revolution and one-to-one marketing scheme had a valuable technology in its corner: machine-learning based AI. AI has been an integral part of programmatic advertising and user profiling from the very beginning. The industry deploys it to analyze who clicked on what ad, who visited which page, and to select which impression out of billions to fill with an ad. 

A more recent form of machine learning — generative AI — is now a topic du jour. It is viewed as a way to take one-to-one marketing to the next level, creating ad copy and images in real-time based on the user behind it. What could possibly go wrong?

This Keeps Me Up at Night

As someone who is deeply committed to digital advertising, our failure to learn from past mistakes keeps me up at night.

Our industry has never really questioned the notion that one-to-one marketing is a worthy goal. Rather than learn the lessons of the consumer rebellion that led to GDPR, CCPA, and countless other regulations, we are embarking on a new style of consumer spying based on a new set of private signals. Today we are leveraging those signals to bully people into buying stuff they don’t need as well as instill in them irrational fears in order to prompt them to support anti-democracy candidates.

Why are we repeating the same mistakes? And make no mistake about it, the “alternatives” to third-party cookies function in the same way; they log a consumer’s private behavior and use it to follow them around the internet. Today we stand on the dawn of cookie-free advertising, tasked with reimagining the world. Instead, we are dangerously close to a colossal failure of imagination. Our focus is on identity resolution graphs and hashed emails — the exact kind of tracking we had with third-party cookies. Call it surveillance capitalism 2.0.

We can — and must — do better. Doing better means resisting the siren call of one-to-one marketing. Until we jettison that fantasy, all of our industry’s brain power and financial investments will do nothing more than recreate surveillance capitalism, ultimately leading us back to the place we currently find ourselves: facing any citizens and governments demanding that we stop abusing privacy.

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