For those who thought the conversation around third-party cookie deprecation couldn't get more complicated, in steps Microsoft Edge with their latest contribution: Ad Selection API. Ad Selection API is an alternative to Google's Protected Audience API, which is a proposal that facilitates retargeting and custom audience targeting without third-party cookies.  Before we explore the Ad Selection API, we must review Microsoft's participation in the Privacy Sandbox to establish context. PARAKEET vs. FLEDGE Around the same time TURTLEDOVE was migrating to become FLEDGE, Mi ..read more

When I think about the next era of ad tech, I see a stage of innovation defined by existing and new solutions that create groups of users of varying value. The availability of deterministic identity, emerging privacy-enhancing technologies, and contextual signals will determine a user's value for publishers and advertisers. I created the below diagram to help you visualize this value. The Pyramid of User Value provides a simple visual framework to help you consider and discuss your advertising strategy in an increasingly complex landscape of user identity and environments with varying levels ..read more

Speed is everything in programmatic advertising, and timeouts keep the ad platforms participating in a real-time auction on time. Publishers need to minimize the time between a user selecting content and receiving an ad. This seemingly simple task requires carefully coordinating and integrating disparate ad platforms, which must work together in beautiful harmony. So what are programmatic timeouts, and how do they work? Let's dive in. ⏱️ But first, a quick ad break. Presented by Ad Tech Explained Become a sponsor That’s right, I’m sponsoring my newsletter to tell you about sponsoring my ne ..read more

If Google has its way, 2024 will be the year we can all finally stop talking about cookies.  That is if their friends at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) give them the green light to phase out support for cookies in Q3 2024. Google must convince the regulatory group that the Privacy Sandbox protects user privacy adequately and does not give Google an unfair competitive advantage. Why would the Privacy Sandbox give Google a competitive edge? Because, the concept calls for the excision of core pieces of legacy advertising technology. Many companies lack the r ..read more

Advertisers want to know what you are watching. Unsatisfied with the heap of metadata already available in programmatic bid requests, buyers are becoming emboldened to ask publishers to share more content metadata — information that describes the shows or movies users watch. Should publishers inform buyers about the video content their users watch or consider passing more information than they do today? Are publishers allowed to provide detailed data about user content consumption? And what even is content metadata, and how is it passed to buyers? You will learn all that and more in this Ad T ..read more

Magnite, The Trade Desk, and GroupM are all vying to establish themselves as indispensable components of an evolving programmatic landscape. These companies have introduced new products and partnerships to develop their value, find more efficient supply paths, and fight for relevance in a maturing advertising ecosystem. The strategic machinations of these three companies are unfolding before us, and they all tie back to the theme of disintermediation in one way or another. But what is disintermediation? This financial term has bled over into programmatic advertising and has found increased us ..read more

A few years ago, while working for a previous employer, I undertook an assignment to understand how IPv6 could impact our programmatic advertising business. We ran into several IPv6-related issues that affected monetization on our supply-side platform, and we needed to figure out what was going on. Did IPv6 pose a problem for our platform and represent a looming existential threat to all digital advertising? I needed to know. Thoughts of IPv6 doom and gloom flitted through my mind. "We are in the middle of an upgrade to a foundational component of the Internet! The value we use to power core ..read more

Do you hear that? It's the sound of millions of individual video ad creatives flying around between ad servers, SSPs, and DSPs at any given moment. These carefully crafted marketing messages flitter in and out of digital properties countless times a day — but their path into a consumer's consciousness takes many twists and turns. Publishers focused on premium video face many challenges when they attempt to wrangle the herd of creatives all vying for placement on apps and websites. For the rest of this article, an ad "creative" refers to the video file played back to a user. The video file rel ..read more

PAIR is a new solution from Google that allows publishers and advertisers (using Google's buying platform, DV360) to match first-party data to deliver personalized ads. Google announced PAIR in a blog post outlining the concept last week. What is Google PAIR? PAIR stands for Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation, and as far as ad tech acronyms go, it's not half bad. The abbreviation accurately describes the goal of the solution since it allows publishers and advertisers to pair together to reconcile their respective first-party data. The result enables the advertiser to deliver persona ..read more

Universal identifiers gained traction in the ad tech collective consciousness when Google decided to phase out third-party cookies from their ubiquitous Chrome web browser. Following that decision, ad platforms, publishers, and advertisers began searching for solutions to establish user identity on the web without third-party cookies — and companies with universal ID solutions were quick to hawk their wares. Different flavors of universal identifiers exist, but the industry seems to be leaning towards solutions that allow publishers and advertisers to securely and privately match first-party ..read more