Data + Privacy

I’ve been saying for years that addressable advertising was a strategic mistake. Not because targeting shouldn’t exist, but because building an ecosystem dependent on granular identity, location trails and behavioral signals was always going to create exposure we couldn’t fully control.  And if we’re being honest, the precision targeting story was oversold anyway. The industry […]

Fees, fees, fees. The Trade Desk is facing market pressure in all directions: from rival DSPs offering lower fee structures, SSPs and agencies clashing over its OpenPath product and bearish investors disappointed with growth. Guest Sarah Caputo, founder of consultancy Fraction Method, tells us why The Trade Desk should reduce its margin and make its fees more transparent.

CTV advertising is booming, with the channel growing by 13% in 2025 to $26.6 billion and projected to hit $51 billion by 2029. In this environment, you’d expect to see sustained overperformance from The Trade Desk, a CTV aggregator with video representing a high-40s percentage of its business. But for some time now, TTD has […]

Every era of advertising has been defined by the moment its infrastructure became the bottleneck. In the late 1990s, the bottleneck was the fax machine. Media buyers negotiated insertion orders over phone calls, signed paper contracts and waited days to confirm a campaign was live. The industry did not abandon that process because it was […]

AI has the power to operationalize and scale weaknesses within marketing organizations. So if marketing leaders want to plan intelligently, they’ll have to make a series of structural repairs. Here are five that separate marketing organizations that pass the AI audit from those that fail it.

The strategic value of commerce data continues to rise, as Infillion snaps up Catalina. Then, a court filing reveals where agencies spend clients’ money.

Retail media spending is surging as advertisers explore new formats, channels and environments. With projections suggesting that in-store retail media ad spend alone will surpass $1 billion by 2029, the industry is entering a new phase of growth. However, confidence in measurement has not kept pace with this rapid expansion. Viewing retail media through the […]

The Winter Olympics show us how far streaming live sports has come – and how much linear viewership remains. Plus: CPGs are pulling back on ad spend, as they steer through economic challenges and the ripple effects of policy decisions.

The Winter Olympics show us how far streaming live sports has come – and how much linear viewership remains. Plus: CPGs are pulling back on ad spend, as they steer through economic challenges and the ripple effects of policy decisions.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the RFI issued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in late January. ICE asked data providers and tech vendors to share information on how their tools and services could be used to “directly support investigations.” The RFI spelled it out: “The Government is seeking to understand the current state […]