Data + Privacy

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 […]

Across industries, marketing teams are navigating a brutal equation: shrinking budgets, leaner teams and rising performance pressure. In this environment, platforms like Meta and Google dominate the ecosystem. Their unrivaled scale and AI-powered technology make them safe bets for marketing and user acquisition. But as these leaders push further into automation, they’ve reduced the manual […]

OpenAI launched its ad platform on Monday, making ChatGPT the newest canvas for advertising. The rollout marks a pivotal moment in generative AI, in which conversational platforms could become a new battleground for ad dollars. But how will the ads affect the chat experience? To head off concerns, OpenAI said ads will only appear after […]

For decades, digital advertising has relied on proxies for intent: demographics, behaviors, cohorts and fragmented signals inferred from clicks and cookies. As of this week, that model is being tested. OpenAI has begun experimenting with ads in ChatGPT, matching sponsored messages to the topics and prompts within a user’s conversation. In a prompt-driven environment like […]

At the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting this week, IAB CEO David Cohen demanded publishers receive payment from AI companies who are taking their content. As publishers grapple with AI redirecting the attention they receive from consumers, what’s their path forward?

We are on the brink of an exciting top-to-bottom structural transformation of our industry, with agentic AI reshaping everything from how media is discovered to how it’s planned, bought and measured. But this transformation won’t happen instantly and without effort.  Agentic AI needs schemas and standards to work. They provide invaluable, referenceable context, so the […]

Prebid is on a roll: It will take charge of a seller agent, part of AdCP, and Amazon’s integration with Prebid is in beta. But there’s one sticking point: Microsoft is not going to cache video ad creatives anymore that come through Prebid, leaving publishers scrambling for an alternative.

The recent Andromeda update, the fastest and most advanced iteration to date of Meta’s ad-retrieval system, has dramatically changed the rhythm of Meta Ads. Delivery cycles are faster, creative gets picked up and exhausted with remarkable speed, and optimization feels more dynamic than ever.  But this increased velocity has also introduced confusion. Many advertisers assume […]

If you are feeling pressure to “do something” about Ad Context Protocol, you are not alone. Since its launch a few months ago, AdCP has been framed as a foundational step toward an “agentic” future, one where AI systems plan, execute and optimize media buys without human hand-holding. It is a compelling vision, but one […]