December 18th-December 23rd // Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. This is the last newsletter of 2024. We’ll try to keep it short and sweet so you can get on with your holiday festivities!

StackAdapt’s 2025 Unfiltered: No-Nonsense Insights for Marketers Webinar will be moderated by U of Digital’s Shiv Gupta! Join to hear industry experts share predictions & insights for the year ahead.

Top Story 👁️ 

Google OKs the use of IP addresses by advertisers, reversing a key ad tech data policy 🔒
Source: Ad Age
December 20th, 2024

Summary: Maybe the IP address won't suffer the same fate as the third-party cookie and will survive after all. Google has reversed course on its long-time policy to restrict IP address sharing due to privacy concerns. Beginning in February, the company will allow advertisers to target ads and measure campaign performance using IP addresses. Google says the broader digital advertising ecosystem already uses IP addresses, especially on connected TVs, and privacy-preserving solutions such as trusted execution environments enable this data-sharing while protecting against re-identifying individual users. Companies can use IP addresses in combination with other data for fingerprinting, a practice that allows them to identify and track users or devices for ad targeting purposes.

It's hard for users to block fingerprinting or give consent for it, which has put the practice in regulators' crosshairs. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which regulates data protection in Britain, called Google "irresponsible" for changing its policy to allow fingerprinting. The ICO says fingerprinting likely reduces consumer choice and control over how their personal data is collected. Google says it will discuss the policy change with the ICO.

Opinion:

Is the endpoint of the privacy movement IP address? Time will tell, of course, but it’s interesting to see one of the two big tech platforms (Apple being the other) backtracking on a privacy initiative for the first time. 

IP addresses are a critical bit of data for digital advertising identity solutions, especially when it comes to CTV, where other identifiers either don’t exist (e.g., cookies) or aren’t very useful (e.g., device IDs). Everyone (including us) has been talking about the impending demise of IP and how the industry is not equipped for it. But maybe we were premature in making that prediction?

Having clarity and finality around which identifiers and data are OK to use and which aren’t from a privacy perspective would be tremendously valuable. It would create clear guardrails around what will and won’t work in the future, and it would allow the industry to build truly “futureproof” solutions. Right now, we’re trapped in addressability purgatory and we’re building speculative solutions. 

In order to achieve “full” clarity, we still need to know:

1. What Apple’s privacy endpoint will be

2. What Google is going to do about third-party cookies and device IDs

3. What federal privacy law will look like in the US

4. What the fate of email-based IDs will be from a regulatory and platform perspective

We may never get to a point of true clarity and finality, as privacy may always be a moving target. That said, perhaps we are getting closer…

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Supreme Court agrees to hear case over TikTok ban - The high court will hear arguments on Jan. 10 and could issue a ruling before the ban is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 19. TikTok is hoping the Supreme Court will agree with its position that the ban is unconstitutional and interferes with the free speech rights of its 170M US users. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the law passed by Congress in April, which will force TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a ban. Donald Trump, who takes office a day after the ban goes into effect, has recently signaled that he might go easy on TikTok because the platform helped him make inroads to younger voters during the presidential election. However, he tried to ban TikTok during his first term, so his views have been all over the map. Advertisers on TikTok seem to be staying put on the platform for the time being.

What happens if the ban goes through? Where does all that TikTok ad money go? We talk about this in a recent U of Digital Live Learning Event with Brian Weiser and Olivia Morley of Madison & Wall. Check out the recording and slides here!

Nielsen increases pressure on Paramount by cutting agency access to transaction tool 🔒- Nielsen has removed Paramount's ratings data from transactional files called media information tape, which agencies use to process Nielsen-based transactions. The move comes as Nielsen's contract dispute with Paramount approaches its fourth month. Without that information, agencies have a harder time processing the translation from Nielsen upfront guarantees to VideoAmp, the alternative currency provider now used by Paramount. This move is particularly disruptive given the holidays, when many agency employees are on vacation, making it more difficult to retool data feeds.

Best Buy to Launch Third-Party Marketplace, Again - Best Buy will make another run at a third-party marketplace in summer 2025, nine years after it abandoned its first marketplace.

The marketplace, which will be built on the Mirakl platform, will help third-party sellers reach Best Buy's customers, similar to the marketplaces operated by Walmart, Target, Nordstrom, Kroger, Macy's, Lowe's, and other retailers. The marketplace, if successful, will boost Best Buy’s commerce media opportunity. Commerce media, of course, has been a bright spot for the digital advertising industry as brands of all stripes see an opportunity to monetize their first-party customer data. Costco, in fact, just executed its first targeted media campaign with a major CPG brand, which delivered a 2x-3x return on ad spend. 

In related news, real estate company RE/MAX Holdings will launch its own programmatic media network in partnership with global software provider Basis Technologies and marketing services company Kontrol Media. The network will enable companies to run private marketplace deals on RE/MAX sites in the US and Canada.

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

Kristi Argyilan, The ‘Godmother’ Of Retail Media, Is Uber’s New Global Head Of Ads - Argyilan, who was SVP of retail media at Albertsons for three years, will replace Mark Grether, who now leads PayPal Ads.

VideoAmp's 'Currency' Yields $3B In Media Deals For 2024 - That's a 880% year-over-year increase in media deals for the alternative currency.

Publicis hires Amazon exec Amy Armstrong as it leans further into connected media 🔒 - Armstrong will become chief revenue officer, focusing on connected media, after serving as Amazon Ads' director of global customer development for two years. Before that, she was global CEO of IPG Mediabrands' Initiative.

Introducing Hightouch’s integration with LG Ad Solutions - The integration will let media and marketing teams sync their first-party audiences to LG Ad Solutions, making it easier to target and suppress audiences in their CTV campaigns.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants to Ban Drug Ads on TV. It Wouldn’t Be Easy. - Kennedy and Elon Musk have come out swinging against pharma ads, which are expected to account for $5B in TV ad spend this year. The US and New Zealand are the only two wealthy nations that don't significantly restrict prescription drug ads.

Nielsen Expands Campaign Effectiveness Suite to Include Creative Evaluation - Nielsen has partnered with attention measurement vendor Realeyes to launch new product features that can help advertisers score performance of their creative assets. 

Meta launches Robyn - Meta Marketing Science has released an experimental, semi-automated, and open-sourced marketing mix modeling (MMM) package as part of its mission to make MMM accessible to all advertisers.

You can now call 1-800-CHATGPT - And talk to the chatbot for 15 minutes for free!

That’s It For This Week 👋

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