Spotlight
Welcome to another edition of Spotlight, Novatiq’s monthly digest of eye-catching stories from digital marketing and adtech.
What we have for you today: Privacy enforcement gathers pace, Google fends off antitrust moves, and The Trade Desk partners with ID5.
This month has seen a number of fines against companies found to be in breach of the ever-growing list of privacy regulations. This includes a €5.4 million GDPR fine against Spotify, and a $20 million fine against Microsoft for breach of COPPA (the US’ Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).
In addition to concluding the above investigations, regulators have been hard at work opening new ones. The Dutch privacy regulator is currently investigating Tesla for a potential data breach, while the Irish data protection authority has forced Google to postpone the launch of Bard, its AI chatbot, over GDPR concerns (it claims there’s insufficient clarity over how the app will protect the privacy of EU consumers).
The takeaway from all this activity is clear: privacy laws are being enforced in earnest, and companies need to prioritise their compliance efforts, including in their digital marketing campaigns.
Google has been the dominant force in supply-side adtech for so long that’s it’s hard to think of a world not centred on its technology. This month, however, the EU ruled that Google must sell off some of its adtech business to address antitrust concerns. The company disagrees with the finding and will challenge it, but there’s every chance that we’re witnessing the end of an advertising era unfold in front of us.
This seems more likely in the light of news from across the pond that the US’ largest daily newspaper publisher, Garnett, is suing Google on the basis that it holds an unlawful monopoly on the adtech used by publishers and advertisers to buy and sell digital ad space.
With pressure building on the Google stack, we can start to envision a future emerging where the adtech market is made up of a larger number of smaller businesses, with competition healthier as a result.
Whatever the future adtech ecosystem has in store for itself, one thing is clear: tracking cookies will be replaced by a new generation of privacy conscious IDs. Recognizing this fact, The Trade Desk has announced a new data partnership with ID5. The partnership will see ID5’s ID graph of data from European publishers integrated into The Trade Desk’s Identity Alliance. Publishers using ID5 will also be able to apply EUID, The Trade Desk’s ID, to enable the targeting of logged-in consented traffic.
It’s great to see The Trade Desk embracing new ID solutions. What’s important now is that it doesn’t limit itself to a single ID partner. There will be a whole range of ID solutions on the market, and The Trade Desk should look to embrace as many of them as possible to provide its customers with greater flexibility and choice.
Finally, the issue of sustainability in digital advertising has been thrust into the spotlight this month. First was the news that a new French startup has raised €1.6 million in funding to help it grow into new markets. Greenbids’ solution uses machine learning to calculate the most effective media advertising at the lowest carbon footprint. This news comes as a study suggests that higher engagement is key to increasing sustainability. The study by Magna revealed that an ad viewed twice as long produces two-thirds fewer emissions.
Sustainability is fast becoming as important an issue to advertisers and publishers as privacy regulations. In both cases, telco-verification services can help. Telco-verified IDs embrace privacy-by-design principles that ensure campaign responses are only sent to the buy-side agent that requested it thus ensuring against data leakage and wasted energy. What’s more, by helping to serve ads to the right audience at the right time, telco-verified IDs ensure that brands can meet their data-driven campaign requirements while enhancing efficiency.
This month saw another big milestone for Novatiq as we completed a funding round of £11m, including a £2.6m investment from Intent HQ, the privacy-first AI customer analytics and personalisation platform. This strategic partnership will help transform how brands, publishers, and adtech intermediaries activate advertising campaigns.
Our latest blogs are also now online. We’re discussing telco digital marketing and outlining three key steps for creating a secure and compliant data-driven strategy. We’re also looking at some recent updates to global privacy law. Enjoy the read, and we’ll catch up again in July.
