The Big Story

It's fall, and there is M&A in the air. Two acquisitions happened this week: Stagwell bought Freestar and DoorDash bought Instacart.

Safari is tracking the trackers. Apple officially blocked identity resolution providers this week. Our guest, Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher and the co-founder of DecryptAds, puts the decision into context. Plus: Edwards discusses his research into how programmatic channels are monetizing AI slop.

Google won't have to break up its SSP and ad server. So this week, Prebid unveiled its plan to help Google fulfill the court's requirements at its annual Prebid Summit. Then: how brands are using their data in an agentic world, and why there's a rise of AI "employees."

Apple has a new blocklist for data brokers and ad tech vendors that do cross-site user tracking – which could expand to include a much broader slate of ad tech and mar tech vendors across the entire ecosystem. Plus: a few thoughts on Advertising Week New York.

Is the open web growing, dying or transforming? Plus: Apple's iOS update is blocking The Trade Desk from serving ads on Safari browsers, and how that fits into programmatic's next chapter.

Let's talk acquisitions! The WarnerMount merger is close to being in the clear, after California and 11 other states dropped their antitrust lawsuit against the merger. Plus: Taboola bought Dianomi. Infillion bought Foursquare. We get into what all three of these companies will look like post-acquisition.

The Trade Desk's recent reduction of 15% of its workforce comes after nearly two years of challenges on Wall Street, leadership turnover and bumpy product decisions. Independent analyst Richard Kramer comes on to dissect how Wall Street views TTD – and what it got wrong in the first place.

Two Big Tech moments capped the summer: The FTC sued Amazon over its kinda-sorta second-price auctions, alleging it deceived SMB advertisers. And Judge Brinkema declared that Google will not have to spin off its ad server.

Google won't have to break up its ads business after being declared an online monopolist. Meanwhile, Amazon faces a lawsuit from the FTC alleging that it charged advertisers more than necessary for ecommerce ads.

The great Meta migration is in full swing. Ex-Meta employees are, filling the ranks at Open AI, TikTok, Amazon Ads and Roku and bringing their expertise with them.