The Big Story

A sneak peek at ad tech IPOs that might happen in 2022, along with a deep dive into Instacart’s advertising ambitions and why T-Mobile bought rideshare advertising company Octopus Interactive.

The ad verification space is full of green fields to expand into. Case in point: 2022 immediately kicked off with an acquisition by IAS and $100 million in funding for Human. Plus, interoperability and first-party data come together in NBCU’s first-party data platform.

One of the most compelling soap operas of 2021 was the TV measurement debate. As the year ends, here’s one of our best reruns: the moment Nielsen lost its MRC accreditation.

2021 brought both bounty (IPOs) and challenges (targeting). As ad tech surfed the wave of IPOs, it also weathered attacks on targeting and measurement, as online privacy increasingly became a priority for governments, platforms and people.

Vox Media buying Group Nine Media is the latest media mega merger to watch. Plus, Criteo buys IPONWEB. Both acquisitions are part of a strategy to find space unoccupied by Big Tech (and impervious to the demise of third-party cookies).

BuzzFeed’s debut on the public market disappointed, but its advertising business is growing (and it’s planning more acquisitions). Plus, digital advertising in 2021 grew faster than it has in the history of advertising. We explain why.

Black Friday didn’t have its “best year ever.” We get into the supply-chain issues and consumer-behavior changes behind the shift. Plus, how UK antitrust investigators are gaining oversight over Google’s Privacy Sandbox.

The antitrust angle to Apple buying ads for apps with high subscription revenue, how Zoom’s advertising play could develop and why Unified ID 2.0 still hasn’t started testing in Europe.

Big Macs, Oreos and Heinz all have something in common: They’re using a combination of celebrity endorsements, big creative budgets and gimmicks to entice consumers to share their first-party data. Plus: Why digital advertising could be left hanging by the IAB’s public policy power vacuum.

To understand how direct-to-consumer marketers are handling the loss of identity signals online, special guest Chip Malt, CEO of the cookware brand Made In, shares his take on testing UID 2.0  –  and even pursuing identity-less radio – to adapt.