The Big Story

Did anything interesting happen this week?

Well, CCPA 2.0 passed in California, tightening the consumer privacy rights associated with the OG CCPA. Also, the United States elected a new president (I mean, maybe?). We’ll look into our crystal ball and tell you how the results (Unclear at the time of this writing) might impact paid media. Except instead of a crystal ball, it’s more of a fractal.

The ad industry is hard at work resolving the future of identity, but in this week’s spook-tastic show, publishers sense a scary presence awaiting them down the hall: new forms of data leakage! In this week’s episode, special guest CafeMedia’s Paul Bannister offers a word of caution on how these new solutions might be privacy safe for consumers, but compromise publishers. And speaking of identity, the AdExchanger team breaks down the new partnership between The Trade Desk and LiveRamp – and what it all means.

The DOJ’s case against Google zeroes in on search – so what happens next? And how is the ad tech community responding to this narrow purview? Also, what the FLoC is happening at the W3C? Google recently completed a test of its cohort-based targeting proposal. The team talks early results and gets into what still needs to be done.

Twilio buying the CDP Segment for $3.2 billion in stock has raised some industry eyebrows. Are we about to see a run on CDP acquisitions? Is this confusing new-ish category the new hotness? This week, the AdExchanger team welcomes Joe Stanhope as we take a frank look at the CDP landscape, including how the indies might hold up against the marketing clouds, whether the Twilio-Segment dance is a prelude of things to come and what, exactly, a CDP actually is.

Because that's a question that still routinely needs to be answered.

M&A activity emerged from its slumber in Q3, and we’ll find out why with special guest, and LUMA VP, Conor McKenna. Also, we’ll contextualize the House subcommittee’s antitrust report on the business practices of the big tech platforms. What does it mean and where do we go from here?

What the dove is Dovekey, and what does it mean for the future of identity in Chrome? Meanwhile, in California, the CCPA is in full swing, and while the state AG hasn’t brought the hammer down on anyone yet, it’s serving notice. And why didn’t TrueX find its Prince Charming in Disney?

With the ongoing pandemic, third-party cookies on their way out in Chrome and IDFA changes on the horizon, it’s easy to forget that there are actually other things happening in the advertising world. We dig into them this week with special guest Ana Milicevic of Sparrow Advisers, getting into everything from antitrust and data quality to algorithmic bias and creativity in ad sales.

This week, The Big Story welcomes Forrester principal analyst Joanna O'Connell, as we discuss Google's recent Congressional hearing and how lawmakers now have a much better understanding of its digital advertising business. We'll also talk about whether Google's dominance can extend to the television space, the future of identity and what's going on with TikTok. Because you have to talk about TikTok these days.

At the IAB, Randall Rothenberg, who held the top spot for 14 years, is stepping into an executive chairman role, while David Cohen, IAB president since March, is taking over. And also Facebook in February 2021 is going to start limiting how many ads a page can run.

Taboola and Outbrain were once planning to merge to create the monster link recommendation site you’ve always wanted. Now, no more.

Tune in this week to hear how it all went down.

This week, what's Google doing to prep for the IDFA restrictions? The world wants to know, and on this episode, we'll tell you! Meanwhile, AT&T is putting Xandr up for sale, according to The Wall Street Journal. We'll recap the ad tech unit's rise and fall, and why Xandr struggled to live up to its grand ambitions - and what that says about the future of data-driven TV.