The Big Story

Cookies: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. Well, depends on who you ask, and the experts disagree. This week, we go headlong into the heated debate on the value of cookie tracking, and take a look at the super-sized media budgets of Big Tech platforms.

Amazon is beta testing a clean room. What does it offer, and how does it compare to clean room setups offered by Google and Facebook?

This week, it's all about Apple's ITP, Google Chrome's response to its browser peers' user privacy lockdown and we get into how CCPA might affect broadcasters' plans to offer addressable advertising.

Viacom and CBS have gotten back together. What does this mean for advanced advertising? For streaming? For content? For everything? Also, the Democratic candidates have created an absurd direct response feeding frenzy, as they each try to amass enough donors to qualify for the September debates. We'll hop into a shark cage and descend like chum into the waters to scope out the situation.

That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of GDPR, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and turn to contextual data instead. This week on The Big Story, we look at the future of RTB, and apologize to William Shakespeare. 

This week, we celebrate three letter acronyms. RTB comes to CTV now that Amazon Fire TV inventory is available through the DSPs dataxu and The Trade Desk. Plus, the FTC and DoJ launch antitrust investigations into Facebook. But what's the difference? Finally, we look at the rise and fall and perhaps rise again of the ad tech startup Ad/Fin.

The Trade Desk stares down Google. The FTC takes a chunk out of Facebook. TikTok invades #Area51. 

News Corp.'s Stephanie Layser makes a guest appearance to dig into the explosive column she wrote about Google's Unified Pricing rule changes, and the effect they might have on the publisher community.

We all want quality in our lives, and our ad inventory. Tune in to hear about a new way to get it. Also, we'll discuss all of the newcomers, and some oldcomers, who are jockeying to grab a bit of LiveRamp's onboarding business.

In this episode of The Big Story, the team looks back at the year so far, and looks forward at the year to come. Happy 4th!