Data + Privacy
Broadsign’s Big Move Isn’t The Endgame. It’s The Opening Gambit
Broadsign’s acquisition of Place Exchange last week is a defining moment for programmatic out-of-home (OOH). But it is not the endgame; it is merely the setup. The OOH stack is being rebuilt from the inside out. The final owner is not yet in the room. When you look at the sequence of recent deals, the […]
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Research
Forrester Survey: Customer Experience the Top Focus for B2C CMOs in 2026
A new survey from Forrester suggests that many B2C CMOs are planning to make the customer experience (CX) their top priority in 2026 — a notable shift from last year, when CX didn’t even crack the top five priorities in the same survey.
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Data-Driven Thinking
AI Slop Is The New MFA, And We All Need To Fight It
Low-quality, AI-generated content – or AI slop – is flooding the open web. The entire digital ecosystem is adapting to the challenges that generative AI’s exponential growth presents. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about media waste and ROAS, I’ve seen how easy it is for bad actors to spin up thousands […]
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The Big Story
APIs FTW, But IPs Are TBD
New APIs from Roku, Comcast and The Trade Desk are reshaping digital advertising, from self-serve campaign management to cross-platform measurement. But when it comes to identity and targeting, a new study finds that IP address matching is missing the mark.
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Data-Driven Thinking
Why Meta’s Exit From MRC Audits Should Be A Wake-Up Call For Marketers
Meta’s decision to withdraw from the Media Rating Council’s brand-safety audits and its subsequent loss of accreditation have sparked important questions for advertisers that depend on transparency and accountability to protect their brands online. When one of the world’s largest advertising platforms steps away from independent verification, it’s a reminder of how critical third-party accountability […]
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Data-Driven Thinking
Why Your First AdCP Project Is Probably Going To Fail
Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) is being sold as a magic bullet. But let’s be honest: Your first AdCP project is probably going to fail. It won’t fail because the protocol is bad; it will fail because you’ve been sold a simplistic dream – a “universal API” for ad tech – and that’s what you’re budgeting […]
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AI
McDonald’s Chief Data & Analytics Officer on AI Upskilling and Empowering its Workforce
Upskilling employees to use AI within organizations is far behind what it should be, according to McDonald’s Chief Data & Analytics Officer Michelle Gansle. Her keynote at MAICON earlier this month detailed how companies can reverse that trend.
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The Big Story
The Power of Prebid
With its wide adoption and independent membership, Prebid is powerful. We discuss Transaction IDs and the remedies phase of the antitrust trial with those inside and outside the org to better understand this open-source project.
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Data-Driven Thinking
AdCP And The Math Of Agentic AI: Building For Today’s Economics, Not Tomorrow’s Dreams
While the promise of agentic AI in advertising is intoxicating, autonomous systems optimizing campaigns and making real-time adjustments still face a sobering reality: The economics don’t work for everything – yet. Let’s look beyond the generalized AI hype to a more actionable and immediate trend: using Model Context Protocol (MCP) and its advertising-focused cousin, Ad […]
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The Big Story
Rest In Privacy, Sandbox
Last week, after nearly six years of development and delays, Google officially retired its Privacy Sandbox. Which means it’s time for a memorial service.
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Data-Driven Thinking
Personalization Isn’t Everything: The Case For Marketing That Brings People Together
Marketers today are tasked with delivering hyper-personalized messaging at scale. Luckily for them, AI has made it possible to reach individuals with uncanny precision (as we all know: right message, right time, right channel). But as the pendulum swings hard toward 1:1 personalization, a critical question emerges: Just because we can personalize every interaction, does […]