Can ad tech’s server-side shift save it from Apple and Google?

With iOS 27, Apple’s Safari browser has begun blocking domains tied to identity resolution providers, such as The Trade Desk and ID5, that link people’s browsing to their email addresses. In response, ad tech firms and IAB Tech Lab are pushing to move ad calls server-side, including through the latter organization’s Trusted Server technology, which would limit the browser’s control over ad tech firms’ actions.

Meanwhile, the remedies ruling in Google’s ad tech antitrust trial has given Prebid an opening to flip the programmatic auction. Instead of Google’s ad server getting final say on the winning bid, Google’s ad exchange would have to bid into Prebid’s server.

But is the server-side shift a long-term solution? And is it the right one? Digiday’s executive editor of news Seb Joseph and senior ad tech reporter Ronan Shields joined the Digiday Podcast to hash out ad tech’s Game of Thrones amid the server-side shift.

Can Trusted Server outrun Apple?

Joseph: From the conversations we’re having in the initial aftermath of the Safari crackdown, Trusted Server has been seen as almost a panacea. And yet it does feel like that is a misappropriation of what Trusted Server was designed for, and that any attempt to truly lean on it as a durable workaround to what Apple is doing misses the point entirely. It’s pretty clear that Apple is not going to stop at the companies that it has already targeted and, more importantly, the mechanism that they use to do that. Whether it’s happening via Safari or via Trusted Server, Apple does not want that stuff happening to its customers in any guise and will by hook or crook find a way to offset that.

Can ad tech take control?

Shields: Can ad tech wrest back control from these power brokers of Apple and Google? I would say absolutely no. They can’t wrest control because Google and Apple own the browser, the mobile OS — in the case of Google — they own the ad tech platform and the cloud infrastructure as well. With Trusted Server, [ad tech companies] can gain a degree of autonomy, but they need to behave themselves with it to retain that autonomy.

Can ad tech police itself?

Joseph: Is it incumbent on the industry at some point to get its shit together and do more than the bare minimum, the baseline set by regulators, in order to instill some sort of trust? Because otherwise the browsers, the platforms, they will find a way to put their hand on the scale moving forward.

Shields: I hear what you’re saying, Seb, but how realistic is that? 

Joseph: I’d say it was pretty realistic this time around, because otherwise what happens? 

Can Prebid take control from Google?

Shields: If we listen to [Google’s] earnings yesterday [Oct. 28], the one aspect of their business that didn’t do well again is this [third-party display ad] network business, the GAM area of the business. I think they’re OK with letting it go. So Prebid wants it? Yeah, fine, go ahead. I don’t think they’re going to lose too much sleep over it.