Overheard at Prebid Summit: Addressability problem ‘really needs to be considered carefully’
The fall conference season in New York City is underway, and hot on the heels of Advertising Week came Prebid Summit, a one-day gathering where independent ad tech players shared their thoughts on the day’s pressing issues: change, change and more change.
The connective tissue in almost every conversation (both public and private) was grappling with the policy whims of Big Tech players.
Every member of this cohort is responding to growing demands for privacy — either that or they are using it as a foil to conceal their monopolistic desires, depending on whom you speak to — and their subsequent actions have the power to upend strategies that have been years and millions of dollars in the making.
Look at the chaos caused by Google’s recent U-turn on cookie deprecation within its dominant Chrome browser. For some, similar eruptions are to follow.
‘IP addresses will go the way of the cookie’
Opening keynote speaker Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange, noted that some of the solutions brought to market to circumvent the addressability problems hastened by the privacy policies of ecosystem providers such as Apple and Google might be on thin ice, particularly those based on IP addresses.
“We’re fixated right now on Chrome’s deprecation with third-party cookies,” he told attendees, noting that while Google’s Privacy Sandbox offering has come a long way, it still has room for improvement.
He went on to say, “Some of the solutions that are being implemented to hedge off the potential signal loss that’s going to occur; there are (largely) probabilistic solutions that are dependent upon the IP address. … I think that’s something that really needs to be considered carefully.”
For Casale, who has been closely following the Privacy Sandbox deliberations, just as the third-party cookie and Android ID have been pegged for sunsetting as ad targeting tools, he added that “the IP address is probably going to be the next fall drop.”
Log-in rates ‘well north of 5%’
Also, from the conference stage came notes of optimism, with Raptive’s svp of research Patrick McCann noting how some of the automated log-in solutions (admittedly provided by large players, such as log-in with Chrome or OpenPass from The Trade Desk) are slowly yielding results.
“People are more comfortable [using such tools] logging in than expected,” he commented on a panel discussion. “Two years ago, it was at 5% … now that’s well north of 5%.”
Of course, the conversation that underpinned almost every conversation in the room was the pending closure (and decision) in Google’s ad tech antitrust trial, a years-long battle between the Department of Justice and the biggest company in ad tech.
Digiday readers will know that Google faces a potentially forced divestiture of its ad tech business should the court case go against it, but (in keeping with the sentiments expressed in recent Digiday Research), some believe the outcome may be more moderate.
During his keynote session, Index Exchange’s Casale — himself a witness on the stand at the Virginia-based trial — expressed reservations for those eager to see a full divestiture. “They [the DOJ] want some structural relief,” he added. “But I’m not so sure that’s going to happen.”
For Casale, the fact that other Big Tech players, particularly Amazon and its rising ad tech suite, may foil Google’s critics who claim it has no realistic competitors.
However, he also noted how Google’s publisher ad server is so dominant that it is most likely subject to any judicial orders should Google lose the ongoing antitrust case.
Elsewhere, on the sidelines of the conference, the ever-evolving role of traditional demand- and supply-side platforms was hotly debated, particularly the potential tension this could cause with their historic supply chain partners.
One source, who requested anonymity in return for candor due to the potential sensitivities involved, noted how “the role of curation” will help distinguish those SSPs that will stay the course from those that will fall by the wayside.
“A lot of them are trying to use the algorithm to wrestle control from the DSPs,” they said. “If they can take a smaller fee from the buy-side there, they can evolve.”
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