Hey everyone-
The IAB Annual Leadership Meeting kicked off this weekend in sunny California. While I’m not there hanging out at the J.W. Marriott in Palm Desert, my colleague Ronan Shields is. On Sunday, he wrote that the online ad trade body is working hard for its members to address Google’s recent announcement that it will kill the cookie on Chrome by 2022.
He writes that the IAB has a planned announcement (sources on the ground say that IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg has dubbed this "Project Harmony") this week that will lay out how it will bring publishers back into focus, as the death of the cookie has members rattled.
“One proposal currently under consideration puts forward the idea of using a recently launched common data taxonomy and publishers’ first-party data, where a user registers an ID such as an email address, to help advertisers target audience types.
“Advertisers can then find their desired audiences by bidding against a relevant audience ID that is created using this verified data, as opposed to a cookie, with the working theory that it can be applied across browsers."
This makes sense, in a way, as the IAB has been the standard-bearer for how display ads work. But here’s the thing. Over the last three years, as the ad-tech community has faced serious headwinds, not least of which is Google’s role, the IAB has systematically repositioned itself towards the direct-to-consumer community.
Seeing that ad-tech funding was drying up (Forrester predicted at the end of 2018 that VC funding would drop from $7.2 billion in 2018 to $1.8 billion in 2019) and DTC funding was ramping up, it’s no surprise that the trade organization wanted to have a bigger tent. (It's 2018 and 2019 annual leadership meetings were ALL about the DTC.)
But as the 2020 IAB meeting gets underway amid tensions from Google, CCPA, GDPR and other coming legislation, publisher execs are looking for a bit more guidance from the trade body. As the cliche says, time will tell. And time’s ticking.
If you have any tips or thoughts about this newsletter, drop me a line. Have a great week!
Josh Sternberg
Media and Tech Editor
