This is one spicy ALM! Conference opening speeches in our industry are usually rather bland affairs consisting of cobbeled together truisms of limited newsworthiness. But not this time.
IAB CEO David Cohen, talking about privacy initiatives threatening the advertising industry’s ability to track and target users, went on an all-out assault on Apple, accusing them of being disingenuous when it comes to privacy. He said while Apple talked big about privacy protection, it employed the same targeting and tracking methods on its own ad platform. His speech was accompanied by the video of a rotting Apple, excuse me, apple. Nevertheless he maintained the IAB was open to talking with Apple – don’t hold your breath waiting for that call from Apple, David.
Washington got their’s, too – he blamed extremists on the left and right for pursuing privacy laws whose effects were ill-understood, and made both users’ and ad folks’ lives worse.
Meta’s Erin Egan talked about privacy, and voiced concern about potential federal privacy legislation and unexpected consequences hurting advertising, consumers and the economy at large.
On another panel it was noted that there will be no fewer than 5 states enacting new privacy laws this year: California’s and Virginia’s went into effect January 1, Connecticut and Colorado will go July 1, and Utah December 31st.
This raised the question of whether companies should try to comply with privacy rules at the state level – taking into account the differences across different state laws – or if they should attempt to do so at the federal level – simply hew to the smallest common denominator across state laws. The former would be harder but would maximize the impact of data use – the latter, easier but less effective.
Magnite’s Mike Laband presented results of a consumer survey re. video consumption – one result being, given the difficult economic situation, that 50% of consumers said they would cut back on their “streaming video stack” – or in plain English, would cancel some of their video subscriptions.
In the following discussion, someone from Netflix‘ new ad group (“5 people so far”) pointed out that there was not enough CTV inventory to to soak up all the money coming into digital from linear TV.“ Generally it’s unclear where that money will go – some will go into (in-app) mobile video, but some will end up in a different places.
To wrap up this quick update on the latest in digital advertising, there was also a rumor going around about Apple considering to also offer an ad-supported version of Apple TV, following Netflix’ example.
That was a great day 2 of the IAB ALM – looking forward to day 3!
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