Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech — Password Sharing & Going Cookieless

Hey there folks! This is Ari at Sharethrough here with a brand new episode of Behind Headlines. In this episode I'll be giving you a 180-second recap of what happened the week of March 14th in ad tech. Let’s dive in!

First up on the chopping block, account sharing. Netflix is testing whether it should charge members for sharing accounts outside of their household. It’s not enough that Netflix recently hiked up its cost when other streaming services are making it more affordable for consumers, members that  want to share their account outside of their household will have to pay an additional $3. But what constitutes a household? How will Netflix track households? Why pay for a premium plan to stream to 4 devices at the same time? It’d take too long to address all my other concerns, but whatever the case, Netflix states that account sharing impacts their ability to deliver new TV and movies to their subscribers. That sounds like they’re trying to squeeze every bit they can get from their members, considering that Netflix doesn’t have an ad-supported option to fall back to…for now at least? (Source: Variety)

Speaking of new TV and movies, MGM, the studio behind The Handmaids Tale and James Bond, was recently acquired by Amazon for nearly $8.5 billion. The FTC hasn’t technically approved the acquisition, but Amazon got the okay in Europe and took that as the go-ahead. MGM will join Prime Video and Amazon Studios, which will add more titles to their existing library. Not only that, but with an additional studio, Amazon can create even more original programming, which could give it quite the significant leg up from other streaming services. AT&T is merging WarnerMedia and Discovery, HBO Max and Discovery+ will fall under one app, the race between streaming services could be anybody’s game. (Source: The Verge)

Next up, third-party cookies aren’t the only thing that Google is getting rid of in 2023. Google recently announced that Universal Analytics (UA) will shut down next year and all analytics customers will be phased into the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4). With increasing demands for higher consumer privacy standards, GA4 won’t log or store IP addresses. Then how will advertisers know where their target customers are? Google registers a user’s country or market, so there’s still some clues as to where they could be. Will this impact the reports and data that advertisers use to make decisions? The lack of IP addresses will be supplemented by the upgraded and built-in data-driven attribution modelling, but how accurate will the data be? (Source: AdExchanger)

More on third-party cookies, American Express has been trying to figure out different measurement technology to get ahead of the looming demise of third-party cookies. The credit card company states that attribution has been one of their biggest challenges. Having previously used Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), Amex is shifting to Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM). So many acronyms to keep track of, what does it mean? MTA is assigning a value to the different touch points across a customer’s journey to determine which channel contributed to the sale. But the exponential loss of attribution signals has made it difficult to accurately predict with MTA. Instead, Amex will focus on MMM to measure what it does know like seasonality, trends, and promotions, using AI and machine learning. But does it work? Using MMM, Amex was able to get more performance from it’s audio channels, when previously it would’ve dismissed audio since users had to leave the audio channel and go elsewhere to apply for a product. (Source: AdExchanger)

And last but certainly not least, Adobe and The Trade Desk announced a partnership that all first-party emails stored on Adobe’s customer data platform (CDP) will be converted into the Unified ID 2 identity solution by The Trade Desk. Advertisers building audiences with first-party data in the Adobe CDP can use them through The Trade Desk on CTV, video, and display campaigns, to name a few. Performance reports from campaigns running on The Trade Desk will return to the Adobe CDP for more insights, and advertisers can keep it all in one platfrom. This is the also first time that the first-party data will be converted into UID 2. That means more campaigns personalized for your target audience, but what if that audience wants their data removed? Adobe has to remove the data from The Trade Desk and the UID 2 as well. Doesn’t sound hard, but UID 2 is open-source code hosted by the IAB Tech Lab, that means others are free to make updates, so how will Adobe remove it from there? Whatever the case, it’s an early play from both companies to rely less on third-party cookies. (Source: Martech, AdExchanger)

Thanks for tuning in! Let us know what you think by leaving a comment on our LinkedIn page or send us an email to marketing@sharethrough.com. For more in-depth information or to subscribe to these weekly updates, check out the links in our blog. This has been Ari at Sharethrough for our weekly 180 second-recap in Ad tech. Until next time!