All articles tagged with #adtech
OpenAI’s initial ChatGPT ad campaigns are failing to prove their effectiveness, with advertisers reporting a low-tech buying process and little data on whether the ads moved business metrics. The company plans to streamline ad buying, through partnerships with ad tech firms or its own system, as it expands its ad sales.
The Register reports that OS-level age verification attempts are tangled in a sprawling ad-tech ecosystem that relies on long-lived cookies and other storage to track users. The piece catalogs numerous vendors and their data practices—collecting IPs, device IDs, precise locations, and user profiles—with cookie lifetimes spanning months to years. Some vendors claim not to use cookies or rely on alternative storage, but the overall landscape shows pervasive data collection that undermines robust age checks and raises privacy concerns about how age gates are implemented and monitored.
Trade Desk reported 2025 revenue of $2.9B (+18% YoY), GAAP net income of $443M, and adjusted EBITDA of $1.2B (41% margin) on $13.4B gross spend with customer retention above 95%. It expanded buyback capacity to $500M after about $1.4B of repurchases in 2025 and gave Q1 2026 guidance of at least $678M in revenue and ~$195M in adjusted EBITDA. The company highlighted ongoing identity, retail data, and connected-TV initiatives in ad tech; analysts rate TTD as a Hold with a $23 target.
The Trade Desk beat Q4 earnings (59c vs 58c) and revenue ($846.79M vs $840.46M) but issued softer Q1 guidance (revenue >$678M vs consensus $689.48M), sending the stock down about 14.7% in extended trading; full-year 2025 gross spend is projected at $13.4B with customer retention above 95%.
The Register compiles a sweeping inventory of third-party ad-tech vendors (TCF and others), detailing each vendor's cookie usage, durations, and data collection practices. The list shows cookie lifetimes ranging from days to multiple years, and data collected including IP addresses, device identifiers, location data, user profiles, and authentication-derived identifiers. It notes whether vendors use other storage, and whether they rely on legitimate interests or consent, with several vendors not using cookies or using alternative storage. The piece underscores how pervasive and varied online tracking is across the ad ecosystem.
The Register reports that Nudify-style apps evade Google Play and Apple App Store moderation by routing content and monetization through a vast web of advertising and tracking vendors. The piece catalogs numerous ad-tech providers and their data practices—collecting IPs, device IDs, precise location, user profiles, and more—highlighting how this ecosystem can enable illicit content to slip through reviews while raising significant privacy concerns for users.
The Register reports that Canva is among about 100 targets affected by the Shiny Hunters credential-theft operation, with the piece listing numerous advertising-tech vendors and the types of data and cookies involved. The broad scope underscores a sizable attack surface across the ad-tech ecosystem and highlights the need for strong credential hygiene and monitoring for suspicious activity across partnered platforms.
A report shows a large swath of apps in the App Store transmit users’ data to a sprawling array of advertising and tracking vendors. Collected data include IP addresses, device identifiers, probabilistic IDs, location (precise and non-precise), browsing and interaction data, and user profiles, with many vendors using cookies for extended periods (months to years) or other storage. Consent models vary, some vendors claim legitimate interest while others state they don’t use cookies, and privacy policies differ across providers. The result is data flowing from millions of users to numerous ad-tech networks, underscoring privacy concerns about cross-app data sharing and the transparency of storage and consent practices.
The European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion for abusing its dominant position in adtech by favoring its own services, requiring the company to cease these practices within 60 days. Google plans to appeal, and the case marks one of the largest EU antitrust penalties against the tech giant, amid ongoing global scrutiny of its market dominance.
Google was fined nearly €3 billion by the EU for abusing its dominance in adtech by favoring its own services, prompting an appeal from Google and highlighting ongoing tensions in US-EU tech regulation and antitrust scrutiny.
The Department of Justice's trial against Google over its alleged ad tech monopoly concluded with closing arguments, where the DOJ accused Google of unfairly dominating three markets by controlling ad auctions and disadvantaging competitors. The DOJ argued that Google's practices harmed publishers, but the judge noted a lack of direct evidence from advertisers and questioned the absence of testimony on better competing products. Google's defense highlighted these gaps in the DOJ's case.
Google is proceeding with major changes to online user tracking, phasing out the use of cookies—a staple in the $600 billion online advertising industry. Despite the lengthy lead-up to this shift, advertisers are still unprepared for the new landscape, which will significantly alter how they target ads to consumers. This move is part of a broader push for increased internet user privacy.
Facebook has introduced a new feature called 'Link History' in its app, which tracks the links users click on and stores them in a repository. This feature is enabled by default, and while it offers some visibility and control over link tracking, it also raises privacy concerns. Meta, Facebook's parent company, has been tracking user link clicks for over a decade and uses JavaScript to monitor user activity on websites. Critics argue that this feature is another way for Facebook to gather data for personalized ads, despite increasing legal scrutiny over data privacy practices. Users can opt out of 'Link History,' but the feature does not affect Meta's data collection on other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp.
The Trade Desk, a leading adtech firm, plans to lower the price advertisers pay for digital ads by bidding below the asking price on ads starting in September. The Trade Desk aims to standardize price floors set by supply-side platforms (SSPs) to eliminate inaccuracies and unfair auctions. This move could potentially weed out SSPs that manipulate prices and help publishers better understand the true value of their ads. The Trade Desk's software, a demand-side platform, handles a significant amount of ad spend and its new strategy may increase bids for publishers' ads. However, publishers are not obligated to accept the lower bids. This development comes as tech for advertisers and publishers are increasingly competing with each other in the industry.
The European Commission has issued a statement of objections to Google, threatening the company with its harshest regulatory penalty to date, which could include selling part of its adtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices. The adtech business accounted for 79% of Google's total revenue last year. The EU antitrust chief said a behavioural remedy is unlikely to be effective at stopping the anti-competitive practices. Google disagreed with the Commission's charge. The Commission said Google favours its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers.