May 2024 in MarTech and AdTech

Welcome to the new edition of MarTech Insider: a monthly newsletter exploring top news stories and discussions in AdTech/MarTech.

In today’s edition, we cover breaking news (the Colossus SSP debacle), widely discussed announcements ( Netflix launching its AdTech), and comments from industry experts.

Here’s what’s inside of today’s edition:

🔸 OpenAI signs a deal with Reddit, Inc.

🔸 TripleLift releases an SSP for retail media

🔸 Kochava brings outcome measurements to linear TV

🔸 IAB Tech Lab announces PAIR protocol

🔸 Hivestack by Perion launches DOOH Green Curated Deals in a partnership with Scope3

🔸 PayPal hires an ex-Uber VP to drive its ad business

Follow Xenoss MarTech Insider to get monthly updates on AdTech and MarTech news.

Let’s dive in!

In our last digest, we covered Adalytics uncovering Forbes’ MFA, and, lo and behold, it’s making waves in the industry again.

This time, the controversy centers around Colossus SSP, which reportedly misrepresented IDs in its logs. The Trade Desk then bought these impressions and sold them to brands.

The industry started witch-haunting whoever was responsible for the mix-up. Several options seem plausible:

• Colossus SSP themselves for intentionally committing ID injection fraud
• BidSwitch – an intermediary Colossus SSP used to connect to The Trade Desk – is responsible for a technical issue that led to the misattribution.
• The Trade Desk for reportedly knowing about technical issues with Colossus SSP roughly a year before the Adalytics exposé and doing nothing.
• Verification vendors for not offering advanced technology for spotting the mismatch that Adalytics spotted by analyzing publicly available Chrome developer information
• Adalytics themselves for not acting in good faith in their accusation, sharing a report with the n=25 sample size, and selling a technical issue for deliberate fraud attempts.

There’ve been a lot of insightful opinions on the matter: check out Ari Paparo ’s post, Dr. Augustine Fou ’s write-up, and more. We also asked Jon Walsh, the founder of JobsInAdtech.com, The Adtech Chat Community, and Xenoss Brand Ambassador, for his opinion on the AdTech’s current state of analytics.

Here is Jon’s take on the current state of analytics in AdTech and finding the balance between advertisers’ aspirations for precision and the industry’s technical limitations.

Netflix is launching its own AdTech (Netflix)

The implementation of the ad-supported tier by Netflix was slower and more challenging than many would expect. Yet, according to the streaming giant, it was quite fruitful: there are over 40 million users on the ad-supported tier. To give brands a reliable way to access their user base and inventory, Netflix has announced its readiness to build a proprietary AdTech stack and partner with other players in the programmatic ecosystem.

Dataiku Launches EU AI Act Readiness Program (Dataiku)

At the moment, AI compliance is not a top-of-the-mind concern for AdTech vendors, but with the EU AI Act passing recently, it will soon be one. Dataiku has announced a plan to support AdTech and MarTech organizations in reaching AI compliance with a dedicated “readiness solution” and “expert guidance.”

TripleLift is the first SSP to enable responsive e-commerce native ad Supply for Amazon Ads (TripleLift)

By supporting Amazon’s REC format in its new offering, TripleLift is doubling down on its commitment to building tools for retail buyers. In a new solution, advertisers can use real-time Amazon assets (price, star ratings, primo logos) in dynamically generated ads.

Zeta shares its finances for Q1 2024 and targets for the rest of the year (Zeta)

The company started the year on an upward growth trajectory. Zeta Global wrapped up Q1 with $195 million in revenue (a 24% YoY increase). The company plans to explore more enterprise and agency opportunities for the rest of the year, intending to hit over $890 million by December.

PayPal hires an ex-Uber VP to lead its AdTech business (Campaign)

Dr. Mark Grether, former Advertising VP and General Manager at Uber will join PayPal to build an advertising platform that will, according to the company, “become a must-use marketing channel for merchants. Little is known about the product at the time of writing, but now there’s room for speculation as to whether PayPal will go “the Uber way”.

OpenAI pens a partnership deal with Reddit (OpenAI)

Source: OpenAI, May 16, 2024

OpenAI’s partnership with Reddit, Inc. is a significant milestone for generative AI and GPT. To date, Reddit is practically unbeatable as a source of authentic user data. Having access to these insights would help significantly improve GPT’s writing capabilities.

For Reddit, the partnership with GPT is an important milestone. The company has been fighting for the right to get paid for user data, and it has won the battle.

For tech in general, the Reddit/OpenAI deal might mark the end of the open API era. With OpenAI quickly soaring into the unicorn space, publishers will be wary of the rhetoric of “providing free data to support the evolution of tech” and will embrace the stance that “if end-users pay AI companies, AI companies should pay us for data.”

For publishers, the surge of AI companies opens a new door to monetization: aggregate high-quality user data and sell it to AI unicorns for model training. This is an excellent way to profit for companies like Reddit, which is behind Big Tech publishers in ad revenue (the platform’s $804-million yearly revenue pales compared to TikTok’s $3.8 billion or Google’s $237 billion).

For publishers, the ability to have AI companies for data they would otherwise be using for free is a big win.

For smaller AI startups, not so much. A shift towards paid data sharing makes running low-cost AI experiments harder. At Xenoss, we have seen firsthand the challenges AdTech and MarTech startups face in staying profitable amidst the rising costs of API-led and point-to-point integrations.

However, this is a new reality, and the industry should respond to it by ramping up first-party data capabilities and prioritizing custom AI technology over plugging in the OpenAI API. The latter might be a good workaround at the MVP stage but will prove financially unfeasible in the long run.

Also, seeing that synthetic datasets are picking up pace, I am hopeful that early-stage startups could use them to build high-performance models without drowning in API costs.

Kochava & Comscore Bring Outcomes Measurement to Linear TV (Kochava)

At the #IABNewFronts stage, the company announced a new solution to bring outcome measurement to linear TV. According to Charles F Manning, the CEO of Kochava, the new platform will combine campaign data provided by the brand and the ECR data feed from Comscore, Inc. This data will be processed using the company’s proprietary methodologies.

IAB Tech Lab announces PAIR (IAB Tech Lab)

IAB Tech Lab PAIR combines the principles of Google’s PAIR (Publisher-Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) Protocol and IAB Tech Lab’s Open Private Join and Activation (OPJA). It will describe ways to use data clean rooms and privacy-enhancing technologies for audience activation.

Hivestack by Perion launches DOOH Green Curated Deals in partnership with Scope3 (Hivestack)

Through Green Curated Deals, brands can access low-carbon DOOH inventory. Hivestack notes that the release is a step towards “mobilizing the DOOH industry towards a standard framework that supports decarbonization.”

In May, there was no shortage of curious LinkedIn posts and discussions. In our opinion, the CDP community hit the creativity nail on the head this month with their thought-provoking discussions and the skill of packaging them into the Internet’s most digestible content format – memes.

In case you missed the Composable CDP vs Packaged CDP discussion, here are the highlights:

Luke Ambrosetti touched down on the growing impact of engineering teams on making data decisions and the importance of keeping in touch with marketing needs.

Caleb Benningfield, Amperity, shared his thoughts on the challenges of breaking data silos and ways technology helps address the problem.

Arun Thulasidharan delved deeper into Salesforce’s alleged zero-copy infrastructure and whether it will be the future of CDPs.

On a non-CDP note, June Cheung, Head of JAPAC at Scope3, shared an in-depth guide on measuring your campaign’s carbon footprint

According to a new IAB Europe report, More than 95% of a programmatic ad platform’s total emissions fall under scope 3, also known as supply chain emissions. Of those, more than 90% come from media, as estimated by the SRIxAD framework. The framework includes ad selection and delivery infrastructure as well as user devices as emissions sources.

We’ve also seen an interesting data point from political advertising.

GumGum released a study on American receptivity towards political advertising. According to the data, 57% of readers are willing to engage with political ads if those ads are integrated into the page’s main content.

Our May events were a-MAY-zing (and many more are coming up). Here are the recaps of places we’ve been to last month and a few announcements to let you know what’s next (spoiler alert: it’s Cannes).

Xenoss at The Cannes Social

If you are going to Cannes, drop by Cannes Social, a must-visit networking event hosted by FirstPartyCapital and ExchangeWire. It is an honor to be a co-sponsoring partner of the event.

Xenoss hosted a Prebid After-Party with Jon Walsh

It was a joy to connect with the UK AdTech community at the Prebid Summit After-Party. Thanks to Jon Walsh, founder of The The Adtech Chat Community and JobsInAdtech.com, for the assistance and for spreading the word.

Xenoss CRO Maria Novikova relocated to Toronto, Canada

In May, we announced that Xenoss CRO Maria Novikova had relocated to Toronto and attended. This a new chapter for the company, as we are committed to expanding our presence in North America.

Xenoss at AdClub Digital Day 2024

We were delighted to attend Xenoss AdClub Digital Day and connect with Canadian AdTech/MarTech professionals.

Xenoss attended Programmatic I/O 2024

Xenoss CRO Maria Novikova attended Programmatic I/O by AdExchanger in Las Vegas. We were inspired by insightful discussions and innovative projects our industry colleagues are working on!

To stay up to date on the upcoming AdTech events, check out our AdTech event calendar.

This wraps up our May’s newsletter. With Cannes around the corner, we are looking forward to a ton of news and discussions in the June edition and will do our best to keep you in the know. Don’t forget to follow Xenoss MarTech Insider so you don’t miss our updates.