Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Google’s yearslong effort to make online advertising less invasive has hit another snag. The U.K. privacy regulator says Google’s proposed replacements for cookies need to do more to protect consumer privacy, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google’s proposed technology, dubbed Privacy Sandbox, leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy and identify users…
Forbes for years ran an alternate version of its website where it packed ads that were intended to run on Forbes.com, another sign that brands don’t always get what they pay for in the opaque digital-advertising market. The alternate site, which Forbes shut down Tuesday following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, featured stories from…
Forget what you know about “made for advertising.” There’s a push now to redefine MFA as “made for arbitrage.” Despite the backlash against MFA websites, there is still no industry standard to define MFA, which is causing problems for some publishers that feel unfairly lumped into the made-for-advertising category. AdExchanger has learned that the 4A’s…
A group of conservative Colorado Catholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile app tracking data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps and then shared it with bishops around the country. The secretive effort was the work of a Denver nonprofit called Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal, whose trustees…
Last November, Michael Morell, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, hinted at a big change in how the agency now operates. “The information that is available commercially would kind of knock your socks off,” Morell said in an appearance on the NatSecTech podcast. “If we collected it using traditional intelligence methods, it…
Almost a year after the industry outcry over made-for-advertising inventory and months since many ad-tech firms have devised solutions to address the problem, ads from large brands are still being served on spammy websites, new research from Adalytics has found. Adalytics found examples of hundreds of large brands advertising on made-for-advertising websites, facilitated by most…
Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh, we keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can literally make or break…
Wednesday, February 7th, 2024 – 12:35 am Last week, the Connecticut Attorney General published a privacy enforcement update that made my stomach turn. A consumer had sent a complaint to the AG’s office because they received an advertisement in the mail for cremation services after recently completing chemotherapy. Apparently, the individual had been part of a…
The Messenger, a news website that pledged to shake up the media industry with a playbook borrowed from the doomed publishing start-ups of yesteryear, will be closing down. In an email to staff, the site’s founder, Jimmy Finkelstein, said that The Messenger’s shutdown was “effective immediately.” “This is truly the last thing I wanted, and…
Programmatic auctions are creating so many carbon copies of themselves, it’s threatening to topple the entire structure of programmatic. The bid duplication is getting so extreme, buyers are starting to take notice of this strange behavior. Instead of seeing the whole universe of bid opportunities, demand-side platforms see only a small portion of inventory copied…