Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Beginning next week, the search giant will face off against the US Justice Department over allegations that the company’s adtech practices are anti-competitive. In a historic trial set to begin on Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will take on Google, challenging the way it monetizes advertising and accusing it of stifling competition in…
A new study underscores the urgent need for more effective brand safety tools to ensure that brands can reliably prevent their ads from appearing alongside harmful content. A report published today reveals that ads for hundreds of the world’s biggest brands – including Meta, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Amazon, Disney, Nestle, Mercedes, Walmart, Marriott and…
Here’s your monthly Garbage Intelligence. It arrives the first Friday of every month, instead of the usual Garbage Weekend issue. It’s a snapshot of everything that’s happening around the web. Before we dig into the data, here are this month’s three big takeaways… NOVEMBER IN JULY The US Presidential race went from historically low polling…
Google to kill cookies with consent Google yesterday announced that it no longer intends to deprecate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. From its blog post, A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web (emphasis mine): Early testing from ad tech companies, including Google, has indicated that the Privacy Sandbox APIs have the potential to…
TikTok collected data about its users’ views on sensitive topics and censored content at the direction of its China-based parent company, the Justice Department said Friday, making its most forceful case to date that the video-sharing app poses a national-security threat. The sensitive topics TikTok tracked included the views of its U.S.-based users on gun control,…
If you still hold any notion that Google Chrome’s “Incognito mode” is a good way to protect your privacy online, now’s a good time to stop. Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” the company collected while users browsed the web using Incognito mode, according to documents filed in federal court in San…
Former hedge-fund manager Jeff Bezos bet on a hunch two years ago and ended up with online bookstore Amazon.com, the poster-child of savvy Net commerce, even though it hasn’t earned a cent of profit yet. After a semi-successful IPO and in the midst of a legal scuffle with Barnes & Noble, Bezos says he isn’t…
Jeff Bezos loves being on the move. He sits in the back of a white van, beaming as usual, surrounded by an entourage of lanky young lieutenants from Amazon.com the Web’s biggest retail store and, someday, if Bezos gets it right, Earth’s Biggest Store. The early-morning landscape of southeast Kansas hustles by: wood-frame houses, trailers,…
Former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia knows the $700bn global digital ad industry is founded on trading “useless, garbage data” because a) she spent a decade in media ops and compliance and b) she’s accessed her own profile from adtech vendors. The result? 500 laughably contradictory audience segments where she is simultaneously woman and man,…
Many people dream of becoming social-media stars like YouTube’s MrBeast or TikTok’s Charli D’Amelio. But for most who pursue careers as content creators, just making ends meet is a lofty goal. Clint Brantley has been a full-time creator for three years, posting videos on TikTok, YouTube and Twitch where he comments on news and trends related to…