CDP Institute

Third-party cookie deprecation lets Google please privacy advocates while harming competitors.  Lest the competitive benefits become too clear, the company is eager to show that advertisers can get acceptable results from alternatives like contextual targeting, interest-based cohorts, and publishers’ first-party data.  It just released a test concluding exactly that: ad campaigns without third party cookies performed only a little worse than those using cookies. (Details here.) They mention but don’t stress that the test doesn’t consider lost measurement or retargeting.

Google has a lot on its collective mind, from renaming its FLEDGE ad targeting API (now Protected Audience API) to watching another nine states join the anti-trust lawsuit   filed by eight other states and federal Department of Justice.   But they still had time to join the verification parade with a new, blue badge for advertisers.  The spread of verification seems to reflect a broad social worry about knowing who to trust, but maybe I’m over-thinking.

What must worry Google above all is the decline in search marketing itself.  You’ll recall we reported last week that search’s share of U.S. Internet ad spend has been falling.  Today I’ll add this Jungle Scout report that people are starting their online shopping searches less with “search engines” (presumably mostly Google) and Amazon, and more with Walmart and TikTok.  Yikes!

Have you been wondering when Amazon Web Services would join Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure in offering generative AI tools? Wonder no more: they announced a collection of services last week that will let developers build AI chatbots and other tools using pretrained models from Anthropic, AI21, Stability AI, and Amazon’s very own Titan family.

Blue badges are the new black: LinkedIn has joined the verification party with a so-far free and voluntary program that offers several ways for members to prove their identity and employer. With programs like this and growing demands for social media to verify young users’ ages and identities, get ready to master the intricacies of identify verification. And start wondering what happens to people who can’t or don’t want to participate.

Here’s the latest twist in the media measurement saga: Nielsen’s flagship National TV Audience Measurement service has been re-accredited by the Media Ratings Council. The service was de-accredited in September 2021, in a move that seemed inconceivable until it happened.