A bit ambiguous: Moloco reports that mobile acquisition costs have grown by more than 200% for tracked users and 155% for non-tracked users since Apple introduced its enhanced privacy controls in iOS 14.5 in April. That’s bad news for advertisers but good news for consumers whose privacy preferences are being respected. Two thirds of ad bids (67.5%) now come from users who have opted out of tracking.
Also cheery: this GeoEdge study finds that slightly more advertising said ad quality challenges got better (40%) than worse (35%) in the past year. By next year, more expect contextual fit to be their biggest challenge (51%) than brand safety (43%). This reverses years of increasing concern. Concerted industry efforts get credit, and let’s note that IAB Tech Lab has just launched a Transparency Center to further improve ad reliability.
Welcome to “Trends Nobody Else Cares About Day” at CDP Institute. We’ll start with Gap Inc.’s acquisition of virtual fitting room app Drapr, which lets consumers try on clothes remotely. This one’s a two-fer: it illustrates the trend for retailers to buy tech companies rather than just using their products, and the trend of virtual dressing rooms, following Walmart’s purchase of Zeekit in May. Woot!
With CDP vendors increasing their workforces by 3.4% in six months, compared with an average of 0.2% each six months over the prior two years, the sector seems to be growing again, according to our own semi-annual industry update. There is much talk of composable CDPs but they still employ no more than 5% of the sector workforce. What is a clear trend is the acquisition of independent CDPs by vendors interested in adding a CDP to a larger system (usually an activation system).