Advertisers can hope, but the odds against person-based targeting keep falling. Firefox just extended its already-strong anti-tracking features by adding “cookie jars” that prevent websites from sharing cookies with each other. And privacy-centric browser firm Brave just bought independent search engine Tailcat, which promises not to track users.
You can bet your CEO doesn’t worry about missing cookies or stale pastries: she has staff for that.
AT&T-owned ad platform Xandr is also clinging to the personal ID lifeboat. It just announced “agnostic interoperability” across individual-level ad targeting solutions including Unified ID 2.0, which The Trade Desk just handed to the Prebid standards group; LiveRamp’s Authenticated Identity Infrastructure; and Europe’s netID unified log-in project. But Xandr is also hedging its bets with support for alternatives such as modeled and contextual ad buys.
“Ask Meta AI anything” is what you now see instead of the traditional search bar across Meta apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Meta AI will still perform the basic search function but will also answer questions and chat with you. It should hardly be a surprise when a tech company launches a genAI solution these days but this is a bold challenge to Google and Open.ai (it’s also available as a standalone tool at Meta.ai).