Google’s much-criticized Privacy Sandbox had some good news yesterday when Microsoft said it would add preliminary support for the Privacy Sandbox APIs across Microsoft Advertising products. Microsoft Edge has also introduced an Ad Selection API allowing advertisers to select and deliver relevant ads to users without relying on third-party cookies.
Customer Data Platform Amperity has unveiled two new AI tools, Explore and Assist, that will join the existing products, Stitch and Predict, to form an AI suite, AmpAI. Aimed at business users, Explore will support engagement with data using natural language; Assist will help both technical and non-technical users develop and customize new data assets on the platform. The capabilities seek to fix data quality and access challenges.
While advertisers continue to rely heavily on third-party cookies for programmatic ad buys, they are slowly preparing for the cookieless future. 33Across reports investment in cookie alternatives within its ad exchange grew an average of 9% in Q4 2023 compared with the previous quarter. Retail advertisers invested 26% of their budget in cookie alternatives during the period, more than double the share of one year ago.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.