When all the cookie dust has settled, contextual targeting may be the only way to reach mass audiences. So let’s note that Precise TV, a “kid-safe contextual advertising platform for YouTube”, has extended its reach to connected TV through a deal with video content classification vendor IRIS.TV. Back in the day, all TV ad buys were fundamentally contextual, but that was when media buyers chose from, like, five channels.
Google has given up on its FLoC cookie-less targeting initiative, which faced insurmountable privacy objections. The replacement, which mercifully does not reference anything bird-related, is Topics API, which will offer three recent interests for each individual based on sites they have recently visited. The loss in targeting and tracking power is so huge that you wonder if Google is purposely showing what tighter privacy is costing the industry. Or maybe they’re just kneecapping competitors.
Email offers precise targeting without cookies but anti-spam laws make it hard to reach new customers. Portugal-based Emailbidding somehow gets around that problem with a service that lets advertisers bid on emails to external lists. They were just bought by Berlin-based Audience Serv, which also sells email prospecting campaigns but apparently without the fancy bidding mechanism.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.