AdExchanger’s Top 10 Stories Of 2024

What caught the attention of our readers this year was the continuation and departure from previous years.

Our top 10 stories of the past year come together around two themes: kookies and quality.

Um, cookies and quality.

Quality has been a topic in programmatic for some time – in every possible permutation. This year, quality was linked to eradication made for advertising (MFA) sites, a better understanding of instream and outstream video standards, and an understanding of how bid duplication encodes programmatic supply chain signals.

Cookies. Oh, cookies. It was 2024 assumed be the year the cookies went away. The year began with the IAB Tech Lab voicing its concerns about Privacy Sandbox, Google’s cookie replacement. If cookies were to disappear, the industry would be screwed if it had to rely on what’s in the Sandbox, the report said. Two months later, Google said it would not retire cookies this year. Two months after that, Google said it might never remove cookies.

It was a dramatic turnaround, but one that some in the industry had predicted for years. It turns out that everyone who refused to believe that Google would actually remove cookies was right after all.

And there was more for Google. Two months after Google said it may never remove cookies, the who’s who of software gathered at a Virginia courthouse to discuss how nuance Google’s ad technology violated antitrust laws and harmed publishers.

The top 10 was rounded out by two stories specifically aimed at TV. One story, published amid the CES chatter, focused on VideoAmp’s fall from grace. The startup spent hundreds of millions in capital trying to oust Nielsen. But mistakes were made.

On the other hand, Netflix’s decision to build its own ad technology has caught the attention of the industry. Any frequent streamer can tell you that Netflix can deliver a clear picture over an unstable internet connection better than anyone else – so what happens when it puts that engineering prowess into the ad tech space?

From top to bottom, these are our most read stories of the year:

IAB Tech Lab says Chrome Privacy Sandbox is a ticking time bomb that will break real-time bidding (February) To quote holiday classic “Home Alone”: “If Uncle Frank says no… it must be very bad.” For a diplomatic, consensus-building organization like the IAB Tech Lab to rebel against the Privacy Sandbox? Instead of finding a middle ground? Well, it must have been really bad. A working group that analyzed the Privacy Sandbox found that only a handful of 44 basic digital advertising use cases would still work if Chrome withdrew cookies. In retrospect, this report probably triggered Google’s decision two months later to withdraw the 2024 cookie deadline.

Netflix is ​​launching its own ad technology (May) Netflix was full of surprises. Reversing course and launching an AVOD version of their product was one such surprise. A partnership with Microsoft to power their ad technology was another. In contrast, the decision to go with in-house ad technology seemed inevitable to many, given the engineering prowess for which Netflix is ​​known. This story, which provided more details about Netflix’s ad tech ambitions, caught the attention of our readership.

Google will not withdraw cookies in 2024 (April) The four-year journey to get rid of cookies took a little longer in April. Following the IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox report and due to uncertainty surrounding the CMA’s decision to remove cookies, Google has removed its deadline for withdrawing cookies from Chrome.

Google says it won’t expire cookies in Chrome after all (?!) (July) Instead of delaying indefinitely, Google has decided that instead of withdrawing cookies, it will create a cookie opt-out tool (which already exists, to be clear). The Privacy Sandbox would handle programmatic use cases for a group of excluded users.

A report from Adalytics ignites advertising technology to advertise MFA prevention while reducing MFA procurement (March) Remember the “quality” theme? Adalytics has been responsible for a significant number of quality and transparency stories in recent years. And this report highlighted the duplicity in the way the industry handled inventory made for advertising.

Why VideoAmp stumbled in the race to replace Nielsen (January) After VideoAmp laid off 20% of its staff and took over leadership again, curious minds wanted to know: What happened? With on-the-ground coverage from CES, this story filled in the gaps that explained the startup’s missteps and misjudgments—a must-read for anyone fascinated by the ups and downs of startups.

The DOJ’s witness list for the Google antitrust trial is a who’s who of advertising (July) When the Department of Justice released its witness list, the names were overwhelmingly familiar to any AdExchanger reader or attendee of our events – as nearly all of them were featured in our report. Although not all of them ended up testifying, this story is a great example to gauge where the epicenter of the Google antitrust trial will be.

Goodbye Šizmek! Amazon is promoting Flashtalking and smart as alternatives before shutting down (January) Quick, name an ad server that competes with Google. Sizmek went bankrupt and Amazon took the technology before shutting it down. The lack of options, along with interest in the Amazon acquisition, drew the industry to this article on the development of the ad server space.

Google’s adoption of the new Instream/Outstream standards could spell disaster for some online video platforms (March) Video advertising space is incredibly valuable. And interstitial ads, which appear when people start watching videos, are the most valuable of all. The new standards separated instream from three other outstream-like experiences, leading the industry to wonder if CPMs would plummet for non-instream formats.

Attack of the Clones: Programmatic’s Hidden Scourge of Bid Duplication (January) The structure of the programs may allow for fraud, inefficiency, or even (allegedly) competitive advantage at the antitrust level. When publishers used header bidding to get around Google’s advantage, they ran into something else: not only was duplicate bids inevitable with header bidding, but it was also a great way to get DSPs to bid higher. Which made this inefficiency challenging for the software ecosystem to address.