Join Us At The Spotlight Data Collab Event; Why AdCP Is A Terrible TLA, But A Worthy Initiative
POWA Ad Tech Breakfast With A Side Of Data
We are hosting another quarterly Spotlight breakfast event on Thursday, November 06. We will be digging into the meaty topic of data collaboration and why it’s a requisite in scaling campaigns across a hugely fragmented market like Europe.
The panel makeup includes: Rachel Smith, ExchangeWire (moderator); Ruben Niet, digitalAudience; Remco Steen, Mediahuis Nederland; and Bedir Aydemir, News UK.
Here is an overview of what we will be discussing in that morning session:
Privacy and regulatory complexity: Navigating diverse data laws across markets, from the EU’s GDPR to the US’s fragmented regulatory landscape.
The importance of local context: Leveraging cultural, linguistic, and regional expertise to ensure data is accurately interpreted and locally relevant.
Fragmentation in Europe: Why privacy-by-design and native ecosystem integration are essential for scalable, trusted data collaboration.
Building a collaborative ecosystem: How trusted local networks of brands, publishers, and technology partners can bridge global ambition with regional realities.
Now you might be thinking that is old hat. Well, you’d be wrong. Widely used ID graphs offered by LiveRamp or TTD have “patchy” scale (at best) in Europe.
This is the primary reason Publicis bought Lotame. Lotame spent the better part of a decade building a consortium of local data partners to help scale its graph. It was dirty, back-breaking work.
Lotame is now part of the Publicis mothership, and that ID spine is unavailable to other agencies and third parties.
Our portfolio company, digitalAudience, has since stepped into the role, offering buyers the ability to scale data-driven programmatic. DA is a hot company right now in Europe and is signing some massive customers.
You can see how DA is achieving this via its framework with the aid of the ExchangeWire MadTech Sketch below.
Places are limited for this event, so make sure you sign up. Register your place here: https://luma.com/25ykiey2.
AdCP: A Terrible Name, But Interesting Initiative
It’s easy to be massively cynical about AdCP. Like, who appointed these people to dream up a bunch of new protocols that the industry didn’t ask for?
Why wasn’t it done through IAB Tech Lab or one of the many industry bodies? Stepping back from what you might think of it all, you can see the true merit and ambition of the AdCP project.
The adoption of autonomous agents is inevitable for managing media-buying workflows, and as buyers lean into them, rules will need to be established. It was smart for independent ad tech to get ahead of it, rather than being dictated by what Google, Meta, and Amazon might do.
Maybe an independent committee was needed to get things moving after all, due to the influence of these three companies on industry bodies.
There will be opportunities related to this, so an open mind on AdCP is required. Our own AI specialist, Carpio, is already starting to work with brands and agencies on AdCP.
In the next few weeks, we will host a portfolio AdCP workshop to discuss the potential application of the protocol. Let’s test and learn to see where this will end up. Overall, it’s an interesting and valuable play to build a framework for an (inevitable) AI-first media buying landscape.
And that’s the newsletter for this week, readers. Have a great ad tech day.