Ad industry has billions at stake as privacy laws force seismic change

The trend: The advertising industry is rethinking how it targets and measures ads in the wake of Apple’s phase-out of mobile data trackers and Google’s planned demise of third-party cookies in response to consumer privacy concerns, and the stakes are high.

• Spending on programmatic display advertising, for which cookies and mobile IDs have been the backbone, is expected to rise more than 15% to nearly $142 billion next year, per our projections.
• Businesses including Meta, Snap, and YouTube have already cited losses from Apple’s launch of AppTrackingTransparency in iOS 14.5, and Meta estimated that the privacy changes could cost it $10 billion just in 2022.

Citing solutions: The number of companies offering identity solutions as consumer privacy concerns ratchet up has expanded.

• These providers include TV networks and social media platforms, agencies that help customers craft ad strategies, and retailers that are deploying media networks.

What’s next? Our recently published report, Identity Resolution 2022: Navigating the Chaos Around the Privacy Reset, cites these and other trends.

• Consolidation among solution providers is expected to continue.
• First-party data has become more important than ever, and companies with access to customer data will focus on activities such as audience segmentation, targeting, measurement, and attribution.