Roblox Breaks Into Programmatic

Signal loss is real, but don’t write an elegy for data management platforms just yet, says Andy Monfried, CEO and founder of Lotame, which turned 18 this year. Also in this episode: Lotame’s reinvention of itself as a data collaboration platform.

With the rise of generative AI software and major changes to search platforms even in just the past year or two, SEO and SEM tactics are back. Everyone and their mother is trying to figure out how to make search work and what the new world of search marketing even looks like. Enter Navah Hopkins.

What is Google’s true motive in launching the Chrome Privacy Sandbox? An optimist might give Google credit for not dropping the hammer like Apple did. But it’s hard not to be a little cynical about Google’s goals, according to Samantha Jacobson, chief strategy officer at The Trade Desk.

Alternative TV currencies are ready for prime time from a technology standpoint. But media buyers aren’t quite there yet when it comes to adoption, says Josh Chasin, VideoAmp’s former chief measurability officer.

Roblox’s head of immersive media Ashley McCollum explains how the online gaming giant built its ad platform with demand for programmatic video in mind. And she previews Roblox’s ambitions to grow an ecommerce platform for real-world purchases.          

Quad Media President Joshua Lowcock asks all ad tech partners for log files as a matter of course. And if a company isn’t willing to hand them over, that’s a sign it’s probably hiding something. Plus: The fallacy of scale and pondering the true role of a third-party verification partner.

Cookie deprecation and the reduced availability of mobile ad IDs is rocking the ad tech ecosystem. But signal loss is also an opportunity for a younger company to build new privacy-preserving targeting technology and grab market share, according to Remco Westermann, CEO of Verve Group’s parent company, MGI.

Jeromy Sonne only began bootstrapping his ad optimization and analytics startup Daypart.AI in 2023, having missed the heady days of low interest rates and easy money. Still, there’s gold in them thar hills for a programmatic startup that isn’t exactly a DSP, isn’t built on cookie-based data and is native to cloud-based advertising.

If Alex Schultz, Meta’s CMO and VP of analytics, had his way, the term “performance marketing” would be retired. There isn’t a line [between] brand and performance,” he says. “It all performs.”

It’s been more than a year since Bloomberg stopped running third-party programmatic display ads on its website – and it was the right move, says Christine Cook, Bloomberg Media’s global CRO.