Advertising & Marketing

On today's episode, we discuss what brands are doing at the Olympics, when time spent on digital video might equal linear, Google's new privacy timeline, the significance of Square buying Afterpay, why marketers must start thinking in 3D, how to individually achieve “perfect productivity,” and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer director of reports editing Rahul Chadha, analyst Blake Droesch, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.

Instacart hires key Facebook ad executives: Carolyn Everson joins the company as its new president—weeks after hiring Facebook alum Fidji Simo as CEO.

Yelp debuts new safety features: New additions will help businesses display COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

Discord courts brands: Jack in the Box is the latest in a string of brands attracted to the under-the-radar chat platform.

Nearly half of US adults are dissatisfied with how much they pay for broadband per a new study. Though proposed governed infrastructure will increase access for rural and low-income households, many more Americans are overpaying because of a lack of ISP choice.

Facebook pursues privacy patina: Homomorphic encryption would potentially allow Facebook to target ads based on encrypted data without decrypting it. Though Facebook hopes this could help expand encryption while preserving privacy, it does nothing to address concerns over Facebook’s access to intimate personal data.

Back to not-so-normal: Marketers may have jumped the gun a little on optimistic “back to normal” ad campaigns, which are starting to look inappropriate as another wave of COVID-19 cases emerges.

Facebook's WhatsApp conundrum: Still struggling to monetize WhatsApp, the tech giant is looking for a way to analyze users' encrypted messages without decrypting them.

The branded content ball starts rolling: WarnerMedia’s new content studio “House of Max” follows other companies like NBCU and Roku, which have started blurring the lines between commercials and TV shows with brand-sponsored and co-created content.

A year of CCPA: California provided examples of how it's been enforcing the CCPA over the last year—but publishers and marketers might not like how strictly it's upholding the privacy standards.

Twitter is offering researchers up $3,500 to uncover bias in its image cropping algorithm. Though bias bounty programs may reveal some instances of bias, they cannot hope to solve the broader issue of algorithmic bias entrenched within the bedrock of artificial intelligence.

SheerID opens up $310 billion market opportunity: The identity marketing platform announced a new product to give brands the opportunity to send digital, personalized offers to new movers.

Amazon is offering users $10 in promotional credits to sign up for its palm print-based One biometric payment system. Adding palm prints to its database could make One more attractive to third parties, though the practice raises major privacy and data security concerns.

The pandemic-induced period of record growth for the devices is waning, and despite high demand, production cuts resulting from the global chip shortage means shipments could be in for further decline.

A new study claims universal broadband access could add $160B to the US economy annually. As one of the first clear estimates of expanded broadband’s economic benefit, the study could help drive support for President Biden’s proposed $65 billion in broadband spending.

Amazon fined under GDPR: The tech giant was fined €746 million for using consumer shopping data for ad targeting without consent—which doesn’t bode well for other Big Tech companies that are facing privacy-related scrutiny.