The world is starting to open up day by day, post-Covid restrictions, and I have been fortunate enough to enjoy in-person meetings away from the home office this week. It’s never been more important to generate your own perspective, strategy and response to the events that shape our marketplace by hearing real life experiences.

For those old enough to remember the late, great Bob Hoskins iconic tagline from the 1995 BT advert that has been ringing in my ears “It’s good to talk”.  Making events like DigiAds@MAD//Fest such a rich environment to meet up and hear from industry thought leaders on how they have navigated the AdTech landscape of late.

The hot topic of conversation remains with the latest regulatory findings around the basis of consent.  On Wednesday 23rd of February the IAB lead a Town Hall meeting called to discuss the EU ruling on the TCF, one of the key questions being “Is compliance risk higher”? the simple answer to which is Yes.

The IAB is still very clear.  They are challenging the ruling but what is their action plan?

There were actions given e.g., review your supply chain, limit vendors, stop legitimate interest for profiling and potentially for everything and that we should all be reviewing our compliance process to avoid the possibility of member states, who contributed to the decision, choosing to enforce the ruling. If the IAB are not granted a suspension pending the resolutions of the appeal, then AdTech needs to be ready.

 I was reminded this week, specifically in response the EU Ruling, that advertising has had a variety of challenges over the years, AdBlockalypse, Brand Safety, Viewability and now Privacy becoming table stakes for advertisers and vendors planning campaigns today. 

Our schedule of speakers has been hand-picked to bring you access to regulatory bodies, perfect partnerships between brands, agency and vendors and individuals that have keen to demonstrate their experiences toward our theme of “No guts, No Glory”

It’s clear that I am not alone in my fascination of the growth and innovation taking place in the CTV space right now.  After reaching out to my network of expert in this field, it is encouraging to see that the CTV aficionados are taking the experiences, both positive and negative, from other Digital channels to help support and shape its future. 

Cookies don’t exist in CTV, so it hasn’t been exposed to a business model that is reliant on such identifiers, but user privacy does.  Technologies are being built with privacy in mind to future proof itself from falling foul of the regulatory changes and patched adaptations to existing technologies we are seeing today.  CTV reminds me very much of the early days of mobile, it has a vast array of reporting that needs tying together in the absence of cookies, so tools are required to make sense of the disparate systems.  New technologies like LightBox TV aim to bring harmony to targeting and reporting on audiences across the emerging CTV Lumascape bringing even more confidence to our industries ability to mirror the advice of Bear Grylls, Adapt, Improvise and Overcome!

Ben will be writing a column for the MAD//Fest Newsletter regularly throughout the year. Find out more here