Top AdTech & MarTech News Stories from Q2 2022

Took some time off to enjoy the start of the summer (or winter)? Been swamped at work? Didn’t have time to read the main AdTech and MarTech news stories from the past few months?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Below are the main industry news stories from Q2 2022, including Netflix’s plans to show ads, the EU’s new DSA and DMA legislation, and Vodafone’s plans to create a supercookie.

Top Stories AdTech and MarTech News Stories

Netflix Plans to Enter the Ad Business

When Netflix announced that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 back in April, it didn’t take long to see news that it would explore offering an ad-supported plan.

Here’s what you need to know about Netflix entering the ad business:

Netflix suffered its first subscriber loss in Q1 2022 in over a decade.
The streaming service noted password sharing, the suspension of its service in Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine, COVID, inflation, and the growing competitive landscape as the main reasons behind the subscriber loss.
Netflix announced that it would plan to offer cheaper, ad-supported subscriptions plans over the next year or two to help increase its subscription numbers.
In June 2022, Netflix confirmed that an ad-supported subscription plan will be coming to the streaming service.
Executives at Netflix had apparently been in talks with Roku and Comcast to discuss how these two companies can help it enter the ad business.
On July 14, 2022, Netflix announced that it will be partnering with Microsoft to run its ad-support subscription plan.

DSA and DMA

On April 23, 2022, the European Commission reached an agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is the sister legislative initiative to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was agreed upon on March 25, 2022.

While these two initiatives don’t state that they’re going after the tech giants, it’s pretty clear that they are.

Here’s what you need to know about the DSA and DMA:

The DSA and DMA will form a single set of rules for the entire European Union.
The goal of the DSA and DMA is to protect the fundamental rights of Internet users when using digital services and create a level-playing field to help encourage innovation and growth.
The DSA will apply to a wide range of digital companies, such as web hosting companies, search engines, online marketplaces, app stores, and social media platforms. It will require these companies to provide mechanisms to allow users to challenge content moderation decisions and deliver more transparency into how their algorithms for content and product recommendations work, among other things.
The DMA will apply to “gatekeepers” — companies that sit between consumers and business and that often control entire ecosystems, e.g. marketplaces, operating systems, cloud services and search engines.
The DMA will aim to prevent these gatekeeper companies from favoring their own services, preventing the installation of software by default with the operating system of devices, providing advertising performance data and information about ad pricing, allowing developers to use alternative in-app payment systems.
The European Commission will be able to impose penalties and fines of up to 10% of a company’s worldwide turnover. For repeated infringements, the fines could reach up to 20% of annual turnover.
The next steps involve the DSA and DMA being adopted by the Council of the European Union. Once adopted, they’ll be signed by the Presidents of both institutions and published in the Official Journal. They’ll then come into force 20 days after being published in the Official Journal. The DSA will apply fifteen months after being in force or from 1 January 2024, whichever comes later. The DMA will apply six months after being in force.

Further reading:

Now They’ve Passed, How Will the DSA and DMA Change Advertising? — VideoWeek
WTF is the Digital Markets Act? — Digiday

Vodafone Introduces a Supercookie Called TrustPid

In May 2022, Vodafone announced that it will be trialing a new advertising ID called TrustPid.

Here’s what you need to know about Vodafone’s TrustPid:

The goal of TrustPid is to act as a persistent ID at the mobile Internet Service Provider (ISP) level and aims to be immune from cookie blocking and IP address masking.
The ID will be created using various parameters and will assign user activity to it.
Advertisers will then be able to show targeted and personalized ads to mobile users without disclosing any identification details.
Vodafone says that the decision to create TrustPid comes after the various privacy changes that have been implemented over recent years, which have resulted in lower revenues for publishers and threaten the “free” Internet — i.e. whereby users receive access to content for free and in return are shown ads.
Vodafone will trial TrustPid in Germany, alongside Deutsche Telekom.

Further reading: