Brands need to get their data houses in order to prepare for the coming collapse of the cookie and new regulations around consumer privacy online.

There are data clean rooms and identity products meant to replace third-party cookies. If the current timeline is to be believed, Google plans to ditch cookies on Chrome at the end of 2024, marking the end of the web trackers used to target ads. There also are gaps in marketing data on mobile, after Apple cut off the ability to track consumers from an ad to a sale. Marketers have lost access to data that gave them insights into whether media buys on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter lead to sales, but there are new measurement products helping with that.

Elsewhere, data is being opened up to allow for better targeting on connected TVs, in video games and within retail media networks. There have also been advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning that are allowing data to guide how marketers create ad campaigns.

This summer, Gartner, the tech research and consulting firm, advised marketers about a “hype cycle” in digital advertising, outlining what tech is closest to solving the industry’s problems. With data clean rooms, for instance, Gartner predicted they are five to 10 years away from reaching their full potential. Also, segment-based advertising, which replaces individually personalized ads with groups of audiences in order to preserve anonymity, is two to three years away. Retail media and connected TV are still two to three years out from achieving their promise, too, Gartner said.

“Everything is changing fast,” said Eric Schmitt, research director at Gartner, the tech consulting firm. “The two major forces in play here are changing consumer behaviors and new norms around the use of data. Those are the two fastest-changing vectors in the marketplace.”

At the heart of these changes are brand, tech and marketing leaders who are helping to usher in advancements in data and ad tech to make advertising more efficient and personalized. Here's a look at some of the executives who are helping to shape data and ad tech advancements in the industry. 

Matt Barash

Senior VP of Americas and global publishing
Index Exchange

Matt Barash joined Index Exchange, the programmatic advertising marketplace, this year. Barash is one of the thought leaders in ad tech driving the conversation about how to move beyond cookies to new methods of targeting and measuring ads.

“Index Exchange was early, very early, in terms of recognizing that there had to be an effort to ready the market for cookie deprecation and for the future of addressability,” Barash said.

Index Exchange has worked with publishers to test a number of new advertising IDs, including LiveRamp’s RampID, Merkle’s M1, and Unified ID 2.0, which is an ID operated by The Trade Desk.

Index Exchange also is working on new standards for cohort-based advertising, using groups of audiences instead of personal ad targets. The industry, through the IAB, has developed concepts like “seller-defined audiences,” which lets publishers bundle segments of readers into targets for advertisers buying through demand-side platforms. Google recently agreed to participate in seller-defined audiences.

Barash is looking for answers to the fragmentation of the advertising landscape, too. Advertisers need measurement and targeting that works across the internet, desktop, walled gardens and connected TV. It’s a challenge, Barash said—if advertising becomes impossible to measure across the digital landscape, then the whole industry is at risk. “And that’s not in anyone’s interest,” he said.

Sunny Bedi

Chief information and data officer
Snowflake

Snowflake is an example of the growing clout of data clean rooms in the advertising landscape. Clean rooms are supposed to make it safe to play with data in an encrypted environment, so publishers and brands can match their audiences to target ads and measure campaigns. Snowflake works with Disney, NBCUniversal, Roku and others to deploy clean rooms. To underscore the growing interest in clean rooms: Amazon is developing such services as part of the Amazon Marketing Cloud, and Google runs the Ads Data Hub. Up-and-coming media rivals like Disney are trying to make the most use of the data they have on their audiences to lure advertisers. Snowflake competes with other clean room providers, InfoSum and Habu.

Bedi is helping publishers and advertisers navigate data security issues, too. Clean rooms are designed to use data that is collected with the consent of consumers. Clean rooms help publishers manage data in a way that meets compliance standards, organizing the data according to what is allowed to be used, and what is off limits.

Brady Brim-DeForest

Co-founder and CEO
Media.Monks and TheoremOne

Brady Brim-DeForest is helping lead Media.Monks with high-concept creative ideas, data, measurement, AI and ad tech. Media.Monks, which merged with enterprise software developer TheoremOne this year, has designed ad creative for Oreo, Google and Nike using Unreal Engine, an advanced 3D graphics platform run by Epic Games. The concept blends sophisticated gaming physics with advertising technology.

For Oreo, Media.Monks created realistic, virtual versions of its product using Unreal Engine. Inside the platform, designers could manipulate the imagery to create new assets, including different versions of Oreo cookies, customized for different locales where ads would run. Those assets could be dropped into commercials without needing to shoot multiple ads.

Media.Monks also is working with Mondelēz International, which owns Oreo, on its first-party data strategies, by analyzing ad campaigns to understand how consumers reacted to different creative executions. “When combined with real-time technology like game engines, brands can use those insights to quickly iterate personalized content,” Brim-DeForest said by email. 

Melissa Burdick

Co-founder and president
Pacvue

To see the rise of retail media channels in advertising, look no further than Melissa Burdick and Pacvue, which is an e-commerce marketing software platform. Pacvue has marketing partnerships with Amazon, Walmart, Kroger and other retail media marketplaces.

Retail media is becoming an important channel for brands to run online ad campaigns and is considered especially valuable because of its links to shopper data. Brands use retail media to promote their products on websites, and they hook into sales data that show the results of ad campaigns. However, the retail media landscape is fragmented, and brands need to buy through multiple channels.

Pacvue’s latest major partnership was with Sam’s Club Members Access Platform. Pacvue was the first e-commerce marketing software to plug into the Walmart-owned wholesale chain's application programming interface, which is part of its ad offering. To help brands get discovered on Sam’s Club, Pacvue is using many of the same tools it developed for advertisers on Walmart Connect, the big-box retailer’s automated ad platform.

Alison Cuan

Global head of ad tech business development, Amazon Marketing Cloud
Amazon Ads

Alison Cuan is helping brands jump into Amazon Marketing Cloud, which launched in a beta-testing phase last year and is just now coming into its own as a full product within Amazon’s advertising platform. The marketing cloud is akin to Google’s Ads Data Hub, where brands build audience segments to target ads and measure campaigns using data sets that are proprietary to the platforms. Last month, Amazon launched new applications in the marketing cloud, giving brands additional data about shopping trends, purchasing patterns and the impact of advertising on and off Amazon.

Brands are looking to Amazon for new advertising prospects, especially since Apple and Google are locking up data tracking on devices and web browsers. Amazon, like much of the industry, is building new data services to keep brands targeting and measuring ads. Amazon generated $16.6 billion in ad revenue in the first half of 2022, up from $15 billion in the first half of 2021.

Amazon is trying to bridge all the parts of its ad ecosystem, which includes a demand-side platform; connected TV channels (including NFL games on Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch and Freevee); display and search advertising. Brands are turning to massive platforms like Amazon to reach consumers on connected TVs and in retail settings.

Cuan has been front and center for Amazon at events such as Cannes, and she will be at next month’s Amazon Ads unBoxed in New York to talk about the marketing cloud.

Mikel Davis

Director strategic analytics
NBCUniversal's Peacock

Mikel Davis is the data strategist behind Peacock’s advertising, which is used to acquire new viewers and to sell existing subscribers on higher-priced, premium tiers of service.

This year, Davis was tasked with developing behavioral models to “identify the customers who were using our free product to deliver a targeted upgrade offer encouraging these highly-engaged customers to shift to premium paid tier,” an NBCUniversal spokesperson said in an email.

Major ad-supported video-on-demand services, like Peacock, Paramount+ and HBO Max, need strong marketing strategies to compete in the streaming wars. The battle for viewers is only heating up, too, as Netflix and Disney+ launch cheaper ad-supported subscriptions.

Like Disney, NBCUniversal owns TV networks, theme parks, film studios and more, and Peacock can use data from all these entities to forge an ad strategy. Davis recently discussed her work on “Hub and Spoken,” a data-focused podcast: “Our goal is to help drive decision-making,” she said, “using the data that we have to support, primarily customer strategy, long-range business planning, and also addresses executive questions that come about.”

Ben Fenster

Anzu.io
Co-founder and chief product officer

As video games become more open to advertising, marketers are looking for automation, measurement and data.

Ben Fenster, at startup Anzu.io, created a “3D ad tracking engine,” a spokesperson said by email, “enabling advertisers to understand the media value and ad exposure quality of their intrinsic in-game ad campaigns.”

The ad service analyzes 3D gaming environments on mobile, computers and consoles, including Roblox. The analysis helps advertisers understand what was on the screen when a player viewed an ad, the placement of the ad inventory, and even the angle of the ad in relation to the player. Ingesting all this data helps advertisers predict delivery of ad impressions, control the frequency of the ads, and improve campaign planning. And in-game ads are a growing field, as more people spend time in virtual environments. In the U.S., video game ad revenue will hit $6.26 billion this year, up 14% year over year, according to eMarketer.

Anzu.io raised $20 million this year, with some of that coming from NBCUniversal, which will connect brands with video game ad inventory. 

Ben Kneen

Senior director of product management
Xandr

Ben Kneen is the head of the product team at Xandr Curate and Xandr Monetization, two pieces of the ad tech platform that help advertisers apply data to their ad campaigns and help publishers make money from online ads. Microsoft bought Xandr from AT&T in a deal that closed this year.

“Curated marketplaces deliver a ton of value for data owners because of the commercial options they provide to folks who have valuable data but want total control over who’s buying what, at what price, and want to understand where the data is used,” Kneen said by email.

Earlier this year, Samsung used curated marketplaces to buy programmatic ads with multiple publishers, through multiple DSPs. Samsung had a better look into the “supply chain,” which is the path an ad takes across the ad tech ecosystem. Brands want to understand the fees that can come from data and other services, and want to make sure they don’t waste ad dollars on inefficient ad placements.

“Media buyers, for instance, are trying to build differentiated supply strategies, deliver fee transparency to buyers, and grapple with all the uncertainties around the loss of cookies and growth of CTV,” Kneen said.

Imogen Lovera

Product manager
Permutive

Permutive works with online publishers like News Corp, Hearst, BuzzFeed, Penske Media, The Guardian, Vox Media, Insider and Condé Nast. Permutive develops data management platforms, audience analytics tools and other services. Publishers are working with companies like Permutive to create the ad tech pipes that replace cookies.

Lovera’s job is “focusing on translating data into valuable information about audiences to increase publisher understanding, and revenue, while protecting and maintaining consumer privacy,” a Permutive spokesperson said by email.

Permutive is trying to perfect the art of targeting ads to “cohorts,” or groups of consumers, instead of targeting individuals. Cohorts are viewed as safer for privacy because the advertiser does not get a lock on any personally identifiable information.

Lovera works on products like Permutive’s audience insights platform, which publishers use to analyze consumer behavior on their websites. “As advertisers seek out direct relationships with publishers, [Lovera] has focused on building out Insights for Advertisers to support Permutive’s advertiser team when they’re answering briefs for global brands and agencies,” a Permutive spokesperson said. 

Katie Madding

Chief product officer
Adjust

Katie Madding is at the forefront of mobile marketing tech, which is undergoing dramatic changes with every restriction on sharing data made by Apple and Google. Apple, in particular, forced app marketers to completely rethink their strategies over the past two years, since App Tracking Transparency rules took effect on iOS devices. Madding and Adjust have done extensive work with some of the biggest mobile ad players, including TikTok, to understand how Apple’s moves affect mobile advertisers.

Madding is an expert in the SKAdNetwork, which is Apple’s alternative measurement platform. It controls how much data apps like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter access to analyze ad campaigns that run inside their walls.

Madding outlined Apple’s latest changes in iOS 16, which launched earlier this month: “Understanding the implications of SKAdNetwork, optimizing the use of its features, and keeping up with its changes is a field of its own,” she said in an email, “that will require an expert user acquisition professional, mastering the art of understanding audiences, and leveraging insights from a mix of aggregated and device-level data.”

Last year, the app marketing platform AppLovin bought Adjust, which is a mobile analytics and measurement firm, for a reported $1 billion.

Therran Oliphant

Senior VP of data and technology North America
Essence

Therran Oliphant, on top of being a must-follow on ad tech Twitter, is a leader in the agency world, working on privacy issues in programmatic advertising. Essence, part of WPP’s GroupM, is a global agency working with brands on data and measurement. Essence counts Google, L’Oréal, Mars and NBCUniversal among its clients.

Oliphant works with brands to embrace the next generation of ad tech that will foster programmatic advertising once cookies go away. Brands need help with strategies around data clean rooms, which are platforms for analyzing ad campaigns without sharing personally identifiable data. Data clean rooms are becoming ubiquitous in digital advertising, as they are being used by advertisers and publishers to co-mingle data without compromising privacy. Oliphant also has expertise in privacy compliance and measurement. And measurement has become much harder as brands lose access to data signals about their ad campaigns.

“[Oliphant] is focused on maintaining and improving performance standards that allow marketers to reach consumers with relevant messages, while ensuring that consumer privacy and preference is first and foremost protected,” an Essence spokesperson said by email.

Megan Pagliuca

Chief activation officer
Omnicom Media Group

At OMG, Megan Pagliuca led the launch of a new private programmatic marketplace for advertisers to buy media placements on 80,000 screens in stores such as Kroger and CVS. And Pagliuca was integral to OMG forging direct partnerships with Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing and Instacart. These ad tech efforts show the growing sophistication of retail media, online and off. OMG made its retail media deals a centerpiece at Cannes this year.

OMG also used ad tech and data to help brands figure out supply chain issues, one of the more troubling economic trends. The agency developed what it called a “supply-chain IQ score,” which shows marketers whether products are well-stocked or in short supply. The data is key to marketing because a retail media network can be great for getting ads in front of people, but it’s a waste if a product is out of stock. 

Brands use supply chain data to shift spending to active products, geotarget ads to where supplies are strongest, and measure sales lift.