There’s a lot of talk about the much-needed ad tech consolidation, and nowhere is that more visible than at the Cannes Lions festival.
Last year, some 20 ad tech companies dominated the festival’s harbor. This year’s ad tech flotilla has thinned, with approximately half of the 18 yachts flying ad tech vendor colors. New (and somewhat late) entrants to this year’s flotilla party: management consultancies Accenture and PwC.
The reasons vary for the more low-key independent ad tech vendor presence: The once-brimming well of ad tech venture capitalist funding has shrunk. Added to that, publishers have taken a cleaver to their digital ad supply chains in order to regain control over their data, curb fraud and unmask hidden fees. That has helped rid the market of the kind of low-value ad tech vendors, fondly referred to in the industry as “bottom feeders,” that even fellow ad tech vendors are pleased to see disappear.
More recently, the arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation has led some U.S. vendors like Verve and Drawbridge to pull out of Europe entirely to avoid the cost of getting their businesses GDPR-compliant and avoid any risks should they fail to do so. Most ad tech executives are pretty candid in their predictions that other noncompliant U.S. vendors will also be forced to leave Europe in the coming months.
GDPR will dominate a lot of conversations at Cannes this week. And where better to have these difficult conversations than on a yacht overlooking the French Riviera, with free-flowing rosé on hand to soften some of the gnarlier questions. Publishers that have felt at a disadvantage as a direct result of Google’s last-minute GDPR policy changes plan to continue their conversations with the tech giant at Cannes, behind closed doors, according to sources. Meanwhile, advertisers will also ask difficult GDPR-related questions of vendors about how they can ensure they’re passing consent on verified audiences and inventory.
Read More at The Original Article: digiday.com
