Data Clean Rooms

WPP has bought InfoSum, a data clean room and collaboration startup. Terms of the deal, announced on Thursday, were not disclosed.

GDPR may not be perfect, but it forced European companies to adopt a privacy-by-default position. For US companies, this is a clear signal: Change is inevitable.

Forget ramping up. Maybe it’s time for the online advertising industry to ramp down. That’s the idea behind a guerrilla marketing campaign by InfoSum, timed to coincide with LiveRamp’s RampUp event in San Francisco this week.

Ad tech is headed to the stratosphere. As in, on the way to becoming part of the cloud infrastructure technology.

But cookies aside – and don’t forget to leave a few real ones out for Santa – there were lots of other big privacy developments in 2024. Here are some of the highlights.

The Federal Trade Commission is warning companies that using a data clean room isn’t some kind of get-out-of-compliance-free card.

LiveRamp reported an unexpected boost to Q3 revenue, from $160 million last year to $185 million in 2024, during its quarterly call with investors on Wednesday.

The term “data clean room” has gotten co-opted. Plus, a useful one-pager on the new baseline standards for DTC marketing. 

Remember back when Netflix was anti-advertising? Plus, CTV is still struggling with low programmatic fill rates.

Serial ad tech entrepreneur Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan founded two startups roughly a decade apart, both for a similar reason: making data available across the enterprise in a way that’s also respectful of the consumer.