How Privacy is Reshaping the Ad Tech Industry

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security Podcast, like any good marriage, we will debate, evaluate, and sometimes quarrel about how privacy and security impact business in the 21st Century.

Jodi Daniels 0:21

Hi. Jodi Daniels here. I’m the Founder and CEO of Clover Advisors, a certified women’s privacy consultancy. I’m a privacy consultant and certified informational privacy professional providing practical privacy advice to overwhelmed companies. That’s your turn.

Justin Daniels 0:39

I was thinking about something else I will say in a moment. Um, hello. I am Justin Daniels. I am a shareholder and corporate M&A and tech transaction lawyer at the law firm Baker Donelson, advising companies in the deployment and scaling of technology. Since data is critical to every transaction, I help clients make informed business decisions while managing data privacy and cybersecurity risk and when needed, I lead the legal cyber data breach response brigade.

Jodi Daniels 1:04

And this episode is brought to you by Red Clover Advisors. We help that’s one beep, one one beep. We help companies to comply with data privacy laws and establish customer trust so that they can grow and nurture integrity. We work with companies in a variety of fields, including technology, e-commerce, professional services and digital media. In short, we use data privacy to transform the way companies do business. Together. We’re creating a future where there’s greater trust between companies and consumers to learn more and to check out our best-selling book, Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Byte at a Time, visit redcloveradvisors.com. Justin, are you trying to give me a case of the giggles? Again? You’re just particularly perky today. I’m just — I’m happy. It was a really long week. I did some really hard things, and now I’m in the home stretch, and I’m just happy. And you were trying to give me a case of the giggles. And the last time that happened, we couldn’t do the show, and I had to keep pausing.

Justin Daniels 2:01

I was distracted, because for our listeners, this morning, I went to put on my shoe, and there was something in my shoe, and it turned out that it was a gecko. And I was a little startled, because at first I thought maybe it was an evil bug.

Jodi Daniels 2:15

That we do not just oh, a snake. Oh, my gosh. Okay.

Justin Daniels 2:20

No, I was able to get the gecko out, and everything was cool. But at first I was like, did I just stick my foot in something? There’s a snake.

Allison Schiff 2:29

Did the gecko have a British accent?

Justin Daniels 2:32

You might have thought that it would, but no, I just didn’t expect to put on a shoe that had been I hadn’t worn in a couple weeks and there was a gecko hanging out in it?

Jodi Daniels 2:41

Well, I’m glad that you put the gecko outside, because our daughter found one on the screen porch, and she kept trying to move it to a safer place. Maybe she moved it inside in your shoe.

Justin Daniels 2:52

Maybe enough about my gecko and shoe. Why don’t you introduce this fabulous guest?

Jodi Daniels 2:58

Today we have Allison Schiff, who is the managing editor at AdExchanger, everyone should be reading that, where she covers mobile, meta, measurement, privacy and the app economy. Alison received her MA in journalism from the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland, also known as her favorite place, and a BA in history and English from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Allison, welcome to the show.

Allison Schiff 3:22

Thanks for having me — so excited.

Jodi Daniels 3:24

You are here. It’s gonna be so much fun. Quite perfect. I’m very happy, happy, happy. I gotta up my energy level.

Allison Schiff 3:30

It’s great to be here.

Justin Daniels 3:33

Sorry. I’m glad you’re happy. So Allison, let’s begin. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your career journey?

Allison Schiff 3:42

So like Jodi mentioned, I went to journalism school in Ireland, although it was really just an excuse to be able to study abroad for a year, and then I graduated right into the financial crisis. So I spent 2008 watching Six Feet Under on Blockbuster DVDs through the mail with my dad, and then I tripped into a writing job about Certified Public accountancy that I got off of Craigslist. And then I also just meandered into advertising journalism from there, because my editor at the CPA newspaper worked at Direct Marketing News, which is now a defunct publication, but I met Ryan, Joe there. He’s now the editor in chief of Ad Week, and he went to AdExchanger, so I followed him. So I really did a lot of meandering, but, but, yeah, I’m my just as a slight anecdote, when I told my parents I wanted to be a writer in high school, they were very supportive of me, but then they went up to their bedroom, apparently, closed the door, and talked about how they needed to get a second mortgage because they were going to have to support me. So I’m happy to make a living writing, and I can’t recommend Business Journalism enough, because it gives you a really sharp mind. Mind, you can get very niche and very expert and learn how to like delve into topics that not everybody like understands, but like needs to understand, because ad tech and advertising and the privacy elements too are fundamental, I think, to everyone’s lives, and they don’t really know it so much, it’s not apparent, but advertising is everywhere, and the privacy considerations are something that is getting a lot more attention now, which I think is very important.

Jodi Daniels 5:31

I actually wanted to be a journalist, but I always wanted to be a broadcast journalist, and then at the very last minute, decided not to go that route, ended up in business school and was a CPA, and then fast forward through a variety of hops. Here I am in privacy. So it’s interesting to kind of see those inner connections at play.

Justin Daniels 5:52

What’s Blockbuster?

Jodi Daniels 5:56

A really fun and cool place you would go and spend hours trying to find a movie where there was no movie, and now we just do it online where there’s still no movie.

Justin Daniels 6:06

So on, Jodi and I have been together, and I’m old enough to when Jodi and I would go to Blockbuster and try to find one, and then now it’s just go on.

Jodi Daniels 6:13

And it’s the same problem. There’s never a movie.

Justin Daniels 6:17

So Allison and I choice paralysis, because we might have viewers who are like, what’s this?

Allison Schiff 6:23

I once made a reference to a rotary phone, and I got a blank stare from a younger colleague.

Jodi Daniels 6:28

Oh, my God, so not rotary but I was recycling some old electronics, including a cordless phone, and by accident that the receiver didn’t make it in the bag and it fell on the floor, and my daughter said, Why do you have a remote in the car? There’s that okay. But coming back to privacy and advertising, so we are seeing, which I talk about all the time, a lot more regulatory enforcement and privacy laws being applied in real ways. And you just talked about privacy and advertising in that intersection. So from your vantage point, covering the industry, how do you think enforcement is starting to reshape the ad tech ecosystem?

Allison Schiff 7:12

For a long time, ad tech felt very like wild-westy, and I think people in the ad tech industry likes that because they’re innovative minded, and there is kind of like a just because we can, we should mentality, and I think the industry is starting to mature, though, and that’s driven by a few factors, and one is regulatory pressure, and the other is Shifting consumer expectations. And those two things are very related. And the online advertising industry used to self-regulate, and there are trade groups like the IAB and the IAB Tech Lab and the Association of national advertisers and others that they come out with guidelines and standards for doing business. But I think the era of self regulation is pretty much over, and it’s a little bit like, this is why we can’t have nice things, right? Like, that’s why this happened, because just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and there’s been rampant data collection and behavioral advertising and related privacy failures. And it’s not the only reason why lawmakers have taken action, and now regulators have a lot of new privacy laws to enforce, but it’s one, it’s one of the reasons so it kind of feels like the Wild West is getting tamed a little bit because sheriffs are starting to show up, and regulatory scrutiny and enforcement is definitely changing ad tech, I mean, not maybe completely willingly. I think some companies still see privacy as like a hindrance, but we’re seeing companies be choosier about who they work with, paying more attention to what’s under the hood. There’s an awareness of data minimization. There’s a desire to honor choices, even if it doesn’t always work, maybe because you want to avoid scrutiny. But it is changing how people think about doing business, and it comes up a lot more in conversation. It used to be something that would be like an aside, like, oh, and it’s privacy safe. And like, Oh, we’ve read that privacy by design, and now people talk about these things with a little more detail.

Jodi Daniels 9:21

I’m so excited to hear that’s what you’re seeing. We’re starting to see more companies, just like you were saying, who really care and put in place policy and process. Want to know what’s actually on the site. What? Who are these vendors? What is it that they’re doing? I also see a really big gap. We still have a lot of learning left to do. For sure,

Allison Schiff 9:41

there’s, there’s a huge gap, I think, too, in you know, what people think is necessary to do, and what is like a tick the box exercise, and what is more about the spirit? I think, just like certain standards that have been set in place, like view. Viewability, for example, which is a concept where you want to make sure that people are actually seeing the ads that are in front of them. So there was a standard that was created in the advertising industry that an ad has to be on screen for X amount of time, very specific. So everyone started to game it like, well, we’ll be on screen for that exact amount of time. It wasn’t really the spirit of what viewability was all about. And so there’s this kind of gap now in compliance, but also just trying to do it right to what you need to do, as opposed to really bringing it in and thinking about it in like a deeper way. Think some companies are just ticking the box.

Justin Daniels 10:41

So kind of want to ask an interesting follow up question, and maybe it’s for the both of you. So Allison, I know in addition to being a journalist in the ad tech space, you also have a degree in history, and I’d love to get the take or your sense from what you’ve seen in the evolution of the wild Westie, and now regulations are coming into place for ad tech, and how you think about that, when you think about what you’re seeing and how artificial intelligence is impacting every industry ad tech, as well as to what are some of the conclusions you’re learning from this evolution of how regulation has happened in This industry and what’s left to do. But now, while this is going on, you got AI coming in, which kind of impacts it? What conclusions or ideas can you draw from that experience as it might relate to what we’re seeing around AI?

Allison Schiff 11:35

Well, a lot of, pretty much every company in the ad tech space is trying to position itself now as an AI company. It’s actually kind of amusing to read the pitches that come in a company that described itself as like a supply side platform. One week is now an AI powered supply side platform. You’re like, Okay, some of it is marketing. I don’t know how much of the AI-powered stuff is real at this point, but I don’t know that there’s a ton of awareness about how AI is going to be regulated in this industry. Now it’s back to the wild Westie side of things like, Ooh, this is cool, and we need to be doing this, and we’re just going to do it because it’s cool and it’s what we think clients want. So it’ll just be history repeating with maybe a few lessons learned. I don’t mean to be cynical, but I think that’s what we’re going to see.

Justin Daniels 12:38

Go ahead. No, no. If you have something to add, please.

Jodi Daniels 12:42

I was going to echo, I think we’re going to see that same thing. I think companies try and push the limit. It’s kind of like Alison, you were saying, here was the viewability threshold. Companies are going to meet it, and you could take any of those kind of compliance like items. And companies often tend to say, Well, I’ve done the minimum. That’s what I need to do in a variety of different areas, until there’s a reason that they have to change. Regulation tends to be one reason. Customer pushback tends to be the other. And right now, especially for AI, everyone claims that that’s what they want, and with you don’t have regulation, they’re going to do the most that they possibly can until they get caught.

Allison Schiff 13:25

What’s really interesting, though, just to this is such a cliche, I can’t believe I’m going to say it to double click on one thing that you just said, what clients want. It might be what brands say they want, but it’s not necessarily what people, just consumers want. There was this really interesting study that raptiv put out pretty recently that I read about there, like a monetization management platform for publishers. They were asking people, just like regular people, what they think about AI generated content and their trust level. And most people said that if they, if they read something that was aI generated, and it wasn’t labeled, and they didn’t know that AI was involved, then found out later that it was their, their trust went out the window, and they had, like, terrible associations with, you know, that company and the producer of that thing. And there was also this Wall Street Journal article, and I can’t remember who did the study, but a few weeks ago, and it was, it was to do with using AI in your promotional material for a product. So if you mention AI, like, ooh, this new phone or this new device is AI powered, people wanted to buy it less actually, because they assumed that there was something weird going on there. So people, just regular people, are a little bit like, nervous about AI.

Jodi Daniels 14:51

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s a huge disconnect. The companies all feel like that. That’s what they need to have, and the regular people. Bulb. The consumer side doesn’t necessarily want that. We just bought a new washing machine, and actually have a friend who was interested in the same washing machine and said, But wait, you have to connect it to use certain cycles. I don’t want that, right? And I said, well, I don’t know. I didn’t, I didn’t do that. And I’m happy with the versions that I have at the moment, because I don’t want to connect it. She doesn’t want to connect it, but the people making it think, oh, it has to have that. There’s this huge disconnect that’s actually happening over and over again.

Allison Schiff 15:29

That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, totally. And I found myself becoming, I’m of two mindsets, one, because I write about privacy in this specific niche of the world, ad tech companies, I kind of feel like the barn door is open. I’m very cynical. I’m like, oh, there’s nothing you can really do to protect yourself online. But also, like, I’d never buy an Alexa. Like, I block my camera on my laptop. I’m getting all, like, paranoid I’m going to move to the woods, you know, and, like, not have Wi Fi. I don’t know I’m a broken person. Now, after all these years, it’s been 11 years at AdExchanger, so

Jodi Daniels 16:07

Well, let’s talk a little bit about what some of these companies are doing. Because there, there is a shift, at least from the privacy standpoint right now. We do have enforcement. We do have privacy laws. And there are some companies, especially ad tech companies, who are trying to include privacy. So can you share a little bit about what you’re seeing out there from that vantage point?

Allison Schiff 16:30

Yeah, I mean, I think you could sum it up as like tech companies. Ad tech companies have this general realization that if they don’t adapt, then they’re going to have a bullseye on their back. And I mean, like I said before, it’s not like all of these states in the US have passed privacy laws solely because of the like excesses of the online advertising industry, but ad tech has this data driven business model, and those practices can get out of control, and that was definitely a motivating factor. So you’re seeing at tech companies shift their strategies because some of them genuinely want to do better, whether that’s adopting a CMP, although you got to make sure that it’s implemented properly, of course, embracing data minimization, investing in privacy by design, being really earnest about making their practices more transparent, and then others are like, looking for loopholes. It’s kind of a mix. But companies, well, this is something I’ve written about here and there. It’s a point I like to make. But companies that treat privacy as a competitive advantage, I think, are setting themselves up for success, like, just not in the long run, only like right now. But my hope is that eventually privacy isn’t a competitive advantage, it’s just like the way the companies do business. I don’t know how close we are to that, but there is a mindset shift. I mean, I’ll say that when I started at exchanger, my editor at the time, Zach Rogers, thought it was really important for us to write about privacy, and it was not something our readers cared about like that was reflected in our traffic. Those stories got very little engagement, but we still felt like it was important to go to FTC workshops and to write about different complaints that were coming up here and there and then over the past few years, that’s changed completely. We have a data privacy newsletter now that we put out. We try to put it out weekly. Our privacy related stories are, like some of our best read stories. So I think that, I think that reflects that there’s at least an interest in privacy, and that did not exist when I started at AdExchanger.

Jodi Daniels 18:44

Well, that is exciting to hear, and I really agree with the competitive advantage ultimately moving to kind of table stakes, right when it’s just as you’re evaluating a vendor or a partner, there’s all different questions people are asking, Can you perform the service? Are you going to help me improve fill in the blank need and oh, I need to make sure you’re doing what you should be and helping me from a privacy point of view. And sometimes companies are asking that question today and those that are promoting, hey, look, here’s how we’re helping you. That’s exactly that competitive advantage. But going forward, I hope just like you do that, it’ll just, that’s just an expectation. If you don’t do that, I’m not even going to talk to you, right?

Allison Schiff 19:28

It would be like, your bank you know? Like, well, don’t worry. Like, there’s not gonna be any bank fraud. Like, it’s awesome. We have no bank fraud up in here. Like, of course, you don’t. I mean, you do a little bit, but this is not something you have to promote, because I just assume that you’re going to protect my exactly best of your exactly best of your ability.

Jodi Daniels 19:43

Yep, I stand with belief and hope that it soon —

Justin Daniels 19:49

What that privacy goes from a nice to have —

Jodi Daniels 19:51

Just to table stakes, because when company so what I always say is when company is evaluating.

Allison Schiff 19:56

Skeptical, very skeptical.

Justin Daniels 19:59

Here’s my issue, and we just talked about it is we’re talking about privacy and how it’s evolved. That’s a lot about what we talk about. But now I’m watching this stuff with AI, and I’m watching all the hype. When you say marketing, I figure out I’m thinking hype. So if they’re not doing that about privacy, and it’s taken this long. Why do I even think remotely that that’s going to happen with artificial intelligence, where privacy is a significant component of data training, and how that technology works?

Jodi Daniels 20:34

Well, my view is we might get the base privacy pieces first, and then we’re going to move, I think at a more accelerated pace, for the AI part, and you’re right, they’re completely integrated. I think what I’m seeing is companies are having a greater interest in the AI piece. So when they’re evaluating a company and they want to use the AI features, they are asking more about, Wait, who are you and what are you doing? From a privacy, security point of view, it’s actually helping the conversation overall. Now, are all those other companies going to jump right away and do what we three believe, and many other privacy pros think that they should be doing right away? Maybe not, but I think that pressure is going to increase and make it closer to the table stakes. And it won’t just be the few companies doing it, and it won’t only be a marketing logo that says I’m complying with X, Y, Z, here, here, that’s what I say. And there are definitely companies that are promoting, oh, we comply with fill in the blank law. And then you actually go to their privacy notice, for example, and it doesn’t even have any of the provisions. Yeah, it’s supposed to have. So there’s, there’s certainly the kind of white washing, privacy washing, I guess you could call it Allison. What are you seeing? Let’s take this competitive advantage. The brands that you are, the ad tech partners and companies that you think are actually doing what they should be doing. What does that? What does that look like?

Allison Schiff 22:06

Um, I mean, it looks like, I mean, it looks like respect, right? I mean, it’s, I’m gonna put aside some of the ad tech companies that I write about and talk more about publishers for a second, I think publishers are in a really tough place. They’ve been trying to, you know, make, just make a living, not even just thrive, but survive. And so they’ve started, over the course of years, working with, like, tons of different partners. They’re covered in tracking pixels, and they don’t know where their data is going, and they’re, I think, trying to make more of a concerted effort now to cut down on data leakage and asking their partners about data flows, and like, being more aware of doing like a house cleaning every so often, so they don’t have All of this like garbage on their site, sending data to who knows where, and it’s really important for them to do that now more than ever, because I think they’re going to be in the crosshairs of enforcers. And we saw that with the Health Line settlement that just happened. It was the first publisher to get hit with a fine under CCPA. And so I, I guess I am, I am hopeful that the changes that we’re seeing among some like ad tech companies, it’s being driven by, like, market need, and that’s almost better. Like, it’s better to be doing that and thinking about performance and how to serve your clients better and, like, be more efficient than trying to, like, scare companies, like, oh, the enforcers are coming for you, and you’re gonna get fined if you don’t do this. It’s kind of like the sustainability conversation that had, like, a talking about greenwashing, right? Like, just washing things. But a year and a half ago, there was, like, this hot topic, oh, like, we’re going to make ad tech more sustainable. And, you know, do you know that every time an ad runs, you know, it’s as much energy as, like an airplane flying to Brazil, like, Whatever nonsense. And it was very like, you’re doing it wrong. You need to do better. Like, ad tech is ruining the environment. And people didn’t really caught into that message. And some of the companies that were basically, you know, promoting that kind of technology to, like, help you cut down and make yourself more efficient from like, a carbon point of view, started changing their messaging and saying, well, let’s just be more efficient from a performance point of view. And if you do that, it’s also good for sustainability. So just framing this as you know, not something that’s a hindrance to you, but something that can be helpful to you and your clients, I think that’s going to change how the industry works, and it almost doesn’t matter what motivates them, as long as the end result is the same.

Jodi Daniels 24:55

I like that approach. I agree. But she said, I. Yeah.

Justin Daniels 25:04

So I wanted to ask you, kind of a different question, because you’re a journalist, you write a lot of articles. Julie and I both write a fair amount, and wanted to get your thoughts around how artificial intelligence impacts how you go about maybe researching a story, how you may write a story like nowadays, if you don’t, you know AI could be your drafts, you know, virtual drafts, person, and I just love to get your perspective on how that impacts you actually writing stuff.

Allison Schiff 25:41

Yeah, well, first, I mean, we’re, we don’t have a policy at AdExchanger over how to use AI in our writing. Yet, we’re just experimenting and messing around. And I think we’re going to try and create one. But really it’s just, it’s experimentation now for me. And so I I don’t usually have, I’ve written 1000s of articles, and I sometimes write like, seven or eight a week. And so I don’t, I don’t have, like, white page paralysis, like that’s but I do sometimes know what I want to say and I don’t know exactly how to phrase it. And so I’ve started doing something with perplexity. I particularly like perplexity where I’ll write the beginning of a sentence, and I know what I want to say, but it’s mushy, and so I’ll write the beginning of the sentence, and I’ll say, Finish this for me, but make this point and give me seven options, and then it’ll give me seven options. I don’t like any of them, but like, Ah, okay, now I feel like I prompted myself in that process, and so I’ve started doing that, and it makes my writing quicker. I’m not like taking exactly what the model gives me, but I am weaving into my process that way, and I’ve also started using it as an alternate thesaurus. It is super helpful for that, because the worst feeling is like, I know there’s a word, there’s a perfect word. I can’t think of the word, and Googling just like does not cut it, and thesaurus comm doesn’t do it either. So you can put in a word like, I want, I want this word, but I want it to have this vibe. Give me 40 examples in bullet point form, and my word is always there, like I am able to find it, and I guess that’s the word I was looking for.

Justin Daniels 27:27

So let me ask you this, because so much of what you do, you really have to have a honed sense of critical thinking. And I’m just curious, from your perspective of how you think AI may impact critical thinking skills, be it a journalism piece or ad tech or, you know, in other areas, do you feel like you have to be very mindful of, hey, I can use AI as a tool, but is this starting to dent my own critical thinking skills?

Allison Schiff 28:04

A billion percent. Because on, like, a very, very like, tight turnaround deadline, like I’ve I’ve relied on Perplexity to, like, pull up information for me. I will say, just as a side point, I only use it for research, to pull up things that I already know to be true. I don’t ask questions. I don’t, at least have some directional like understanding what the answer will be. Because I’ve, I’ve seen it hallucinate every I think everyone’s had an experience. But like, for example, I interviewed the CEO of Viant, which is a DSP, on our podcast, I don’t know, a couple of months ago, and he had founded, with his brothers, this ad tech company called specific media, and I forgot exactly what it did. So I wanted to look up what it did. I’m like a Perplexity, what did, what did specific media do? And so I I got that answer, and then I went to Google, and I just, I wanted to get all of the stories about specific media on AdExchanger, and our site search isn’t that great, so I put specific media in quotes, and then I put AdExchanger in quotes, and the Google AI overview said that AdExchanger had acquired specific media in whatever it was the year, like 2013 And that is why specific media is no longer operational, because AdExchanger owns it. I’m like, what? And then I clicked on the source article, and it was just an interview with this guy, the CEO of Viant, talking to one of our writers about ad tech stuff. It had nothing to do with the AdExchanger buying specific media, which never happened and so, and it said it was such confidence, so that gave me, like, very little confidence in its ability to, like, always be correct, which, of course, everyone knows, you have to be careful. I’ve completely lost track of your question, but, but, oh, critical thinking, there you go. So clearly I’m losing my critical thinking skills. Come right? Rambling here, but you’re absolutely correct. Like, I, I can see how it’s both really helpful to, like, work faster if you already kind of know what you’re doing, and yet I’m afraid that I’m going to rely on it too much. And then for people who don’t have experience and haven’t cut their teeth and aren’t already, you know, like, steeped in a certain profession, I don’t know where they’re gonna get their training from, because I wrote some of my first articles, like, on a literal typewriter, and like I was interviewing people writing my notes. Like I didn’t just record an interview and get an AI transcript three minutes later, like I took physical notes or I manually transcribed, and I had to train my brain and my ears to call out specific sentences that I thought would be interesting to focus on, like it gave me critical listening skills that I don’t think that I would have if I was able to just record everything and get a transcript instantly. So I worry, I worry for our youth.

Jodi Daniels 31:07

I’m just like you and myself, and need to hear and need to know, take and I think there’s a significant critical skill that is there that is important, and I hope, I hope that we’re able to still find a way for people with all these recorders all day long, I I feel like they’re gonna miss miss that part, and then these recorders don’t transcribe accurately all the time either.

Allison Schiff 31:30

So some of them are hilarious, like some of the translations. I did an interview with someone about the FTC’s action against Kochava, and it was cochababa the whole way through, like, that’s how it transcribed.

Jodi Daniels 31:45

There’s also a protein powder called cachavat spelled it really. But there’s also that I’ve done sock too, and it, you know, it’s giving me Socks, socks. Yeah, two socks. Two socks. Well, so I’m curious to kind of wrap our conversation, what are the trends that you’re paying close attention to in the privacy, advertising and maybe even AI space?

Allison Schiff 32:09

Well, for a long time, it was the third-party cookie saga. Because I, like I said, I’ve been an AdExchanger for 11 years. I spent the better part of five of those years covering third party cookie deprecation in Chrome, which never even happened, hundreds of articles, quite literally. I do think, though, that although there was, like, a lot of wasted motion related to the cookie deprecation stuff, that it all like served to push the industry to seriously evaluate their data practices and invest in first party data and contextual and be more privacy conscious overall. And so this coverage priority that a lot of people have talked about now as being a waste of time, I think, was the trigger for a lot of really important topics that we now cover in great detail and in terms of other trends I’m covering, though I’m I’m pretty interested in how new companies are cropping up that have privacy baked in as part of the premise. We profile like new privacy tech startups, and some of which were founded by like old school, like OG ad tech folks, because they know where the bodies are buried, and they know the ins and outs of how data really flows and gets shared through the digital, like ad ecosystem. So they have the scars, and they should pitch me, because I would like to profile those companies, and I’m also really interested in all the plaintiffs’ bar lawsuits, like, based on VP, Pa and C but and, like, who knows what else next? Because they might be kind of frivolous, but, like, you can’t fault them for their lack of creativity, right? I mean.

Jodi Daniels 33:48

They’re very creative. They will continue to find all kinds of loopholes. I It’s like, whack a mole, I feel, you know, oh, that one doesn’t work. Great. We’re gonna go try the next one. That is what’s happening.

Justin Daniels 34:02

Well, can you share with us when you’re hanging out, talking to some of these prospects for a good article, maybe you have a best personal privacy tip that you’d like to share today?

Allison Schiff 34:18

I think it’s just the golden rule, like, treat others as you want to be treated, right, like, and also do what you say. And, yeah, say what say, what you do, right? I mean, it’s like, kind of cheesy, but it’s really true. Like, cliches are true for a reason, and I would love if, if everyone was just like choosier, you know, like choosier about their partners and like, only worked with companies that were really transparent about their data practices and could give, like, real proof of compliance. Because if that happened, then the companies that didn’t do that, just like, wouldn’t have business, and it would just sort of rectify itself. It would happen over time. Time, but, but, yeah, I’m just transparency. Be transparent, like, if you have nothing to hide, although I know that’s kind of a challenging perspective, because that’s also the excuse for total surveillance. Well, if you have nothing to hide, then we should be able to watch you all the time now.

Jodi Daniels 35:19

When you are not writing and reading and learning all things privacy and ad tech. What do you like to do for fun?

Allison Schiff 35:27

I’m a big reader. I love reading. I have to be really careful though about what books I pick up, because I’m also a completist. So I will finish anything that I start. And I’m crazy that way. So I’ve read books that I straight up hated from cover to cover, because I just, I just need to give I guess I want to give it a chance, like, maybe it’ll get better. But usually, you know, and I also love movies, like, I’m a big movie person, and if a movie is screening in a theater and it’s also on streaming, like, I will pay $17 or $19 to go see it in the theater, because I love seeing movies. And I don’t know if you could you heard the dog bark, but that’s Oliver. I am about to live with him. It’s my boyfriend’s dog, and we’re moving in, and I’ve gotten really addicted to taking him on walks, like I love my cat, but she’s strictly indoor, so it gets me out of the apartment three times a day, which is like kind of fun. I’ve taken over those duties. I love walking him and like meeting all the other dog owners.

Jodi Daniels 36:27

Well, the microphone works really well because we did not hear the dog. Wow, at all. But I really enjoy when our dog takes me for a walk as well. Yeah, it’s really good to be able to get out of the house. Well, Allison, where can people learn more and connect?

Allison Schiff 36:44

Well, please read us, all of us, not just me, the six of us. We’re a small team at AdExchanger. So AdExchanger.com, we put out a privacy newsletter, sometimes weekly, sometimes bi weekly. You can sign up on the website, and I’m notoriously bad at social media, so don’t send me messages on LinkedIn, because I won’t see them. Just email me. Allison@adexchanger.com.

Jodi Daniels 37:11

amazing. Well, Allison, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate to hear all the latest in the privacy and ad tech universe. Oh, and we heard all our topics today. Thank you.

Outro 37:28

Thanks for listening to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes and check us out on LinkedIn. See you next time.