Top AdTech & MarTech News Stories from Q2 2022

Missed a few months of industry headlines while the summer got away from you? Here's a digest of the stories that mattered most in AdTech and MarTech during Q2 2022 — Netflix's pivot toward advertising, the EU's sweeping new DSA and DMA legislation, and Vodafone's controversial ISP-level tracking play.

Netflix Plans to Enter the Ad Business

When Netflix reported losing 200,000 subscribers in Q1 2022 — its first net subscriber decline in over a decade — the logical next step was almost immediately obvious: bring in ad revenue to cushion the blow.

Here's what happened:

• Netflix's Q1 2022 subscriber loss was its first in over a decade. The company pointed to password sharing, the suspension of its service in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, COVID-related normalization, inflation, and an increasingly crowded competitive landscape as contributing factors.
• Shortly after, Netflix announced plans to introduce cheaper, ad-supported subscription tiers over the next year or two.
• By June 2022, Netflix confirmed an ad-supported plan was actively in the works.
• Executives had reportedly held talks with Roku and Comcast about how those companies could help accelerate the transition.
• On July 14, 2022, Netflix announced it would partner with Microsoft to power its ad-supported subscription offering.

The speed of the pivot was notable. Netflix had resisted advertising for years, positioning ad-free viewing as a core feature. The subscriber loss changed that calculus quickly.

The EU's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act

On April 23, 2022, the European Commission reached agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA), the companion piece to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which had been agreed upon on March 25, 2022.

Neither regulation names specific companies — but the targets are broadly understood to be the large platform operators that dominate digital markets.

Key points:

• Together, the DSA and DMA form a unified regulatory framework across the entire European Union, aimed at protecting the fundamental rights of internet users and levelling the competitive playing field.
• The DSA applies to a wide range of digital intermediaries: web hosting providers, search engines, online marketplaces, app stores, and social media platforms. Among other obligations, covered companies must give users meaningful recourse against content moderation decisions and disclose how their recommendation algorithms work.
• The DMA targets "gatekeepers" — companies that sit between consumers and businesses and effectively control entire digital ecosystems (marketplaces, operating systems, cloud services, search engines). Gatekeepers will be required to stop favouring their own services, share advertising performance and pricing data with advertisers, and allow developers to offer alternative in-app payment systems.
• Penalties can reach 10% of a company's worldwide annual turnover, rising to 20% for repeated infringements.
• On timing: once adopted by the Council of the European Union and published in the Official Journal, the DMA takes effect six months later. The DSA applies fifteen months after coming into force, or from January 1, 2024 — whichever is later.

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 it would trial a new advertising identifier called TrustPid — raising immediate concern among privacy advocates.

What to know:

• TrustPid is designed to function as a persistent ID at the mobile ISP level, intended to be immune to cookie blocking and IP address masking — the two most common privacy tools that have eroded ad tracking in recent years.
• The ID is generated from multiple parameters and used to associate user activity, enabling advertisers to serve targeted and personalized ads to mobile users without directly exposing identifiable information.
• Vodafone framed TrustPid as a response to the wave of privacy changes that have squeezed publisher revenues and, in its view, threaten the ad-funded model that underpins free content on the internet.
• The trial launched in Germany, with Deutsche Telekom participating alongside Vodafone.

The broader concern is structural: by moving the tracking layer to the ISP level, this approach operates below the reach of browser-based privacy controls — and largely outside the scope of user consent mechanisms as they currently exist.

Further reading:

Vodafone plans carrier-level user tracking for targeted ads — BleepingComputer

Other Notable AdTech & MarTech Stories from Q2 2022

Privacy

The first developer preview of Privacy Sandbox on Android — Android Developers Google's Privacy Sandbox plans include separate vetting for third-party code — Digiday UK Shifts to Opt-Out Model for Cookie Consent — VideoWeek Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users worldwide — Firefox Google Is Working On A Product To Give Users More Control Over The Ads They See (On Google Only) — AdExchanger Experts predict Apple will turn on Private Relay by default in iOS 16 — Digiday

Antitrust Investigations and Big Tech

Study of Apple's ATT impact highlights competition concerns — TechCrunch Google offers to let ad rivals place YouTube ads in EU antitrust probe — Reuters Google Hit With Fresh UK Probe Over Anticompetitive Behaviour in Ad Tech — VideoWeek Google Ad Manager Builds A Bridge To Prebid – But Don't Call It A Two-Way Street — AdExchanger UK Government Backtracks on Tech Regulation Bill — VideoWeek Google Inches Towards Settling Privacy Violation Lawsuit — ExchangeWire