Telcos make a play in adtech while Google rows back on its fingerprinting ban

Welcome to the January edition of Spotlight, your monthly summary of the hottest news stories from the world of digital marketing.

What we have for you today: New telco business models, more U-turns from Google, and the return of brand safety as a top priority.

Telcos’ adtech manoeuvres

On the heels of T-Mobile’s $600 million play for outdoor ad specialist Vistart, Digiday’s Ronan Shields has delivered an in-depth examination of telcos’ past missteps in the adtech space as well as some of their more recent – and more successful – moves to provide data and identity plays that serve the digital marketing sector.

It’s clear that the myth that telcos can’t be part of the adtech world is now outdated. But rather than trying to buy their way into the market – a strategy that has failed in the past – the real opportunity for telcos lies in leveraging their inherent network functions to deliver privacy-first, market-facing services that meet the needs of brands and publishers.

Trailblazers like e& in the UAE and MTN in South Africa are already proving the naysayers wrong, providing verified ID solutions that enable compliant and scalable user recognition and personalised campaigns. Novatiq is proud to have been first to market with a telco-based ID verification solution for digital marketing and of the significant strides we have taken worldwide with our telco and publisher partners in helping to mature this market.

Google’s U-turns keep on coming

Another month, another U-turn from Google. This time, the tech giant is rowing back on its promise to prohibit fingerprinting for companies that use its products. Fingerprinting determines a device’s identity by aggregating numerous signals into a single ID, including screen size, browser type, operating system, battery level, and IP address.

In effect, Google is doing what Google does and moving privacy obligations onto the shoulders of its users. Advertisers and publishers will need to choose whether they want to use fingerprinting to identify users, and consumers will need to weigh up whether to give their consent – after all, fingerprinting uses personally identifiable information and is therefore regulated (on that note, and as the article points out – if users do give consent for their personal data to be used, fingerprinting becomes null and void, as more direct data gathering techniques can be used).

Our advice to any brand or publisher considering fingerprinting is that you use it at your own peril. Regulators will be watching closely, and any privacy breaches will be punished accordingly.

Media execs focused on growing engagement

In its annual review of media executives’ priorities for the year ahead, Digiday has revealed that publishers are focusing on engagement as a means to boost ad revenue and subscriptions. As publishers seek growth in the year ahead, we can therefore expect to see greater use of first-party data alongside innovative adtech to create personalised experiences that resonate with their audiences. As always, this will need to be done in a privacy-compliant way if publishers are to avoid regulatory fines and maintain the trust of their customers.

The return of third-party data?

This month, Experian launched a marketplace for third-party data vendors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company states that this is a “full-fledged marketplace where audiences from other data partners will be accessible.” At launch, data partners on the marketplace included Attain, Circana, Dun & Bradstreet and Alliant.

However, the service currently inspires more questions than it answers. Why is Experian pushing this approach given the industry-wide trend toward first-party data? Is this true third-party data, or do its partners source the data direct from data owners? How will the data be made available? Is it a cleanroom? It will be important to see more detail over the coming weeks to assess the role this new marketplace could play in the years ahead.

The Trade Desk powers up

A big surprise came in January when The Trade Desk made its first acquisition in aeons with the purchase of Sincera, a leading digital advertising data company. And then came the news that The Trade Desk is partnering with Ezoic, the AI-driven technology platform for digital publishers. The partnership aims to make it safer and simpler for brands to move ad budgets away from walled gardens and includes work on Unified ID 2.0, which will pair with Ezoic’s new ezID platform to help publishers leverage first-party data in a privacy-centric way.

It’s great to see The Trade Desk strengthening its position, and we expect to see its Unified ID 2.0 play an important role in the interoperable ecosystem of alternative advertising IDs emerging today.

Brand safety’s back

It’s fair to say that the US is going through a big period of change at present, and this is impacting the digital world. Meta is moving closer to the incoming administration’s worldview by removing fact checking for Facebook and Instagram in the US (and it plans to do the same in other regions too).

In response to this move, as well as the administration’s dismantling of government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, media buyers are on alert, prioritising brand safety and clamping down on media buying practices. We are entering a new era for brand safety, where advertisers will need to do more than ever to ensure their promotions are not appearing next to erroneous or harmful content. Having in place a robust and proven ID strategy will be key to these efforts.

More from Novatiq

We’re going to MWC! If you’re in Barcelona between 3-6 March and want to meet up, we would love to see you. We’ll be catching up with telcos to discuss the huge revenue opportunities on offer through telco-verification services. Let us know if this sounds of interest.

In the meantime, why not check out some of our recent thought leadership. Tanya Field, our CPO, has just been published in Capacity magazine, where she wrote about how telcos can best monetise data for marketing success. As always, you can also read more in our monthly blogs, such as this one on the future of programmatic advertising.

We hope your new year has got off to a great start, and we look forward to keeping you company through the remainder of 2025.