Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech — DoorDash vs NYC: War on Customer Data Sharing

Hey there! This is Lauralyn & Vanessa at Sharethrough. In this episode we'll be giving you a quick recap of what happened the week of September 6th in ad tech, in 180 seconds. Let’s go! 

On Wednesday, food delivery app DoorDash filed a lawsuit against New York City over a new law that is set to go into effect in December. The law in question would require food delivery companies, including GrubHub and UberEats, to share their customer data with restaurants. DoorDash claims the law is unconstitutional and infringes on consumers’ privacy, while also allowing restaurants to be able to leverage the information gathered from its platform in direct competition against it by marketing to consumers themselves. Tensions between regulators and food delivery companies are already at an all time high, following another lawsuit filed by the 3 aforementioned companies against New York last week, when regulators introduced a bill to add emergency fee caps to services. With privacy matters top of mind, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the end. (Source: CNBC)

Apple has announced they will be releasing IOS 15 on Monday, September 20th. The update. The update is in line with Apple's commitment to bolstering consumer privacy and tracking transparency, with the promised features of Mail Privacy Protection; the obfuscation of IP addresses and Private Relay. Although the update and its features have been anticipated, news of the release is still cause for concern amongst marketers and app developers, considering they are still working through the last round of privacy changes with iOS 14.5.  (Source: AdExchanger)

Facebook announced on Thursday their plans to introduce a new product line to make ads more personal without infringing on consumer privacy. The platform is currently testing marketing automation, paid & organic tools to ameliorate business to consumer interactions and improve the customer experience overall. In what it quotes to be “the next era of personalization”, Facebook’s aim is to bridge the gap between businesses & consumers for more meaningful interactions to take place, without having to resort to targeted advertising.
(Source: AdExchanger)

Following up on our mention of the rise of mobile gaming last week, it appears more and more esports companies are cashing in on the opportunity. According to an article featured in Digiday, esports companies are leveraging Snapchat to reach mobile gamers - particularly Gen Z and Millenials audiences. In addition to reaching 293 million daily active users on average, Snapchat also has 30 million users monthly engaging on their Snap Games app. As it stands, Snachat has launched 60 new games and shows for esport companies to engage with these audiences. (Source: Digiday)

Earlier this week, TransUnion officially acquired Neustar in a deal for 3.1 billion. Since 2019, TransUnion has been acquiring several companies to fulfil their goal of becoming the “go-to provider of identity solutions” in the industry. By leveraging Neustar’s OneID platform, TransUnion aims to build off it to improve targeting and connect identity solutions. No decision has yet to be made regarding a rebrand or presumed name change. (Source: AdExchanger)

Thanks for tuning in! For more in-depth information or to subscribe to these weekly updates, check out the links in our blog. This has been Lauralyn & Vanessa at Sharethrough for our weekly 180 second-recap in Ad tech. See you next week!