The Digiday Podcast

“Trust” is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in ad tech circles. But it’s going to become even more important if ad tech completes its server-side shift.In response to Apple’s identity resolution crackdown, the online ad industry has rallied around server-side ways to sidestep browser-based controls. IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server is the biggest example of this. Not only does the open-source software promise publishers faster page-load speeds, it enables publishers to better control their ad tech stacks and minimize their exposure to browser-based blockades.Trusted Server originated at a time when third-party cookies were under siege and signal loss was a major concern.“When this initiative first started, it was pretty clear that it was time for publishers to start thinking about not continuing to keep everything within the browser itself,” said Rowena Lam, senior director of product, privacy and data at IAB Tech Lab, on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.Taking ad calls out of the browser, however, has the effect of taking them out of users’ sights. A browser can see – and block – the calls a web page asks it to make. Once the calls run on a publisher’s server, though, users have to trust the publisher to a greater degree.For example, Trusted Server introduces the edge cookie, which is a server-side identifier that websites use for users. The edge cookie is created, in part, by hashing a user’s IP address via a secret key specific to the domain the user is visiting.The downside of this from a user privacy control perspective is the edge cookie can be used as a persistent identifier. A person can clear their browsers’ cookies, but if they visit that website again while connected to the same IP address and the website uses the same secret key, a new edge cookie would be created that can be matched to the previous edge cookie, effectively undoing the user’s cookie-clearing. And if the website passes on that edge cookie via server-side calls to ad tech firms and others, those companies would be similarly positioned to use the edge cookie effectively as a persistent identifier connected to whatever other identifiers they have in place, all beyond the user’s visibility.And this is where the trust in Trusted Server really matters.“That doesn’t mean that the edge cookie itself automatically makes it to any of the downstream vendors the publisher engages with. And actually this is where the publisher does have more control. [The publisher] would have to proactively decide that this edge cookie gets sent to anyone. Nobody downstream would automatically receive an edge cookie,” Lam said.Lam also noted that Trusted Server was designed from the start to support integration with consent management platforms. That would give websites a way to share a user’s consent status across the programmatic supply chain. But of course, that requires the user blindly trusting the site to do so.

Apple has reminded ad tech how much power the browser holds. Ad tech’s reaction: Get out of the browser. With iOS 27, Apple’s Safari browser has begun blocking domains tied to identity resolution providers, such as The Trade Desk and ID5, that link people’s browsing to their email addresses. In response, ad tech firms and IAB Tech Lab are pushing to move ad calls server-side, including through the latter organization’s Trusted Server technology, which would limit the browser’s control over ad tech firms’ actions. Meanwhile, the remedies ruling in Google’s ad tech antitrust trial has given Prebid an opening to flip the programmatic auction. Instead of Google’s ad server getting final say on the winning bid, Google’s ad exchange would have to bid into Prebid’s server. But is the server-side shift a long-term solution? And is it the right one? Digiday’s executive editor of news Seb Joseph and senior ad tech reporter Ronan Shields joined the Digiday Podcast to hash out ad tech’s Game of Thrones amid the server-side shift.

Indie agencies have client ad dollars to spend, but demand side platforms don’t seem eager to take said dollars. At least, that’s the sentiment coming from indie agencies as of late. Indies say they're fed up with DSP fees, barriers to direct access and are starting to question the value of the platforms. At the same time, AI agents promise to automate media buying and negotiations. The question is whether DSPs could lose their grip on the market. Digiday's senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, unpack the agency backlash and what comes next for ad tech.

Publishers’ hemming and hawing over the Google Zero post-search era has reached a fever pitch. Now, they’re finally doing something about it. The publishing industry has been forced to reckon with declining referral traffic from Google as the tech behemoth prioritizes its AI-powered search, or AI Overviews. Companies like Axios, The Verge and Time have starting sprouting greenshoots, turning gripes into game plans to survive in what could best be described as a search-pocalypse. Senior media reporter at Digiday Sara Guaglione and senior media editor Jessica Davies joined a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast to discuss the greenshoots that seem the most promising.

Gone are the days of the one-size-fits all influencer deal. On one hand, creators are being treated like programmatic buys, measured on performance and scale. On the other hand, mega creators are locking down Hollywood-style brand integrations and long term equity deals. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Portal A co-founder and president Zach Blume breaks down what's behind the creator economy bifurcation.