1. Cookies Are, In Fact, Good Enough For Google

Google has, yet again, figured out a way to make itself the center of the conversation, this time by announcing that all those years of torturing the ad and ad tech industries by threatening to do away with third-party cookies was, in fact, just a madcap prank of sorts, and that cookies were actually just fine and not going away any time soon.

Which caused Criteo’s stock to shoot up about 9 percent.

Privacy advocates were not happy. Apple and Mozilla probably were (Safari and Firefox banned third-party cookies a while ago) and the television industry was largely unaffected.

Plus there may have been a lot else going on in the news this past week, so it’s not like anyone had time to really pay attention.

Why It Matters

Third-party cookies, for those of you who have spent your careers on the TV side of things, are pieces of code that get embedded in your browser by companies who did not create your browser. Ad networks like DoubleClick who actually serve up digital ads being a prime example of the types of companies that serve cookies.

The primary use cases are relatively benign: making sure you don’t see the same ad over and over, targeting ads to you that align with your interests.

Privacy advocates take issue with cookies though because the malevolent use case is that they can be used to create echo chambers and to radicalize people who are, initially, only slightly inclined to a particular extreme point of view. 

There’s also a complete lack of transparency around cookies—you’re not told what is being collected or by who. 

The problem has been getting the mass of people to care. That has less to do with the actual efforts of said privacy advocates and more to do with the fact that third-party cookies are a fairly complex concept, one that few people could be arsed to understand, to use one of my favorite Britishisms.

TV, of course, has no cookies. (Maybe I shouldn’t say “of course” as I’m not sure how widely understood this is.)

TV has, however, been relying on third-party data to provide targeting on streaming and that’s not been going as smoothly as promised.

As companies like Truthset have been pointing out, many of the data sets used to target TV viewers are outdated, inaccurate or both.

They’re also based on a single user, which works fine on digital where most usage is individual in nature, but not so fine in TV, where most viewing is a household activity.

Which is why contextual targeting, long a big cookie alternative on digital, is becoming quite popular on streaming.

Contextual means just that: using the context of what’s on the screen—either the show itself, what is happening in that particular scene, the mood/emotion of that scene, even the identity of the actors—to target the appropriate ad.

That not only eliminates any privacy issues, but it ideally gives you ads that feel somehow related to the content, which makes for a better viewing experience.

That, and other benefits like greater transparency and better metrics are why contextual has been taking off on streaming and why TVREV is going to be releasing a Special Report on the topic this fall. (Stay tuned for details.)

Adoption of contextual targeting on TV is still a challenge in that it requires effort in an industry that is traditionally effort-averse. Meaning that if I can keep on selling CTV ads based on traditional audience targeting, why would I bother to try and educate my clients on why contextual targeting would actually be better for them.

The mantra being something along the lines of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, even if fixing it could make us a lot more money down the road.”

So there’s that.

Which is why our Special Report, educational tool that it is, should be of particular value to the industry.

Our largesse knows no bounds.

What You Need To Do About It

If you identify as a member of the digital ad community, my sympathy. Google kind of has you strung up like a marionette and all you can do is dance when they tell you to.

If you are Google, probably a wise move. You’re betting on the fact that few people in government actually even almost understand what you do. (Versus, say, Amazon, which sells things to people, something that is far more easily understood.) Meaning no one is going to break you up any time soon, and well, at least you tried to fix the cookie thing.

If you are the TV industry, time to wrap your head around the value of contextual for a medium that rarely has individual viewers and whose content, with its sight, sound and motion, has a great deal of emotional resonance, something rarely found on a website.

If you are a consumer, just use an ad blocker. 

Cookie problem solved.

2. WBD’s NBA Reality Check

NBA rights for the next 11 years have been up for grabs and WBD has been looking like the odd man out for some time, as NBCU, Disney and Amazon were all flagged as the front runners.

People thought this was odd, as WBD, whose TNT network has long been home to many games, was being cagey about what it wanted to do, making occasional noises about being able to match Amazon but not really doing much of anything. (There was a contractual clause somewhere that gave WBD the rights to match any contenders.)

That seemed to have backfired on them this week when the NBA confirmed that NBCU, Disney and Amazon were getting the contracts, and, that they had seen and rejected WBD’s counteroffer.

Why It Matters

WBD is the driving force behind Venu, the app formerly known as “Spulu” which combines sports from Fox, WBD and ESPN into one app, the price of which is still the subject of much speculation.

Without NBA basketball, WBD does not have much to contribute, and the whole value of the app seems to dissipate greatly, given the absence of both NBC and CBS.

So there’s that, and then there is what had appeared to be WBD’s strategy with Max, which was to create an indispensable app that gave viewers news (CNN), spots (TNT under the brand name “Bleacher Report Sports” and entertainment (HBO, TBS, Discovery, HGTV et al.)

Without the NBA games, there’s not a whole lot of sports left for the Bleacher Report portion, and WBD desperately needs that in order to ensure that they are on the “must have” list along with Netflix and Disney, not the “nice to have” list.

What’s most surprising is the way that WBD approached this.

I have no insider details, but it sure seems as if they thought that the “match” clause was their ace in the hole, that they would just need to match whatever number Amazon came up with and it would be theirs, so no need to put much effort into negotiations.

The NBA obviously felt differently. Which is not surprising, given that Amazon has far more subscribers than WBD and (more importantly) offers the ability to sell lots of NBA gear to fans who watch the game.

Amazon can, for instance, make sure that Lakers jerseys and mugs are on the homepage of Southern California fans who have just watched Lakers game. (And that’s before you get into any upcoming t-commerce plays they may have in store around live sports.)

WBD is planning to sue of course, but suing someone into working with you isn’t a great way to start (or continue) a relationship, and Wall Street is already amping up its calls for mergers and sell-offs to stanch the bleeding on WBD’s stock price.

So there’s that too.

What You Need To Do About It

If you’re WBD, you need to figure out a way to keep some of the NBA. Not sure what that looks like, but without it, you run a strong risk of becoming a D-League player.

If you’re the NBA, probably no reason to cave other than that a lawsuit might prove very expensive. But Amazon is a smart choice, as is putting more games on traditional broadcast channels—the whole Diamond Sports fiasco understandably has you more than a little skittish.

Not to mention the fact that it’s doubtful cable TV networks like TNT will be around 11 years from now. I mean 2035 is almost a science fiction year.

If you’re Amazon, well done. Remember that NBA fans are a lot younger and more international than NFL ones, so don’t be afraid to experiment in terms of interactivity and commerce.