Everyone in adtech seems to be either rebranding as an AI company, panic-emailing their DSP rep, or pretending they’ve read the GDPR. This week? It’s a greatest hits album of industry denial: Viant’s out here building an identity spine while investors are still Googling "lockr," OMD’s treating alternate IDs like a tasting menu, and Dentsu’s quietly assembling an executive A-Team like they’re rebooting Suits.

Meanwhile, Google’s AI Mode is eating the web one uncredited summary at a time, Perplexity’s ad pitch is still mostly vibes and vapor, and the Belgian courts just reminded IAB Europe that “consent” isn’t a decorative term. If this is what innovation looks like, it might be time to unplug the martech stack and go back to direct mail.

🚨 Viant Bets Big on Identity — Investors Still Googling 'lockr'

🧊 Cold Open:
Viant dropped the name "lockr" on their earnings call and half the investor call hit mute to Google it. Fair — it’s an early-stage identity infra startup no one outside a DSP basement had heard of.

📦 What’s in the Box:
lockr powers publisher-first data pipes. Add iris.tcv for CTV contextual and it’s less Frankenstein, more Voltron. Viant’s DSP is becoming a data spine, not just a bidder.

🧠 Galaxy Brain Mode:
This isn’t just a side bet on post-cookie life. It’s Viant’s play to own identity, measurement, and content targeting — while analysts still ask, “But what does it do?”

🔥 The TL;DR:
From “huh?” to “aha!” in one earnings call. Wall Street might be late, but Viant's already moved in, set up shop, and started redecorating.

🚨 OMD’s Alt ID Game Plan: No Silver Bullets, Just Strategy

📣 Sound the Alarm:
Emily Proctor didn’t bring a magic wand to Programmatic IO. She brought a checklist, an AI assistant, and receipts.

🧪 Ingredient List:
Top 5 alt IDs: Google, Yahoo, Fabrick, RampID, UID2. But the real MVP? Omni Assist — OMD’s AI brain that crunches ID performance across markets faster than a junior planner with five Red Bulls.

🧠 Why It’s Spicy:
Take UID2: McDonald’s Australia used it to cook up a loyalty-driven lookalike model that sizzled — 92% revenue lift, 87% more purchases. But that works only if your data game is Michelin-starred.

🔥 Swipe This Slide:
The new ID game isn’t about loyalty to vendors — it’s about loyalty to performance. OMD’s not chasing silver bullets. They’re building their own ammo.

🚨 Dentsu’s New Hires Mean Business — Literally

🛬 Meanwhile, at Corporate:
Ogburn from UM. Claudio from FKA. Kodish from... everywhere. Dentsu’s media arm just dropped a triple hire flex and didn’t even flinch.

📉 Org Chart, But Make It Drama:
With Reardon gone and Swayne double-hatting, these roles might be stabilizers — or just power moves in a long-overdue agency housecleaning.

🧠 The Side Hustle Theory:
Every holding co is pretending it’s a software company now. But Dentsu’s move smells less like vaporware and more like: “Let’s make ops not suck.”

🔥 One-Line Zinger:
New blood, same playbook — but if they pull this off, Dentsu might just stop being the ad industry’s quiet middle child.

🚨 Google’s AI Mode Is Eating the Web — One Summary at a Time

🤖 This Just Got Weird:
Click-throughs? That’s so 2022. AI Mode is here, reading your content back to users and forgetting to invite you to the party.

🧷 Under the Hood — and Under the Bus:
Publishers report CTR drops up to 44%. Recipes are being paraphrased. News articles get regurgitated minutes after publishing. And tracking it? Not happening. Yet.

🧠 Hot Take Alert:
Google’s not just replacing search. They’re replacing navigation. The user stays, the ad revenue stays, and the publishers? They become training data.

🔥 Final Destination:
Google built the highway, owns the map, and now auto-generates the scenery. Everyone else is stuck with carpool lanes and toll booths.

🚨 Perplexity’s Ad Biz Is All Talk, No Traffic

🫣 Opening Cringe:
Advertisers are intrigued by Perplexity — in the way people are intrigued by off-brand cola. The idea's cute. The scale isn’t.

📉 The Fine Print:
They’ve got sponsored answers, a Merchant Program, and some cool AI ideas. But the ad business is still in “workshop mode.” As in, the slide deck slaps but the campaign ROI doesn’t.

🧠 Why It’s Not Working (Yet):
They’re raising money like it’s 2021 but burning cash like it’s 2000. Without serious lower-funnel functionality, it’s a nice story — not a business.

🔥 Slogan That Writes Itself:
Cool AI toy. Not ready for prime time. The only thing scaling faster than the hype is the AWS bill.

🚨 Privacy Rules Just Hit Adtech Like a Brick: IAB Europe Loses… Again

🫠 Cold Brew Bombshell:
The Belgian Market Court just said nope (again) to IAB Europe’s TCF — the so-called consent framework powering nearly every pop-up you rage-click. TL;DR: It’s not consent. It’s cosplay.

🔍 The Receipt Roll:
The TCF (Transparency and Consent Framework) was supposed to make real-time bidding (RTB) GDPR-compliant. Instead, it ended up being a very elaborate “we swear we asked permission” system — that didn’t actually do the asking properly. Courts agreed: The consent string is personal data. And IAB Europe? Not just a referee — they’re a joint controller.

🤯 Plot Twist You Probably Missed:
This wasn’t just a tap on the wrist. The court found the entire ecosystem — with its spaghetti mess of data sharing — nearly impossible to monitor. No real way to verify consent, check for fake signals, or guarantee data security at scale. The ruling didn’t just declare TCF 2.0 illegal — it basically warned 2.2 is skating on GDPR-thin ice.

⚖️ Meanwhile in Ireland:
Just as IAB licks its wounds, Microsoft gets served. An Irish court greenlit the first-ever class action over RTB, targeting Redmond’s deep ties to this whole data auction circus. The gloves are officially off.

🔥 Wrap It Up:
Adtech tried to fix a broken system with duct tape and acronyms. Regulators called their bluff. Now the whole RTB circus is on trial — one cookie, one consent string, one class action at a time.

Yes, the TCF Is Still a Problem.

And every time, my answer is the same: No, it hasn’t. And I’m not sure it can be.

Let’s back up for those who weren’t paying attention between the GDPR hangover and the current AI-induced identity crisis in adtech.

The Transparency and Consent Framework — you know, the thing that gives your website that 13-option pop-up you ignore while hunting for the "reject all" button — was IAB Europe’s grand plan to make OpenRTB look compliant. Emphasis on look.

Spoiler alert: regulators weren’t impressed.

The Belgian Data Protection Authority found it violated GDPR on several fronts. Not sort of. Not maybe. Violated. Then the Brussels Market Court confirmed it. Then the Court of Justice of the European Union weighed in. Then the Market Court confirmed it again — with a fine, just in case the message was too subtle.

So no, this isn’t a minor scuffle about a banner’s font size. This is the data privacy equivalent of saying, “Your foundation is made of sand, and now it’s raining subpoenas.”

The Problem Wasn’t the Code. It Was the Concept.

Let’s be honest: the idea that you can get meaningful user consent, at scale, in microseconds, during a real-time auction involving thousands of anonymous vendors, is about as realistic as building a trust-based relationship through a robocall.

The TCF tried to say, “It’s fine. We have a string.” But as Ruben Roex of Timelex (a name you should remember) helped prove, that string is personal data. That string is tied to IP addresses. That string travels the internet like a carrier pigeon on meth, with no real security, no ability to audit the destination, and no user understanding.

Oh, and IAB Europe? They’re not just the mall cop in this ecosystem. The court found them to be a joint controller — meaning they’re just as liable for what happens to that data as the CMPs and publishers.

"But TCF 2.2 Is Better!" Sure. So Was New Coke.

Here’s the part where some people get nervous and ask, “But wait, wasn’t the newer version supposed to solve all that?”

Nope.

The underlying principles — the ones that turned informed consent into legal theater — are still there. And the courts essentially said: if it walks like illegal data processing, and propagates like illegal data processing, well... it’s probably still illegal.

There's no real way to verify that thousands of participants follow consent instructions. There’s no way to ensure data isn’t being passed on to someone four hops down the daisy chain who thinks GDPR is a German DJ.

And Now… Microsoft’s Turn

Just in case you thought this was all a Belgian niche problem, guess what? Ireland just greenlit the first-ever class action against Microsoft for its role in the OpenRTB free-for-all.

That’s not just a sideshow. That’s the next wave. And once the regulators start sniffing around that case, you can bet every major RTB participant is going to start reviewing their compliance posture while pretending they haven’t read this column.

The TL;DR You Should Tattoo on Your Laptop:

• The TCF didn’t make RTB compliant. It made non-compliance look organized.

• Courts across Europe aren’t buying the “it’s just a framework” excuse.

• IAB Europe isn’t a bystander. They’re in the driver's seat — and now on the liability hook.

• TCF 2.2 still shares the same DNA. And regulators have microscopes now.

• If you're still using RTB like it's 2015, you better have a Plan B. Or a very, very good lawyer.

This isn’t just about a framework. It’s about an entire industry that pretended “transparency” meant adding a banner and calling it a day.

So no — I haven’t changed my mind. I said this was broken years ago. The only difference now? The courts finally agree.

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