MediaMath Files for Bankruptcy

On June 30, independent demand-side platform (DSP) MediaMath filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Delaware district court, with most of its 300-plus employees losing their jobs, AdExchanger reports. The filing comes on the heels of several years of financial troubles and potential acquisition deals falling through. AdExchanger states that, according to the filing, “MediaMath has between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities. It has estimated assets of somewhere within that same range and owes money to between 200 and 999 creditors.” Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings do not guarantee that unsecured creditors will be paid, and even for those that are, “the collections process could take years.”

The Future Impact of AI

MarTech Series examined the future impact of AI in the advertising world. It briefly summarized the components of AI in advertising—machine learning abilities, manipulating big data/analytics, and effective platform solutions—before diving into the transformation effects. MarTech Series identified five key ways that companies can leverage, and capitalize, on AI:

1. Ad personalization by using insights to make ads more relevant to the target audience.
2. Utilizing machine learning to understand your audience better, creating better engagement.
3. Using data-driven forecasts to find out how “messaging and creativity will engage with customers.”
4. AI solutions will benefit from the AI constantly learning and adapting to “ever-changing real-world scenarios.”
5. AI algorithms can help analyze ad performance and offer recommendations to optimize the ads.

Data Clean Room Practices and More

IAB Tech Lab released Version 1.0 of its Data Clean Room (DCR) Guidance and Recommended Practices, as well as its Open Private Join and Activation (OPJA) Version 1.0 specifications, on July 5. These guidelines and specifications are intended to be industry best practices, not rules, AdExchanger explains. Of note, the DCR document states that there must be “some level of counterparty trust and due diligence is still required when collaborating within a data clean room,” as different parties may have differing legal responsibilities, and that trust is necessary for both parties to contribute accurate data and more. The OPJA specification was also published by IAB “because of its benefits to end-user privacy, as well as to publishers and advertisers working with identified first party data.”