This WTF guide, sponsored by Adstra, explores how composable identity is changing how marketers target and engage consumers across a fragmented ecosystem, future-proofing their marketing strategies against industry and regulatory changes.

Amid evolving privacy regulations, signal loss and the ongoing fragmentation of user identities, brands face growing challenges around targeting and measurement. Since brands can no longer rely on a single persistent identifier to link their disparate efforts  — 86% of e-commerce users are not logged in, and thus anonymous — they struggle to create a holistic and comprehensive view of their prospects and customers.

To keep up with these rapidly changing digital landscapes and consumer journeys, brands need flexible identity frameworks that ensure continued audience addressability, personalization and measurement.

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After a mere three months of testing, Meta announced on Wednesday that ads on Threads are now available to all eligible advertisers globally.

While it might seem quick — testing periods can typically take anything from six months to a year prior to an official global launch — the anticipation of when this might drop has lingered since Threads first launched in July 2023.

So what’s on offer and how does it work?

Since Threads is a text-based app, the new image ad placement is in the Threads feed. And as predicted by most advertisers Digiday caught up with during the short testing window, Meta stated that advertisers can access it via the Advantage+ platform whereby advertisers leave it up to Meta’s algorithm to determine where their ads show up, or via manual placements, where marketers purposefully select which placements they want their campaigns to show up in. 

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For years, privacy was treated as advertising’s great reckoning. The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, Apple’s crackdown on mobile identifiers and the slow death march of third-party cookies in the largest browser — it all painted a picture of a future where platforms would be reined in, marketers would be forced to adapt and users would finally gain some measure of control over their data.

That future never quite arrived.

What followed instead was a slower, stranger drift: enforcement grew spotty. Regulatory efforts stalled and the largest platforms — Google, Meta, Amazon — emerged with even more concentrated power than before. Fines dried up. Reforms got diluted or delayed. And cookie deprecation, once symbolic of the new era, came full circle when Google confirmed it wouldn’t eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome after all.

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Livestreaming is having a moment in 2025 — and it’s bringing some growing pains.

Creator platforms’ push into livestreaming is exposing a deep cultural divide between Twitch’s dedicated streaming community and creators going live on newer platforms.

The format is breaking out of its niche roots, with platforms from Substack to Patreon launching new tools and total livestreaming hours watched rising by 8.9 percent year-over-year, according to Stream Hatchet’s Q1 2025 livestreaming trends report. But as streaming moves beyond its Twitch-native roots, creators are discovering the format means very different things on different platforms, and the result is growing friction.

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The subject can’t be avoided — following years of delays and panicked preparations, Google is keeping third-party cookies in its Chrome browser after all. For publishers, it’s a real case of mixed emotions: frustration about time and money spent on something that was never realized, but also gratitude that they were driven to shore up their first-party data and, by consequence, their businesses as a whole.

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The long saga of Google’s third-party cookie crumble has come to an end. The tech behemoth has stopped kicking the can down the road when it comes to removing third-party cookies from Chrome and, instead, reversed course.

For media buyers, it’s been a wild time filled with false starts, urgency and many delays to an ever-extending deadline. For one media buyer at a media agency, this week’s announcement that Google had called the whole thing off was met with laughter.

In the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor, we talked with this buyer to get his take on the reversal, what it means for the industry and why, despite the headache, Google’s push to end cookies in Chrome likely made the ad industry innovate in ways that were needed.

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The all-conquering video platform YouTube turned 20 years old this week, signifying a welcome break from drama after drama in what could be described as the most turbulent month in the 26-year history of its owner, Google. 

The last three weeks have seen a trifecta of developments that Google is at pains to point out are entirely unrelated (see below), but many think the adjacency of such events is too close to be a coincidence. 

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Anudit Vikram, Chief Product Officer, Channel Factory

Brand safety technology has advanced well beyond its origins. What began as simple keyword blocklists has matured into a new generation of tools powered by AI. These systems now integrate natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning and large language models to understand content at a far deeper level. They can assess tone, sentiment, emotion, visual context and even audience response to construct a multidimensional view of the environments where ads might appear.

This sophistication matters. Brands today need more than blunt exclusion lists; they need platforms that can distinguish between risk and relevance, nuance and noise. Multimodal AI has enabled content classification to move from surface-level filtering to a more semantic understanding of media, which can offer an added ability to incorporate performance signals as a secondary layer of analysis.

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This is the Digiday+ Research Data Sheet, a new monthly feature that takes an in-depth look at our survey data in relation to major trends in the marketing and media industries. This month, we look at how publishers are approaching subscription pricing and how subscriptions drive other revenue streams for publishers.

“We are subscription first and all of our brands are paywalled properties. As business products, they command high subscription prices, and we have great retention. As a result, that’s an important part of our business,” Josh Stinchcomb, evp and chief revenue officer at Dow Jones, told Digiday. “It’s also the source of our value in the advertising space because we have largely logged-in consumption.”

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When major marketers like Unilever are saying they’re dramatically increasing their ad spending on influencer marketing, the agencies who manage influencer marketing are, naturally, chomping at the bit to get those ad dollars.

But when everyone, even more traditional ad agencies, are after brand dollars — in a market where most ad budgets are tightening — what separates the best when it comes to influencer marketing agencies from the rest? How do marketers and creators sort through the ever-expanding list of influencer marketing agencies and figure out who to work with?

“I look for a team that’s flexible, collaborative and genuinely invested in helping solve problems as they arise — going beyond just executing tasks to acting as true strategic partners,” said Amy Moussa, manager of social media and digital partnerships for restaurant company Qdoba Mexican Eats, which works with creator marketing agency Open Influence.

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The digital advertising industry has spent the last five years preparing for a cookieless future. This week, they’re looking for ways to make that feel less like a wasted effort, following Google’s latest policy reversal.

Facing legal challenges and industry pushback, Google has opted to retain the cookie in its popular Chrome browser after all, instead allowing users to manage settings through its existing privacy tools. Google’s own Privacy Sandbox initiative, which aimed to enhance privacy while supporting digital advertising, will stick around, at least for now.

The decision has prompted a collective eye-roll from media experts. “It’s a little disappointing to be going through this for the last five years, marching toward this post-cookie era and getting to a point where there’s no final decision,” said Kyle Rovinski, associate director of search at full service agency Duncan Channon.

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The Possible conference, trade show and kibbitz-fest kicks off on Monday in Miami, its third year of existence. And while it has grown its audience sizably since year one — with an emphasis on attracting more marketers — the content too has widened its aperture, thanks to a cadre of diverse voices serving as its advisory council.

Among the high-profile names speaking this year are Martha Stewart, who seems to reinvent herself every decade, tennis legend Stan Smith, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, and college basketball star Flau’jae Johnson — all of whom are rounded out by execs across the intersection of marketing, media, tech and culture that Possible aspires to connect. [Full disclosure: Digiday has been a media partner of Possible since the event’s first year.]

Made up of 17 leaders from the above areas, the advisory council represents a broad diversity of voices, and one of its members appreciates what he calls “respectful disagreement” to help make the annual confab accomplish its mission. “It is really run as a team of rivals,” explained Chaucer Barnes, CMO of cultural consultancy Translation and United Masters. “Everyone is terrifically friendly, bringing tons of diverse points of views, and a real high tolerance for respectful disagreement.”

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In this week’s Media Briefing, publishers say that after years of preparing for Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies in the Chrome browser, the tech giant’s U-turn this week felt like a slap. And yet, they say their investment in cookieless solutions and focus on first-party data hasn’t been a waste.

• Publishers are frustrated but also quietly grateful for Google’s cookie U-turn 
• The Washington Post signs a deal with OpenAI, Google’s AI Overviews faces EU scrutiny and more.

Publishers are frustrated — but also grateful — about Google’s cookie U-turn 

Publishers are deeply frustrated. After years of preparing for the deprecation of third-party cookies, Google’s U-turn this week has landed like a slap. The sense of betrayal is sharp, but so is the sense that they’ve been led on a wild goose chase — an expensive, time-sapping exercise that now feels, in part, like farce.

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Brands looking to reach Roblox users in 2025 are finding themselves inundated with competing pitches from Roblox over how to best advertise on the platform — and some are deciding to spend their marketing dollars elsewhere — or temporarily pause spend — as a result of the confusion.

Three executives at Roblox studios — the metaverse platform’s version of influencer marketing agencies, which help design branded experiences or integrate brands into pre-existing experiences — told Digiday that confusion over the platform’s competing ad visions in 2025 had caused a brand they were negotiating with to decide not to enter Roblox, though all three declined to name the specific brands to avoid damaging potential deals, and two requested anonymity to preserve business relationships.

At the moment, Roblox’s advertising ecosystem contains a multitude of stakeholders with differing priorities and ideal outcomes. There are the creators, who simply want to make as much money as they can by working with brands — which often means convincing an advertiser to focus its marketing budget on integrating into a single, popular experience. Then there are the studios, which want advertisers to pay them to manage more widely distributed campaigns that integrate brands across multiple experiences. And then there’s Roblox itself, which wants to funnel brands’ marketing budgets into its own ad products, such as Portals and video ads.

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As more vendors rebrand automation as agents, established giants and startups alike are challenged to show agentic AI delivers real business value — not just hype.

Among the most ambitious is Salesforce, which aims to do for AI what it did for enterprise software. 

Last week, Salesforce highlighted growth for its Data Cloud and Agentforce platforms, reporting $900 million in annual recurring revenue for fiscal 2025 and 3,000 net-new Agentforce deals in the fourth quarter. The company is pitching these tools as the foundation tapping into what it sees as a potential $6 trillion “digital labor market” — which comprises AI agents powering marketing, sales, and service workflows.

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When the economy wobbles, most marketers ease off the gas. Amazon is telling them to floor it — on its ads, naturally.

It’s a predictable pitch from a media owner. But Amazon isn’t just any seller of ad space. It can draw a straight line from impression to impact — be it a sale or a sentiment shift. That’s compelling in any climate but especially when every marketing dollar has to prove its worth. 

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This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at a report from Innovid that seems to show CTV advertisers’ reach and frequency calibrations are out of whack.

• Beyond reach
• Productions’ Hollywood exodus, Netflix’s podcast interest and more

Beyond reach

For all the increasing attention being paid to business outcome measurement, reach and frequency remain the main metrics for ads running across connected TV platforms and streaming services. So as this year’s upfront negotiations near, it’s worth asking: To what extent are advertisers reaching audiences on CTV and how often?

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It’s been nearly a week since U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google illegally monopolized the tools that direct how ad dollars flow across the internet. The moment felt, briefly, like vindication for publishers. After years of mounting frustration, they finally saw their suspicions ratified in a courtroom. Google hadn’t just dominated the open web — it had done so illegally.

And yet, few publishers are rushing to celebrate.

Because as clear as the verdict was, the path forward is anything but. Google’s likeliest appeasement to the verdict — a forced divesture of its ad server and exchange — may take years to materialize. And, even if it happens, it may fall short of what many industry observers are hoping for.

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After more than half a decade of delayed timelines, government oversight and industry infighting, Google has fulfilled many expectations: a U-turn on third-party cookies in Chrome.

For some, it spells the death of Privacy Sandbox — a project that dates back to August 2019 — with critics pointing to the proximity of Google’s vp, Privacy Sandbox, Anthony Chavez’s announcement this week to its successive antitrust rebukes earlier in the month.

Basically, such voices are asking the question, “Does Google Chrome’s latest cookie U-turn represent a peace offering to regulators now that it faces multiple breakup scenarios?”

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The winners of this year’s Digiday Streaming and Video Awards — formerly the Digiday Video and TV Awards — found success by focusing on personal stories and meaningful experiences to foster connections and drive brand affinity. Advertisers also demonstrated a commitment to innovation, leveraging emerging technologies such as enhanced in-scene advertising to improve user experiences.

For instance, Business Insider is recognized in two categories: Best Interactive Video Experience, alongside partner Amazon Ads, and Best Use of YouTube. In 2024, Business Insider implemented a robust YouTube strategy to increase watch time, boost engagement and build a dedicated subscriber base. The publisher diversified its content by creating longer videos and meaningful marathons, and strategically scheduled them to optimize audience retention and grow watch hours. Business Insider also refined its packaging through YouTube’s A/B thumbnail testing feature and capitalized on Shorts to introduce new audiences to its content ecosystem and direct them to long-form videos. With 9.65 million subscribers and rising, Business Insider’s YouTube success demonstrates how thoughtful packaging, diversified formats and interactive features can drive sustained growth and viewer loyalty.

YouTube itself is a winner in four categories: Best UGC Integration Strategy, Best Use of Data-Driven Personalization, Best Video Podcast and Best Short Form Video of the Year. The platform is recognized in the Best Use of Data-Driven Personalization category for refining its recommendation engine using AI-powered tools and real-time user behavior to serve hyper-relevant video suggestions. From personalized video feeds that adapt to evolving interests to new features like Search Highlights and Smart Topics, YouTube reimagined content discovery across its ecosystem. These updates helped surface key moments within videos and categorize content into tailored themes, making each user’s journey feel uniquely intuitive and seamless.

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