The digital advertising world is entering a reset. As privacy laws tighten, cookies vanish, and platform fees rise, companies are reclaiming control. Avenga's Pedro Carrascosa reveals why 2026 will be the year of the custom adtech renaissance - a shift toward building and owning adtech infrastructure. For more than a decade, we've all seen how big brands, publishers, and media companies have relied on big adtech vendors to power their digital advertising. And it worked, until it didn't.
Using Anonymised's privacy-by-design, on-device technology, Audience Lift creates multiple people-based audiences that unlock smarter lookalikes and diversified targeting. Audience Lift enables advertisers to launch interest and intent-based audience strategies, allowing each audience to compete for performance across social and search channels. The solution instantly identifies which behaviours drive the highest conversion value and continuously refines targeting based on real-time performance feedback.
where I worked in the early 2000s in its rather pioneering e-commerce business (which launched, among other things, the first click and collect service). Argos was jostling with Tesco for first place at Christmas, and I've found myself reflecting on why DTC has become such a major issue for several sectors that have not traditionally had a direct path to purchase over the last few years.
By combining Regit's first-party vehicle data with Blis's unique mix of aggregated real-world movement, telco-derived insights, spending, and digital behaviour data, the collaboration gives automotive brands unmatched precision in reaching the right drivers at pivotal moments in their ownership journey. With drivers becoming harder to reach, smarter targeting is critical. Regit data shows two-thirds of UK motorists are considering an electric or hybrid car for their next purchase, while 76% say they will be less loyal in the low-emission era.
That cuts against the grain of ad tech, which has spent the better part of two decades engineering software to trap budgets, data and behavior inside proprietary dashboards. But Yahoo is making a different bet. Lower the friction to exit, and it also lowers the friction to enter. If that still sounds backwards, put it this way: Yahoo is recasting its DSP less as a place marketers go, and more as infrastructure their systems can plug into.
The last decade has been defined by the convergence of these three worlds and by the dramatic evolution of the underlying technology. Ten years ago, brands started to shift away from buying hardware to store data and implementing software stacks in the hope they could extract value. Today, cloud infrastructure underpins almost everything we do, personally and professionally. The way we access, analyse, activate, and share information has been transformed.
Prediction and detection algorithms are at the core of the Bytek Prediction Platform, the prediction platform that unlocks the power of secure, privacy-compliant first-party data for enterprise advertisers. These models enable the creation of audiences based on product and thematic interests, as well as predictive segments built on customer lifetime value (Predictive LTV) and conversion probability (Action Prediction). These audiences are then activated through Anonymised's technology, which ensures the secure processing of Bytek's raw analytics and eliminates the risks traditionally associated with sharing first-party data in digital advertising.
The second annual connected packaging study from Appetite Creative polled 968 marketing execs at the start of 2023 and found a sharp rise in practitioners willing to invest in the medium. 88% of respondents say they are planning a connected packaging campaign this year and 92% agree that it is increasingly important. Last year, only 59% planned such a campaign and only 85% considered it important.
Curation flips this script. A publisher's greatest asset will always be their content, of course, but the advantage that sets them apart - the ace up their sleeve, so to speak - is their audience data. By putting that data to work in curated marketplaces, publishers can stretch the value of their content well beyond their own properties - bundling data and inventory into highly targeted, privacy-compliant packages that advertisers can buy directly.
Taboola continues to bolster Realize with new Generative AI features that are driving clear results for advertisers as well. Realize is a technology platform that delivers outcomes at scale for advertisers, leveraging Taboola's unique supply, first-party data and AI technology. It delivers simplicity and efficiency for advertisers to run performance-based campaigns on many of the world's largest and most trusted publishers across all ad inventory, OEMs and apps.
Using advanced first-party data collection and real-time content analysis, the magazine creates advertising environments where every placement is strategically positioned for maximum impact. This isn't just about showing ads to the right people; it's about presenting them at the precise moment when the audience is most receptive and within editorial contexts that naturally complement the advertiser's value proposition. The results speak for themselves.
"Internally, we strive for the 'perfect send,' when 100 percent of the people who get the message click or engage, and no one opts out," said Alex Campbell, the chief innovation officer and co-founder at Vibes, a mobile marketing platform. Campbell was discussing the potential for AI individualization (AI-I), Rich Communication Services, and mobile marketing in the retail sector when he described this 100% engagement, 0% opt-out scenario.
Attributed revenue, ROAS, conversion rate - traditional marketing metrics track efficiency but often miss the signals that reveal which customers drive growth. Today, first-party customer data is more accessible and valuable than ever. And when combined with AI, it opens the door to a new era of customer-centered performance measurement. Customer analytics shifts the focus from channels to customers, framing analysis and activation around engagement, growth and predicted value.
The digital marketing landscape is undergoing a seismic shift. As third-party cookies disappear or deteriorate and consumer privacy takes center stage, marketers face a pivotal choice: adapt or become irrelevant. Success in this new era means moving beyond mere compliance to build strategies rooted in trust. The terrain is complex. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA are a net positive for consumer rights, but can create issues for marketers.
According to the complaint, Meta inflated the ROAS of its Shops ads campaigns, which incorporated the costs of shipping fees and taxes as part of the attributable sale, despite those never going to the merchant or brand. Meta's other ad products, and those of other platforms, including Google and Amazon, don't count taxes or fees in their ROAS calculations. More damning, when data scientists identified the inflated ROAS, and Shops ads otherwise performed no better than "business as usual" campaigns, higher-ups continued to misrepresent ROAS.
