Now that Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative is starting to take shape, ad-tech companies have a few notes for the digital giant.

So far, there are a few kinks to be worked out, ranging from latency issues to falling prices, according to three recent reports from platforms on both the supply and demand sides, together representing the digital plumbing of the internet.

The findings build on early data that has shown the effects of Privacy Sandbox, a collection of tools designed for ad-tech companies to maintain the monetization of online advertising without invading user privacy. Privacy Sandbox has been touted by Google as a replacement for third-party cookies, which the company has repeatedly announced plans to phase out of its Chrome browser.

In January, Google removed cookies from about 1% of Chrome users, or around 30 million, to allow for testing—and almost immediately, some publishers reported that those users monetized nearly 30% worse than users with cookies. The new reports from industry players Criteo, Index Exchange, and NextRoll, which were released in late June and early July, suggest that nearly six months later, little has changed.

“We’re still seeing that 30% hit to revenue in Chrome cookieless world, and that’s a big amount of revenue for people to lose,” Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer at publishing ad-tech company Raptive, told Marketing Brew. That figure comes with a caveat, he noted, since third-party cookies remain in use.

Because Privacy Sandbox “totally changes the way advertising works today, everyone is at a kindergarten level again,” he said. “We’ve got this really powerful tool, and we don’t fully know how to use it.”

Continue reading here.—RB

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It’s a hot girl summer for Athleta.

Around the time of the last Summer Olympics in 2021, the Gap-owned women’s activewear brand made news when it signed a deal with Simone Biles, who severed ties with Nike in favor of Athleta. For this year’s Paris games, which kick off next week, the brand is going big with Biles again with its first-ever national linear TV ad and other marketing activations revolving around its “Power of She” platform designed to support women and girls in athletics.

“We’re not doing this because it’s trendy,” CMO Ilona Aman told Marketing Brew. “It’s where we’ve been. Now, it’s just putting that on a bigger platform and a bigger stage with the right partners that share the same values.”

The revolution will be televised: The decision to run an ad on national TV for the first time is largely about relevance, Aman said.

• Since she joined the brand from Fabletics earlier this year, the Athleta leadership team has been focused on “reinvigorating the brand,” she said, and the Olympics presents a major opportunity to do so.

“The Olympics is one of the very few times in sports where people come together and actually watch things live on television, versus just the catch-up or the highlights that they might find on social media,” Aman said.

The ad features Biles flipping in slow-motion to show the “insane aerodynamics of what Simone can do,” Aman said, and is set to the refrain “because she can” from the song “Oral” by Björk and Rosalía.

• It’s a not-so-subtle reference to Biles’s response to a question about why she continues to perform such difficult moves, in which she said, “Because I can.”

Read more here.—AM

Advertisers haven’t yet killed the video star. Digital video ad spend is projected to grow 16% to $63 billion this year, according to new data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The IAB first published its 2024 estimates in May, declaring that this year, digital video would surpass linear ad spend. This week, the group released new details about where these dollars were actually going, and how they were being used.

Overwhelmingly, advertisers said they were spending on “business outcomes” as the most important KPI to determine success, meaning anything that can drive a customer to take an action, like visiting a website or making a purchase.

CPG and retail brands accounted for the biggest buyers of digital video, and are projected to spend $12.6 billion and $7.4 billion in 2024, respectively.

The IAB defined digital video as connected TV, online video, and social video, which is the fastest-growing category.

Bid stream: Three-quarters of CTV buys are done programmatically, and 89% of advertisers are either testing or taking meetings with alternative currencies, according to the report—further evidence that the streaming ecosystem is looking more and more like the open web.

+1: In April, the IAB reported that advertisers spent a record-breaking $225 billion on digital ads in 2023, growing 7.3% year over year.—RB

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Executive moves across the industry.

• Kraft Heinz hired Pepsi’s former top marketing boss, Todd Kaplan, as North American CMO.
• Netflix VP of Ad Sales Peter Naylor is departing the streamer.
• Kickstarter hired ex-Twitter and Audible marketer Courtney Brown Warren as CMO.