Drew Stein, founder and CEO of Audigent, examines why the sudden privacy-first attitude of big tech companies is not in the interest of consumers. It forces advertisers and publishers to cooperate.
In 2024, the internet is changing. The public and lawmakers have little understanding of how the ad-supported internet works, but what role “Big Tech” is intentionally playing in obfuscating it. is not discussed.
Because the government has not enacted a uniform privacy law, state governments have enacted ad hoc laws. To be clear, nearly every ad tech company champions privacy as a central, non-negotiable part of the future of a free internet. However, it is “big tech” companies, not “ad tech” companies, that are leading the conversation around privacy and its implementation. Big Tech is literally dictating the privacy agenda through unilateral changes to software and platforms, affecting millions of consumers and billions of dollars in media funding, with no consideration other than profit. .
As a result, big tech companies are not only thriving, but they are literally building their walls up by defining what privacy means to suit their own interests. Even when their actions prioritize profits over consumer privacy and a free internet, big tech companies are simply moving faster than the wheels of justice that are meant to protect consumers and protect the industry from anti-competitive behavior. The result? We are heading for a place that will do real damage to consumers, internet experiences, content publishers, and above all, jobs.
Here we explain what's happening and what needs to happen to maintain a thriving, free internet.
Long live the free internet
Nothing online is truly free. You can either pay for content or watch ads in exchange for content. However, there is a growing belief that the content we consume is on-demand and free at any time and on any device. Sure, some consumers choose to pay a subscription fee, but the vast majority of people don't want to pay a monthly fee.
Advertising is what makes content free, and advertising technology (“adtech”) is what makes digital advertising possible. why? Because the Internet is immeasurably large, advertisers who want to reach consumers need help, and consumers don't want to be exposed to disruptive, irrelevant, or repetitive advertising. To address this challenge, the programmatic advertising industry has developed an efficient way to bring advertisers and content publishers together while putting more relevant ads in front of consumers. Everyone wins. To make this work, Free Internet relies on data to make these connections and ads effective. Most ad tech companies don't need consumers' personal information, so this data is mostly anonymous. Third-party cookies are anonymized identifiers that have been used for many years to facilitate this exchange. However, the lines became blurred as certain parties began linking her cookies to personal information. Enter a big tech company to seemingly save the day.
The privacy saga of big tech companies
With big tech companies in the driver's seat, they have declared that the exchange of anonymous data for free content is not safe because identifiers may be tied to personal information. And they argue that their own platforms should be exempt from that standard because they block data. As a result, big tech companies unilaterally change their policies and practices to allow brands to use only their own tools and data, giving themselves an unfair and anti-competitive advantage. To be clear, this is a self-serving double standard to advance their own interests and stifle competition.
Big tech companies own everything from mobile devices to popular internet browsers, so their policy changes ripple through the entire ecosystem. As big tech companies move away from supporting the open buying and selling of ads and instead push their own tools, the whole industry has changed direction. A good example is Apple. While it has publicly defended consumer privacy, denounced the harmful effects of third-party audience data, and was the first company to turn off targeted ads on its own devices, it has built its own advertising platform privately, using its own data and rules, with no competitors, and with the ambitious goal of topping $20bn (£15.7bn) by 2026. Do you see that strategy? Call out injustice → shut down the independent ad tech ecosystem in the name of privacy → build your own ad tech behemoth using your own data and rules to shut out competitors → make billions while killing off competitors. The same thing is repeated with other big tech companies.
And while big tech companies lobby behind these narratives in the name of privacy, the public can't see what these efforts really are: profits that harm the industry and consumers. We need to see through expropriation. Big tech's sudden obsession with privacy is not in consumers' best interest at all. They aim to force advertisers and publishers to adopt their solutions, eliminating competitors in the process.
with major technology companies ad tech
Simply put, ad tech is not big tech. Ad tech companies rely on a network of interdependent partnerships, and their success lies in enabling brands, publishers, and consumers to all participate in the value created through the exchange of free content. Big Tech, on the other hand, relies on its proprietary platforms to generate revenue solely for its own benefit. In ad tech, for an ad tech company to win, a lot of companies have to win. In Big Tech, for them to win, everyone else has to lose.
It is necessary to point out the hypocrisy here. Big tech companies are full of personal information used for targeted advertising, while ad tech companies are primarily focused on anonymization, context, and predictive signals. In short, it is the big tech companies that profit most from personal information, and the focus on blocking ad tech companies is disingenuous at best.
Whether it's for legislators or consumers, the inability to distinguish between big tech companies and ad tech companies is a disservice to the advertising industry, content creators, and consumers, and encourages big tech companies to get even bigger and lead to anti-competitive policies. It only encourages the pursuit of. This hurts small businesses and puts the entire free internet at risk. Now is the time to separate ad technology companies from big tech companies and stop them from dictating broader regulatory policy narratives while profiting from double standards. It's not just consumer privacy that's at risk. The free internet as we know it depends on making this distinction.
Drew Stein is the CEO and founder of Audigent.
