US advertisers increased their investments on digital media by almost 15% last year despite a pandemic and recession, looking for flexibility and accountability.

Google’s secret anti-competitive project revealed: New court documents show that Google gave itself preference in its ad exchange, confirming long-held suspicions that the tech giant was running a monopoly.

I'm feeling lucky: Google's raking in search ad revenue

As the pandemic drove consumers to move their spending online in 2020, Amazon benefitted in a big way. But it wasn’t just its ecommerce business that grew by double digits. Its advertising business grew by 52.5% last year, pushing Amazon’s share of the US digital ad market past 10% for the first time. This has only strengthened its position as the No. 3 ad publisher in the US.

Google's Chrome wasn't the first browser to put the kibosh on third-party cookies. Phil Acton, country manager for the UK, Benelux, and France at end-to-end programmatic platform Adform, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss how the company has been testing cookieless targeting with publishers in Europe, where Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox have significant market share, as well as the importance of supply path optimization (SPO).

This report explains the rise of tech-focused SDOH initiatives among US health insurers and hospitals, unpacks how these entities’ heavier focus on SDOH has ushered in opportunities for digital health vendors and tech companies operating at the periphery of healthcare to help address nonclinical health gaps, and lays out the factors driving the prioritization of SDOH and inhibiting these efforts’ growth.

Neustar's product marketing director Devon DeBlasio and eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin discuss how the deprecation of third-party cookies and changes to Apple's policies will affect how advertisers can identify and track users across channels and what they can do to continue measuring their success by taking a unified approach.

On today's episode, we discuss Facebook and Apple's next virtual and augmented reality moves, Netflix cracking down on password sharing, whether Google and Facebook killed the concept of "free," what Americans will do with their stimulus checks, how ESPN+ will do on Hulu, where in the world there is a giant plughole in the ocean, and more. Tune in to listen to the discussion with eMarketer forecasting analyst Rini Mukhopadhyay, senior analyst Sara M. Watson, analyst Blake Droesch, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Jeremy Goldman.

When we spoke with experts in publisher ad monetization in January, most of them expected the field of identity solutions to narrow over the coming year as adoption continues, but they felt it was unlikely that a single identifier alone would replace third-party cookies.

On today's episode, we discuss Google's recent announcement not to build alternative user-level identifiers or support them in their ad stack. How does this change the upcoming cookieless landscape, how does FloC fit in, and how might these changes affect consumer privacy? We then talk about whether The Trade Desk's investments may help it better compete with Google, Facebook lifting its political ad ban, engagement with misinformation on social media, and what to make of The Walt Disney Co.'s new ad exchange. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin.

Within digital media channels, probably the longest-standing gap in measurement information lies with the walled gardens—a group that includes Google, Facebook, a host of other walled social platforms, and Amazon. Some in the industry are also talking more of walled gardens—or attempts to build them—in the connected TV (CTV) or over-the-top (OTT) space.

eMarketer principal analyst Nicole Perrin and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom discuss Google's Q4 performance and what's driving it forward. They then talk about YouTube's shift to connected TVs, whether Americans are becoming less tolerant of digital ads, and what to make of the UK watchdog's investigation into Google replacing cookies.

Consumers’ growing willingness to get their financial services from non-FI providers is spurring consumer brands to embed financial elements in their products and services. But this new form of finance will mean dramatic changes for incumbent and startup FIs.