This FAQ covers the fundamentals of programmatic advertising and the trends shaping the market in 2026.

Google Chrome controls 73.2% of worldwide internet traffic, more than five times the combined share of all non-Safari competitors, according to an October survey from StatCounter.

Google Chrome will now autofill users’ loyalty card numbers, travel details, and vehicle information housed in Google Wallet, per a company blog post. Maximizing its utility as a shopping interface is critical as Google Chrome’s browser dominance risks getting eroded by AI tools and browsers like Perplexity’s Comet. If volumes divert to new sources, like the PayPal-linked Comet, Google shoppers could maintain their loyalty in the browser by convenience the tools offer them during their checkout experiences.

The news: Apple will reportedly launch an AI-enabled web search tool powered by Google’s Gemini, potentially accelerating long-awaited software improvements and helping Apple enter the AI search race, per Bloomberg. The “answer engine” would be integrated with Siri and could help Apple compete with OpenAI and Perplexity. The feature, internally called World Knowledge Answers, will aggregate information from across the web into AI Overviews-esque summaries. It may eventually be added to Safari and Spotlight. Our take: Apple’s pivot toward external AI partnerships highlights how unready it is to compete head-to-head in foundational AI or search. While a Gemini integration could improve Siri and add powerful search capabilities, it could threaten Apple’s core advantage: total control over the user experience.

The AI search startup is launching a browser to pull users away from Google—turning its search engine into a full-fledged, AI-powered browsing experience.

Big Tech battled Europe’s new rules in 2024: Apple opened its ecosystem to comply with DMA while Meta faced fines and scrutiny over data use and subscriptions. We can expect continued stringent regulations.

Banning Google’s search payments will threaten browser stability, push Apple to adapt, and create openings for competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo.

In seven charts, this report tells the story of some of the most critical trends that digital leaders need to know about in 2024 and beyond.

Google no longer plans to unilaterally eliminate cookies from its Chrome browser. After four years of begrudging preparation, the advertising industry is reeling.

Since Google debuted its Search Generative Experience AI-based interface in beta three months ago, it’s made a lot of updates to alleviate early concerns from testers. But according to search expert Lily Ray, Google still has some work to do to fix issues with its new AI-driven experience. Meanwhile, Microsoft—which is still a very distant rival—continues to innovate on Bing Chat, which Ray called “the best AI product that’s out there right now.”

Identity resolution is in a state of flux in the US advertising industry, with third-party browser cookies and mobile IDs being ushered out in the name of consumer privacy.

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).

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.

The deprecation of the third-party cookie in Chrome will be significantly disruptive for publishers that monetize their sites with advertising. Here’s how web publishers are preparing for a future without third-party cookies.

Programmatic transactions for digital display account for 86.4% of the market in Canada this year, even though global privacy reform and device tracking protections are making it more challenging to execute.

Consumer privacy concerns affect marketing practices and will continue to alter the digital advertising landscape. Here’s what digital marketers and their companies need to know.

To deliver an effective customer experience, marketers must first identify their customers and audiences. This report focuses on how marketers identify audience segments and target groups today.

Measuring influencer attribution is already an issue for marketers, and the recent privacy updates on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome aren’t going to make things easier.

The push for more effective ad targeting remains one of marketers’ chief occupations. More than half of client-side marketers surveyed by Econsultancy and Adobe said leveraging data for more effective segmentation and targeting is among their top three organizational priorities this year.