Should Ad Tech Be Rooting For Trump?
If the ex-president returns to office - does the threat of heavy regulation go poof?
The advertising/media universe is - generally speaking - a pretty liberal place. Yet I recently found myself wondering, are ad execs, particular those in ad tech, secretly rooting for a second Trump administration? Should they be?
I’m certainly not saying that ad tech folks are anti-democracy, or pro racism. It just that they, like most humans, tend to favor their own self interests. And if you hadn’t noticed, ad tech- and the entire business of digital advertising - are under fire from regulators.
In fact, just a few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission hosted an event during which the government body once again decried the growth of “surveillance advertising” while pretty much putting all of ad tech on notice, according to AdExchanger.
“We are looking upstream to establish liability and pinpoint the actors that are driving or enabling unlawful conduct at a massive scale,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan. “We are looking past the consumer-focused applications and zeroing in on the backend infrastructure that is facilitating the commercial surveillance ecosystem.”
That kind of language is scary for everybody on the Lumascape. However, if Trump wins, it seem a safe bet that Khan gets The Apprentice treatment on day one.
“I think just about everything is up in the air if Trump wins the White House,” said privacy law expert Alan Chapell. “It’s hard to see how Commissioner Khan sticks around as it seems unlikely that her agenda would be supported by a Trump Administration.” (Khan’s term ends this September).
It’s hard to know what a second Trump administration would focus on beyond vendettas and migrant prison camps. But based on the first go-round, he is decidedly anti-regulation.
Then again, it’s not as though Trump and his party are pro Big Tech. Republican lawmakers have all sorts of issues with the Metas and Apples of the world, but they tend to be more about hidden biases than protecting consumers from retargeting.
“If Trump wins, he’d almost certainly choose a new commissioner,” said leading mobile analyst Eric Seufert, who noted that several Trump appointees resigned from the FTC once Khan took on commercial surveillance.
“I don’t see Trump appointing an activist chair with respect to privacy, especially since he has apparently changed his mind on the risks posed by TikTok.”
Chapell wondered what the climate might be like next year if Trump not only wins, but carries both the House and Senate.
“That’s a big factor too,” he said. “You currently have the [Ohio Republican] Jim Jordan-led House committee all but declaring war on Ms. Khan. “Do the DOJ suits against Google and Apple continue unfettered? Maybe, but who knows?”
Here’s betting that Trump has given next to zero thought about whether SSPs are overreaching when the collect PII data in various bid streams (even though if asked, he’d surely avow himself an ad tech expert). He may very well view Google and Amazon as monopolies to go after (especially if Elon tells him to) - but I doubt he’s got a bone to pick with the likes of Magnite or OpenX (I’m not saying those companies did anything! Just examples).
Or he may be inclined to just let it all roll, cut back on all sorts of regulations to get the economy humming (even though it already is).
Could we actually see all this post-cookie angst, and this fervor to move away from third party targeting and embrace privacy go by the wayside?
Well, let’s not forget several key factors:
Europe still has a big say here. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) pretty much control’s Google’s decision making timeframe for dumping cookies, regardless of what Trump might say.
A Trump reboot shouldn’t impact the slew of state privacy laws. California is the most prominent example, but several red states are enacting related laws, often through the lens of protecting children. Even Trump doesn’t want to be against helping kids, right?
So while bad actors may still have to watch out for individual states looking to make examples of them, it’s quite possible that an entirely new climate emerges in less than a year -and ad tech players finding themselves breathing much easier. Some may even feel emboldened to start cutting corners again. Who needs a clean room, or first party data, when no one’s paying attention?
Or maybe things don’t change at all!
Alia Lamborghini SVP, Head of US Sales and Strategy, Yahoo, predicted that the status quo is likely to win out.
"In any administration, there will be a continued focus on data privacy,” she said. “It has become one of the few areas of bipartisan collaboration.”
So for ad tech, get ready for an unpredictable couple of years to say the least.
“I wouldn’t be too quick to say that any Trump-infused policy changes would necessarily be more helpful to the business community,” said Chapell. “The only company that appears safe in a Trump admin is TikTok.”
Speaking of TikTok, I had two experts on my podcast this week on that massive entertainment platform and the world of social shopping — Nicole Rechtszaid, co-founder and CEO of the LA-based Ghost Agency and her colleague Jeremiah Neil, who serves as the company's Creator Success Manager.
If you’re like me, and don’t necessarily live your life on TikTok Shop, this episode should help you get up to speed how brands can and should play here. Some highlights:
Rechtszaid on the difference between TikTok Shop and Amazon: “[TikTok is] incorporating social shopping into what they're doing, they are building something that is entertainment-forward and not trying to change their platform to exist as an e-commerce platform first. They're an entertainment platform first. E-commerce is clearly second…Amazon - they are a marketplace-first that is introducing entertainment - so they are exactly the opposite….they're not going to attract the same kind of shopper.”
Neil on working with creators: “Everybody can participate [in commerce]. We see so many different creators from so many different categories, backgrounds, sexual orientations, age demographics…with TikTok, it's so niche and there's so many different communities that everybody has the opportunity to do this.”
It’s impossible to know how the composition of Congress will change with the election but it’s hard to envision that it becomes 1) more functional or 2) more animated by consumer privacy concerns.