Threads of Context: how AI is rewriting targeting

Pat (0:09)

Welcome to the fourth episode of the Ad Tech Podcast. Today we are joined by Alexandra from OneTag, where we're talking a little bit about the impact of AI on curation.

But initially, we're going to have our usual news roundup. We've got two stories today, both of which we're probably going to get our main story giver to give a lot of detail, because we're probably, as Alex said, woefully unprepared.

Joe (0:34)

I would never say that.

Pat (0:37)

Joe, can you kick us off? What's your story of the week? Absolutely. I mean, I think both of our stories this week are more sort of jumping off points to talk about, I guess, wider issues or conversations in the industry.

And so this is a story that about just a little under two weeks ago now, Amazon DSP released support for Vast 4.0, 4.1. I think it's up to 4 whatever at this point. 4.3, I think.

Joe (1:02)

What's Vast 4.3?

Pat (1:03)

Vast 4.3. So the reason why this is important is because the leap from Vast 3 to Vast 4 was actually quite significant, more so than in usual sort of updates.

And critically, that meant that actually Vast 4 was not particularly compatible with previous versions. And this unfortunately put the industry in a bit of a problem situation where some people wanted to upgrade, but some people were hesitant to because they felt like the amount of investment needed in order to do it wasn't necessary.

Joe (1:35)

When is it the right time to kind of...

Pat (1:37)

Exactly. And something we hear about a lot in CTV is about this fragmentation sort of cliche that you hear a lot about, but it is a real problem. And again, it's something that we have to deal with so much in this job is this catch 22 of you know, publishers coming to us saying, look, we need advanced capabilities in CTV. We then go to people like Tech Lab and say, do you have them? They say, well, yes, of course, it's here. It's in Vast 4

And then of course, the publishers say, oh, but actually, it's not really feasible for us to make those updates here. And so it's like, well, great. Nothing's happening then. You have your head or ear close to the ground than probably me and Alex in terms of the CTV world and compliance, but also capability. What is your take on what is possible now compared to like two years ago, for example? And what are some of the bits that people are talking about? Absolutely. So for me, the big highlight that comes off of Vast 4 is the inclusion of support for a creative ad ID, which is something that's being talked about even more and more in our industry. Essentially, if you look at sort of the way linear broadcast works, there's always been an ID attached to advertisements because they have to go through a registration process before they're allowed to be broadcast. We don't really have that in digital advertising. However, as these two worlds kind of are merging, there's this sense that, well, actually, if we find a way of bringing that ID infrastructure over to digital, then we can maybe have a bit of the best of both worlds. And this is what Tech Club have been trying to do via their ACIF initiative, just to throw another acronym at our listeners.

And so again, this is why it's important for people to make these updates so that the existence of a persistent identifier can obviously have quite numerous benefits across the supply chain. The ID stuff is interesting because, as someone who's worked in the biz, you do find that once you uploaded something into the platform you're using, it will be given a unique identity or ID, whereas having something that is universal across platforms is for troubleshooting, et cetera, like an easy thing.

Joe (3:50)

So much easier. Wait, have we talked about what the news is related to Vast 4.0? So what's happened that you're...

Pat (3:58)

So yeah, this is the big story that Amazon DSP have now adopted it, which has been a little bit of a long time coming. Obviously, it's really great to see huge platforms making these changes because that...

Joe (4:10)

The scale suddenly just...

Pat (4:11)

Yeah, exactly. And that's now a huge incentive for people, you know, down the chain to adopt it. It's kind of a bit of a domino effect.

In theory, hopefully, fingers crossed. Although it is telling that they've made this big announcement, and yet the likes of Fire TV and Twitch do not yet support Vast 4.0. So hopefully, that's the next measure. Only time will tell, but certainly it's always promising to see these changes. I've got a slightly less technical fun, well, funny.