Tariff Brand Paralysis, Retail Media Uncertainty, and Trade Desk Legal Troubles

Summary

Next in Media: Detailed Summary of Episode "Tariff Brand Paralysis, Retail Media Uncertainty, and Trade Desk Legal Troubles"

Release Date: April 14, 2025

Host: Mike Shields

Guest: Emily Riley, Advertising and Ad Tech Consultant

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Introduction

In this episode of Next in Media, host Mike Shields welcomes back Emily Riley, an expert consultant in advertising, ad tech, and media. The duo embarks on an in-depth discussion covering the tumultuous landscape of the media and advertising industry, focusing on three primary topics: the ongoing tariff crisis, the uncertainties surrounding retail media, and the legal challenges faced by Trade Desk. Additionally, they touch upon the successful marketing campaign for the recent Minecraft movie as a case study in effective brand integration.

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1. Tariff Brand Paralysis

a. Current State of Tariffs

The conversation kicks off with a deep dive into the tariff meltdown, highlighting the persistent uncertainties in the market. Mike expresses concern over consumer confidence plummeting to levels worse than the Great Recession, citing a CNN headline:

"Consumer confidence is like worse than the Great Recession." [00:45]

Emily elaborates on the multifaceted impact of tariffs, distinguishing between pricing/product challenges and advertisers' strategic responses:

"If you're an auto manufacturer... you might buy cars really fast right now because they're worried." [02:03]

b. Impact on Supply Chains and Pricing

Emily discusses how companies that survived the COVID-19 supply chain crunch are better positioned to handle current challenges:

"A lot of companies actually have better distributed supply chains. They're a little bit more up to date with their tech so they can track pricing better." [02:40]

Mike concurs, noting that these companies aren't "caught flat footed" like during the initial COVID outbreak. However, he points out that high-ticket items are particularly vulnerable, affecting media planning and advertising budgets:

"Not happy in those cases... their media planning is going to be affected." [03:16]

c. Consumer Sentiment and Advertising Strategies

The duo examines the chronic decline in consumer sentiment, exacerbated by job insecurity and economic turmoil:

"We're just in this weird phase of turmoil. People are getting laid off, they don't feel job security." [04:34]

Emily emphasizes the necessity for advertisers to maintain sales goals despite the downturn, advocating for sophisticated measurement and long-term planning:

"If you're good at measurement, you can go in there and be like, you want me to show you the levers that I have." [05:30]

Mike adds that merely focusing on demand generation without addressing brand-building can be detrimental:

"You can't just advertise to people who are about to buy something anyway." [05:51]

Emily further explains the importance of demonstrating the impact of advertising on future sales and margins to finance teams:

"They start realizing, okay, this isn't just like free money that I'm cutting out of the budget. I'm actually cutting out future sales." [07:16]

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2. Retail Media Uncertainty

a. Current Landscape and Consolidation

Shifting focus to retail media, Mike and Emily discuss Amazon's dominant position and the potential for market consolidation. Mike muses on whether retail giants like Dick's Sporting Goods might partner with larger entities like Walmart:

"Are all these companies going to be in that business for the long haul? Could this be a forcing function to make, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods, say I'm going to work with Walmart instead?" [12:12]

Emily concurs, highlighting the absence of a unifying trade desk in retail media and the preference of grocery chains to maintain direct relationships with brands:

"We have a lot of money going back and forth on our own. Like please stay out of my supply chain." [12:49]

b. Growth from Off-Site Retail Media

Citing Emarketer, Emily notes that most growth in retail media is projected to come from off-site audience targeting:

"The majority of growth in retail media this year is going to come from off site. And that's basically just audience targeting." [13:03]

Mike expresses surprise at the limited prevalence of off-site retail media, though Emily explains it includes platforms like Yahoo where ads are seamlessly integrated into services:

"Think of all the different grocery chains...you have...five, you can target them off site with real time data." [14:06]

c. Yahoo's DSP Sale Potential

The discussion shifts to Yahoo's potential sale of its Demand-Side Platform (DSP). Mike is puzzled by the move, given Yahoo's reputation in ad tech:

"I'm puzzled by why they want to sell their DSP. I don't have a good sense of why." [15:05]

Emily reflects on Yahoo's longevity and utility, questioning the rationale behind divesting:

"Yahoo's DSP is really highly rated by the people that use it on a regular basis. It's like one of those workhorses." [15:47]

She speculates that the sale could be a strategic move to focus on retail media:

"Maybe it's a retail media play where they don't have the mechanics that they want." [16:19]

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3. Trade Desk Legal Troubles

a. Overview of Legal Challenges

Mike brings attention to recent lawsuits targeting Trade Desk, predicting that regulators have taken issue with the company's UID 2.0 initiative:

"I was, I kept saying, when is a regulator going to read between the lines here and say, this is all about people's personal email addresses being mushed together anonymously and secretly?" [16:21]

Emily explains the technical aspects of UID 2.0 and the privacy concerns it raises:

"It's an aggregation of a whole bunch of separate IDs, but to the point where it becomes a permanent ID." [17:42]

b. Privacy Implications and Legal Arguments

The duo discusses how Trade Desk's practices might conflict with data privacy laws. Emily points out that while data is acquired legally, the aggregation into a permanent identifier like an email hash could be problematic:

"It depends on if the law is written in such a way that it's not just about how you acquire and use the data, but how you aggregate the data so that it becomes something that it wasn't before." [18:29]

Mike expresses skepticism about the legal viability of these lawsuits, questioning how easily such technical arguments can be made in court:

"Making that case in court would seem to be a hard one to explain to even savvy professionals." [18:43]

Emily adds that the outcome may hinge on regional privacy attitudes, noting that Northern California is particularly stringent:

"If there's enough engineers... it's an area that is very privacy oriented." [18:43]

c. Public Perception of Privacy

Emily reflects on the paradoxical nature of public sentiment towards privacy:

"The average American will of course say, I want all my data to be super private. They're also going to say, I want everything to be personalized." [19:34]

Mike humorously acknowledges the resignation many feel towards privacy:

"I've already given up." [19:35]

They ponder the broader implications of privacy litigation in digital advertising, considering the entrenched nature of device tracking and data aggregation:

"The concept of privacy has exploded and we're still kind of nitpicking this like one weird area that has to do with digital advertising." [19:53]

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4. Case Study: Minecraft Movie Marketing Success

a. Overview of the Campaign

Towards the end of the episode, Mike shifts the conversation to a successful marketing campaign involving McDonald's and the Minecraft movie. He describes the campaign as one of the year's standout efforts, highlighting the scarcity of toys and the viral engagement it generated:

"You can't get the toys. Like the. Everyone's people are obsessed with the sauce they're selling out." [20:25]

Emily praises the thoughtful integration, noting the campaign's alignment with both the movie's and the brand's target audiences:

"It's a fully thought through the way that it used to be... like, what would you say is the difference here?" [20:38]

b. Analysis of Success Factors

The hosts analyze why the campaign resonated so strongly, attributing success to several factors:

• Nostalgia and Broad Appeal: The Minecraft franchise appeals to both young audiences and their parents, creating a multi-generational impact.
• Viral and Social Media Engagement: The campaign's organic spread on social media amplified its reach and effectiveness.
• Strategic Planning and Investment: Significant upfront investment ensured high-quality execution, making the integration seamless and impactful.

Mike compares it to classic marketing successes, noting the campaign's ability to feel both modern and reminiscent of effective brand integrations from the past:

"It feels like something out of the 90s or something." [21:10]

Emily underscores the importance of understanding the target demographic's behaviors and preferences:

"There's a language on like Snap is a perfect example...That's part of why they like it." [22:07]

c. Lessons for Future Campaigns

Both hosts agree that the Minecraft-McDonald's collaboration offers valuable lessons for brands:

• Comprehensive Audience Understanding: Recognizing and catering to the nuanced preferences of different age groups.
• Leveraging Existing Popularity: Utilizing established franchises to amplify brand messages.
• Investing in Quality and Creativity: Ensuring that marketing efforts are well-funded and creatively executed to stand out in a crowded market.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Mike expressing appreciation for Emily's insights and emphasizing the value of their ongoing discussions in navigating the rapidly evolving media and advertising landscape. They reaffirm their commitment to this "week in review" format and invite listeners to engage with feedback and sponsorship opportunities.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "Consumer confidence is like worse than the Great Recession." — Emily Riley [00:45]
• "You can't just advertise to people who are about to buy something anyway." — Mike Shields [05:51]
• "It's a fully thought through the way that it used to be." — Emily Riley [20:38]

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Takeaways:

1. Tariffs Continue to Create Uncertainty: Companies must navigate fluctuating supply chains and pricing strategies while maintaining effective advertising.
2. Retail Media's Future May Lie in Off-Site Targeting: Growth is expected to stem from broader audience targeting beyond traditional retail platforms.
3. Trade Desk Faces Legal Scrutiny: Privacy concerns around data aggregation practices pose significant challenges for Trade Desk and similar ad tech firms.
4. Effective Brand Integration Remains Paramount: The Minecraft-McDonald's campaign exemplifies how strategic, well-executed marketing can drive massive engagement and success.

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For more insights and detailed analyses, tune into future episodes of Next in Media with Mike Shields and guest experts like Emily Riley.

Transcript

[Mike]

This week on NEXT IN media, we're back talking about the big week in media and advertising news with Emily Reilly. Tons to cover here as Emily and I touch on the tariff meltdown, Yahoo's DSP sale potential, retail media consolidation and the trade desk facing lawsuits. Let's get started. Hi, everybody. Welcome to NEXT IN Media. I'm joined again this week by Emily Riley, consultant, expert in all things advertising, ad tech, media. We are once again trying our new experiment in a sort of a week in review style pod here. Emily, how you doing?

[Emily Riley]

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back, Mike.

[Mike]

I'm trying not to make this, turn this into the tariff show, but it's pretty hard not to talk about that again this week. And again, it's an insane situation. That is a moving target. I wonder, there's the hey, this is over, right? Trump stopped it. But then the markets took a hit again. We're still fighting with China. I just read a headline in CNN that consumer confidence is like worse than the Great Recession, which is terrifying. So I don't know if advertisers have any more clarity. But I mean, do we think that what I, what I would worry about is they are going to overreact because there's so much uncertainty. They're just going to cut the hell out of everything because they don't know or can they ride this wave and react, you know, and it's going to be, I think probably very category by category. But you said we should break this in two parts, which I think is interesting.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. If we do that, we're looking at the difference between like the pricing and the product themselves versus the advertisers and what they want to do with their media budgets. So if you're an auto manufacturer, you're looking at the price of steel or aluminum or, you know, you're the electronics and the chips you need to put in your car. And you're making this crazy 2, 3, 4 year projection of, you know, people. Not only am I going to be making cars for them that cost 30 or 40% more, they might buy cars really fast right now because they're worried.

[Mike]

Which has been happening already.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, totally. You know, if you're making a laptop, you know, I have a daughter going into high school next year, she's going to need a laptop. Everyone's like, buy it now.

[Mike]

You know, because the stuff is not that you can't just necessarily buy us made laptops overnight. It doesn't happen that way.

[Emily Riley]

And like, maybe that never happens. Who knows? But it's definitely going to change pricing and it's going to change the supply chain. A lot of brands know, okay, we survived a supply chain crunch during COVID It sucked. We didn't die. Well, some companies died, but the ones that are still around made it through. So a lot of companies actually have better distributed supply chains. They're a little bit more up to date with their tech so they can track pricing better.

[Mike]

That's a good point. They're not caught flat footed. Like Covid was like, oh my God, I can't get things, what do I do?

[Emily Riley]

You have these ancient systems in place, processes that were like, you know, you're faxing stuff to other countries and so a lot of that's a little better. It doesn't mean it's good. But I think a lot of companies are better at predicting what's going to happen pricing wise and supply chain wise and okay with the swings.

[Mike]

Not happy in those cases. You're mentioning electronics, cars, they still have to perhaps either rethink their advertising plans, pause things. They can't hide their high prices. Like they're going to be, their, their media planning is going to be affected. Right.

[Emily Riley]

100%. I mean, you know, you have to make projections like, okay, am I going to see a 25% increase in purchases for the next six months and then a huge dip that could last for a really long time. You know, you think about mortgage rates, for example. The housing market has been suppressed for years. Especially big ticket items where people, you know, it's like, I could hold on to my car two more years, right?

[Mike]

I'm not going to replace the dryer or whatever if it's still working.

[Emily Riley]

Totally different than like if it was something small like a pencil. You know, maybe you buy 10 pencils from China on Amazon and they cost, you know, 750 instead of 650. Totally different situation. But these big ticket items, that's where like the advertisers are freaking out and making bigger changes.

[Mike]

Yeah. Okay. So then on the consumer side, again, everything, it's so unpredictable. When it changes like by the day, people are naturally going to be nervous and they think they're expecting prices to rise. The conventional wisdom is you put more money into things that are performance driven, that are trackable, but that could get screwed up, I would think as well because the things like retail media are going to be less predictable or reliable because of the pricing challenges or supply issues. What is the consumer sentiment mean to you right now?

[Emily Riley]

You know, it's funny. Yeah. I saw that same article that Consumer sentiment, it's been pretty bad for a long time.

[Mike]

Right. It wasn't like it was great during the inflation years.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, right. It's like worse now than it was, but it's like a chronic problem that advertisers have had to deal with for a while. You know, they have these little bright spots where consumers are feeling good. We're just in this weird phase of turmoil. People are getting laid off, they don't feel job security. You know, it's just a weird time. What we're in right now is this world where you still have your sales goals. So if you stop all advertising, it's not going to drive sales. And so then to your point, all right, well, what if I just advertise in my comfort zone? What if I advertise just, you know, lower?

[Mike]

Let's keep that CFO happy and that's all I can do right now.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. You know, so it, it's an interesting time to do it because I don't know how many advertisers have actually embraced this, but you read any advertising trade and like, everybody's talking about outcomes, they're talking about incrementality, better modeling.

[Mike]

Before all this, like, yeah, everything had to be trackable.

[Emily Riley]

Everything had to be really like over a year where there's been a bit of like a measurement renaissance and people are starting to get really smart about measurement. If that's in place in an advertiser's organization, they're going to find out pretty quick, okay, if we just advertise to the lower half of my funnel, I'm not tipping any new people in here. There's no incremental growth.

[Mike]

No, I understand. They say, but you completely abandoned demand generation. Maybe not like 20 year branding goals. I understand that might not be a priority right now, but you can't just advertise to people who are about to buy something anyway.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. Like, you have levers. And so, you know, if you're the cmo, you're the head of media buying, you're getting pressure from your finance team. Now, if you're good at measurement, you can go in there and be like, you want me to show you the levers that I have? If you have this goal for, you know, 20, 25 sales, these are the things that I can do. If you give me a bigger budget, these are the things that I can do. And so instead of it being almost like a game of chicken where the marketer has to just go on faith and hope that they have a supportive team around them, they're like pretty empowered to talk about the different ways that they can drive longer term results and margin, you know, so perfect example is like there was tons of discounting when we had the inventory issues and people would have like these huge backlogs of inventory in their warehouses they were trying to get rid of. So when you discount, yeah, you get a lot more sales, but the margin sucks.

[Mike]

Yeah. And then you train people that that's what the price is, a hundred percent.

[Emily Riley]

So then you have all these people, maybe they would have purchased anyway and now they're like, oh, but I'm, I'm ready for my 25% off coupon now.

[Mike]

Yeah. You know, so yeah, that's not going to be that situation at all. It doesn't seem like. Right. Right now, at least for certain products.

[Emily Riley]

Fair enough. But you know, it's like you start showing the levers to your finance team and they start realizing, okay, this isn't just like free money that I'm cutting out of the budget. I'm actually cutting out future sales.

[Mike]

Right. And hurting my bottom line.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You know, it's interesting, there was a piece of the information this week about how it was the obvious, like, search is going to do well and retail media, theoretically. But streaming might not be the safe zone you might expect. Even, you know, like, that's been the huge story the last couple years of money moving to tv. It's going to be more trackable, but it's not as trackable as brands would like it to be right now. So I want, you know, I wonder what if there could be some kind of shakeout in that space. I would still think that connected TV is going to do well versus traditional media. And then I also do wonder if this is going to be that moment where the. We've been saying this forever, but the consolidation. We're already having this conversation in my household about, wait, do we need to pay for all these services right now? Like, you know, like we've been putting off that decision. But do we need. Have we used Disney plus much lately? Like that's, that's going to come up as well for people.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, yeah, totally. I, you know, it's funny. So operative calls, what's happening right now on streaming, the advertisers are going that way, but they're buying the way that they used to on. On linear.

[Mike]

Because it's essentially linear in a different to.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. You know, it's like the Olympics, the Oscars, these things that bring in big stuff. And then obviously of March Madness, you have super.

[Mike]

The outbreaks are the same kind of model. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily Riley]

Like my husband's watching the Masters now on streaming. All that stuff brings in like really traditional media buys where they're not looking at performance the way that like I think you and I are talking about it, which is okay. I've been a display buyer on Programmatic for forever and now I'm shifting some of my pricier inventory over to streaming. They're looking for like bottom of the barrel.

[Mike]

Your husband's not buying something during the Masters. I don't think from the TV that.

[Emily Riley]

Well, you know, this is like just so they're really like two streaming markets. There's the linear moving, the streaming with big brand dollars. They're going to be the ones that buy at the upfronts. They're going to be the ones that are looking for mass reach. You know, that stuff is just going to move to streaming because eyeballs are moving to streaming. Case closed. Totally different story. When you talk about like the long tail of advertisers that have been driving Programmatic for the last 15 years, they're very cautious about what CTV can do for them. A lot of them don't even have high quality CTV ads. They're just now starting to be able to use, you know, the AI that's coming out of companies like Spaceback and Cargo and Innovat and stuff like that. Build their own creative. Like before that it was like, do I invest $2 million in like a top tier video creative so that I can get on streaming? Like that's probably the same price as their entire annual.

[Mike]

Right? It's not, it doesn't make any sense. The math doesn't work at a certain point.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, totally. So, you know, it's, it's a bifurcated market right now. It could change.

[Mike]

Yeah, I do, now that you mentioned that. I wonder, you know, it's going to be, it's the timing of the upfront with all this chaos is not great to begin with. You already have this battle of like the tech guys trying to take over a lot of the television space. Are they even better positioned? Because Amazon could come in and say, well, you know, I've got your sports, but I can also track the hell out of everything you do. Why are you on, you know, Warner, Discovery, NBCU anymore? That's going to be a. I imagine that's going to be a tough battle, you know, given this weird climate right now.

[Emily Riley]

Well, and your point before about like, is there going to be consolidation? Because, like, you're not going to have 10 subscriptions no, it feels like the.

[Mike]

Time to merge some of these. But is that we say that forever fair.

[Emily Riley]

Amazon is huge. Netflix is huge. Like, so is this going to be sort of the thing where, like, dot dash Meredith dot dash bought Meredith, not the other way around? So is Amazon going to buy one of these big traditional media companies, broadcasters, whatever? For sure. I mean, that's where the consolidation is probably going to happen. But it depends sort of on what they're good at. So Amazon is really good at retail. They have reach right now. So, like, why would they do that right now? Like, to me, it's not super obvious.

[Mike]

No, I mean, I'm thinking. I guess I'm thinking more about like, you know, Paramount plus and Peacock coming together or something like that. Right.

[Emily Riley]

Like they need deeper inventory, they need, you know, better reach because a lot more buyers are going to want to target audiences and it's expensive to keep up your tech. Like, when you're a media company, that's not a tech company by nature, it's a tough one.

[Mike]

And most of them aren't that good. I mean, if you, if you. I would complain all the time. Netflix always works. The other apps, it's hit or miss with so many of these companies. It's just not as good. They're just not as good at it. It's harder.

[Emily Riley]

And think about, it's like Saturday night, you and your family want to watch a movie. You can pick three or four different places to watch that same movie.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Emily Riley]

And you go to one app and it's not loading. You're like, I'm out of here.

[Mike]

Forget it. No, there's no way my wife's going to go to bed if it's not like, starting in the next five minutes. Yeah. You mentioned retail media. We were talking about how it's. It's long been, you know, Amazon has been the faraway leader even with all these new networks the last couple of years, but it's still astonishing how much they dominate. And I wonder, that's a great sector right now that all everyone's making money. But I wonder if you'll see some kind of. It's another area where we always predict there's gotta be some consolidation someday. Right? Are all these companies going to be in that business for the long haul? Could this be a forcing function to make, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods, say I'm going to work with Walmart instead or something? Where do you think that's going right now?

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. I am super surprised that there is not like a trade desk of retail media.

[Mike]

Well, I think the trade desk would like to think they are right but. But I don't know. But you're right. Where is that like roll up?

[Emily Riley]

Where is the rollup? And part of it is, you know, think of like all the different grocery chains, you know, like a Kroger and Albertsons where they have a pretty decent retail media play. They're thinking of it more of like an extension of their already pretty robust relationships with their brands. And so it's sort of the way that we saw all these big old school name publishers resist being rolled up under an ssp.

[Mike]

Right. Yeah, it's very similar dynamic and I.

[Emily Riley]

Have direct relationships already. We have a lot of money going back and forth on our own. Like please stay out of my supply chain, you know what I mean?

[Mike]

But for the advertiser it's not what they, it's a pain. They don't love that.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, yeah. And like actually Emarketer put out something this year that the majority of growth in retail media this year is going to come from off site. And that's basically just audience targeting, meaning.

[Mike]

The open web for the most part. Television.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. So mostly it's basically wherever it's enabled. So it's going to be, you know, like if you're working with Amazon you have huge, huge, huge reach. And so you're like, all right, anybody that shopped for Valentine's Day presents over the last X number of weeks, I can go target them off site. And it's just like basically any other audience targeting play but just hopefully better, more real time data. You compare that to like a, like a regular sized grocery chain buying off site with them. Like it has to get rolled up at some point.

[Mike]

Yeah. Because you're, you're not, that's also like those kind of purchases are not like necessarily in grocery mode when you're, when you're somewhere else where you still might. Maybe I'll buy those shoes I was thinking about. But that's like, doesn't lend itself to necessarily. And yeah, to do that at scale you need to, you have a lot of, a lot of demand squeezed together. That is, that would make a lot of sense to me.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, that's where you know, if the off site trend continues then it's like I need to assemble an audience at scale for this very particular use case. Because you think of the thousands of SKUs that any retailer has like that audience that that day searched for soap or searched for whatever, you know, diet supplements or something like that. It's just not Huge.

[Mike]

No, it's funny, I don't see it in my life. At least go on the web. You would think the whole web right now would be off site retail media. I haven't seen a flooding of that yet. That could just be my. My world or I just. Because I don't buy anything. But you would think that would be everywhere.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, well, I mean the stuff that's included in that is. Think of all. You know, you go to like some like I'm still sadly have like a yacht. Yahoo email account. You go on my Yahoo email account and every banner ad and there are many of them are rando Amazon off site.

[Mike]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Emily Riley]

And that is a lot of people. Yeah, right, totally.

[Mike]

You know, mentioned Yahoo. Why are they. I'm puzzled by why they want to sell their dsp. I thought it was a. I know a couple of years ago they got rid of their SSP there. They seem like a quiet ad tech success story. Maybe they just want to focus. But I was surprised to read about that. I don't have a good sense of why.

[Emily Riley]

You know, it's funny you had mentioned you wanted to talk about that. And so I [e-mail] for a long time and they got squished together for a while. You know, they got moved and sold and endless integrations. Yeah. Yahoo's DSP is really highly rated by the people that use it on a regular basis. It's like one of those workhorses. It's like a jeep. Right. Like it's been around forever. It still kind of works the same way that it always has. People like it.

[Mike]

Right. So why get rid of it?

[Emily Riley]

I guess why get rid of it? Except a lot of people say that it's tied like one of the things that's good about it. It's tied to their content, you know, like Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports. Like millions of people still go to those sites. So it is weird to think like what is the tech going to offer.

[Mike]

If you don't have that unique access? What's the connect. What's the. What's so great about it if you lose that.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. So that is where my question mark is.

[Mike]

That's a good question.

[Emily Riley]

You know, who's going to buy that? And to your point, maybe it's a retail media play where they don't have the mechanics that they want.

[Mike]

Yeah. That's not crazy.

[Emily Riley]

It's sale, you know. Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay. You mentioned the trade desk. You know, it struck. It caught my attention that the story broke. I think it was that week yesterday and it's now all over the place. There are a couple of lawsuits. I'm going to say that I predicted this because for the longest time I was saying, as the trade disc has pushed UID 2.0, like, I totally understand trying to get away from the cookies and having an alternative, but I was, I kept saying, when is a regulator going to read between the lines here and say, this is, this is all about people's personal email addresses being mushed together anonymously and secretly? Like, that's not going to. Someone's not going to like that. I don't know. I'm not sure if I know who's. Who actually is filing the suits. If you've seen. But what do you think about this? And is this. Are they in trouble or is this random?

[Emily Riley]

So it's. It. It doesn't look like it's random. It looks like the big thing is do these data privacy laws relate to advertising in any way where we can stick it to a tech company? So what you're seeing here is, to your point is really deconstructing what the ID is made out of. Fingerprinting. I don't know if you remember, there was like a huge uproar, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago with fingerprinting. It's a little bit like fingerprinting the way that works. And this is what I mean. It's like an aggregation of a whole bunch of separate IDs, but to the point where it becomes a permanent ID. And that's sort of the problem. You know, like an email address is a permanent id.

[Mike]

People keep them forever, you know, forever. Pretty much.

[Emily Riley]

You know, the trade desk can be like, well, we don't know what the email address is. It's hashed. Hash. Hashed. But then, you know, you mash that up with their mobile IDs and you mash it up with their IP address and you're big enough like the trade desk is, and at some point it becomes a forever mark on who you.

[Mike]

Yeah. And it isn't necessarily what people signed up for when it were. Whenever they provided that. That email somewhere.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. So like they could argue, okay, let's pick apart every little thing underneath our id. And it's all, you know, acquired legally. It's what we do with it internally that might be a problem. And so then it just depends on is the law written in such a way that it's not just about how you acquire and use the data, but how you aggregate the data so that it becomes something that it wasn't before.

[Mike]

You know, now I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an expert. Making that case in court would seem to be a hard one to explain to even savvy professionals. Like, I wonder, I wonder how difficult that will. Those kind of cases will be to win.

[Emily Riley]

Right. I mean, you know, one of them is in Northern California. So if there are enough engineers.

[Mike]

Yeah, that's true. And that's an area that is very privacy oriented, you would think.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. And it's, you know, the other thing that's kind of interesting is like, if it. Depending on like the way that it's decided, let's, you know, if there's actually a jury or if it just gets decided or that or whatever, the average American will of course say, I want all my data to be super private. They're also going to say, I want everything to be personalized. And they also assume that every device that they own is tracking their every move currently. You know, like, how many times have you been somewhere where all of a sudden somebody's phone is like, oh, I'm happy to show you pictures of Milan. And you're like, where did that come from? Listening to me, you know, like, so people are trained to sort of have like two sides of their brain. One is like, oh my God, privacy is so important. And the other one is like, but I don't have it.

[Mike]

Yeah, I've already given up.

[Emily Riley]

I, I don't already given up my privacy. So, you know, this kind of a lawsuit's weird because it's like, well, what about the makers of the devices that have all of these microphones? Like, the concept of privacy has exploded and we're still kind of nitpicking this like one weird area that has to do with like digital advertising. It's weird to me.

[Mike]

Yeah, it is strange. All right, last topic I've thought of for this week. Very much a left turn, but. And I'm living it with three boys that are obsessed with the Minecraft movie, which is a remarkable success story for a lot of reasons it seems like. But this people are saying this McDonald's campaign is one of the campaigns of the year already. I'm not even a big, like campaign guy as terms of following these things. But they. You can't get the toys. Like the. Everyone's people are obsessed with the sauce they're selling out. It's just, it's a pretty wild integration and there's a lot of reasons why this movie has done well. But I wonder if we've if there's any, any lessons learned from this thing.

[Emily Riley]

Oh man. I mean, so you gotta tell me more about what it means for your family. But you know, because like I have. My younger ones are girls and they don't care, but like it's a fully thought through the way that it used to be.

[Mike]

Yeah, this feels like something out of the 90s or something.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, well, old school, right. Like they have product. They have stuff in the movie that's fun for every age, you know, so you have the parents that know what it is, that you have the kids that know what it is. They really thought it through and they invested from the very beginning. This is not like, oh, let's just insert a burger with using AI in the production. You know what I mean? So that part of it is huge. Like, you know, like if you compare this to other things that your kids have wanted or cared about, like, what would you say is the difference here?

[Mike]

It feels. That's a good question because yeah, they've certainly like big Marvel events. I'm trying to think of they wanted so and so toy when they were especially they were younger. This feels like it's theirs in a weird way. And it's viral. Like it's very. Of social media. I mean, first of all, it's a. It's a game. It's been around for 15 years. There's people that are nostalgic about it who are like 20 years old, which is funny to me. But it's. It's like their own code. I don't know. You know, I don't get the jokes. I don't understand the memes. It was like a. It's something that spread where they all had to go and they were all into it even apparently it's funny. The movie is not supposed to be very good. Like. Like the. The New Yorker ripped it, which I think is funny. Like why, why are they. Why are they even reviewing that? Like, why would anyone be qualified there to judge this thing?

[Emily Riley]

But many movies anyway, they have nothing else to look at.

[Mike]

And it's also like creators are a big. Are tied into this in a big way and it's been something that they've been talking about for months. So I, I think it's a pretty unique set of circumstances.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, but.

[Mike]

But it, but it's pretty. It's been pretty fascinating to watch.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. That. The inside element of it. It's so true. I mean there's like a language on like Snap is a perfect example. I'm not on Snap and my kids know that I'm not. And it's obvious that's part of why they like it.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mike]

Yeah. All right. Well, all you need to do is, is have a 15 year old huge video game and tie it into McDonald's and have a movie and you'll, you can, you can do the same thing. Any brand can do this.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. Plan in advance. Best millions of dollars. You're good to go.

[Mike]

Emily, great stuff. Let's keep doing this. Thanks for your time and your insights. Let's talk again.

[Emily Riley]

Sounds great. Thanks, Mike.

[Mike]

Thanks again to my friend, Emily Riley. If you like this new format, please let us know. And if you're interested in sponsoring, please reach out.