Anudit Vikram, former board member of the IAB Data Center of Excellence and Chief Product Officer, MediaMath joins me in a discussion about consumer privacy (amid Amazon fines), Google’s FLoC (which recently wrapped up the first phase of testing), and addressable/scalable identity solutions to replace third-party cookies. Anudit explains, “While there has been a flurry of activity preparing for the demise of the third-party cookie, the pushback around it and signals from the EU hinted that it would not be smooth sailing for Google, so, ultimately, it’s not a complete shock that the timing changed. There is no question that first-party data performs better, and that the quality of third-party data is questionable, but that is not the only factor driving transparency. Transparency to the actual user – what we call addressability – is directly affected too. To continue the momentum of creating a more transparent supply chain, industry leaders must continue work around the activation of first party identity options and creating cohort-based solutions. As far as next steps for the industry, marketers, advertisers, publishers and the like should use this time to start working with first party identity solutions and perfect the stack they will use, while still being able to leverage the scale provided by third-party cookies.”