What’s a cookie cost? About $30 million–$40 million, if you’re the ad-tech company Criteo.

During an earnings call earlier this month, Criteo CFO Sarah Glickman told investors that the company “expected signal loss of approximately $30 million and $40 million in the second half of the year,” following Google’s move to begin phasing out third-party cookies.

• That figure isn’t entirely surprising: In 2021, the IAB estimated that the ad-tech ecosystem could lose up to $10 billion by 2025 thanks to the deprecation of third party cookies, a vital tool for advertisers.
• Criteo, for its part, told investors in 2022 that it expected to lose between $140 million and $160 million in 2024 and 2025 due to the death of the cookie. (For reference, Criteo posted revenue of $1.9 billion in 2023.)

Criteo—which operates both a demand-side platform and a supply-side platform, primarily within retail and commerce verticals—is leaning heavily into Google’s post-cookie alternative, Privacy Sandbox, and has spent years testing the tools from Google, meeting with the company on a near-weekly basis, Nola Solomon, SVP of Criteo’s global go-to-market strategy and commercialization, told Marketing Brew. At the ad-tech firm, there are around 100 employees loosely dedicated to testing the tools, she told us.

“We’ve been preparing for these changes for a very long time, since Privacy Sandbox’s infancy,” she said.

Continue reading here.—RB

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In life, there will be people who tell you that you can’t do things like open a business or get a degree. But with Microsoft’s AI helper here to design your logos and quiz you in chemistry, you can now tell those people, “Watch me.”

At least that’s the premise of the Microsoft Copilot ad that aired in front of over a hundred million viewers during this year’s Super Bowl. The minute-long commercial backs up its claims with a montage of rapid-fire examples in which users tap it to move their dreams forward—presumably making their doubting haters seethe.

But can Microsoft’s new AI Copilot actually perform the tasks as they were demonstrated on television screens across America? Armed with a test subscription to the service, Tech Brew attempted to find out.

First, some quick background: Microsoft Copilot is the company’s latest packaging of it and OpenAI’s generative models for enterprise and consumer users. This iteration of the service, which debuted last November and opened to smaller businesses and consumers last month, weaves through the various programs of Microsoft’s productivity software suite like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It also features a ChatGPT-style interface where users can give it instructions in conversational terms.

• Microsoft is aiming to make Copilot ubiquitous in offices and homes in the same way it has its workplace software, and the Super Bowl ad was an attempt to frame how that could look.
• The ad seems to have piqued at least some viewers’ curiosity; it propelled the Copilot app to a top-three spot on the App Store the morning after it aired, according to NBC News.

In an effort to make AI appear accessible to a larger audience, Microsoft centers the ad on a series of “‘watch-me’ moments”—examples of the AI “enabling people to do things previously unattainable,” according to a company blog post.

Read more on Tech Brew.—PK

Sarah Stringer is the EVP, head of innovation and US media partnerships at Dentsu. She’s joining Marketing Brew tomorrow at our event, The Marketer’s (Early) Guide to AI.

Ahead of the event, we had Stringer tell us a little bit about how she and Dentsu are using AI, and what her thoughts are on its possibilities.

Does your company have policies around using AI? If so, what are the main tenets? There should be no use of company or client data in any public tools. Leverage company sandbox for testing and play. Any output should be reviewed by a human for accuracy and quality. Don’t use personal email addresses if using any systems for work purposes. And you must state if something has been created with AI.

What AI tools are you currently using? In what capacity are you using them? We use ChatGPT via Azure AI and Microsoft Copilot—mainly for work efficiencies, meeting notes, next steps, and the creation of images using enterprise Dall-E.

What is the best real-life application of AI that you have seen in the marketing world so far? Heinz ketchup showing its brand dominance and iconic status so much that when AI imagines ketchup, it’s shaped like a Heinz bottle. At Dentsu, we have also created D.Scriptor, which allows for AI-optimized search terms to improve performance.

What advice do you have for marketers and brands that are considering using AI but aren’t sure where to start? Start to play, but work with your IT infrastructure team to ensure you’re playing in a safe environment. If you aren’t ready for an enterprise level relationship, play with free tools, but in nonidentifying ways with no real data.

Continue reading here.

Time to freshen up. Tidying up your messaging strategy? Get data-driven insights from 2023—and the trends already taking over 2024—in Customer.io’s latest The State of Messaging Report. Explore how their multi-product customer engagement platform helps marketing teams create data-driven campaigns that reach audiences at the right time. Read on here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Target and designer Diane von Furstenberg are collaborating on a line of clothes and home furnishings.
• Stagwell acquired Sidekick, a specialist agency collective, to expand its capabilities in Europe.
• The FTC filed a lawsuit seeking to block a proposed merger between the grocers Kroger and Albertsons.