Optable: Delivering Privacy-Safe Digital Advertising in the Post-Cookie Era
By Darcy Frisch, Hearst Ventures
In early 2023, Hearst Ventures invested in Optable, a company focused on enabling privacy-safe digital advertising. Programmatic advertising has long been dependent on the third-party cookie, and as web browsers continue to block the use of these identifiers, advertisers and publishers alike are re-thinking how will build effective targeted and measurable advertising campaigns.
Since its founding, Optable has offered secure, interoperable data clean room solutions to publishers, advertisers and agencies in Canada, the EU and the US. The company’s product is best-in-class, built by repeat founder and Chief Product Officer Bosko Mikelic who with his co-founders Yves Poire and Vlad Stesin all together sold their last advertising technology company, AdGear, to Samsung Ads before joining forces again to launch Optable.
Hearst Magazines has a commercial partnership with Optable and uses the platform for privacy-safe and data-informed strategies. The ability to securely and seamlessly execute ad campaigns with the company’s data collaboration platform supports Hearst’s value as a premium publisher that delivers quality content for our audiences and efficiency and performance for our advertisers.
In January 2024, after months and years of signaling it, Google started to deprecate cookies in the Chrome browser. Instead of cookies, Google is offerings its Privacy Sandbox APIs that are meant to facilitate online advertising in a privacy-safe way. Optable has been an early partner in the Privacy Sandbox, having integrated its data management platform (DMP) and data clean room technology there, and is already running live campaigns on Protected Audiences.
We expect the demand for these types of campaigns at Google will grow exponentially as cookies are phased out entirely this year — and we are excited that the team at Optable is prepared to help publishers and advertisers alike take advantage secure and private data collaboration, at scale.
