Privacy Sandbox APIs Temporarily Unavailable; Sports Podcasts on Spotify See Growth of 74%; Amazon Unveils New Ad Tech Features

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 28th May 2024 in News

On today’s news digest: Privacy Sandbox APIs Temporarily Unavailable; Sports Podcasts on Spotify See Growth of 74%; Amazon Unveils New Ad Tech Features

Last week, Privacy Sandbox’s APIs were temporarily unavailable due to a misconfiguration in the Chrome-facilitated testing setup. The issue was not related to the APIs themselves, but to the “setup that supports Chrome-facilitated testing ahead of third-party cookie deprecation.” With many significant concerns about Privacy Sandbox still present, this points towards further instability with Google’s cookie replacement solution.

In the world of audio, podcasting continues to boom: the number of podcast shows streamed per person in the UK has risen 8% year-over-year, states Spotify’s 2024 Global Podcast Trends report. According to the study, podcast advertising revenue has been growing faster than music advertising revenue. Globally, Business & Technology is one of Gen Z’s fastest-growing categories, increasing 34% year-over-year. Sports have also been driving more listeners to the platform: Spotify saw an 80% increase in UK streams of podcasts discussing the Women's World Cup the week of the opening ceremonies and kick-off. Sports was one of the fastest growing podcast categories in the UK, seeing an increase of 74%. News podcasts saw a growth of 60%.

In a move to continue bolstering its ad business, Amazon unveiled several new ad tech features to give brands greater access to its audience. These also aim to help advertisers and publishers comply with changing privacy regulations from digital platforms and governments. The updates include the launch of an advertising identity service – Signal IQ – as well as enhancements to its clean-room offering, and an extension of its Transparent Ad Marketplace.