Hello Bidtellectuals. Here’s the latest in the digital advertising industry.

Groceries and taxes, publishers and COVID, and Banksy and llamas. An update on the state of the digital advertising industry.

First: I hope you had a fabulous Cinco de Mayo and drank a spicy margarita. I sure did! Second: congrats to Bidtellectual of the Week Abigail Bojanic! What a star.

The new essentials: Groceries and Taxes

If anybody is surviving this crisis, it is grocery stores who have capitalized on e-commerce. Read more here and download our one sheet. Speaking of groceries, a tight regional footprint and targeting limitations proved to be a challenge for this regional grocer looking to connect with consumers. How contextual targeting and pause-out-of-view video turned it around. Andddd….it’s (still) tax season! How this tax solution provider beat their CPA goal by 76% and increased campaign budget by105% thanks to contextual learnings.

Publishers are feeling the heat – as are SSPs – but they are trying to combat it

Millennial favorite/guilty pleasure Buzzfeed announced that it will furlough 68employees beginning May 16, as well as extend salary cuts. NBCUniversal is also weighing “significant layoffs.” More trouble in publisher paradise: The New York Times announced that in Q1, subscriptions accounted for 64% of its revenue and a  record 587,000 people signed up during the quarter, but ad-sales contributed just 24% and the Times predicts its advertising business will take a 50-55% nosedive next quarter. (This is why you shouldn’t block coronavirus content.) The drop in demand has meant fewer SSPs are selling across publisher sites. To combat doubts, some SSPs like OpenX and TripleLift have sought to address publishers’ concerns by adding an insurance line to cover any failed payments from DSPs (read more on Digiday).

WATCH Coronavirus & Retail -> 5 key takeaways:

Privacy and context: now and post-COVID

Google has no plans to postpone killing third-party cookies in Chrome, but privacy and data rules are a little hazy. In short, server-side first-party cookies aren’t in danger, but the JavaScript approach is unsustainable, thanks to ITP, according to this piece on Adexchanger.

On the topic of privacy, IAS published a survey on perceptions of privacy and targeting this week and dubbed context “the new black:” an answer to the changing privacy landscape. (We couldn’t agree more!) 89% of consumers say online privacy is very important or important to them. 53% of consumers are receptive to some form of contextual targeting and, in fact, prefer it to all other tactics, including behavioral, audience, and geo-targeting.

Good news

In some good news, this lovely llama may hold the cure for coronavirus. Really! Llamas hold antibodies that have neutralized coronavirus and other infections in lab experiments. Bonus: they are so cute!!! And Banksy unveiled a new mural on Southampton Hospital in the UK celebrated medical workers as the heroes they are. The painting will remain at Southampton General Hospital until the autumn when it will be auctioned to raise money for the NHS.

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Charlotte Otremba is Sr. Manager of Communications and Marketing at Bidtellect.