Lessening concerns over Google
pushing for sweeping changes to its ad tools sent stock prices higher for publicly traded ad-tech companies by Friday.
The Trade Desk was up 6% on Friday to close at $197.95, while Criteo
gained 5% to $20.03 and Telaria grew 2.4% to $6.34. LiveRamp was up 1.4% to $54.57, and Rubicon Project inched up 0.7% more to $6.08.
In the wake of earlier reports that Google would
make some heavy changes to its Chrome browser concerning data-privacy protections, which would affect how ad-tech vendors operated within it, ad-tech companies stock prices were down sharply on
Tuesday.
Now analysts believe these tighter restrictions won’t occur.
John Egber, security analyst for Stifel Nicolaus, according to Seeking Alpha, said: "If Google were
to decimate its ad-tech competitors’ business models overnight by imposing changes as restrictive as Apple’s ITP, the company could face even more antitrust scrutiny than it is already
dealing with."
In addition, Dan Salmon, an analyst at BMO, warned investors not "jump to assumptions" on any potential changes.
Investors are concerned that Google would make big
changes following previous data-privacy changes made by Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox.