• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Artificial intelligence (AI) must become about "us," not about "I" -- how to make the world better. How to ensure privacy.

Shifting from "us" to "I" requires a multifaceted approach for the collective good that involves policy, technology, and ethical practices.

Mozilla is about ethical practices -- so when its executives talk about challenging traditional online advertising and demonstrating that the open web can be a place where people feel informed, empowered, and respected, pay attention.

The company may not have the clout and financial power of Google, but it's much closer to protecting consumer privacy than many others.

That mission drives Mozilla's continued investment in rebuilding digital advertising around trust, transparency, and fairness. The key is creating technology that serves people first and machines second -- for example, with its browser Firefox. Now it continues to apply that same principle to how the open web is funded -- advertising.

This week at the Web Summit Lisbon, Mozilla announced a new partnership with Equativ, formerly Smart AdServer.

Equativ merged with Sharethrough and now offers a suite of products including an ad server, a supply-side platform (SSP), and buyer tools like a demand-side platform (DSP) and media services, with an independent ad platform.

Now Mozilla has direct access to an SSP and DSP, giving it a full stack of direct services with a focus on privacy, programmatic data-driven services to support an open and competitive ecosystem.

Mozilla's executives believe this approach prioritizes publishers and media buyers. It controls privacy and opens innovation.

Suba Vasudevan, COO of Mozilla.org and senior vice president at Mozilla Corp., believes the company has spent more than two decades proving that trust is not a limitation on innovation, but rather a "multiplier," and through Mozilla Ads, it will extend that same principle to how advertising works online.

The next era of digital advertising will be defined by trust and performance. It must as artificial intelligence steps in to make decisions on behalf of consumers.

"We are aligned in our commitment to a healthier advertising ecosystem,” said Teiffyon Parry, CSO at Equativ. "As the digital ad market shifts away from identifier-based targeting and toward privacy-preserving innovation, this partnership shows sustainable alternatives are increasingly viable."

This is not the first major partnership Mozilla made in the past few months. The company has spent the past couple of years designing and building a programmatic ad-targeting model from the ground up to give advertisers access to its Firefox audience.

In October, Vasudevan told MediaPost that Mozilla has "stepped into a field it has long critiqued" and announced a partnership with Index Exchange, a supply-side platform (SSP) that serves as a programmatic marketplace for media owners to sell digital ad inventory -- to prove to the industry that companies can build and deliver outcome-based advertising without giving up on trust.