Among the solutions being proffered for the ongoing deprecation of the cookie is returning to a method of targeting people based on what interested them to land on a piece of content in the first place: its context.

As we head into the first of America's big holiday and shopping season events, it may be comforting to know that most of us haven't been losing much sleep during the pandemic. But maybe we should be.

The big loser of the 2020 election was political polling -- and by extension -- survey-based consumer research. While caveats abound, it largely failed, raising questions about how good polling is not just for political campaigns, but for any form of marketing.

The 2020 presidential election has barely been resolved and oddsmakers are already predicting the soon-to-be-departing incumbent is the Republican favorite for 2024. That assumes the then 78-year-old isn't behind bars, but it also means he will likely continue to be a domineering figure in American politics for some time to come.

As well intentioned as the deprecation of third-party cookies may be, the effect ultimately may be meaningless, as advertisers, agencies and a wide range of data and technology suppliers come up with workarounds that effectively achieve the same results, albeit potentially with even less desirable experiences -- for consumers and advertisers alike.

I'd like to make a case for MediaPost to weigh in with its first-ever Presidential endorsement, but I'd like to hear what you think first. Should MediaPost endorse a candidate? If so, which one and why?

At a time when digital media appears to be accelerating share gains vs. traditional media, questions regarding its underlying veracity -- especially the accountability and measurement of its audience delivery -- are looming. This may not matter for some big marketers who appear to beincreasingly focused on ecommerce results (ie. sales) regardless of what the efficiency of its media buys are in terms of audience delivery, but an update from the Media Rating Council indicates many digital media platforms are reverting to a non-accredited industry standard.

"Some observers may have treated this as indicating that the whole affair may have been a scandal that never was," GroupM's Wieser writes, noting it does not take "away from bigger issues of mis-managed data access, poor ethical behavior and heightened awareness by consumers of legal uses of data, which were inconsistent with expectations and which contributed to enhancing the polarization of societies around the world."

Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, confusion and uncertainty is the theme for all things American, including the ad industry. "A diagnosis of COVID-19 for the U.S. President amplifies these circumstances," says GroupM Business Intelligence chief Brian Wieser.

I learned something from Spark Foundry's new "Audio Academy." I learned that the days when agency internal media training programs were autonomous, neutral and not subject to influence from the media supply chain may be over.