The Dx3 conference took place last week in Toronto, Canada. We went there as attendants, to feel the pulse of the digital advertising industry.

The conference exhibitions are -still- focused on Web advertising, for a simple reason: Is where -still- the money is.

While mobile has grown incredibly, is -still again- catching up with the Web as a whole. That didn’t meant there were not mobile focused exhibitors, is just that they were a minority. Regardless, we still had a chance to meet great people and companies with great ideas and services, respectively.

Why focus on the Web rather than mobile?

It has been already 7 years since the launch of the iPhone, a launch that changed the computing industry and how people consume media. So it surprised me that the main focus was on -still 🙂 – the web.

One reason I speculate about the web being the main driver, is because of the fine tuning in tracking the Web allows via the -infamous- cookies. In advertising, targeting more or less dictates value. To achieve this value, companies need to build a profile of the person. This profile can be built by the users willingly (I.e Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or any other social media network), or by tracking the user behaviour via Web cookies. Obviously social media networks are more precise for targeting, however millions of people still browse the web outside of social networks. For the latter, cookies tracking remains one of the few options to achieve granularity towards advertising.

It’s not that advertising companies didn’t tried to transfer this model to the mobile world. They did! However, Apple & Google blocked cookie (and device) tracking as much as possible due to -obvious- privacy concerns.

For Apple’s part, it offers IDFA (Identifier for advertising). On Google’s side, it offers Advertising ID. Both aim to provide anonymous traceability, resettable by the user whenever he/she wishes. Both of them allow some targeting without giving too much private information. These two services have been available for a couple of years, hopefully it will catch on marketers so the full embrace of mobile becomes a reality.