Rebel Fund

Data Sharing Is Caring, With Rebel AI CEO Manny Puentes

AdExchanger Talks features Manny Puentes, CEO and founder of Rebel AI, discussing the evolving role of data sharing and identity in ad tech. Puentes, who founded Rebel AI in 2016 to tackle domain spoofing, explains that Rebel AI was later sold to Logiq for $8 million in cash and stock, illustrating consolidation in the data activation space. In the conversation, Puentes expresses skepticism about hashed email addresses as a viable industry identifier, noting that the transfer of encrypted emails between platforms still requires the original address and can link to offline data, raising security concerns. He references Universal ID 2.0 as a promising but incomplete solution, arguing that privacy risks remain and that email-based identifiers may be insecure compared to other approaches. The episode covers the friction between privacy and targeting in programmatic environments.

Working Out While Working From Home: Inside The Advertising Industry’s Fitness Routines

The piece surveys how advertising-industry professionals have integrated fitness into remote work during the pandemic. It highlights individuals such as Emily Adams who rode a Peloton for 10 miles during a long meeting; Fyber's David Simon who squeezes workouts into internal calls with video off and sometimes uses resistance bands; Rebel AI's Manny Puentes who does Zwift rides and often attends calls in sweaty clothes immediately after riding; Eric Berry of TripleLift who attempted a Peloton video conference early in the pandemic and notes awkward moments with live video and workout-score displays; and notes that SpotX, Fyber, Kochava, and OH Partners organized group workouts for employees while MarketMakers LCC launched a virtual networking and exercising program that has grown to over 100 participants.

First-Party Consent Can Replace Third-Party Cookies

AdExchanger columnist Manny Puentes argues that Google's plan to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome will impede browser-based targeting, cross-site tracking, frequency capping, and retargeting. The piece notes that third-party cookies are effectively anonymous IDs that become powerful when linked to form data, and that their demise could push some firms to stitch data across sites using email or other identifiers, raising privacy questions. Puentes stresses that the real challenge is complying with evolving consent and privacy regulations, not merely technology. He envisions consent platforms as gateways to legitimate first-party data use, enabling cross-site targeting with first-party cookies and consent. The article outlines a potential workflow: a user allows cookies, a redirect to a consent domain (optin.com) sets a first-party cookie and returns an opt_in ID for future ad calls. He calls for IAB-standardized protocols and an open consortium to manage the workflow. Overall, the author is optimistic about future industry innovation under stronger privacy controls.