Khai Le, APAC Senior Director of Business Development at Mintegral
Caught between stringent privacy mandates and rise of AI led optimization, digital advertisers are pivoting from third party cookies to first party data and privacy-first targeting strategies.
"The decline of third-party cookies has been one of the most significant structural shifts in digital advertising over the past few years," said Khai Le, APAC Senior Director of Business Development at Mintegral, a leading mobile advertising platform. In an interaction with CXOtoday, Le also pointed out that AI is becoming central to almost every layer of the advertising technology stack. For instance, his firm is using AI for campaign optimization, targeting users, creative generation, and fraud detection.
Expanding on the impact of privacy mandates on advertising, Le said that the impact has been less severe on mobile apps ecosystem as compared to traditional web because mobile advertising already relies on in-app signals and privacy-compliant measurement frameworks.
"Across the industry, we are seeing a growing shift toward alternatives such as first-party data strategies, contextual targeting, probabilistic modeling, and privacy-safe attribution frameworks. Technologies like SKAdNetwork (SKAN) and aggregated measurement models are becoming standard tools for mobile marketers," said Le.
SKAN is a privacy-centric framework for iOS apps that allows advertisers to measure ad campaign performance. Apple's privacy-centric features like 'Ask App Not to Track' had a significant impact on the mobile advertising industry. Big tech firms like Meta reportedly blamed Apple for losing billions in advertising revenue.
How is Gen AI shaping the ad industry
Global spending on advertising is expected to grow by 9.1% to $1.30 trillion in 2026, according to a World Advertising Research Center (WARC) report, released in January. Around 80% of this spending is likely to go into retail media, paid search, and social media platforms. The report also highlights the growing use of generative AI (GenAI) in search and its impact on how consumers access information online.
Most browsers now offer AI-generated summaries and curated responses to search queries, instead of just showing weblinks. Meanwhile, AI chatbots such as ChatGPT now offer built-in search capabilities that allow users to find real-time information on any topic. Many users also rely on these AI chatbots for shopping recommendations. Last month, OpenAI became one of the first AI chatbots to display advertisements to its free and Go Plan users in the US as it seeks new forms of monetization to offset its high operational cost.
Le agrees that GenAI is beginning to reshape how users discover information, apps, and digital services. "This shift could create new discovery opportunities for developers," he adds.
Le believes that for mobile apps and digital services, visibility in AI-generated recommendations may become an important extension of existing app store optimization and search strategies. For that, "developers will have to ensure that their apps are well-described, contextually relevant, and associated with strong user engagement signals so that AI systems can surface them in recommendations," said Le.
According to a January report by BCG, use of GenAI for shopping grew by 35% in 2025. The use cases involve seeking recommendations, summarizing reviews, comparing prices and features.
Even though the generative discovery ecosystem is still evolving, Le said that his firm is closely monitoring how AI-driven search and conversational interfaces are influencing user acquisition pathways. His goal is to assist developers maximize discoverability across the open internet through high-quality creatives, contextual relevance, and data-driven optimization.
Moving away from walled gardens
Digital advertising has been largely dominated by big tech firms such as Google, Meta, and Amazon. However, their ad practices are facing a lot of scrutiny. In April 2025, a US federal court found Google in violation of Sherman Act and "willfully acquiring and maintaining a monopoly" in the ad server market and ad exchange market, which are used by publishers and advertisers to buy and sell online display ads.
Google's ad server accounted for 87% of the US market and 91% of the global market, according to the lawsuit. The court found that Google made its ad exchange (AdX) the only gateway through which AdWords (now Google Ads) advertising bid was allowed.
Le points out that overdependence on any single platform or ecosystem for distribution, monetization, or user acquisition can limit diversification and growth flexibility for developers. "Any policy change or algorithm shift can have a significant downstream impact on their business performance," adds Le.
Le further said that he encourages developers to adopt a more balanced strategy that leverages the broader open internet and diversified monetization channels. "This approach is not about abandoning any single platform, but about empowering developers with more control and resilience, ensuring they can scale globally regardless of shifts in the broader ecosystem," he adds.
Where is the ad industry using AI
According to a January IAB report, 83% ad executives are seeing their companies use AI in their creative process. Cost efficiency, creative innovation, time saving, personalization, and data driven insights were cited by them as the top advantages of using AI.
Mintegral has invested heavily in AI-driven predictive models that can assist advertisers understand user behaviour patterns even when granular identifiers are limited. Le noted that by focusing on aggregated insights and campaign-level optimization, platform providers can still deliver strong performance for advertisers while aligning with the evolving privacy mandates.
AI is playing a key part in this strategy. According to Le, creative optimization is one of the areas where AI is having a strong impact. Le said that AI can analyze large volumes of creative performance data to understand which formats, colors, messaging styles, or gameplay previews resonate best with specific audience segments. This allows developers to automatically test and iterate different variations at scale, resulting in better engagement and conversion rates.
AI is also playing a key role in bidding and campaign optimization models that continuously adjust targeting and budget allocation in real-time. Le explains that this helps advertisers maximize the efficiency of their spend by continuously adjusting targeting and budget allocation in real time. For advertisers this means measurable benefits in campaign efficiency, whether it's in the form of more install rates, improved user retention, or higher lifetime value from acquired users. "These are the outcomes of a continuous, data-informed optimization process, not a one-time fix," adds Le.
