The history of advertising recently has been one of identity ... specifically, knowing identity across sites and apps.  That’s changing: the third-party cookie is dying, Apple’s identifier for advertisers is going opt-in, and Google's GAID might as well. What does that mean for the future of advertising? And … what does it mean for the ad-supported services we’ve all come to enjoy? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Sheri Bachstein, Global Head of Watson Advertising and The Weather Company.

Covid-19 was the 'digital accelerant of the decade,' pushing brands' digitization strategies up an average of 6 years. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we're chatting with Twilio chief customer officer Glenn Weinstein about a major report Twilio put together on digital transformation. COVID-19 is clearly a medical and economic disaster, but it also vastly accelerated technological change and changed how companies think about the tech that drives their business. In this discussion we chat about who's winning and who's losing in the fight to stay relevant as customer behavior changes massively.

In iOS 14, Apple is making the IDFA opt-in. Is this a privacy power move or a cash grab?  The IDFA is a device identifier that advertisers use to know who's engaging with their ads. It also helps ad networks target ads. In previous version of iOS, the IDFA has been default on, but users can turn it off. In iOS 14, keeping the IDFA on now means that each app must ask individually for permission to use the IDFA.  That's probably good for privacy, but it's tough on marketers and advertisers. The question is: is Apple doing this primarily to increase privacy, or because what's bad for advertising might be good for in-app purchases and subscriptions ... which Apple takes a 30% cut from? We chat with Abhay Singhal and Sergio Serra from InMobi, an ad network, about their perspective.

Late last week Amazon announced Halo, an AI-powered health service. In doing so it beat Apple to exactly what Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly told us the company was focusing on over 18 months ago. Oh, and Amazon wants your underwear selfies. Plus, recordings of everything you say.

Today Elon Musk unveiled more about his mysterious brain-to-computer interface company Neuralink, showcasing a pig named Gertrude with a “Link” installed and sharing that Neuralink has received a “Breakthrough Device” designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One of the abilities he teased was being able to summon your self-driving car — a Tesla, of course — with a thought. But Musk’s ambitions extend much farther. And his Link isn’t intended just for early adopters, niche technophiliacs, or bleeding-edge cyborg wannabes. Rather, Musk intends this device for almost everyone.

How do you build 10X products and 10X startups with the potential for exponential growth? In this special episode of TechFirst, we chat with the chief product officer of Asana, Alex Hood. Asana has over 75,000 customers including customers like Google, Slack, Twitter, Harvard ...  So today we're chatting with Asana's chief product officer Alex Hood about his playbook for building high growth products: How does it work? What's it look like? And frankly, what can we copy for our own startups?

iOS is safer than Android, right? Usually ... because getting on the iOS app store is harder than getting on Google Play. There’s more scrutiny of apps, their code, and functionality.  But now, for the first time ever, security researchers have found an ad fraud network on Apple iPhones that uses click injection to steal potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s in over 1200 apps with billions of downloads, and has been since mid 2019, in apps like Talking Tom, Asphalt 9, PicsArt, Gardenscapes, and Helix Jump. It works by spying on your activity on the phone and sending fake clicks on ads it sees you engage with. To learn more, we’re going to chat with the man who found it: Danny Grander, Co-Founder & Chief Security Officer at Snyk, a digital security company. Welcome to TechFirst with John Koetsier.

Apple announced this morning that it has launched two new “radio” stations on Apple Music: Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country. Apple is investing significantly in its Radio product, with major stars and shows that are part talk radio, part Casey Kasem, part podcasting. An important question for stars to ask, however, is how broad an audience they can get by focusing on a single platform versus allowing their shows to appear on every platform simultaneously.  Or ... if they’re better off opening up their content on a freely available service.

Lama Nachman is an Intel scientist who built Stephen Hawking's communication system. Now she's helping another scientist and roboticist, Peter Scott Morgan, who has Motor Neuron Disease (like ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), to live and communicate with a more advanced version. It uses gaze control and AI to essentially control a computer that allows him to talk, write, control his environment, and retain some measure of independence. Most of the technology is open source, and the next version, which senses brain waves, only uses a few hundred dollars worth of equipment. Morgan's vision is using AI and technology to essentially cyborg himself (eventually, perhaps with help of a robotic exoskeleton). Nachman is using AI, including GPT-2, word prediction, and more, to help him communicate. Sometimes the result isn't just him or just the system, but a combination of both.

Should we ban all foreign apps? President Trump might have a lot of support from Americans who want to do precisely that. In a poll run by TapResearch this week, 30% of American adults said they that the U.S. should ban all foreign social media apps. Another 40% said that the U.S. should ban all apps from countries that have an interest in spying on Americans. “Our findings show that many people support banning apps developed by foreign companies,” TapResearch says.