Oracle Corporation announced its exit from the advertising business during its earnings calls last week for the quarter ending March 31, as revenue fell to $300 million in the fiscal year 2024. Given Oracle’s significant workforce reductions in 2022 for teams supporting Oracle Advertising, the news was not shocking. That being said, it’s unexpected how quickly the decision was made. The announcement lacked details regarding the company’s exit plan. Numerous advertising-related services, such as analytics, audience, and contextual targeting, data management, and more are impacted by this choice. The effective date of the end-of-life (EOL) is September 30, 2024.
It was reported in August 2022 that Oracle Advertising generated $2 billion in revenue. Revenue was only increasing by 2% annually at the time, and a large number of workers had been let go as part of a restructuring in 2022.
Oracle invested billions in the advertising industry, purchasing over a dozen ad tech firms in more than ten years. When Meta, which was then operating under the name Facebook, closed its data to outside parties in 2018—including Oracle—in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Oracle’s wager on the advertising sector was weakened. The kind of insights that Oracle Advertising could provide were greatly lost.
By September 30, 2024, the following Oracle Advertising goods and services will be rendered obsolete.
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Oracle Advertising had a rough 2018 and was never able to get back on track. The forces of data deprecation dealt multiple blows to Oracle’s advertising division. Oracle found it difficult to come up with a solution for the new GDPR regulations. After failing to come up with a way to make its social sharing add-on AddThis GDPR compliant, they withdrew from Europe. A class-action lawsuit alleging Oracle had created “digital dossiers” on millions of people without their consent brought consumer privacy awareness to light. Furthermore, because Oracle’s BlueKai data management platforms (DMPs) relied on third-party cookies to create and reach audience segments, they were rendered useless following third-party cookie deprecation.
Beginning on June 17, Oracle will no longer enter into new contracts for any advertising goods or services. Nevertheless, it will keep completing current orders for advertising-related goods and services through September 30, 2024, which is the EOL date. Additionally, Oracle will no longer be offering service renewals and will be severing ties with the data provider it uses for its advertising products. If users want to keep using data, they have to keep paying. Additionally, Oracle says that after all obligations are fulfilled, it will remove customer data.
Oracle was never a massive adtech company. There appears to have been a significant miscalculation on Oracle’s part, as evidenced by the sharp decline in advertising revenue from $2 billion in 2022 to $300 million 2024. There were no obvious advantages to working with Oracle or being acquired by Oracle because there were no supply-side or demand-side platforms and no sizable audience to draw from. Whether Oracle’s intellectual property will find new ownership and enjoy a second life is an open question in this case.
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