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Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

User privacy and revenue are directly linked for publishers

It seems we’ve entered an era where an increasing ratio of stories on the advertising industry are opining on what new regulations may come to pass or when big tech companies will (or won’t) deprecate third-party cookies. With so much coverage focusing on external pressures, it’s easy to fall into the trap of forgetting what lies at the core of digital advertising: the consumer.

What regulators and big tech alike are providing aren’t, at their essence, constraints on the advertising ecosystem but rather the opportunity for consumers to choose how their data can or cannot be used for digital advertising. And when given that choice, consumers are increasingly acting in ways that protect their own data privacy.

What publishers need to know is that this means advertisers are facing an environment where half of users are browsing in environments that restrict cookies (Safari, Firefox, etc.). Of those who are browsing in Chrome, 40% disable tracking on their own. This leaves only 30% of the open web available for targeting with advertising. As consumer choice grows, so will the percentage of audiences that are traditionally unaddressable.

Luckily, publishers are better equipped than any other part of the ecosystem to directly connect with consumers. Largely, consumers aren’t objecting to their data being used responsibly by the website they’re on or the app they’re in, but rather they’re opting out of being tracked across the internet by adtech or big tech. This means an overwhelming majority of consumers’ data is visible to the publisher alone.

Protecting consumers and revenue alike

The evolution to more responsible marketing practices — where data is secure by design — is primed to benefit publishers. With that, there needs to be a focus on solutions that are grounded in user consent and choice in order for publishers to be able to operate sustainably and protect both their consumers and their revenue.

The right data infrastructure and insights gives publishers 100% addressability and the tools to activate audiences consistently across all media transaction types. This means publishers are uniquely equipped to offer advertisers the opportunity to extend the scale of their own data by partnering directly to activate first-party audiences.

Publishers’ rich audience data enables advertisers to reach high-value audiences with targeted messaging, without infringing on user privacy. This is invaluable to advertisers, helping them to continue reaching consumers with relevant content, even as addressability declines. For example, U.S. News’ first-party audience data allowed its advertisers to see an uplift in engagement of up to two times by activating valuable cohorts.

Further, Bauer Media’s Illuminate offering has been shown to positively affect user perceptions and purchase consideration. Post-campaign research for a leading manufacturer showed a 44% increase in users who said they would be highly likely to buy from that brand, compared to non-exposed.

How publishers benefit from user privacy

It’s clear that the close proximity publishers have to their audiences is transforming the digital advertising ecosystem. What publishers do with this opportunity will redefine how they are able to successfully activate and monetize their users in the future.

We’ve entered an era where publishers are responsible for user privacy practices when it comes to the collection, management, and usage of consumer data. They serve the needs of consumers who are growing increasingly aware of how their data is used as well as advertisers looking to buy across highly addressable publisher inventory.

Fortunately, this ecosystem is also one where publishers will be fairly compensated for the value they create, as they are positioned to provide addressability, relevance, and scale for advertisers. And these advertisers are seeing results.

By working directly with publishers, a global beverage CPG brand course-corrected over-indexing in Chrome, helping solve its addressability problems and reaching double the audience that was previously hidden in Safari. That same campaign was also able to deliver 2.1x the number of impressions served in Safari vs Chrome, which resulted in a 21% lower CPC and a 123% higher CTR compared to the benchmarks.

Publishers and advertisers must work together to restore consumers’ trust in their data privacy. Concern needs to go deeper than worrying about the deprecation of the third-party cookie or simply meeting regulatory compliance. Building consumer trust comes from publishers seeking consent and data solutions that are secure by design.

About the author

Isabella Jenkins is a Client Revenue Partner at Permutive. Isabella supports publishers on new Permutive products and features to ensure their platform use aligns with their data strategies. Isabella has over six years of experience in adtech, previously heading up Client Success at Captify.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Publishers beware: 3 malware trends for Q4

As the days grow shorter and the pumpkin spice overfloweth from lattes, a bitter wind blows through the digital ecosystem, dropping malicious intent into every nick and cranny. Little devils ride the waves of code, seeking to trick and gladly snatch treats away from consumers in the form of stolen credit card info and personal data. All the while, they leave backdoors open on devices so they can return to wreak more havoc.

The fourth quarter can be the most wonderful time of year for publishers’ digital revenue efforts. Unfortunately, it can also be a lucrative moment for digital ghouls, with deal-hunting shoppers falling prey to malevolent code lurking beneath the surface of ecommerce sites.

Conventional wisdom holds that threat actors pull back from clogging the advertising pipes with malware in Q4 as premium publishers book more direct deals and there’s a dearth of cheap inventory. But threat actors are a devious bunch. They have diverse strategies for inflicting maximum harm on online consumers—and some particularly nasty tricks tend to appear during the holiday season.

Publishers play a key role here in keeping audiences safe from digital dangers. They must also help rid their advertisers and demand partners of malware demons.

Advertisers transform into malvertisers

It’s said when the moon is full and red as blood, advertisers large and small howl out in pain as they morph into the most fearsome of digital beasts—malvertisers!

OK, it’s not that dramatic. In fact, a lot of legit advertisers are completely unaware that they are spreading backdoors and phishing through their landing pages. Schemes like MimicManager-3pc lurk in the shadows and are quite hard to detect. It typically enters an advertiser’s site through a corrupted JavaScript library, and doesn’t actually show up in the call chain when it drops a malicious payload (e.g., a redirect with a backdoor).

The amount of malicious landing pages in the digital ecosystem grew dramatically over summer 2022 as MimicManager proliferated.

Caption: The amount of malicious landing pages in the digital ecosystem grew dramatically over summer 2022 as MimicManager proliferated.

As of publication, MimicManager has already infected hundreds of advertiser websites, from local real estate and travel agents to major ecommerce sites. And it’s been compromising three to seven new websites per day ever since, with multiple threat actors using the tool to meet their own malevolent goals: backdoors, phishing, e-skimming, cryptojacking, etc.

Smaller and midsize advertisers are more likely to fall prey to these schemes because their publishing software and plugins are out-of-date. (And, in many cases, that’s because a third-party design firm manages them.) MimicManager is a fearsome threat because it’s quite good at evading detection, and certain variations only fire if the right targeting parameters are met (e.g., mobile browser).

The fast spread of MimicManager is particularly worrisome as the holiday buying season heats up and consumers click on ads left and right. By shutting down ads with compromised landing pages, publishers can protect their audiences. However, they need to take it a step further and share their findings upstream. Advertisers, and their platform partners, must be informed to stop the spread.

Retail hijinks

eMarketer predicts worldwide ecommerce sales will only climb by 9.7% this year compared to the wild growth witnessed during the peak of the pandemic. But that’s still $5.7 trillion, and around 20% of the entire retail market.

No surprise that a lot of scammers want in on that cash. Advertising CPMs might be higher in Q4, but many bogus retailers still use the ad pipes to woo consumers to their shady shops. The amount of scam ads blocked by Media Filter, The Media Trust’s real-time ad quality solution for publishers, doubled between April and September. And the top 10 companies blocked are all fake retail outlets

As the number of scam ad blocks have doubled over the past 6 months, the top 10 companies blocked have all been bogus retail websites.

These scam ecommerce operations sometimes send goods that bear no resemblance to what was purchased and no way for a consumer to seek restitution. Or they’ll flat-out take consumer cash and disappear into the night.

The top four bogus retailers blocked are owned by the same sketchy Chinese company and feature interchangeable merchandise and page layouts. With consumer economic concerns running high this holiday season, deal-hunters will be easy target—unless publishers ensure their scam ads don’t make it in front of their audiences.

E-skimming epidemic

But legit retailers have real problems as well. While e-skimming tends to spread during Q4, the proliferation of credit card and personal-data stealing code has been absolutely stunning in 2022.

The amount of e-skimming has doubled year over year and we’ll likely see massive growth in the next few months across ecommerce platforms. Quite worrisome is the re-emergence of a threat group that dominated e-skimming efforts for much of the twenty-teens.

E-Skimming incidents are double what they were a year prior and tend to grow sharply in the fourth quarter.

Don’t get spooked

Publishers are the last line of defense when it comes to protecting consumers from digital threats. For many ad and revenue operations folk, this too often just feels like getting the damn redirects to stop so the executives will quit howling.

But especially in Q4, the threats truly stretch across all the players—and keeping consumers safe means more than just blocking a “high-risk ad platform.” The good news is that audiences will have a higher propensity to click your ads this holiday season. Unfortunately, that also means a higher chance they’ll run into scams, e-skimmers, or other horrors. Making sure the ads on your properties are clear of danger means communicating with platforms and advertisers when you see trouble.

It always seems a bit like Devil’s Night in the digital ad ecosystem. It’s a good thing publishers are a fearless bunch.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Why FLEDGE might be the best thing hatched in Google’s Sandbox 

We’re more than half way through 2022, and we still do not know exactly what’s happening with third-party cookies. On the one hand, Google announced that it will be delaying the phase-out of third-party cookies until 2024. The ad tech giant has also promised us a well-built solution that can sustain publisher revenue without third-party cookies. 

In fact, a big reason for the delay is that Google has not been able to figure out a solution yet. The privacy sandbox started in August 2019 has been underwhelming, failing to bring forth a solution that preserves user privacy while allowing publisher income to flourish.

That said, a few exciting proposals emerged from the privacy sandbox. Promising ideas included FLoC, TURTLEDOVE, and trust tokens, which were among the most popular. However, none of these held the key to the most critical problem in the ad tech industry right now: how publishers can maintain and increase their revenue while protecting user privacy simultaneously.

One proposed solution that promises to better suit the needs of publishers and advertisers while protecting user privacy is FLEDGE, a privacy sandbox proposal within the TURTLEDOVE family. It may be the solution the ad tech industry is looking for because it addresses the end goal of privacy via interest and behavior-based digital advertising.

The concept of FLEDGE stems from the fact that, while contextual advertising is a vital asset in the absence of third-party cookies, it might not be able to render the revenue needed.

Let’s take a look at the potential of FLEDGE as well as some of its competitors to better understand the approaches being explored and what these experiments and possible outcomes could mean for publishers.

Can FLEDGE save the day?

The uncomfortable truth is that after the failures of FLoC and other privacy sandbox proposals, there is a lot of hope riding on FLEDGE.

FLEDGE is short for First Locally Executed Decisions over Groups Experiment and it uses remarketing audiences. FLEDGE functions on the understanding that interest groups can be created by assigning users, which can be done by publishers, advertisers, and ad tech vendors in tandem.

Owners of interest groups can add members with the help of a JavaScript function: Javascript function, “joinAdInterest Group(), which is called out to a user’s browser when they visit a website. And then, the following process is performed to display a relevant ad to a user.

Source: Google

Why FLEDGE looks Promising

Limited control over users’ browser details

It’s important to note that FLEDGE only allows the assignment of users’ browser details in interest groups for only 30 days. After the one-month mark, publishers or advertisers must complete the same process again, which gives them only limited control over this data, thus protecting user privacy while helping the former earn short-term revenue.

Fenced frames provide more security

When a winner for an auction is declared in the ad space sales cycle, the ad information is only sent to a secure frame within a web page called the Fenced Frame. This prevents brands from collecting user data, protecting user privacy as a result. But the publishers’ and advertisers’ revenue isn’t compromised in the process.

Granular event-level reporting

FLEDGE allows outcome reporting to publishers and advertisers after the ad is displayed to a user. As we all know, granular reporting is key to improving advertisement creatives and overall ad serving quality which helps publishers earn more revenue.

Other alternatives competing with FLEDGE

Apart from the promising potential of FLEDGE, many other options in the ad tech industry are emerging as viable competitors. Here’s an introduction to the main ones:

PARAKEET

Direct competitor to FLEDGE, PARAKEET has been developed by Microsoft and stands for Private and Anonymized Requests for Ads that Keep Efficacy and Enhance Transparency. PARAKEET uses a proxy model that stores a unique ID for each user, and this proxy server stands between the advertiser and the ad space. When the SSP/website requests an ad, the proxy server mediates to serve a pretty accurate ad in alignment with the user’s preference while masking the user’s data, including their location, gender, etc.

TOPICS

As the name suggests, Topics capitalizes on the topics a user is likely to follow and displays ads based on that knowledge. This is another privacy sandbox proposal brought forth by Google. It is a kind of contextual advertising but much more granular.

OTHER PROPOSALS

Some other alternatives in the market are not direct competitors of FLEDGE but hold potential. These include:

Proposed solutionDescription
Email HashingThis converts a user’s email ID to a hashed string which can then contain data and behaviors attached to it. Unlike third-party cookies which contain information about anonymous users, hashed emails protect user privacy while allowing retargeting companies to get relevant information.
Probabilistic IDsThese are direct competitors of Deterministic IDs which capture the exact data of the user, thus invading their privacy. Probabilistic IDs used shared IP addresses, time zones, and other such inexact parameters to build probabilistic user profiles that offer around 75-90% accuracy for targeting.
Clean RoomsThese are online spaces where companies like Google and Amazon can share data with advertisers without violating user privacy.
Encrypted SignalsThis is an initiative launched by Google which allows publishers to share encrypted first-party signals with advertisers. This can be implemented via Google Ad Manager.
Publisher Provided IDsThis is another Google Ad Manager feature but it is only available for the 360 version. As the exact definition states, ‘Publisher provided identifier (PPID) allows publishers to send Google Ad Manager an identifier for use in frequency capping, audience segmentation and audience targeting, sequential ad rotation, and other audience-based ad delivery controls across devices.’ Google is calling them the #PPIDs.

Looking forward

Publishers’ frustration is understandable, seeing the uncertainty associated with third-party cookie demise and the failure of some of the proposed solutions. But FLEDGE might be the solution that holds the most promise, considering how elegantly it preserves user privacy while helping publishers increase revenue. Publishers should keep their hopes high because FLEDGE may just transform into the solution that they have eagerly awaited. 

About the author

Kean Graham is the CEO and Founder of MonetizeMore. He is a pioneer in ad optimization, covering areas such as AdSense, AdX, GAM, header bidding, and ad network optimization.

He firmly believes in empowering publishers to increase their ad revenues more efficiently and effectively via technology, PubGuru University, and YouTube Tutorials. 

April 18, 2023: Google’s FLEDGE rebrands as ‘Protected Audience API’ as the tech giant continues Privacy Sandbox trials

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

The back-to-office push is driving ad sales opportunities

Many companies are now requiring their employees to be in the office at least a few times each week. While this mandate has been met with much pushback on the part of employees, it also brings opportunities for ad sales teams. 

As Americans settle into their “new normal” work life, whether that be hybrid or full-time in the office, there are many areas in which an agile ad sales team can capitalize. Recently, at MediaRadar, we reviewed the advertising landscape to see which advertisers are actively increasing their ad investments in preparation for the latest “return to office mandates.”

Here are some of the segments that are shifting as we head to the office. Here’s our advice regarding which categories should be on your “radar.”

Back-to-office means these categories are back to advertising

Here are some segments that are actively advertising right now and would make great prospects for your business. These products are currently in high demand. However, these brands are also often in highly competitive segments, so they need to advertise. 

  • Beauty and grooming products saw a 15% jump YoY from January – August. This category reached over $3.6B through August of 2022. As Americans are venturing out of their homes and going places, like back to the office, they are investing in cosmetics (up 130% YoY), men’s skincare (up 91% YoY), and fragrances (up 86% YoY). 
  • Apparel advertising is up 49% YoY to $3.7B through August of this year. In August we saw the largest jump in this category, it was up 49% YoY. Major fashion houses and designer brands are investing in ads to entice Americans to invest in a new wardrobe as they spend their workdays outside the home.
  • As Americans are commuting again, audiobook publishers, like Audible and Penguin Random House have increased their advertising. This category is up 530% YoY from January – August 2022. Interestingly, podcasting, a pre-pandemic favorite of commuters, hasn’t seen a dramatic jump yet. Advertising for podcasts has reached $62.5mm through August 2022 and is only up 5% YoY. 
  • Mommy/Daddy guilt is real and children’s advertisers are ready to capitalize. We see advertising for baby and children’s products up 70% YoY to over $695mm through August 2022. Eighty-five percent of the advertisers in this category increased their ad spend YoY. Top drivers include toys/games ($272mm, up 39% YoY), diapers ($139mm, up 20% YoY), and dolls ($77mm, up 11%YoY)

Getting out of the house could be a turning point for these segments

These segments and advertisers have struggled this year, but with the return to the office, we could be seeing an increase in advertising investment. These are advertisers your team should reach out to now, as they may be turning the corner.

  • While the auto market is fairly flat to date, electric vehicles’ advertising was up ~175% to nearly $218mm invested through August of 2022. EV’s biggest jump was in July with over 430% YoY increase from July of 2021.
  • While restaurants are down 13% YoY, still an impressive $2.6b has been invested through August. June and July were down 26% and 27% YoY respectively. However, August shows an increase of 12% YoY. Will office parties, team building events and client dinners be exactly what this segment needs to get over the hump? Only time will tell. 
  • While Dunkin’s ad investment is down 27% YoY through August of 2022, the return to office announcements could be the cause of the increase in July (up 230% YoY) and August (up 780% YoY). Total ad investment for this company was $60.5mm from January – August of 2022. We will soon see if other commuter favorites follow suit.

Added bonuses

Not all recent increases in ad sales can be attributed to a return to the office. Here are some notable categories that are investing in ads now, but it isn’t likely attributable to shifting working conditions. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t target them!

  • Supply chain struggles were at their peak for home furnishing advertisers last year, so it isn’t a surprise to see this category up 7% YoY with over $4.2B invested in advertising through August of this year. Mattresses and furniture advertising increased 18% YoY and 74% YoY respectively. The combined investment of these two topped $512m through August.
  • The technology category increased advertising by 25% YoY. Through August we saw over $9b invested in advertising. Not surprisingly, cell phone advertising was a primary driver of this YoY growth. It was 12% of the total technology spend in 2022. Through August cell phone advertising was up 193% YoY. Alphabet, Apple, Samsung, and T-Mobile were top drivers in cell phone advertising. Combined spending through August from these names exceeded $1B.

To capitalize on an ever-changing advertising climate, it is important to regularly review which segments are spending on advertising and what is driving that ad investment. This will likely lead your team to uncover some hidden gems. Just because an advertiser or product category was down, you can never count them out because the ad landscape is always shifting.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

How to have the brand suitability conversation with advertisers

Leaders know that strategic conversations, though often complex and time-consuming, are the ones worth having. Within an industry, the ability to successfully navigate these conversations, both internally and with clients, can separate the quality teams from the pack.

Brand suitability is one of those topics in online advertising where buyers and sellers have plenty to gain from conversations that help them align strategically on goals. According to a DV/Harris poll, 87% of consumers feel that brands bear responsibility for ensuring their ads run adjacent to safe content. Brands have a real financial interest in protecting their brand’s reputation online, and publishers have been tasked with reacting to this new pillar of the digital advertising world.

Conversations reveal opportunities, not doom and gloom

Brand safety and suitability is a concept that is here to stay. However, that doesn’t mean that publishers are doomed to experience rising incident rates on their campaigns. Tools are improving, block rates are decreasing, and teams on both sides of the industry are becoming more efficient, transparent and collaborative. All that remains is continuing to build momentum and best practices for both sides to benefit from the measurement and performance opportunities out there.

With the dwindling (and imminent loss) of third-party cookies, advertisers are experimenting more than ever. They are looking into targeting based on contextual relevance, brand suitability, attention metrics and other alternatives to help them understand performance in more privacy-friendly ways. Publishers hold a lot of power in those conversations if they are proactive about their audience knowledge and technical know-how.

Bringing buyers to the table

For brands and agencies, ad tech has stepped in to provide brand safety and suitability solutions, creating the illusion that it is simply an issue for publishers to deal with alone. However, advertisers still have much to gain from fruitful brand suitability conversations with the sell-side.

Publisher teams need to remind their advertising partners that a “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work effectively when it comes to brand suitability. Publishers and their audiences are diverse. So, limiting strategies can ultimately hold brands back in their efforts to maximize reach and performance. Ad tech has also evolved to the point where brand suitability is not just something you turn on and off. Between inclusion lists, exclusion lists, contextual classifications, mobile app controls, keyword avoidance and more, advertisers have much more diverse and nuanced tools at their disposal.

Icebreakers: Questions to ask your partners

In many cases, brands and agencies may also not know how to navigate these conversations with publishers. New brand suitability tools are regularly made available, and both sides stand to gain from analyzing and revisiting their strategies. Based upon our experience putting together a brand suitability guide, here are some effective questions that publishers can ask to better understand how partners may be thinking about brand suitability.

  1. What types of content does your brand find most or least suitable to advertise next to? Do these topics fit into industry accepted content taxonomies?
  2. Are you utilizing keyword lists in your brand suitability strategy? Are those keywords overlapping with more nuanced brand suitability tools that may be better ways to maximize reach?
  3. Is your team utilizing inclusion lists to deem it appropriate for your ads to always appear on trusted sites and publishers? What are the criteria you have for such distinctions?
  4. Are you utilizing a brand safety floor that protects you from the riskiest content related to malware, phishing and spam?

Deciding to begin a complex conversation is the hardest part. Once you do, the opportunities for improved revenue and reduced friction become apparent.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Cookies got you down? 5 ways to avoid analysis paralysis

Google has once again delayed its deadline for the end of third-party cookies on Chrome, now slated for the second half of 2024 . This moving target has made it difficult for online publishers to focus on preparing for a cookieless future. The task of replacing cookies seems overwhelming, and the fear of making a bad decision is forcing many into “analysis paralysis.”

Don’t let uncertainty get in the way of your progress. The worst choice you can make amid these continued delays is to do nothing at all. Instead, look at this extended timeline as a chance to take deliberate steps that will strengthen your ad program now — and position you for success in a world without cookies.

Here are five ideas to get you started:

  1. Start testing cookie alternatives. It’s important to remember that more than 40% of all online traffic is already free of third-party cookies. That means cookie-free browsers like Safari and Firefox provide an ideal environment for testing and experimentation.

    Now is the time to assess your cookieless traffic. Set up tests to see what kind of results you can achieve without third-party data. Consider an investment in addressability to help drive higher CPMs. Explore membership in a data collective to combine and connect your own audience data with other like-minded publishers. Engage with advertisers to demonstrate your ability to deliver high-value audience segments without third-party data. Any work you can do today will not only increase the current value of your inventory, but also set you up for future success.

  2. Leverage audience attention to maximize ad value. Today’s ad ecosystem depends on cookie data for tracking user behavior, authenticating identity, and setting ad rates — but it doesn’t have to be that way. Publishers and ad buyers alike are beginning to recognize the power of audience attention and its potential for measuring and predicting ad performance.

    By tapping into the “attention economy”, publishers have a unique opportunity to regain control of inventory pricing. Using a reliable, scalable measure of attention — like engaged time — publishers can more easily identify, target, and sell highly desirable audience segments without relying on third-party cookies and increase ad revenue in the process.

  3. Look for new revenue opportunities. Experts predict that the eventual loss of third-party cookies may cost the industry up to $10 billion in ad revenue. If you’re like most publishers, your monetization strategy relies heavily on advertising — which means it’s time to look for new ways of driving revenue.

    The good news is publishers have countless options for diversifying their earning potential. Within the affiliate marketing space alone, you have a wide array of tactics like curated shopping, price comparisons, product reviews, and other types of commerce content. Every publisher should consider which techniques are the best fit for their unique brand and audience, but revenue diversification can help to smooth out the inevitable ebbs and flows across the industry.

  4. Optimize your ad operations. Digital advertising is a complex business and having the right ad ops team can help to ensure you’re earning as much ad revenue as possible. An expert ad ops partner can provide technical expertise and cutting-edge technology to fine-tune your strategy and maximize ad revenue — without the cost of hiring and managing a dedicated in-house team. And if you’re already outsourcing your ad ops function, it’s good business practice to re-evaluate your ad ops partner from time to time.

  5. Take a closer look at your technology stack. If you’re reviewing vendors and technology, this is a great time to examine your ad stack from top to bottom. That includes everything from your DSP, SSP, and DMP to analytics, optimization, and retargeting tools (and so much more).

The ad ecosystem is incredibly diverse, with a vast assortment of technology, solutions, and services to help you build a successful ad strategy. Having the right ad tech in place — and choosing the right partners — can help to ensure your ad program is ready for whatever the future brings. This moving target will certainly frustrate some. However, if you view the added time as an opportunity to test and prepare you not only re-frame the situation, odds are that you will develop a solid solution.

About the Author

Rebecca Cole is the Director of Content and Communications for Sovrn, a publishing technology platform that provides advertising tools, technologies, and services for content creators to build their businesses, remain independent, and thrive on the Open Web. Rebecca has more than two decades of experience driving increased attention through purpose-driven content. She has held communications positions in tech, energy, and consumer brands and was a journalist and editor. Rebecca has an undergraduate degree from The University of Iowa and a master’s degree in journalism from The University of Colorado Boulder.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Why you need a data clean room (and how to choose one)

Publishers and advertisers – it’s time to unite! With collaboration, both parties can win big. Data clean rooms are a critical component in maximizing this relationship because they give digital advertisers and publishers the right tools to collaborate on their first-party data and redefine the way they target and reach audiences.

In combination with deterministic IDs, data clean rooms help to increase the addressability of existing customers. They also provide a great way to improve the targeting potential of “unknown users” and the ROI of marketing efforts. This includes generating insights and enabling personalized experiences across the web – all while complying with data protection regulations. 

While data clean room technology isn’t new, the applications are not always well understood. For instance, if there’s a need for secure and privacy-compliant infrastructure to check data records for overlaps to enable downstream use cases – data clean rooms are the best fit. That’s because common variables or identifiers such as email addresses and other deterministic IDs are used. 

This provides valuable insights into target groups and customers and helps develop effective marketing strategies. The key here is that the original data sets always remain separate from other parties, with no access to each other’s data (i.e., between publishers and advertisers). In this way, each party retains sovereignty over its information, works in compliance with data protection regulations, and gains new insights on mutual data overlaps to foster a variety of marketing use cases.

New targeting and reach opportunities

Advertisers who control and use their first-party data have always looked for additional external data sources to increase their advertising efforts’ efficiency. However, they have often been hampered by data security and privacy concerns. These reservations can be addressed through data clean rooms, allowing everyone to better benefit from their own and others’ data in a privacy-safe way.

Publishers and advertisers have a comprehensive knowledge of their customers who have consented to use their first-party data. Independent data clean room partners can help overcome technological, legal, and data challenges all while making the data usable for collaboration between partners. In partially automated processes, selected data from advertisers and publishers are merged and sorted in a secure way. In collaboration with their preferred publishers, advertisers can increase their existing reach.

As a controlled, virtual ecosystem, data clean rooms open and connect closed spaces for advertisers and publishers and integrate seamlessly into a client’s existing tech stack. Collaborative partners work together in a privacy-compliant manner, deciding when and how to use their own data. It starts with matching defined data sets between both parties. Where it goes from there depends on what features the data clean room solution brings to the table regarding integration, automation, and activation.

Criteria for selecting a data clean room

Advertisers and publishers considering using data clean rooms should keep the following aspects in mind when making their selection:

Data

  • Is there sufficient first-party data available currently or in the future, and what is the value of this data for your business?
  • Is there an opportunity for scaled reach and quality in terms of data & media? For example, via integrated machine learning technology?

Use cases

  • Which use cases are to be implemented?
    • Consider internal company use cases vs. external data collaboration use cases (e.g. advertiser-publisher & retail media)
    • Data/marketing insights
    • Advertising use cases (such as retargeting, prospecting, and measurement and attribution)
  • What is the relevance of these use cases for the business (strategic/commercial)?
  • Which business units implement these use cases (BI/Data Science &/or Digital marketing/media) and how easy is it to access, control and activate data in the use cases?

Integration

  • What security standards does the solution provide? 
  • How intuitive is the UI/handling of the solution for the different stakeholders?
  • How integrated is the solution with existing ad tech?
  • What is the level of automation for stakeholders?

Scalability through integrated retargeting and prospecting capabilities

Matching data from both partners enables downstream processing for retargeting use cases in all data clean room solutions. In addition, some data clean rooms today use machine learning based on large data sets to create lookalike models (statistical twins) for prospecting opportunities. 

If these approaches are applied on the publisher side, scalable media use cases emerge for advertisers and agencies. Beyond the targeting options, some data clean room solutions are also integrated into the tech stack on the publisher side so that the use cases can run fully automatically, and the data is also loaded directly into the activation channels. 

Thus, advertisers can continue to run targeted and scalable campaigns based on their data, even without third-party cookies. Publishers using data clean rooms can, in turn, build powerful data sets from their first-party data and gain extensive reach. This makes them more attractive to advertisers and strengthens their position against walled gardens like Meta and friends. These tech giants have long been collecting consent and data on a grand scale. And because their data sets give exclusive insights into target groups, they’re irresistible to advertisers.

With data clean rooms, advertisers have a new opportunity to improve the quality of their data and increase their reach. And, by collaborating with advertisers using data clean rooms, publishers who’ve lost ground to digital heavyweights have a chance to regain lost ground and get a better return on their investment.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Content and context make premium publishers’ audiences addressable

Increasingly, consumers are opting out of targeted advertising, leaving publishers searching for ways to continue serving marketers’ desire to reach relevant audiences and to optimize ads for audiences. A significant part of the answer for many will lie in publisher content, context, and the savvy application of first-party data. To do this, publishers must capture powerful insights they have available to monetize the most relevant, high-value consumers – all without compromising their privacy.

Much of the adtech ecosystem has kept their eye trained on when Google will or won’t deprecate third-party cookies. There’s also a great deal of focus on existing and pending privacy regulation. While these are valid concerns, we do need to work in the here and now: Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies and Apple’s ATT makes opting out of tracking incredibly easy. And in Europe, consumers already have the ability to “reject all” cookies via Chrome.

The reality is consumers are already opting out of advertising more than ever. However, publishers can still make those audiences available for advertising. With their content and their unique, direct relationships with users, publishers are the keyholders in re-establishing a connection with unreachable consumers.

Advertising powered by content and first-party data

Publishers are the keepers of a crucial component of advertising: content. Visitors to publisher sites certainly continue to engage with content, even when they’re not traditionally visible or they’ve opted out of third-party cookie tracking.

Publishers have access to a wealth of traditional first-party data. Not only is this first-party data more reliable than third-party data, but it’s also more powerful. And, because the data is owned by the publisher, they can target these known audiences on behalf of advertisers. Beyond that, they also possess a great many applicable insights from page signals created by users around categories, concepts, emotions, sentiment, keywords, and entities. The power of these data points ensures that publishers can maximize both addressability and revenue.

Traditional contextual targeting is often as simple as placing sports ads on sports pages, but that’s not enough. With the right technology, publishers can build next-generation contextual targeting that not only builds bridges between their own content but provides additional value to advertisers in terms of scale and accuracy.

Beyond simple context, publishers can learn from consented users’ data and create an affinity score for each piece of content, based on page attributes. This can then be matrixed with a publisher’s cohorts to predict how likely a given cohort is to engage with a page, compared to the site average. By leveraging their own content and the rich first-party data they have access to, publishers can deliver accuracy and scale to advertisers from first page-view. And, critically, they can do all this while respecting user consent.

Direct advertiser-publisher relationships

Advertisers are preoccupied with evolving timelines for the depreciation of third-party cookies or new regulations. However, the reality is that without the right publisher partners, they already cannot reach large swaths of audiences. The California Consumer Privacy Act, Apple’s Hide My Email and App Tracking Transparency, and Safari/Firefox are all impacting consumer choice to opt-out of invasive data collection – and even advertising altogether.

Things are different when advertisers partner directly with publishers that have consented first-party data from their audience, particularly when it is paired with contextual signals. These publishers are uniquely equipped to activate users and make otherwise unreachable audiences available to advertisers – without compromising consumer privacy.

These direct relationships provide another pathway for publishers to make desired audiences available to advertisers. They also shift power away from the data-driven duopoly and place the power back in the publishers’ hands. Publishers’ position to maximize their trusted relationship with audiences provides a viable alternative to third parties that exist only to commoditize publisher content and data.

Consumers’ increasing methods of protecting their own privacy are, ultimately, a positive for the industry – especially for publishers with strong first-party data practices. But this brighter future can only be embraced if we acknowledge the need to invest in those practices and ensure consumer data is treated responsibly.

About the author

Aarti Suri is a Product Marketing Manager at Permutive. Aarti has worked in the marketing, advertising and communications space for over 10 years, this includes experience working with OOH, Media Owners, Ad-Tech and in SaaS businesses. An advocate for a more inclusive industry, Aarti is a mentor and member of Bloom.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Audience experience: The missing piece of the ad quality puzzle

The marriage of convenience between programmatic advertising and digital media is not over. Publishers must remain vigilant as deceptive, irrelevant ad experiences easily damage audience acquisition, retention, and engagement.  

Credibility is the new currency 

Trust is a crucial element in the user-publisher relationship. Daily run-ins with bad ads devalue publishers’ brands in the eyes of users. Online audiences have become increasingly wary of off-brand and unsafe ads, which makes them lose faith in publishers’ ability to ensure valuable experiences.

For incremental revenue, some publishers give up white space for a function that adds little value for audiences—and may remove value. More than three-quarters of publishers face ad quality challenges that impact user experience on their sites. Six out of 10 publishers reported that ad quality challenges have negatively impacted revenue. These ads frustrate users and reduce time spent reading content by 45%. 

Clickbait is one of the most frustrating forms of advertising and 56% of publishers have identified clickbait ads on their sites. We identified the five most prevalent clickbait scams served through publishers’ websites: financial scams, misleading product offers, brand infringement, tech support scams, and forced browser notifications. It’s no surprise that ads like this drive audiences away.

If you’re not listening to your audience, someone else will

Not only are many ad experiences unsafe, they’ve also become less relevant because they’re based on guesswork. Publishers set their ad quality policies based on assumed audience preferences. However, assumptions don’t make for adequate quality control. Unfortunately, this  means that publishers often serve ads and brands that are inappropriate for their audience, which leads to user churn and a tarnished reputation.

In the era of fake news and crumbling cookies, publishers must continually work to better understand audiences and maintain ongoing two-way communication. Since there’s no universal guide for what makes a “good” or “bad” ad, publishers must define what a bad ad looks like for their unique audience.

It’s time to implement new ways to listen to your audience. The idea of driving audience feedback isn’t new. It makes sense that in order to better engage your audiences you have to listen to what they want. To do so, publishers require a feedback loop and custom tech controls to maintain their standards. 

Resist the impulse to paint audiences with a broad brush. A user-first approach lets you get specific about your audience’s ad quality preferences and close the feedback loop by allowing audiences to respond to bad ads directly. Publishers require audience feedback, without additional platforms intermediating. For example, AdChoices reports bad ads to Google and any other platform that serves the ads. Audience input creates a framework for consistently relevant and engaging ad experiences. This helps foster a sustainable, profitable ecosystem. 

The sustainable feedback loop: Adapt to constant change

User-first publishers know what their audiences expect and take immediate action to eliminate unwanted ads. Allowing users to report poor experiences doesn’t just increase users’ trust in publishers’ brands. It also differentiates publishers from the competition, setting them apart as truly audience-centric. 

Publishers should follow the following principles: 

  • Eliminate guesswork by closing the feedback loop and learning which ads your users are unhappy with.
  • Fine-tune ad quality policies based on user feedback. Customize and adapt ads to suit your audience as their preferences change.
  • Learn to guide your calls to encourage audience interaction in real-time. As a rule, the more instanuous and simple the better.
  • Create engaging ad experiences for each site. Each of your channels attracts a different audience and you should cater specifically to them.

Stop screaming, start listening 

It’s nearly impossible to regain a user’s trust once the user has been shown an ad that contradicts the publisher’s tone, looks suspicious, or is malicious. This is especially true if the user clicks through to a misleading ad and gets slapped with an offensive site or deceptive scam. Listening to your audience is vital to the success of your long-term monetization strategy. But, listening takes time. Publishers don’t have to start from scratch, real-time ad quality tools eliminate the heavy lifting. When you start listening to users, what you learn will have immense benefits for long-term monetization. 

Remember: Effective communication is a reciprocal process. You never learn anything by talking.

Advertising | Perspectives

Content drives engagement for advertisers. Here’s how to maximize that investment

Once upon a time, product placement was not a dirty word. Advertising was an art. Ads were tasteful, thoughtful, well-designed, and created to be iconic. 

During the 90s, the internet changed everything. And, for better or worse, the internet itself continues to evolve. 

For a long while, data-driven advertising was every marketer’s go to. However, cookie deprecation, legislation and a shift to privacy have altered the advertising playbook. And while new solutions are being proposed to supplant invasive data-driven strategies, there are tried and tested approaches that will work. Chief among them are content and context, which work in tandem to engage audiences and drive advertising success. Here’s how to maximize that investment.

Context and content

Content marketing has been around for some time and has ebbed and flowed in terms of popularity. However, we’ve learned a great deal over the years that reinforces the efficacy of quality content, particularly in the right context.

Contextual targeting is privacy compliant, and consumers enjoy the results more than invasive-feeling 3p targeting. 

  • 69% of US publishers are confident their contextual targeting could replace traditional audience targeting. 
  • At Nativo, we’ve seen  a 34% lift in campaigns using contextually targeted ads in viewable CTR and a 32% lift in average time spent on branded content.

Quality content works. It draws audiences in, hits them at a time of heightened relevance, and works hard to give the consumer what they want when they want it. It builds trust with the consumer base, fosters lifelong relationships, and leads to conversions. 

Drive branded content success

Content is a futureproof strategy to reach and engage a brand’s audience. But how do you ensure that brand content stands out? Here are three simple considerations to help ensure that branded content stands out and, most importantly, drives impact.

1. How is the content being consumed?

Content consumption can be divided into location and frame of mind.

Where is the content being consumed?

Contextual relevance coupled with dynamic creative optimization can help drive success and deliver improved impact compared to traditional targeting. Both strategies should consider the site’s placement, surrounding content, and other cues to properly place and optimize content to align with the reader’s frame of mind.

What is the consumer’s frame of mind?

Are they leisurely browsing content or actively seeking trade-related information? The branded content can either be optimized or have separate branded content campaigns that meet the consumer where they are in the purchase journey. This leads to the next consideration:

2. Where does the branded content sit in the marketing funnel?

Branded content either fits closer to the top of the funnel focused on perception or lower in the funnel, trying to engage to the point of consideration.

Point of perception

Top of funnel or perception strategies can include immersive or high-impact content. Providing viewers with helpful resources that either help identify a problem or support the initial research in the form of simple stories formats to full bleed branded content experiences. Content strategies that support perception include tips, quotes, listicles, quizzes, and other high-level engagement opportunities. A brand’s social media accounts typically provide quick access to this content.

Point of consideration

Branded content suits itself well for mid to lower funnel activities and can include multiple CTAs, product highlights, product informational videos, customer reviews, testimonials, and much more. Brands typically have this content already developed and available on their corporate site and blog.

This content typically exists for publishers to repurpose in branded content campaigns and is a matter of scaling the production and delivery of the content.

3. How do you simplify content production?

The most straightforward way to simplify content production is to repurpose the brand’s existing assets. Blogs, downloadable content, quizzes, listicles, infographics, and even a brand’s social media posts can all be used as a part of a sponsored content program. Either providing a foundation for content production or lead generation activities.

To support scaling direct sales, as we covered previously, publishers should look to implement content technologies that make it easy for your organization to repurpose, build and scale a brand’s content program. 

Ultimately, content and context deliver optimal results for brands and provide publishers with the opportunity to offer premium and strategic advertising offerings. However, it is important to help brands think about their content programs strategically and implement the tools required to scale and optimize campaigns.

Advertising | Featured Post | Policy

What the landmark GDPR fine of the IAB signals for the ad industry

In February of this year, the Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) dropped a bombshell on the ad industry when they ruled that the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in several critical ways. Admittedly, that alphabet soup doesn’t exactly sound like a bombshell.

So, let’s go beyond the acronyms and break down what this means for publishers going forward.

The ruling

First, the basics. The GDPR requires companies to have a valid legal basis tied to a specific purpose before processing any personal data from consumers. The two most popular bases are consent (affirmative and freely given) and legitimate interest (essentially, the benefit to the consumer from the use of their data outweighs the risk). Although it should be noted that Facebook decided to take its own direction by using a contract as its basis, a strategy that is quickly unraveling.

To maintain the free flow of data that currently fuels a wide swath of digital advertising, the IAB created the TCF which allows companies to transfer their legal basis for the data used in the buying and selling of advertising inventory in a real-time bidding format. Under the TCF, a publisher can note whether or not they have a legal basis to process a consumer’s personal data. Then, advertisers and ad tech companies can decide whether to bid on the ability to show an ad to that person.

The Belgian DPA received several complaints, including one from Johnny Ryan at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, that the IAB’s TCF violated the GDPR. In short, the TCF was criticized for facilitating the widespread dissemination of personal data to the entire industry without any real controls on the access, use or auditing of that data. Specifically, the DPA found that:

1. The TCF and the ad tech companies using the TCF were processing a ton of personal data without any legal basis and certainly beyond any legal basis claimed by the publisher.

2. The IAB failed to properly educate consumers given the complexity of the data processing.

3. The IAB deployed no technical measures to limit unauthorized access to personal data.

4. The IAB was operating as a controller of data and, thus, should have kept a register of activities, appointed a data protection officer and conducted a data protection impact assessment.

The DPA ruled the TCF invalid and fined the IAB 250,000 Euro per day. The IAB is currently appealing in the hopes of making small changes to satisfy regulators. However, many insiders are skeptical that the IAB’s proposals will suffice. The fundamental problem is that the current ad industry is built on the ability to collect and share consumer data at will and at scale. And GDPR enforcers want meaningful change with meaningful protections for consumers. This approach to maintain status quo simply does not satisfy that requirement.

Impact on data-centric ad businesses

Let’s assume that the Belgian and other European regulators win on appeal and the TCF is required to undergo major changes. What does that mean for the ad marketplace, for real time bidding and for publishers?

For starters, ad marketplaces will be required to handle consumer data more carefully. Allowing free-for-all access to consumer personal data by any company that agrees to the terms of service just won’t fly. They may need to deploy technical measures to mask personal data and/or limit access to only those companies with a sound legal basis.

Of course, this could be a problem for some of the IAB’s biggest members and hundreds of ad tech intermediaries, which are dependent upon the ability to profile consumers silently across the web. However, should a more consumer-friendly, less data-invasive approach win out, advertisers will need to learn to rely far less third party data. The certainly won’t want to open themselves up to liability for using illegally-sourced personal data.

Marketplaces and the shifting data market

The second major impact will be on the organizations that run marketplaces. The IAB attempted to craft a framework which would save the status quo of third-party, behaviorally targeted advertising because that is the moneymaker for its biggest members and the sea of intermediaries who mine and resell access to user profile data as a core business model. However, a fine of 250,000 Euro per day is likely too rich even for the dominant platforms.

Going forward, organizations that want to offer automated ad marketplaces will have to institute more controls and assume greater liability. There is a real question as to whether any organization will want to take on that role certainly for the entire industry. It’s far more likely (at least in the short term) that smaller organizations will stand up marketplaces with segments of industry.

CPRA follows suit

Third, the issues at play on the European landscape are likely to play out similarly on the California coastline. California regulators have just recently proposed a set of draft regulations for compliance with the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). Starting next year, the collection and use of Californians’ personal data will be regulated in ways that are very similar to European law. Whatever solutions emerge to satisfy European regulators will have a very good chance of satisfying California regulators.

Future focused

Undoubtedly, the IAB faces significant pressure from its most powerful members such as Google and Facebook and the long-tail of adtech solution companies. Given that their businesses have been built on the ability to collect data (even off-platform, when consumers do not expect it), they are deeply invested in finding a way to comply with emerging regulations in a way that ultimately allows them to continue their business more or less as usual. In Europe, their strategy has been to put off any major interruption to their massive data-collection-and-use model for as long as possible.

But these businesses that have dominated the digital advertising market do not represent the only way of doing business. While regulation certainly changes the market, it does not inherently change things for the worse.

In fact, I’ll leave you with a feel-good fact: A revamped and GDPR/CPRA compliant ad marketplace could elevate premium publishers. They enjoy trusted, direct relationships with consumers. Instead of a wild west marketplace where all kinds of actors stake dubious claims of proper legal bases, the premium publishers, which are on far more solid legal ground, would be in a strong position of controlling access to a limited supply of consumers.

Advertising | Perspectives

4 challenges to leveraging attention in a programmatic world

Attention economy is arguably the ad industry buzzword for 2022. Publishers and brands have realized that they need to move beyond traditional viewability metrics to focus on how a user is interacting with content in the moment.

In simple terms, there’s a measurement gap between what is viewable and what is viewed. But how simple is it to leverage attention through programmatic data?

Here, we take a look at four common challenges to extracting programmatic insights.

1. Analyzing metrics that matter

Let’s imagine a line graph, with a steadily increasing curve representing the volume of online content over time, while a flat line represents the time a user has to consume it. The gap between those lines describes the attention deficit.

A few years ago, viewability metrics (e.g. video completion rate, dwell time) became the accepted way of measuring the performance of online content. However, as Playground xyz’s CEO Rob Hall describes, as the attention deficit widens, standard viewability metrics are fast becoming “preconditions for [online content]. But really, they’re more hygiene factors.”

And while hygiene factors are important, publishers are now looking to dig deeper into engagement by using attention metrics, such as attention time or active time in view.

Attention metrics can be measured in different ways. These include as scroll rate, scroll depth, touch rate and cursor position. All of these can show how the user is interacting with the page when the content is in view. Crucially, they also reveal whether they are interacting with the content itself.

Taking this one step further, publishers are also beginning to use advanced image-streaming technology that detects when a user is zooming in on content, or viewing it in full-screen mode.

Just like viewability data, attention data can have a significant steer on programmatic advertising. By making the leap to include attention metrics in the mix, publishers can serve more relevant content programmatically, optimizing the experience for users.

2. Getting close enough to real-time data

According to Lumen Research, the key to analyzing engagement is to create a predictive model of attention to content that can be used to inform programmatic bidding in real time. ​​By collecting huge volumes of impression data on visual attention, they have created a powerful model that can project how much attention an ad or a piece of content is likely to receive.

The reality is that many publishers are still reliant on data platforms that refresh data sources once a day at best. But by switching to more advanced tools, they can get access to much fresher data than ever before. For instance, they might use software that refreshes the data every few hours. Once they have real-time attention data, they can then look to build more advanced data models based on predictive analytics.

Armed with this vast (and ever-growing) pool of fresh data, publishers can extract more relevant insights for more effective programmatic advertising based on user attention. However, analyzing data at scale can be laborious and error prone without the right tools in place.

3. Extracting programmatic insights at scale

Some larger publishers handle petabytes of impression data each day. That’s a heck of a lot of data from which to extract useful insights. Until now, publishers have faced the daunting task of building out their own strategic data asset. But this can take months, if not quarters, before their business teams can get to the data they need.

Thankfully, there are heavy-duty data unification tools on the market that can handle growing volumes of data with ease, providing business teams with the bespoke reports they need, while freeing up engineering teams for other business-critical projects.

But, of course, it’s not just about scale. It’s also about versatility.

4. Blending different reports for a holistic view

Having access to large data sets is no use if they remain in silos. For instance, while drilling down into programmatic data is important, so too is having a holistic, blended view of all ad spend. Likewise, inventory yield reports should provide up-to-date reporting across all digital revenue channels including display, mobile, CTV, social, DOOH, etc.

However, for many publishers, generating these high-level reports is still a challenge. It takes too much time and effort to manually aggregate the disparate datasets. And then it takes even more time to build custom reports that are accurate and speedy enough for business teams to act upon.

Get the tech to do the heavy lifting

The speed at which today’s media teams are expected to build, measure and optimize programmatic campaigns to remain competitive is daunting. But it is not impossible.

Whether choosing the right metrics, accessing the data in real time, or bringing together disparate data sets at scale, implementing automation tools to do the heavy lifting will give publishers the confidence – and the time – to focus on user attention. Only then will they start to drive more meaningful ROI for their brand advertisers.

About the author

Navid Nassiri joined Switchboard as Head of Marketing in 2021. Switchboard’s data engineering automation platform aggregates disparate data at scale, reliably and in real-time, to make better business decisions. In his role at Switchboard, Navid is focused on driving growth and brand awareness through innovative marketing strategies. Navid is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive, including leadership roles at PwC and NBCUniversal.

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