Category results for "Advertising"

4 Ways publishers can invest in accountability to build revenue in 2022

February 18, 2022 Dave Constantino, VP of Client Development – Oracle Advertising

Spending on programmatic advertising is set to hit $133.04 billion in 2023, representing over 90% of display advertising, according to eMarketer. This rise in programmatic advertising presents publishers with a new challenge. While spending increases, so do the estimates around the cost of ad fraud. Publishers must exert more control over inventory than ever before if they aim to maintain customer trust while being a part of the programmatic marketplace. The good news is, providing a trustworthy, fraud-free environment for advertisers can be what sets you apart from the competition.

Certainly, achieving transparency with advertising partners remains a persistent industry challenge. However, there are also few ways that publishers can maximize their opportunity for monetization while building audience trust and meeting the needs of advertisers. Let’s look at a few and what they may involve.

Pay attention to bad actors and ensure fraud-free experiences 

It seems like an obvious criterion, but advertisers and agencies need to ensure real people see their ads. Delivering quality impressions and identifying any invalid traffic is table stakes for publishers who want to build trust with advertisers.

In the past, attempts to prevent invalid traffic (IVT) have been tedious at best, and, at worst, horribly ineffective. To be genuinely effective at blocking IVT, publishers need intelligent solutions to identify patterns associated with malicious bot activity. Your solutions should do this without slowing download times or exposing consumers’ personally identifying information (PII). This is how you truly stay ahead of the game.

Commit to responsible media 

We can all agree that getting brand safety right is essential—that value transcends across the ecosystem. The right technology needs to be in place to safeguard brand reputation while also being nuanced enough to allow access to quality inventory. Having the right tools in place will instill advertisers with confidence that working with you is an efficient and responsible investment decision.

However, brand safety is about so much more than avoiding inappropriate or non-brand-aligned content. Establishing a marketing strategy that brings brand values into the equation has increased importance, especially when it comes to reaching younger audiences. Curating packages in line with advertiser values (such as diversity, social initiatives, and environmental impact) will make you a more attractive partner overall. Publishers that support and maintain responsible media practices demonstrate integrity and care for audiences by doing what they can to avoid potentially damaging exposures.

Work with reliable tools you have now

Faced with an economy overwhelmed by COVID-19 and web traffic spread across a variety of devices and channels, more than 70% of advertisers feel they need to simplify management of programmatic budgets to have more inventory control. To meet the challenges of rapid declines in revenue during pandemic-caused turmoil, publishers cannot wait idly for the next technological innovation. In fact, conditions like these create opportunities to plan how to lower expenses and optimize value.

For example, take a look at the tools you currently have at your disposal and determine if you are truly getting the maximum value. Connect with your partners, revisit best practices, and uncover new features that you may have missed or metrics you may not have paid much attention to before. Measuring attention meaningfully goes beyond simple verification metrics—such as valid, safe, and viewable—to more nuanced metrics that can provide deeper and more tailored performance metrics that can set you apart from your competition.

Moving targets: establish dynamic pricing to deal with flux

When the average cost of an ad impression falls precipitously due to high supply and low demand, as they did in early 2020, ad revenues creep lower as well. In January and February of 2020, the price of an impression fell by almost 28% compared to 2019. To cope with these changes, effective publishers employ dynamic pricing methods that incorporate bid analysis.

By leveraging learnings to set minimum pricing rules per device, content category, type of bidding, advertiser, and other parameters, publishers can address growing demand and fierce competition. Even under the most challenging circumstances, ad revenue can rise if publishers continuously analyze the bids they receive for ad space and create opportunities to set minimum prices—between fill-rate and revenue—that reflect customer demand.

New measures of success

As an industry we are increasingly looking toward new measures of success and a commitment to the responsible media strategies that inform them. Human, viewable, and brand-safe data still sets the baseline for core measurement, but true brand effectiveness requires further evolution.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How broadcasters can turn Advanced TV to their advantage

February 14, 2022 Virginie Dremeaux, Vice President, Marketing and Communications, International – FreeWheel

Changes to media consumption habits mean that audiences are consuming more than linear TV and subscription services. Today’s audiences are tuning in to a broad range of connected TV (CTV), broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD), and advertising-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) services, which all fall under the umbrella of Advanced TV. As a result, marketer interest in this medium and the highly engaged viewers that flock to it are on the rise. But this raises an important question: What’s in it for the broadcasters?

As a medium that can expand the reach of linear TV and make premium video environments accessible to digital-native advertisers, Advanced TV holds strong potential in the media landscape. As Katie Coteman, Vice President, Advertising and Partnerships at Discovery, put it, during The Future of TV Advertising Global event: “some of the bigger, usual advertisers were pulling away [from TV advertising during the pandemic] so it was a great time to encourage new advertisers to TV.”

Recent research conducted by FreeWheel* into key European markets uncovered what’s driving this shift and the growth in Advanced TV. The research also explored further opportunities that broadcasters should seize.

Advanced TV is well-placed to maintain a growth momentum

Almost three-quarters (73%) of the European marketers surveyed intend to boost their Advanced TV spend in 2022, an increase more than double that of global marketing budgets. In the UK, CTV and VOD in particular were forecast to grow 9.2% and 8.2% respectively by respondents in the region.

So, what’s feeding this appetite for Advanced TV? Content and accessibility.

A previous survey by FreeWheel and Happydemics in four European** countries found that CTV users watch an average of two to three BVOD or AVOD services. This highlights both the continued fragmentation of the TV landscape and the rising viewer demand for quality video content. In response, marketers are keen to make Advanced TV an even more integral part of their media plans.

Broadcasters stand to gain from this trend and can tap into the high levels of marketer confidence for 2022. Doing so requires a deeper understanding of buyer needs, so that broadcasters can support marketing objectives and heighten the value of their premium video inventory.

What are marketers looking for from Advanced TV campaigns?

As revealed in FreeWheel’s “Advanced TV Uncovered” study, the European advertisers and agencies surveyed are prioritizing upper-funnel marketing goals, with 59% looking to strengthen customer acquisition. What’s more, 49% are focused on growing revenue and 37% are committed to improving customer loyalty.

These three priorities rank as the most important for 2022, mirroring those of 2021 and indicating that marketers are deeply invested in their current objectives. Cross-screen targeting opportunities are also a key motivator for Advanced TV growth, meaning broadcasters that support these capabilities can win ad budgets by helping marketers leverage premium video environments to boost campaign reach and personalization.

For example, advanced audience targeting is the top accelerator overall for investment in the medium, as claimed by 50% of advertisers and 42% of agencies who took part in the research. Being an ecosystem that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies (which will soon be retired), Advanced TV’s effective and privacy-compliant targeting techniques could be a key accelerator for growth. For broadcasters, these targeting solutions ensure they seamlessly deliver ads that improve the personalized viewing experience while respecting user privacy. Looking ahead, maintaining the quality of the content as well as audience trust in Advanced TV will be highly important.

How can broadcasters continue to capture this growth?

With audience consumption patterns diversifying, it’s becoming critical to unify advertising across all screens. Developing measurement capabilities will be central to this, as 40% of respondents consider the ability to monitor ROI — such as customer acquisition, lead generation, and uplift to web traffic — as a top priority.

Broadcasters have the opportunity to work together to progress the ecosystem, as they are in a strong position to use deterministic data sets and advanced solutions that monitor cross-screen performance. By building a shared language and aligning on metrics, broadcasters may make the most of all their premium inventory, both linear and digital. As a result, digital-native brands could be further encouraged to expand Advanced TV’s place in their media mix. Harmonized measurement tools will enable effective media planning and impactful campaign optimization for marketers, attracting greater investments.

The strong optimism in Advanced TV is making it a promising part of the media landscape for 2022. Broadcasters can use their in-depth understanding of content and audiences to help marketers deliver addressable, targeted campaigns across screens. By uniting their efforts, they can progress measurement solutions, standardisation, and increase the value of premium video inventory, allowing them to reap the benefits of viewer adoption of Advanced TV.

* in collaboration with CoLab Media Consulting between 23 July and 2 August 2021 in: UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

** UK, DE, IT, FR

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

The role of ad quality in the post-trust era

February 11, 2022 Tobias Silber, CBO – GeoEdge

Publishers have long understood that user experience and monetization go hand in hand. So it only makes sense to examine the impact of ad quality on experience and, by extension, on monetization.

According to our research, more than three-quarters of publishers (76%) say user experience on their sites has been impacted by ad quality challenges. What’s more, 66% say poor ad quality has affected their revenue. It’s clear that user experience and ad experiences are one and the same in the eyes of the audience. So why should digital publishers see it any differently?

Maintaining user trust in a post-trust-era

Few publishers are spared the burden of poor ad quality, hitting them where it hurts most—audience trust. Digital advertising is often characterized by clickbait, as well as deceptive and offensive advertising. These days, the audience sits at the most vulnerable position in advertising as digital scams and fraud run rampant. But they are also the most powerful element in the digital ad ecosystem, determining the success or failure of a publisher’s business.

Along with sensitive ad categories, publishers should be wary of ads touting misleading product offers, financial scams, and brand infringement. It may seem that programmatic monetization automatically translates into poor ad quality, but publishers should understand that there is a better alternative. Quality advertising can reinforce a positive user experience, benefit a publisher’s relationship with the audience, and serve as a differentiator within a crowded market.

The first step is to acknowledge the need to shift your approach to one that puts the user first.

What it means to be a user-first publisher

Implementing a user-first approach is vital to ensuring a positive experience and safeguarding programmatic as a strategic revenue channel. But not every publisher who says they take a user-first approach actually does.

In 2022, publishers that want to differentiate themselves must offer a user experience that surpasses the standard—and user expectations—because audiences see bad ads as more than a red flag. Beyond being simply annoying, bad ads send a message that a publisher doesn’t value its users. In fact, nearly half of publishers claim that poor ad quality impacts the lifetime value of visitors to their sites. Our researchers found fewer than 10% of users who experience bad ads even let publishers know. The vast majority churn silently. They leave the site, end their subscription, and opt for the competition, leaving publishers wondering what went wrong.

To uphold truth-in-advertising, bad ads cannot appear on the page in the first place. This is the only way to exceed audience expectations, ensure user protection, and maintain user trust. Our research revealed less than a quarter of publishers who serve programmatic ads claim they have total transparency regarding the ads that come through those channels. Unless programmatic platforms can reign in bad ads, scams will continue to plague publishers and their audiences.

Making technology work for you and your audience

Publishers are the obvious choice to determine brand suitability. They set the standard for ads that meet their site’s content and audience expectations. After all, publishers know their audiences best. To ensure a high-quality user experience, technology must be used to provide complete transparency and control for publishers.

We found that a staggering 80% of publishers say brand suitability enhances audience trust and ensures confidence. Real-time tech should provide publishers maximum granularity enabling internal teams to define the standards for what is and isn’t allowed on their site.

Publishers require dynamic, real-time tools that proactively ensure brand suitability standards across programmatic channels most susceptible to bad ads. Though it is important to remember that, while high standards for brand suitability can be maintained with technology, the technology itself must be reliable.

Thinking forward (not one step back)

A user protection approach can’t simply involve putting out fires. A positive and trustworthy user experience is at the heart of audience loyalty—and it requires a proactive approach.

Trust in advertising requires truth in advertising. To put users first, publishers cannot compromise on user protection. Publishers must synchronize their user protection strategy with their business objectives by using a technology-based ad quality strategy.

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation | Policy | Revenue

Regulation, revenue, and relationships top of mind at the 2022 DCN Next: Summit

February 7, 2022 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Held virtually January 31-February 3, the 20^th annual members-only DCN Next: Summit was a gathering of digital content companies from all over the world.

CEO Jason Kint opened the event by offering his perspective on how the last few years have underscored the need for quality information. He also reinforced the need for trust, particularly as we move toward web3. “Where people have choice and a competitive market, where they spend their time, attention and relationships, trust will matter. Trust matters more than ever,” Kint explained.

Keynotes and discussion sessions touched on subscriptions, paywalls and reader revenue, video, film, audio strategy, and AI. The event also explored the political and technical forces shaping the media landscape today, with sessions focusing on cookies, identity, trust, privacy, and platforms.

The personal is political, and platforms

The opening keynote featured 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa speaking with investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr. They discussed platforms and the critical role a free press plays in healthy democracies. As Ressa put it, “Until technology gets guardrails around it, until we get to the point where the platforms that deliver the news are redesigned so that lies laced with anger and hate do not spread faster and further than facts, journalists will be under attack.”

Investigative Journalist Carole Cadwalladr in conversation with Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler

Platform concerns and necessary regulation arose again throughout the event, notably in Thursday’s final keynote. Attendees heard from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, mere hours after a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights hearing.

Klobuchar, who has been working to hold big tech platform accountable, provided an update on the bipartisan antitrust app store bill that just went through committee, as well as other bills she’s leading. “We just had an incredible vote on a bill that Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn and I … put out a few months ago on app stores: 21 to 1,” she said.

The bipartisan legislation, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would enable news organizations to collectively negotiate terms with platforms to provide fair compensation for news content. Klobuchar told attendees, “The big issue is advertising money and fair compensation. These companies are sucking up the ad dollars using the original content that you produce and they’re using the data they collect from your audiences to compete against you.”

Chris Pedigo SVP, Legal Affairs of Digital Content Next, interviews Senator Amy Klobuchar

First-party data and identity

Unsurprisingly, the upcoming deprecation of the third-party cookie was a topic of much discussion at this year’s summit. The change has destabilized the advertising ecosystem. Experts discussed how to prepare for the post-cookie reality and how publishers could invest in their first-party data.

To prepare for the post-cookie reality, Rachel Parkin, CafeMedia’s EVP, Sales and Strategy, suggested publishers strengthen relationships with advertisers and build up their arsenals and come up with the right framework for identity and authentication for users and content.

TRUSTX CEO David Kohl suggested that publishers, by acting as a group to create scale, can create competitive advantage. ” We are in transition and there’s tremendous chaos in identity and audience data. But here’s the thing: Chaos creates opportunity,” he said. “And the question is, how can publishers take the lead in organizing the chaos? How can we band together? It is time to create an ‘easy button’ for scale.”

Another session discussed how publishers are leveraging consent-based visitor relationship data sources to fuel monetization as the industry moves forward into a cookie-less future. David Rowley, senior director data and identity products at News Corp. said they feel first party data is going to be one of the most important assets to a publisher. News Corp is assessing what’s out there for external identity solutions, Rowley said, and building out a proprietary identity solution.

“Publishers use so many different types of technology, DMPs, CDPs, analytics platforms, you name it, all of them spit out and create their own identifiers. Being able to stitch all of those together to have a unified view of a user is critical, so you can have that one-on-one relationship with a user,” he said.

People and empathy

Another theme that echoed through the conference was that of managing during these difficult times. As Agnes Chu, president of Condé Nast Entertainment remarked, “I think it’s hard to drive change during a time where people are experiencing so much anxiety themselves.”

Lindsay Peoples Wagner, editor-in-chief of The Cut, outlined that it’s important for leadership to have and bring a sense of empathy. Leaders must “be able to step outside of yourself and understand that, yes, we’re all employees and work at a company, but we’re human beings,” Peoples Wagner said. “People, especially in the past couple years, have had a really hard time with mental health or their family issues or being sick. It’s important to understand, I think, that people may need time, and that push and pull as a manager, I think is more important than ever.”

Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director of DCN interviews Lindsay Peoples Wagner, Editor of The Cut

The biggest shift for TripAdvisor’s Christine Maguire when the pandemic hit, was from building products to empathy. “I had to sort of take a step back and realize where everybody was in their journey,” she said. “Having empathy for what goes on in their day to day is so important, because oftentimes we come in to make a change when there is a problem, and that’s too late.”

The future of work

The newsroom of the future may look nothing like the pre-pandemic one. Indeed, as publishers move forward, they’re stepping into a future which doesn’t look much like the past. There’s upside, such as the ability to create more flexible working situations, which facilitates broader recruiting.

However, as author Anne Helen Petersen noted, when companies allow their employees to live anywhere and work any time, they may run into a lot of sticky situations.

“The larger question that a lot of companies are dealing with is if we say that people can have really flexible work schedules and can go in when it is most convenient for them, are we also going to put stipulations on the states or countries where they can live,” she said. “Are we going to say that they get into New York within the day, that they take the train in? Is that okay? Or are we going to say that it’s one flight away? What are our boundaries?”

The future of the industry

On the last day of the summit, Co-founder and CEO of Insider Henry Blodget and Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson engaged in a spitfire conversation about the digital media industry. They discussed the complicated relationship with platforms, new technologies like AI, NFTs and blockchain, and made predictions for web3.

Blodget was optimistic about the future of local news. However, he sees a different scenario play out for others going forward. As the industry evolves, he thinks there will be three to five big generalists, a bunch of targeted specialist publications that serve a particular niche, and everyone else is in the middle.

Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson in conversation with Henry Blodget Co-founder & CEO of Insider

“I do think we’re all going to face pressure and there’s going to be a lot more consolidation because there are enormous returns to scale,” Thompson replied. “We see that every day with The New York Times, when they roll out some cool new tech feature that they can spread across their 10 million subscribers.”

“Let us just acknowledge that The New York Times is Netflix of journalism,” Blodget said. “My view is in five to 10 years, they will have 25 million subscribers and they will still be growing strong and they will become one of the most powerful English language journalism publications in the world. And the rest of us are gonna have to find places to carve out what is left.”

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Navigating the new identity era: Why preparation is key

February 3, 2022 Jessica Werner, Senior Director, Publisher Development – ID5

If history has taught us anything, it’s that there are always lessons to be learned and mindsets to be shifted. If you’ve been in the digital advertising industry for any length of time, you’ll likely know there’s no shortage of lessons to go around.

The world of advertising has rapidly evolved over the years keeping publishers, advertisers, and adtech partners alike on their toes every step of the way. The latest evolution is that of user targeting and how we can continue to properly identify and address who our audience is in real and meaningful ways.

Identity in perspective

This brings us to the era of privacy and transparency, where identity was ultimately born. Although they emerged circa 2017, identity platforms are still somewhat of a foreign concept when it comes to overall strategy. Conveniently enough, there have been a number of postponed deadlines making it easier to rationalize resisting the adoption of said identity solutions. However, that mindset is worth debating. While we’ve been given a bit of a reprieve, it’s time to get started.

An important moment in history we can all gain perspective from is when Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content from family and friends while shying away from news publishers and brands. The problem with that sudden change was that publishers weren’t properly warned and consequently, weren’t able to properly prepare. Those that had all their eggs in one basket (who relied primarily on Facebook as their main or only traffic acquisition source) were quick to feel the impact of change. Within a month’s time, there were a number of publishers closing their doors or handing the keys over to a new buyer.

This story isn’t meant to instill fear, but rather share the importance of taking advantage of this privileged time to find where best to move your eggs. Just as you would with any other programmatic advertising strategy, that of identity needs proper time to ramp up allowing for testing and adjustments where needed.

Time to start

For publishers, this means finding the right identity solutions to begin testing with to secure what your favored identity stack looks like. In other words, think about who you’ll be working with and how you’ll be working with them. It also means giving buyers time to adapt and adjust. Just as buyers’ algorithms need time to adjust to changes in ad layouts, ad placements, ad stacks, and new users, buyers need up to eight months to adapt to new identity solutions as we transition into a post-cookie world.

Securing an identity platform alone isn’t enough. There needs to be a clear plan of action in place from initial integration to ongoing optimizations. You will need to ensure you have coverage for both authenticated as well as unauthenticated traffic. You’ll want to confirm that the partners you currently have running in your ad stack are compatible with the identity provider you’re working with so there’s no missed connections. And you should evaluate and re-evaluate what sort of audience segmenting you have in place and what it is that makes your users valuable. This is why you must do your due diligence and look into what each provider has to offer ahead of time.

Remember that this is very much so a team effort as we collectively migrate into the new world of identity, with publishers leading the charge. The sooner publishers fully roll out and adopt identity as the new currency, the sooner buyers can finesse their bidding logic. Each player has their own unique responsibility when it comes to fully scaling out efforts and getting this right, with the power falling into the publisher’s hands.

Yes, we’ve gotten the luxury of notice, and a bit more time. But don’t waste it. Preparation is critical and collaboration is necessary. If you’re not sure where to start, begin by taking stock of your current dependencies, evaluate the market, and identify a handful of providers to start integrating with. Once in motion, the rest is history!

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

What 2021’s CPG ad trends tell us about the 2022 forecast

January 24, 2022 Todd Krizelman, CEO – MediaRadar

The last two years have been unpredictable for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. In 2020, Covid-19 and pandemic-induced shortages realigned consumer shopping behavior and caused marketers to pull or pause campaigns. These unprecedented changes had a cascading impact on publishers with millions of ad dollars lost and considerable resources exhausted to cater to the shifts. 

Unfortunately, the coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on CPG well into 2021. The second half of the year — and the holiday period, in particular — was hurt by supply chain challenges. Long, unpredictable delivery times, and low inventory left brands and consumers scrambling. To complicate the situation even further, all of this occurred while overall consumer spending was on the rise, widening the gap between supply and demand. 

As we embark on what is sure to be another challenging year, MediaRadar wants to understand market headwinds for publishers who rely on ad dollars from CPG brands. So, we looked at our U.S. data, and here’s what we found. 

How did the CPG market shift in 2021?

As a result of the pandemic, online shopping for groceries and toiletries — staples of brick-and-mortar convenience stores and drug chains — has normalized. Significantly, an impressive 45% of consumers report shopping online for groceries. That trend will only continue, driven by convenience and safety on the consumer side.

“Ecommerce will be the key battleground for CPG brand growth over the coming years,” says Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith, and the numbers are bearing this prediction out. Another driver of increased online shopping is CPG brands getting into more direct online sales. Clorox, Nestle, Ocean Spray, and others are launching or investing in web-based DTC offerings amid the pandemic. These same CPGs are also increasing their social activations with live streaming and live shopping options in the U.S., to build direct relationships with a growing cohort of online shoppers. 

Where are the ad dollars going? 

With more CPG brands shifting focus to ecommerce sales versus brick-and-mortar channels, our analysis reveals that ad spend is following. Comparing media spend in 2019 to 2021 through November, here is what we saw: 

Print spending is down by over half (53%), totaling $970 million in 2021 versus 2.08 billion in 2019. TV is also down by 16%. Spend totals topped $3.1 billion in 2021 compared to roughly $3.7 billion in 2019. 

Digital, however, grew like gangbusters and is up an eye-popping 742% over the last two years. Spending last year approached $1.6 billion ($1.59 billion) while 2019 saw investments sit at just $189 million. The growth speaks to changing strategies for CPGs, who are investing more and more in online sales. 

CPG ad spend has fallen

Even with the exploding online spend, CPG ad spend has steadily decreased since 2019, and is now down 6%. Digging deeper, we see that 2021 CPG ad spend is down ~1% from 2020 to $5.7 billion, while 2020 dropped 5% from the previous, pre-COVID year. Pandemic-driven sensitivities and supply chain challenges are likely the causes of this downshift, as advertising adjusts to stay in line with available supply — or adapts to mitigate shortages.

Unsurprisingly, TV stays on top

Overall, spendings on TV ads still tops other media and remains hugely popular among CPGs for brand lift. Even as consumers spent more time with entertainment apps, TV still owned 55% of all ad spend in 2021 at $3.1 billion. However, digital overtook print as the second most popular medium, with spend at $1.6 billion. 

Changes in monthly ad spending

Note the month-to-month changes as there were decreases with ad spend in February (-16%) and November (-18%) and increases in April (+16%) and May (+13%) as a result of CPG companies reacting to supply chain challenges and leveraging data to react to consumers’ needs.

The top CPG advertisers

According to our analysis over the last three years, the number of CPG advertisers grew annually: 9,329 in 2019; 9,666 in 2020; 12,300 in 2021. This rise was due, in part, to companies who didn’t advertise previously starting to advertising in 2021. (Such as Beautcella offering DERM iNSTITUTE and The Naked Bee.)

Top spenders remained unchanged from pre-pandemic all the way through 2021: L’Oreal, The Hershey Co, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. These companies account for more than a quarter (28%) of the overall 2021 category spend. While each brand’s total spend is down YoY, they all experienced growth in digital. L’Oreal, Hershey and Unilever saw increased digital advertising more than 100% YoY. With each, we witnessed large video and Facebook buys adjusting to consumer buying patterns. 

What’s next for CPG in 2022?

We believe that CPG companies will continue to reshape portfolios with DTC offerings and investment. They’ll also continue to zero in on health-conscious lines to support changing consumer demands. Ad spend distribution will likely shift in tandem, with more budget allocated to digital and social media. To win those open web dollars and compete with the walled gardens of Meta, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok, publishers should emphasize in-demand formats like video and OTT.  As livestreaming continues to grow, advertisers are reconsidering how they can approach their marketing efforts through this medium to help create brand awareness and increase sales.

Overall, there have been many changes within the CPG advertising space. These include navigating external factors like supply chain issues as well as a changing marketplace. Ecommerce and digital advertising are a necessity within this space as consumers shop online more than ever before. While top CPG advertisers remain the same as in previous years, their tactics are shifting. Publishers need to keep a close eye on these trends to understand how to best serve the changing needs of these potential advertisers.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Prospering in the increasingly dangerous open programmatic market

January 21, 2022 Gavin Dunaway, Product Marketing – The Media Trust

It was a fourth quarter to remember…and a fourth quarter to forget. The main reason to remember is so other Q4s will look positively luminous in comparison. I’m not just talking about the wrath of Omicron, which ruined holidays for countless families and continues to cause illness, death, and emotional distress across the globe. I’m talking about an alarming rise in malvertising that endangers publisher revenue and consumers’ online safety.

As publishers struggle more than ever to balance user experience and monetization, the perils of the open programmatic marketplace require higher levels of vigilance, lest audiences be lost in a storm of malware. Let’s explore the factors behind the rise in malvertising and what publishers can do to combat its impact.

Malware incidents on the rise

*While malvertising typically subsides in the fourth quarter with higher inventory prices, Q4 2021 malware levels were disturbingly high.*

In the digital ecosystem, The Media Trust detected a 64% increase in malware incidents during the final quarter of 2021 — which can account for thousands of impressions or hits — as compared to the same time period in 2020. And 2020 levels were already high as the programmatic marketplace struggled to snap back during the early days of the pandemic.

Malvertising levels this high at the end of the year are unusual. It typically subsides a bit in the fourth quarter. Because increased advertiser demand enables publishers to increase CPMs and raise programmatic floors most malvertisers are priced out of the market.

However, Q4 2021’s record malware numbers weren’t the result of a few blanket attacks. The industry was assaulted by a wide variety of malicious code and content:

Redirects peaked in October, growing 170% over the course of the year.
In November, Digital media was awash in FizzCore, a notorious form of malicious clickbait that employs cloaking technology to hide its devious content. The amount of FizzCore detected grew 9X over two months.
An outbreak of fake antivirus/software update ads also hit hard in November, marking a 50% rise since the beginning of the year.
E-skimming typically increases in Q4 as bad actors hunt for consumer credit cards, but the amount detected in Q4 2021 was 63% higher than the year prior.
Scam ads, which surged in 2021 and made up nearly a third of malware in the space, stayed high and ticked up an extra 9% in December — nearly exceeding the summer peak.

A most malicious year

*While 2020 saw a surge in malvertising caused by advertisers’ pandemic pullback, the amount of malware in the digital ecosystem in 2021 has been dramatically higher.*

Unfortunately, these numbers are representative of 2021 as whole, where malware simply exploded. The Media Trust’s Digital Security and Operations team managed an average 2,210 malware incidents daily. That’s a 64% increase over 2020 and well above the ~1,000 historical average. During the summer — the height of the 2021 malware blitz — average daily malware incidents stayed above 3,000.

Overall, The Media Trust identified 26,664 new malware incidents in 2021, a ~30% increase over the number cataloged in 2020. And our creative blocker, Media Filter, halted four times more malware than in the year prior.

The proliferation of malvertising is simply breathtaking.

What’s behind the rise in malvertising

Certainly the 2020 surge in malvertising followed advertisers’ pause in spend; bad ads flooded the programmatic advertising space as publishers lowered floors to grab whatever revenue they could. But even as the pandemic drags on and on, programmatic markets seem to have rebounded. So, what’s behind this incredible 2021 surge in malware?

First, from a programming perspective, the malvertising barrier to entry is very low. The dark web is full of malware kits for sale including turnkey phishing solutions and the ever-popular ransomware-as-a-service. There’s a whole black market ecosystem for selling pilfered data and access to infected devices — and often no legal repercussions for bad actors (though there were some impressive arrests in 2021).

Secondly, research from eMarketer found that private marketplaces account for more RTB spend than the open programmatic marketplace. With $15.4 billion in advertiser spend in 2021, private marketplaces made up 56% of all RTB-transacted dollars. The open marketplace sat at $12.3 billion and had a 44% share.

According to eMarketer, the shift to private marketplaces is only going to accelerate in 2022. Spend is predicted to increase another 21% and make up 59% of all RTB spending. However, the open marketplace will only grow 5% and dwindle to a 41% share of RTB spend.

We also see premium advertisers are investing heavily in connected TV (CTV) — although they’re struggling with campaign measurement — direct, and programmatic. These advertisers shifting their buying power away from the open marketplace is likely depressing CPMs. It is also making more room for bad actors to spread a variety of malicious wares.

Is it time to give up on open programmatic?

So, if the open marketplace is suffering from a rapidly growing malware infestation, am I suggesting publishers turn off their open programmatic pipes post-haste? Heavens, no! That’s not really an option for most digital publishers. Can you imagine the amount of revenue left on the table? All the unfilled inventory?

It’s obvious why private marketplaces are increasingly attracting advertiser dollars: high viewability, actually engaged human beings rather than bots, and impressions on well-respected publications. We’ll see top-tier publishers layering in high-impact audience segments that will likely outperform third-party cookies.

But the challenge with private marketplaces has always been getting them to scale. I still hear publishers lament long-lingering Deal IDs with laughable fill rates. Truly getting private marketplaces to hum requires time and resources, something many publishers in the “fat middle” struggle with.

Premium advertisers will keep buying in the open market. This may be to cherry-pick super-cheap inventory on premium publishers or for prospecting purposes. Smaller advertisers may find it easier to reach target audiences across a wider crop of publishers. Publishers also use the open marketplace to find new advertiser prospects and evaluate the market value of various types of inventory and audience segments.

Your best defense against malvertisers is high quality data

The open programmatic marketplace may be getting seedier but diligent publishers can still drive a ton of revenue. It’s just going to take more work to keep audiences safe from all the fraudsters spread across the programmatic pipes.

Having a page/app-level creative blocker to bat away malware before it hits your property is table stakes. But with this massive expansion of malware in open programmatic, the quality of data fueling your blocker is more important than ever. Publishers can’t go cut-rate. Their ad-quality provider should be pumping data into the blocker in real-time from an in-house team of malware analysts. Third-party malware data isn’t going to be fresh enough. It may also lead to revenue-bleeding false positives.

And finally, publishers need to be a lot more discriminating when it comes to their open marketplace partners — and by extension, those partners’ partners. Especially during the pandemic, publishers have been willing to install most demand sources that might give them an edge with bid density. But open programmatic is getting too dangerous to be carefree about the companies you monetize with. Ensure all your demand partners are scrutinizing both tags and landing pages (preferably from a variety of device and geographic profiles). And if a high percentage of the ads they bring you get shot down by your malware blocker, maybe they’re not the right fit for you.

Open programmatic is definitely becoming a more dangerous place for monetization. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the revenue. With the right tools and policies, publishers can make bank — and keep their audiences safe and happy.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How publishers can benefit from the rise of attention analytics

January 19, 2022 Mimi Wotring, SVP of Publisher Sales & Client Services – DoubleVerify

Americans spend nearly 8 hours a day on digital devices, according to a new report from eMarketer. Yes, that means time spent on devices now rivals how long people sleep. However, according to Harvard Business Review, for consumers to be affected by advertising messages, they need to be paying attention. This may seem obvious but capturing consumer attention can be challenging.

User attention has become more fleeting in the internet age. A Microsoft study states that the human attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds – shrinking 25% in just a few years. With users seeing thousands of ads per day, and privacy changes affecting how we measure performance, how can the industry determine whether an ad was seen by someone who is actually paying attention?

The opportunity in attention measurement

The rise of the internet set up the reach and quality metrics that everyone is familiar with today, but a lot has changed since then. In pursuit of optimal performance, advertisers gained interest in additional ways to measure and categorize impressions using brand suitability, contextual relevance, viewability and fraud. While these metrics have improved advertising performance immensely, none of them effectively measure attention.

Specific, industry-accepted metrics to measure attention are still being defined. They are also impacted by increased pressure to ensure privacy-friendly measurement. Some solutions rely on eye tracking and other technologies that are based on sampling.

Pay attention to measurement criteria

Our approach to attention measurement is a more complex endeavor that includes a combination of over 50 exposure and engagement signals that help us understand whether a user’s attention is or isn’t captured by an ad. Exposure signals include an ad’s entire presentation, such as viewable time, share of screen, audibility and more. The engagement side focuses on user-initiated events while the ad creative is displayed, including user touches, screen orientation, video playback and volume control, among others. These signals give advertisers and publishers helpful information about ad performance for both campaign and inventory optimization.

Rising use of attention metrics comes at a time when performance is getting harder to measure directly due to privacy changes across the industry. Behavioral targeting enabled by third-party cookies is giving way to other methods for measuring ad performance. For many advertisers, combining attention and quality metrics is a way to utilize new KPIs that can effectively improve performance over time.

People have grown increasingly savvy, avoiding or ignoring intrusive and non-relevant ad placements, so publishers and marketers must evolve to improve experiences and performance. Attention is a way to use privacy-friendly data to measure ad impact without using third-party cookies to track or measure data from the user.

How publishers benefit from analyzing attention

These insights enable more effective media buying, but how can publishers better understand attention as it relates to their inventory? First, we need to understand how attention is measured.

Attention is understood through a mix of exposure and engagement. Exposure is measured by looking at how long an ad was viewed by a user, how it was presented and what share of the screen did the ad take up. Engagement is measured by checking if a user is present and looking at whether they interacted with the ad. This includes actions such as clicks, hovers, volume adjustments, screen orientation, etc.

Key attention themes to watch for in 2022

Exposure: Brand awareness can be driven by measuring exposure to better understand how insights such as time-in-view, share of screen or quartile completion correlate with brand favorability and recall improvements over time.
Engagement: Metrics such as hover, click and mute rates show how optimized engagement can directly lead to increased conversions.
Cost-Benefit: Publishers that use attention to increase ad engagement can demand higher pricing from existing placements.
Understand Creative Impact: Advertisers can begin building better creatives based on knowing when and where to place messaging for maximum impact.

Analyzing attention gives publishers an opportunity to better understand how to package premium inventory in new ways. Advertisers value the increased conversions and brand awareness that comes with placements that result in higher attention rates. Similar to packaging inventory based on quality, this inventory can garner higher CPMs. With the right analytical tech stack, attention measurement enables publishers to understand their inventory in new ways, helping to drive yield.

It’s still early days for attention measurement, but signs are growing that it’s here to stay. Like any new set of metrics, the industry must come together to agree on standards that allow for interoperability and simple communication between buyers and sellers. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that attention is a way to better understand users and the impact of advertising, which is why the industry must evolve alongside new behaviors with the help of new data and analysis.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight | Video

Why premium video is media’s new monetization moonshot

January 17, 2022 Ricky Sutton, Founder and CEO – Oovvuu

In May 1961, President John F Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth and his vision took the world to new heights. Sixty thousand companies in 70 countries invented five million parts and 400,000 of the world’s greatest minds collaborated to achieve a giant leap for mankind. That’s what you call a moonshot.

There is a rising groundswell that the time is now right for a Media Moonshot: one that recasts the industry to blend trust with technology and a new commercial model that can last. The good news is that for those willing to embrace change, it’s not that hard.

A billion dollar opportunity

I have spent the past 15 years working in premium publisher video. I believe a relevant video in the right place in the right article lifts the quality of reporting, and improves the news experience for readers. This is now being recognized by ad agencies who are increasing spend in this sector.

To measure this, we at Oovvuu have been working with the Tribune Content Agency over the past year to match videos to articles from hundreds from America’s largest publishers. Those articles are read 93 billion times a month. Significantly, our data showed only 7% featured video, even when it was available.

Unfortunately, just 1% of the videos that were embedded were relevant. And, unfortunately, the least relevant videos of all were the most likely to be autoplay and contain low yielding bottom of the funnel programmatic advertising. However, our research showed that putting the contextual videos in priority positions, and making them click to play, was popular with news consumers and advertisers who would pay premium CPMs.

We used journalists, along with our own matching tech, with 100 global wires and broadcasters in the TCA project to ensure the highest levels of contextuality. The evidence was compelling according to Wayne Lown, Vice President of Tribune Content Agency, part of Tribune Publishing.

The Tribune News Service syndicates hundreds of daily articles read by millions and across the most trusted brands from Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Chicago Tribune.

“We were able to match 86% of articles in the Tribune News Service with relevant video across news, sport, lifestyle and multiple other genres,” Lown said. “It proved relevant video was there and could be simply matched, revealing a major new revenue stream for publishers who get it right.”

A timely solution

Display advertising is in freefall and subscriptions nearing saturation. The good news is that premium video – which fetches $40 CPMs – offers a way to capitalize on billions of page views and reset publishers’ earnings.

Last month, the world’s largest ad agency GroupM released a report that showed global ad spend was predicted to exceed $1 trillion in 2025. Of that, premium video will account for 19.6% of spend in 2022.

Mark Lollback who served GroupM CEO in Australia and New Zealand before joining Oovvuu believes that “Publishers are perfectly placed as they have massive engaged audiences. And the big global agency groups are openly talking about supporting publishing.”

At the same time, he pointed out that the biggest spending brands are looking for trusted locations for their messaging. Premium publisher video opens a whole new marketing channel for them, but it needs to be done right.

“Publisher video must be click to play, sound on, highly contextual and get premium positions in premium brands. When it does, it taps into users’ attention and delivers the high performance metrics that marketers are demanding,” according to Lollback.

He recently presented research to the IAB showing publisher video delivered double digit performance boosts compared to YouTube on viewability, completion rates and click throughs.

Publishers must act now

The benefits to publishers to grow revenue couldn’t be clearer. Unfortunately, 99% of US articles today feature machine-matched autoplay video with low relevance that attracts low yielding programmatic $7 CPMs. However, The TCA trial has proven that relevant video is available for 86% of articles and premium pre-rolls command $40 CPMs when they are click to play, sound on and highly contextual.

Autoplay should now be outmoded by the smart publishers so they can tap into the opportunity to shift ad spend from YouTube back to publishing. That is the Media Moonshot

Undoubtedly, the emergence of large video syndicators, powerful matching technologies and premium advertising support means it will play an increasingly important role in publisher earnings going forward. The good news is that publishers who do this will be poised to meet customer demand for video, increase engagement and performance metrics across their sites and open access to the largest premium advertising budgets on offer.

Advertising | Perspectives

Can automated advertising save America’s newspapers?

January 11, 2022 Luke Insoll, Content Marketing Manager – DanAds

The steady decline of print and exponential growth of digital media has turned many industries on their heads. Few have been hit harder than traditional news media. The combined advertising revenues of U.S. newspapers peaked in 2006, at around $50 billion. Less than 15 years later, in 2020, they were estimated below $9 billion – an 80% drop. In that same period, the total number of newsroom employees more than halved from 75,000 to 30,000. And in 2020 something interesting happened: newspaper advertising revenue dipped below circulation revenue for the first time in recorded history.

The unavoidable takeaway is that newspapers are losing the battle for ad spend. The clear winners are big tech providers. From 2008 to 2018, Facebook’s ad revenue increased by 7000%—from $764 million to $55 billion. In other words, the ad revenue of a single company is now higher than the combined ad revenue of all U.S. newspapers at their historical peak. As one local journalist interviewed by The Tow Center for Digital Journalism put it, “The advertising dollars are going away and not coming back. Google and Facebook have just eviscerated the business.”

With these staggering numbers in mind, the prognosis for newspapers looks bleak. Can anything halt the attrition of ad spend?

Innovation hesitation

Arguably, one of the failures of traditional media has been their reticence towards adapting to new technologies. In a recent Tow Center study, researchers found a marked contrast between the way that editors and reporters use technology in their own lives and how they implement it in their work. Only a small minority of respondents (15%) had undertaken training in new tools or platforms paid for by their employers.

From the report: “half of respondents indicated low levels of interest in learning about chat apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Only a small minority (3.4%) are “very interested” in this technology. This comes at a surprise given that WhatsApp has two billion users around the world and Facebook Messenger reaches more than 133 million people in the U.S. and 1.3 billion globally.

Furthermore, more than four in ten respondents indicated a low level of interest for learning more about tools such as automation. This seems to be a particularly egregious oversight given that automation is one of the most powerful tools in big tech’s arsenal. Automation allows them to scale revenue-generating activities exponentially.

Automation education

This brings us to an age-old question: Does automation kill or create jobs? It might seem logical to assume that automating tasks removes the need for a human employee and thus contributes to a removal of jobs. In the short-term and in certain industries this may well be true.

In news media, however, it may be that the unwillingness to embrace automation has had the opposite effect. We see clearly that the number of newsroom employees has more than halved while the tech companies that have embraced automation keep growing.Editors and journalists may fear new technology. However, they should really be more concerned about the ongoing impact of relying on old technology.

One powerful way in which newspapers may find salvation in automation is in the sale of their ad inventory. Historically, newspapers established tight and long-lasting relationships with large, corporate advertisers. These relationships were maintained over lunches, cocktails, and many hours of manual work and negotiation. Think Mad Men. Of course, the Golden Age of Advertising has long since passed. Today, the name of the game is ease of access, efficiency, and iteration.

One of the reasons that companies like Facebook have been able to snatch ad revenue away from news media is that their main ad sales model is entirely automated. Although not the first to do so, Facebook set the standard for an e-commerce approach to selling advertising.

Self-service adoption

Today, most social platforms offer some type of campaign manager inspired by the Facebook for Business marketing platform. LinkedIn, Instagram, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, and Reddit are just some of the tech companies that have fully adopted self-serve advertising as their primary model. While the phrase is beyond cliched, self-serve platforms really do cut out the middleman.

That’s not to say that the news media has entirely missed the bus on self-serve. The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, News Corp, New York Post, and Mail Metro Media are some of the publishers that have built or are building their own self-serve ad platforms. At present, most of them channel only a very small proportion of their ad sales through their self-serve platforms.

As the benefits of scale, speed and automation become impossible to ignore, however, I predict a wholesale self-serve revolution in the newsrooms of the world. Perhaps the age of newspaper advertising isn’t over. Rather, it is entering a promising new phase.

close of of hand ready to use tablet resting on persons leg

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Why prioritizing personalization can build trust between consumers and brands

January 10, 2022 Jürgen Galler, CEO and Founder — 1plusX

The pandemic era has altered consumer behavior like never before. With lockdown restrictions mandating stay-at-home orders and closing physical stores, every company — big and small — had to rethink its customer engagement strategies. This digital transformation and the mobile shift were quicker than expected. But consumers’ expectations have also radically changed in that time frame.

In an instant, consumers wanted brands to offer an enhanced user experience, especially when it came to mobile usage and ecommerce. To meet this demand, they expect companies to know who they are, what they like, and everything in between, regardless of which channel they came from. This anticipation of a more value-added exchange will only continue to rise. It’s therefore paramount that brands are ready to deliver a more personalized experience — and that publishers are empowered to help them deliver.

Start with first-party data

With first-party data, a more personalized experience can become a reality. The average buyer is becoming increasingly aware of how companies collect and use their personal data. However, they’re also demanding the highest level of privacy and security. And this trust is crucial in maintaining customer loyalty and retention.

When deciding on which brand to choose, 55% of consumers say trustworthiness and transparency are the most critical factor. Finding the sweet spot between convenience and privacy is therefore important to nurturing that relationship for a long-term future. After all, 48% of consumers appreciate the convenience of personalization as long as their data isn’t compromised.

We know that third-party cookies and comprehensive third-party data collection will most likely become obsolete. As a result, the businesses that invest and implement first-party data strategies will stay ahead of the pack.

But this isn’t necessarily straightforward. The average person touches their smartphone 2,617 times a day. They switch between an average of three devices to finish a task. And, 86% of shoppers regularly hop between two channels. However, with data silos and poor infrastructure, the necessary context to bridge these channels and build a more complete picture is missing.

Personalization for omnichannel experiences

Fuelled by the pandemic, omnichannel shopping grew by 50% in 2020. This means that consumers have become more savvy about where and how they shop online than ever before.

Nielsen also found that consumers use online channels to purchase goods, research and identify physical stores. When examining levels of engagement across channels, 56% of online shoppers put careful consideration into each purchase at the point of sale in September 2020, compared with 51% of brick-and-mortar shoppers. In addition, the average buyer is now more used to going between the physical and digital world.

Consumers now expect a seamless transition across every touchpoint they have with a company. Therefore, prioritising creation of an omnichannel experience will help increase overall ROI. This is especially true when behavioral data is used. Behavioural data provides a more personalized experience online and offline, as well as giving a boost to brand loyalty and engagement. By tracking online data and leveraging it across all channels, a better user experience is entirely possible.

Enter data management platforms

In an increasingly privacy-driven and restrictive data collection environment, the proper data infrastructure can supercharge a company’s first-party data, all while staying privacy compliant.

This is where marketing needs to get deeper into single properties. For example, richer, more granular profiles for audience targeting allows for better personalization. So often, when we do a data interview with customers at 1plusX, we realize that typically they only have robust, deterministic data or attributes that are targetable for a fraction of their use. A data infrastructure with intelligent AI and predictive capabilities can enable brands to enrich and enhance their first-party data.

By expanding their dataset, companies can better personalize services and experiences. They can offer better advertising. They can understand which user might want a subscription or be more inclined to add a product to the cart. This behavior then feeds back to brands to better understand their customers. These data insights will prove valuable to optimize and enhance their marketing efforts.

Prioritizing personalization for the future

When companies use a data management platform that puts the control of user data in their own hands, they empower the consumer. This helps build the trust and transparency needed to maintain loyalty and engagement.

As a result, companies that can bring a more personalized experience to their customers without compromising privacy will thrive. Those that don’t will inevitably fall behind.

Advertising | Perspectives

Media tech execs reveal their 2022 playbook

December 27, 2021 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

As we head into 2022, we find ourselves living in that mixed blessing: interesting times. Like every industry, we’re rocking in the wake of pandemic-era changes. From staffing challenges and workplace transformation to a consumer base whose priorities and expectations have profoundly shifted, media executives have plenty to manage. Needless to say, it is important that we enter the new year with an informed perspective to be ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We reached out to some of our supporter partners here at DCN and asked about the biggest challenges and opportunities they see as we start off the new year. (DCN supporter partners are companies that do business with premium publishers and are aligned with principles of quality and trust.) Many of them echoed the big trends we’ve been watching. They also offered insights that should prove useful to anyone in the business of digital media.

Industry trends to watch in 2022

Innovation and diversification will accelerate

As we move into 2022, one significant trend that started this year, and will continue, is finding the balance between subscriptions and advertising in order to maximize revenue.
The next step for publishers in 2022 is looking at their business models holistically. Every business will need to find the right balance between subscriptions and advertising to maximize revenue.

—Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services, Piano

Diversifying revenue streams is the mantra for 2022. This necessitates quick experiments, risk optimization, and data literacy; the precursor to which is an iterative mindset.

—Abhishek, Dadoo, CEO, Fewcents

Recognizing the full potential of video as a primary format is one of the biggest opportunities we see for digital media companies as we head into the new year. This strategic move will not only allow publishers to reinforce their brands and diversify their revenues but build even more valuable and durable relationships with existing and new audiences.

—Andrew Rosenman, Global Product Marketing Lead CTV/Video, Smart AdServer

The biggest opportunity is to harvest advertising from segments of the market that are not just healthy, but those that are lurching forward in leaps-and-bounds. The biggest threat is still running your Before Times playbook, assuming (wrongly) the market has rebounded in mostly same way that you remember. The ad market is like a chameleon. Some parts do look the same shape, but the colors have changed quite significantly.

—Todd Krizelman, CEO, MediaRadar

New strategies and technologies will help publishers navigate the shifting data flow

One of the biggest challenges for publishers heading into the new year is the continual evolution and tightening of data privacy policies. Consumers are also becoming more mindful of their data. Therefore, we predict that new privacy regulations will follow the lead of the GDPR and require publishers and their partners to provide consumers with more transparency and control on how their data is used.
By adopting technologies like privacy-focused universal identifiers, publishers can solve different challenges, including privacy compliance, with one solution. Privacy-first IDs ensure compliance with the latest regulations, protect media owner’s data from leakage – and consequent audience depreciation – while enabling them to monetize their traffic effectively when traditional identification methods will be phased out.

—Jessica Werner, Senior Director of Publisher Development, ID5

The challenge is moving an entire industry to a new way of buying media. Advertisers have over 100 ‘post-cookie’ solutions to choose from – not all are equal. There will also be more consolidation and growth in CTV.
The opportunity lies in education, publishers need to encourage testing and learning as we head into 2022. The chaos we’ve seen over the past year is about more than third-party cookies, it’s about how we use data ethically and responsibly in all aspects of digital advertising. Advertisers and agencies will move out of the testing phase and begin to select partners and solutions that are sustainable and use data ethically.

—Michael Ogunjobi, Customer Success Lead, Americas, Permutive

Going into 2022, one of the key challenges remains the fragmentation of the ecosystem and the difficulties of measuring cross-platform TV viewing and campaign performance.
By leveraging new data and technology capabilities, such as linear addressable, media companies will be able to scale up and facilitate access to their CTV and VOD inventory. This will bring benefits to both sides of the transaction – return on ad spend for brands and optimized yield for broadcasters and other media providers. It is truly an exciting time for premium video and advanced TV.

—Stefanie Briec, Director – Demand Sales, UK & International, FreeWheel

In a market where most publishers are looking to monetize an increasing number of consent-less impressions and with increasing pressure on privacy enforcement, the future belongs to publishers who will find ways to maintain their revenues without collecting personally identifiable information.
This future must be anticipated right now, and our industry should stop holding onto the old world. So, the main focus for publishers should be to find solutions that do not rely on cookies or IDs, but that are still able to qualify 100% of their inventory.

—Fabien Magalon, Chief Supply Officer, Ogury

As the digital advertising industry continues to look ahead to a world with fewer shared personal identifiers, we can expect publishers and brands to turn more and more to AI-powered predictive insights as a way to get to know their audiences next year. As user-level targeting shrinks, and audience-level and contextual targeting grows, AI-powered predictive technologies will help to drive a new age of privacy-compliant targeting.

—Jürgen Galler, CEO and Co-Founder, 1plusX

Heading into 2022, audience, identity, and the challenge around associated data ownership and execution will remain at the forefront of media owner’s minds. Media companies will be navigating a complex and evolving landscape of regulation and regional policies, along with a diverse set of audience, contextual, and identity solutions.

—Leon Gurevich Head of Product & Client Services, IPONWEB

As we look toward 2022, a big challenge within the media industry will be continuing to refine and advance the way we approach audience creation. With challenge, of course, comes opportunity. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to combine traditional audience approaches with advanced contextual strategies that support quality reach and empower publishers and advertisers to value supply appropriately. The ability to then verify reach and measure the success of those audiences is a critical step for both advertisers seeking ROI and publishers showcasing value in the efforts to further optimize yield.

—Dave Constantino, VP Client Development, Oracle Advertising

Media companies will focus on excellent experiences for the win

Publishers shoot themselves in the collective foot, because horrid ad experiences mean less consumer engagement: less homepage visits, less sharing of emails, fewer pageviews per session, fewer session, etc. At a time when publishers need to build tighter relationships with their audiences, we’re pushing them away with giant piles of junk ads (as well as constant prods to enable push notifications, sign up for newsletters, etc.). There’s a huge opportunity in the ad quality arena.

—Gavin Dunaway, Product Marketing Lead, The Media Trust

The biggest challenge is the acceleration of digital from linear channels and the ability for brands to manage a fragmented media environment. Our mixed reality future—part digital, part physical—will change the way business is done from now on. The opportunity for brands, agencies, and publishers is to smooth chaotic user experiences, by embedding insight into every media exchange.

—Laurel Rossi, CMO, true[X] + Gimbal

Over the past years, we’ve seen non-traditional publishers start to double down on advertising, and it’s a trend we expect to accelerate in 2022. Non-traditional publishers take any number of forms, [which] include retail and commerce companies and utility-based sites and apps such as rideshare. Many of these have enormous volumes of traffic, deep customer engagement and the golden goose: first-party data. With non-traditional publishers, it’s vital that it’s vital that ad experiences do not take users out of their walled gardens or detract from the primary experience.

—Justin Choi, CEO, Nativo

The word of the year is quality, which presents both a challenge and opportunity. Brands are increasingly aware of the impact of their media spend, not just on society at large but on the attention that high quality environments can deliver.

—Eric Shih, Chief Supply Officer, Teads

Automation will help level the playing field

We will continue to see self-serve technology impact advertising as we move into 2022. Self-service allows advertisers to manage every aspect of their campaign whenever they need, without talking to a salesperson. Not only does this give users more control, but it also saves time and resources. Self-service generally uses a low-cost technical automated platform to replace the manual tasks in the ad booking process, and that automation allows sales teams to work more efficiently and focus efforts on growing their bigger accounts.

—Peo Persson, Co-Founder and EVP Sales, DanAds

The biggest opportunity for digital media companies is to boldly tackle customer churn across the entire customer journey. Strategic partnerships and subscription bundles are an excellent place to start. Consumers today are ready for easier, more convenient ways to get all the digital content they love in one place.
Digital media companies need a complete retention approach. Start by getting smarter and more creative with subscription partnerships and bundles. And ensure you get the revenue you deserve by using subscription intelligence, automation, and revenue recovery.

—Roy Barak, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Vindicia

Scaling ad revenues by increasing bandwidth via automation integration. Digital media companies will need to leverage automation to streamline their Order-to-Cash workflows and digital processes. This will enable scale while greatly reducing error margins, increasing internal bandwidth and, of course, increase ROI.

—Jay Kulkarni, CEO and Founder, Theorem Inc.