Tags containing: "1st party"

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Publishers push past the cookie and take control of their data destiny

February 22, 2022 Todd Tran, Chief Strategy Officer – Teads

The start of 2021 seems like a lifetime ago by any measure. But if you work in the world of digital advertising, the landscape certainly looks very different today than this time last year. Back then we were expecting 3rd party cookies to be removed from Google’s Chrome browser imminently resulting in a rush to prepare for this new world.

Google may have postponed their deprecation timeline. However, the reality is that – thanks to updates from Apple and existing policies from the likes of Firefox – the online digital landscape globally is already 40% cookieless, rising to 60% in markets such as US and UK*. Last February, we surveyed of 419 of the world’s top publishers to see how they were preparing for the cookieless world and we recently conducted the survey again to see how much had changed.

Over the past month, 449 of the world’s best publisher brands, representing a cross-section of both small and medium sized publishers and the largest media companies, responded to questions about their plans for the deprecation of the cookie and which industry initiatives they’re looking at implementing and the results are illuminating.

Education progressing but confidence isn’t high

The number of publishers who have limited to no knowledge of cookies and the cookieless future has fallen from 10% to 6% and those who have a strong understanding of new initiatives has risen from 24% to 31%. However, those in the middle who are unsure of new solutions and how they affect their business are still far ahead in the majority at 63%, relatively unmoved from 66% 12 months ago. While it is good to see there’s movement in publishers’ education, there’s a long way to go if they are to thrive in today’s cookieless world.

Google can wait, media can’t

What’s plain to see is that 12 months of changes have sent a clear message to publishers: The time for action is now. Do not delay. When asked how platform and regulatory changes in 2021 impacted their planning for the cookieless future, 78% said that such changes either had no impact or had accelerated their plans.

While this might seem counterintuitive at first glance, it’s fantastic to hear that publishers are not waiting for others to dictate their future when it comes to 3rd party data. Media titles need to move quickly to create clear and sustainable offerings for advertisers that aren’t susceptible to changes. They must lean into their strengths vs social platforms, which currently have the lion’s share of digital budgets.

Ain’t no party like your 1st party

The most encouraging outtake from the survey however is that publishers are doubling down on sustainable revenue practices that are within their control. We asked: “Do you see the deprecation of 3rd-party cookies and/or IDFA/Device IDs as a threat or an opportunity for publishers?” The good news is that we’ve seen a 100% increase year on year. Half of all respondents now say such changes “…give us the opportunity to differentiate through our 1st-party data and the quality of our content”.

In similar fashion, when asked about which data/targeting solutions are they likely to adopt, only 27% said that a privacy sandbox would be considered. Most (63%) see 1st party data as an answer, 59% appropriately see contextual within their offering, with unique ID seeing a good percentage at 43%.

This focus on owned data and content may not be revolutionary for those who’ve been fighting the battle for quality journalism for a long time now, but it’s exciting to see it within this context. Indeed, many of us in media have played this record before. However, 3rd party cookie deprecation changes this landscape dramatically.

Publishers’ who have stayed the path, developing deep connections with their audiences and building trust (at a journalistic and UX level) will have significant advantages as we move into this new world. And while the exact “how” might not be worked out, it’s fantastic to see the digital media landscape increasingly bullish as the privacy debate plays out.

The goals are set, now it’s about execution

While this all sounds great, there are some visible hurdles that need to be cleared. Logins could be an opportunity to develop sophisticated targeting solutions for brands. However, only 45% say they have a strategy for increasing the use of logins and 93% of global publishers say 50% or less of their users actually do so. Logins pose questions across the publisher journey. In fact, 45% worry about the impact on user experience and 49% are worried about the impact on traffic.

Others also show concerns about monitoring inventory monetization capabilities (33%), technical implementation of logins (31%) and conflict with subscription models (18%). The directive here? While logins should be part of publishers’ solution for a cookieless world, it cannot be the only tool they use. They must also adopt solutions such as a cookieless tag to supplement this to provide greater scale for advertisers. That there’s no time to waste, cookieless is here and digital media can press home their advantages, but there’s a lot of work to be done before they’re ready.

In 2021, we said that publishers need answers in order to be fully ready for a cookieless world, and while a lot of those questions still yet to be answered, the question about whether publishers can thrive in a sustainable data world does seem to be resolved.

It will require more tests, increased implementation of technologies and a press to find concrete answers today that can resolve the questions being asked. There are already viable solutions in market and it’s time for publishers to properly get started, if they have not already done so. But once those challenges are overcome we should be left with better user trust, better media outcomes and better monetization opportunities for publishers – which sounds like a sustainable media ecosystem to me.

*Source: Teads global platform data (October 2021)

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Trust, walled gardens and a shining new opportunity for publishers

September 8, 2021 Eddie Lee, Head of Publisher Account Management – Nativo

The future of digital advertising might just revolve around the matter of trust. But before publishers take on that question, they should consider this one: Why is Big Tech working so hard to build trust in their respective walled gardens?

Take Amazon (please!). They’re rumored to be creating a universal identifier restricted to their ecosystem. Google’s proposed FLoC targeting, presented as the evolution of 3rd party cookies, might be reimagined before it even launches over privacy concerns. But surely whatever takes its place will only serve to strengthen its monopolistic hold on advertising. Apple is pushing to present their core OS’s as privacy-focused — all while maintaining their typical “advantageous” relationships with the app developers that build and support large parts of their ecosystem. All are effectively fortifying the garden walls while working to convince the public of their respective trustworthiness.

This new-found obsession should come as no surprise to publishers: Trust is a key ingredient in the secret sauce of ad revenue growth.

Anecdotally, we know this to be true, and the numbers don’t lie. Privacy is the #1 driver of influence and engagement on social media platforms. Brands and agencies are cutting advertising budgets due to trust issues: Of those who decreased ad spend on one or more major ad platforms, 35% cited concerns over ethical handling of user data.

A shining opportunity for publishers

In a new trust-based world of content and advertising, publishers start with a few crucial advantages.

First, publishers enjoy implicit goodwill from their audiences, which converts to business. More than two-thirds of consumers are more likely to engage with an ad in the context of a publisher they know and trust. Second, publishers have the advantage of knowing the types of content readers want to engage with. Most notably, publishers own the new “oil” of advertising: 1st party data.

What is the opportunity for publishers? It’s a chance to differentiate themselves from Big Tech as the embodiment of stewardship with regards to consumer data. In short, publishers must buck the status quo and adopt a strategy where the audience is no longer for sale. Sell the site and sell the content. Maybe even leverage audiences on the backend to improve content experiences or implement new rate types. But no matter what, protect audience’s trust in publishers audiences by implementing a privacy-first approach.

Capitalize with balance and control

Successfully seizing this opportunity will take balance and control.

Balance subscription and ad-supported strategy.

A paywall that is too high limits exposure and hamstrings new audience gains. However, too much advertising hurts a brand’s value and, most of all, the audience’s trust (that they won’t be constantly blasted with ads).

Control the quality of the user experience

Ad clutter diminishes trust by reneging on the promise of a good user experience. But control also means an increased cognizance of demand sources. Due to its inherent reliance on 3rd party cookies, programmatic demand should be a last resort. And these demand sources should provide the tools necessary to preserve brand-safe environments.

Trust is the answer (and the question)

How does the industry enable publishers to build and maintain trust? The simplest solution may be to step aside and let publishers create quality content. The role of industry tech platforms, in turn, is to support publishers without adding complexity. All the while, brand safety is table stakes: Any digital distributor should guarantee it (full stop).

Of course, tech platforms must enable publishers to meet their business objectives. They should support multiple pricing models and offer broad customization options for demand sources. Again, this is because publishers know best in a new world of 1st party data and heightened demand for sophisticated content. (Read: the opposite of standard display).

The guiding principle? Trust. The differentiator from Big Tech? Trust. Our final thought? Trust us on this one.

Advertising | Innovation | Revenue

Fact check series, part one: the truth about “cookieless” DMPs

January 13, 2020 Adam Solomon, CMO – Lotame

As a 20-year marketing technology and media vet, I must tip my cap to data management platform startups for bringing new energy and interest to the needs of publishers and their commercial partners. We face an ever-changing media landscape characterized by fragmentation in delivery channels, evolving consumer consumption behaviors, and privacy regulation. To navigate it successfully, we need to focus our time and effort on finding innovative and effective ways to connect, enrich, and activate consumer data for publishers in a manner that respects consumer privacy and empowers choice.

I admire the marketing prowess and focused messaging of these data management platform (DMP) companies. However, I can’t stand by while they purposely and repeatedly mischaracterize technical capabilities and confuse publishers (and media outlets) on the facts related to profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, privacy compliance, and “match rates.”

In a series of three pieces, I will set the record straight. This first piece will focus on the facts on profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, and their relationship to privacy regulation.

The facts about profile identifiers and browser storage mechanisms

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard the term “cookieless DMP” in the last year, I’d be a very rich person. This is purely a marketing term with no basis in fact or function. If we’re talking about data management technologies that are operating in a web browser context, then there is no such thing as a “cookieless DMP.”

PIDs

All data management technologies — including DMPs — use profile identifiers (“PIDs”) in a web context to organize and connect consumer data. A PID is typically a string of randomly generated letters and numbers. By itself, a PID usually has no information that can directly identify an individual in the real world.

In a web browser environment, these PIDs can be stored using one of three browser storage mechanisms. These are: 3rd party cookies, 1st party cookies, or browser local storage (sometimes referred to as HTML5 web storage). It’s important to understand that a cookie is just a storage mechanism (a text file), and you put a PID string inside the cookie.

1st and 3rd parties

Many years ago, DMPs primarily stored PIDs in 3rd party cookies because they provided a consistent and scaled container to access PIDs across websites and over time. In 2017, Apple released their Intelligent Tracking Prevention (“ITP”) functionality in Safari. It blocked the setting of 3rd party cookies by default and made that storage mechanism an ineffective tool for storing and retrieving PIDs. As a fallback mechanism, DMPs could use 1st party cookies to store and retrieve PIDs.

The difference between 3rd party cookies and 1st party cookies is that 3rd party cookies can be accessed by the entity that originally set the 3rd party cookie irrespective of which website the consumer is visiting. In contrast, 1st party cookies can only be set and accessed when a consumer is visiting a specific website domain.

So, for example, a PID that is placed in a 1st party cookie when a consumer is visiting Publisher_A.com can only be accessed when the consumer is at Publisher_A.com. If the consumer subsequently visits Publisher_B.com, then a different PID will be generated and placed in a 1st party cookie that can only be accessed from the Publisher_B.com domain. Now this same consumer has two PIDs stored in 1st party cookies — each only accessible when visiting the originating site.

Storage issues

Within the past year, Apple has continued to ratchet-up the ITP restriction on cookies in Safari, and now even 1st party cookies are being squeezed. In many situations, 1st party cookies will now only persist for 24 hours before being deleted. As a result, web developers — including DMPs — have increasingly used browser local storage as a fallback for storing PIDs.

Browser local storage is a standard technology built into all major web browsers. It allows for the storage of larger amounts of data (e.g., HTML code) than cookies, and over longer periods of time than cookies. Browser local storage isn’t magic technology — it’s standard web browser technology — and using it to store PIDs isn’t innovation.

When companies refer to their tech as “cookieless,” it should be qualifying such as “3rd party cookieless.” It is worth noting that, despite loud and repeated marketing claims to the contrary, these companies use 1st party cookies as the centerpiece of their platform for data collection. We know this factually and objectively because they say so in their documentation.

The facts about profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, and privacy regulation

I’m not exactly sure how the idea came about in the press that “cookieless DMPs” are automagically GDPR compliant. However, that’s a misunderstanding that needs to be corrected. Whether a PID is stored in a 1st party cookie, 3rd party cookie, or local storage has no bearing on GDPR compliance obligations as a processor for a publisher’s data.

Consumers have a set of rights under GDPR. Therefore, any technology company processing consumer data on behalf of a publisher needs to provide a means for publishers to transmit to such processors the consent signals for data collection and use. They must also provide a way for the processors to enforce those consumer consent choices. Mobile devices don’t use cookies whatsoever in the app-space. However, publishers still need to comply with GDPR.

Regulation

GDPR compliance obligations for a publisher-as-controller and a vendor-as-processor do not differ based on whether a vendor’s PID is stored in a 1st party cookie, 3rd party cookie, or browser local storage. Even if no 1st or 3rd party cookies were used — and if browser local storage was exclusively used — the GDPR obligations for the parties remain the same.

True forward-thinking innovation for publishers will be based upon connecting publisher data to marketer data in meaningful ways across channels and platforms. It requires providing the means for all parties to analyze, enrich, and activate for commercial benefit — while always respecting consumer privacy and empowering choice.

About the author

As Chief Marketing Officer, Adam leads Lotame’s global marketing and product teams in helping publishers, marketers and agencies solve complex business challenges with unstacked data solutions. His diverse experience balances art and science. It includes stints as an aerospace engineer and patent attorney, plus 21 years in consumer media and marketing technology in leadership roles at Viacom Media Networks, Time Inc., Hearst, and PebblePost. Adam is co-inventor on four issued U.S. patents related to interactive video advertising technology.

Advertising | Innovation

Personalization without people: What happens when no one can track consumers?

November 14, 2017 Aram Zucker-Scharff, Director, Ad Engineering – The Washington Post

The alignment of new laws, reader advocacy, and technology has opened up a challenge to user tracking tools. While some express concern that an end to unbridled tracking will hinder the digital ecosystem, this is an enormous opportunity for publishers to take the lead in building the next generation of personalization technology. However, this evolution in personalization will need to be built on a foundation of editorial metadata, which will drive everything from video playlists to targeted advertising.

A new door opens

A new type of personalization that eschews user-based targeting is coming. In part this will be driven by the fact that many analytics, ad tech, and personalization-tech companies will be deeply affected by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). An AdAge headline once proclaimed that the GDPR will “rip global digital ecosystem apart.” While that may be a bit alarmist, the GDPR will force companies operating within the EU, and the third party tools they use, to adhere to a strict opt-in for all tracking. It will also levy severe penalties on those companies within EU jurisdiction that fail to do so.

The omnipresent motivation behind the law, though, has failed to prompt the development of similar legislation in the U.S. Despite results and sentiment that suggest otherwise, targeting remains central to many marketing strategies. Brands have found user targeting programmatic campaigns less effective than they expected. Consumer groups have formed in protest of the functionality of user tracking in action (such as ads appearing with no regards to the content they appear on). Individuals on social networks find retargeting approaching some sort of uncanny valley — a point at which its very accuracy is becoming deeply discomforting. And we’re even seeing the start of a conversation around user targeting happening in Congress.

A victory for publishers

Publishers have a mission to treat their readers and viewers ethically. The good news is that smart publishers can (and do) run user-targeting related tools on that basis. The personalization of ads and news has become a significant trend, one that many are still chasing. However, the fundamental underlying technology is challenged by the GDPR. Even if publishers never conduct any business outside of the U.S., the vendors who power personalization tools do. We operate on literal reams of data but must face a future where comparatively little is available.

These oncoming shifts in the marketplace shouldn’t frighten publishers. They are likely to hurt the thousands of middleware third-party ad tech companies that have failed to deliver on user targeting for years now while skimming profits. A push to decrease both publisher and advertiser reliance on user targeting is an opportunity.

Metadata to the rescue

Publishers need to take a look at the new generation of tools that can provide the data needed for personalization on-page without ever tracking a user. Metadata standards are improving and adding detail. Our current tools consider article relationships mostly in keywords and categories but new ways of telling the story about a story could bring about a revolution in personalization.

Almost by accident, social media has pushed thousands of sites to adopt Open Graph, an RDF-based standard built to provide detailed site data. Search engines have long supported and rewarded structured data like hCard. Improvement in the Schema.org project, along with increased support of JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD) by a variety of platforms, has made it an increasingly promising standard. Unfortunately, The Schema Project, which is complex and lacking good documentation and in-action examples, has been challenging to adopt. Publishers have also lacked a clear reward for use. However, that is changing with the announcement of support by Google for the use of structured data for fact checking.

Regardless of how successful the fact checking markup project becomes, it demonstrates that page-to-page relational metadata is joining other complex metadata systems as part of the future of publishing. With privacy concerns on the rise, it behooves publishers to start considering these systems as part of the future of personalization.

A structured future

Beyond keywords and tags, there is an embarrassment of new options for metadata that can create a unique experience on each webpage more tailored to the moment the reader encounters an article than following them with cookies ever was. While a reader might have been shopping for shoes yesterday, what they read today may put them in a very different mindset. And the reader of today is a more useful target for personalization than the reader of yesterday.

What can we build on using enhanced metadata? Geographic coordinates could drive a set of recommendations even more relevant than attempting to geotarget the user. Article authorship has worked well for media companies where the byline promises a particular voice. We can build playlist systems that find their next videos through more than title keywords, looking at producer credits, length and related affiliate offers. Types of content or referenced urls in the body of an article can allow personalization tools to recommend other articles that share a particular format, or ads that sell the referenced type.

Planning beyond keywords

Taking advantage of these opportunities will require different ways of thinking about what everyone creates and how it breaks down. It won’t just be up to an SEO expert to drop tags on a page. News organizations will find that optimizing for search, social, or ads will require taking advantage of all the opportunities that complex metadata provides and operating within a larger plan for how metadata should be handled. The editorial and business sides will need to work together to consider the whole of outlets’ output, prioritizing approaches, and building out tools that automate and suggest metadata structures.

Owners of this process will need to consider personalization on a variety of factors that describe form, format, key ideas and digital objects. They’ll have to build out a framework on how articles connect to each other that will describe small universes of content. A site that takes full advantage of metadata structures can promise a richer experience for readers, viewers and listeners than any provided through cookie-based tracking, an experience based on in-the-moment intent.

Our current generation of overly-targeted ads and recommendations don’t just fail to perform, they’re creepy and overpriced. Our audiences deserve more and our ethics require that we provide it. We have the technology and industry pressure to deploy successful alternatives. Understanding, expanding and adapting the use of detailed metadata across the web will build better media companies and a better open and well-connected internet.

Aram Zucker-Scharff is the Director for Ad Engineering in The Washington Post’s Research, Experimentation and Development group. He is also the lead developer for the open-source tool PressForward and a consultant on content strategy and newsroom workflows. He was one of Folio Magazine’s 15 under 30 in the magazine media industry. He previously worked as Salon.com’s full stack developer. His work has been covered multiple times in journalism.co.uk and he has appeared in The Atlantic, Digiday, Poynter, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has also worked as a journalist, a community manager and a journalism educator.

Perspectives | Policy

Perspective of premium publishers: privacy rules for broadband providers

February 27, 2016 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

On Friday, February 26, Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler to lay out the perspective of premium publishers with regard to their upcoming privacy rules for broadband providers. The letter urges the FCC to require broadband providers to provide consumers with transparency and meaningful choice with regard to the collection and use of personal information especially when this data will be used for purposes that fall outside of a consumer’s expectation and outside of the context of the interaction where the data was collected.

For example, a reasonable consumer would expect a mobile broadband provider to collect data about how a consumer uses their mobile device so the company could make improvements to the broadband service or ensure efficient management of the network. However, consumers would not expect (or even know) if a mobile broadband provider was using this same set of data to tailor advertising to consumers on websites or apps.

As several news outlets reported, at least one mobile broadband provider was inserting a unique identification header every time a consumer’s mobile browser fetched content from a website. This header was used by advertising partners of the mobile broadband provider to identify individual consumers, track their online behavior and target advertising based on that behavior. However, neither the mobile broadband providers nor their partners meaningfully disclosed to consumers’ information about this activity or the ability to opt out. In addition, it was later discovered that the header was being used without the knowledge of the broadband provider by some of their advertising partners to respawn cookies that a consumer had deleted – effectively reversing a consumer’s choice for privacy.

Consumers have different expectations with regard to 1st party, direct relationships versus other types of transactions which are indirect and out of context. The FCC’s privacy rules should account for the differences in these relationships. As our letter points out, greater transparency and choice will help rebuild consumer trust and help the digital economy reach its full potential.

Policy

FCC Wading Into Privacy Matters

July 16, 2015 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

In response to growing consumer concerns, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is beginning to dig deeper into consumer privacy issues. And, as with their first foray into these matters, it appears the FCC will take a measured and thoughtful approach.

In its Open Internet ruling (aka “Net Neutrality”), the FCC decided not to waive the Title II privacy rules. Instead, the FCC announced it would hold a separate proceeding to figure out how the old rules in Title II should be adapted for a broadband world. As the FCC rightly noted, “broadband providers serve as a necessary conduit for information passing between an Internet user and Internet sites or other Internet users, and are in a position to obtain vast amounts of personal and proprietary information about their customers.”

The FCC subsequently held a workshop with industry and consumer representatives to learn more about how consumer data is collected, used and retained by broadband providers. Some workshop participants tried to argue that ISPs don’t have access to any special set of consumer data and that apps and websites would have the same data, but common sense would tell us differently. ISPs have a different relationship with consumers than just about any other actor in the digital ecosystem. Consumers constantly choose which websites to visit and which apps to download, but they cannot avoid or shield their activity from an ISP therefore there are different consumer expectations in regards to their data. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been very vocal about the different expectations that consumers have with respect to 1^st vs 3^rd parties.

Now, as part of this privacy discussion, Consumer Watchdog is asking that the FCC require adherence to a Do Not Track (DNT) standard to protect consumers. While there are real concerns about how a DNT standard would be administered and whether the FCC has regulatory authority to enforce it, the request isn’t unreasonable. Even though very few companies honor it today, an increasing number of consumers are activating their browser’s DNT signal in an attempt to block being tracked by various parties across the web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) just this week completed a technical and policy standard for how companies should respond to the DNT signal. Interestingly, the standard is not that different from the industry’s self-regulatory opt-out program and could provide a roadmap for the FCC and companies.

It is heartening to see the FCC take a measured and thoughtful approach to learn more about how privacy rules should be implemented for broadband. There is a real opportunity for the FCC to build upon and even strengthen the fine work of the FTC. This important effort will ultimately enhance consumer trust and grow the opportunities for the brands they love.