Tags containing: "clean rooms"

Four media companies on tackling signal loss with data collaboration

June 24, 2024 Jeffrey Rosello, VP Customer Success – Permutive

Signal loss makes it increasingly difficult for advertisers to run campaigns across the open web. Traditional methods for prospecting and direct response are particularly impacted, with only 30% of the open web currently being addressable.

This change places advertisers in a challenging position, making it difficult to reach their target audience and maintain brand equity, especially on the open web. However, publishers and broadcasters are uniquely positioned to assist advertisers in navigating these issues, as they have not experienced signal loss.

Media companies have highly engaged audiences and access to a growing variety and volume of behavioral and contextual data points, which are essential for effective audience modeling. Essentially, publishers are the key to achieving 100% addressability and the future of targeting on the open web. However, to maximize the value of these insights, they need tools that foster collaboration and provide advertisers with clarity amidst the chaos.

To gain insights into how publishers are strategically addressing these issues, Permutive gathered four customers and publishing leaders who are reimagining data collaboration. We asked them where they see opportunities and how they are solving the challenges that arise.

Our panel included Stephanie Mazzamaro, VP, Addressability & Premium Programmatic at The Arena Group, Michael Nuzzo, SVP Data Solutions at Hearst Magazines, Josh Peters, Global Head of Commercial Data Strategy and Programmatic Operations at The Washington Post, and Bethany Hillman, Vice President, Data and Advertising Operations at TelevisaUnivision.

Here are the four key insights from that discussion:

1. Solving for signal loss: What advertisers want

The panel’s resoundingly indicated that advertisers are looking to publishers to solve signal loss across the open web and the addressability data gap caused by privacy regulations and third-party cookie deprecation. Josh Peters at The Washington Post emphasized the complexity of these advertiser requests. He said they are seeing varied inquiries about data access and standards and noted the challenge of advocating for better solutions beyond standard industry offerings. He said: “They want the IAB standard. We have to make the case that we actually have something better.”

Stephanie Mazzamaro at The Arena Group stressed the need for standardizing signals. She explained that one of the big initiatives and challenges for the publisher this year is making the signals a standard but still unique. “How do we still create that special sauce and still provide differentiators in the marketplace?, she mused. On the issue of creating standardized audiences – and echoing Mazzamaro’s challenge – Michael Nuzzo at Hearst Magazines said: “Having a single person be one thing, at any given time, is kind of an impossible task.”

Publishers know their audience, and, through the right tech, can connect the dots and provide insights into audiences that advertisers might not realize. Nuzzo believes it’s important to understand who users are at the right time in a given contextual space and expand beyond existing user bases.

He said that “it’s something that advertisers and agencies understand really well: If someone’s reading about dog food, I should serve them a dog food ad. But we also know, through a taxonomy, that people who are interested in dog food are often outdoor runners because they run with their dogs. And so we open up new audiences, and we’re not just pitching these people into a single segment.”

2. Metrics for success: Moving away from clicks

The Arena Group has put a lot of resources into launching “as many IDs as possible” to find its North Star, and has started shifting from page views to addressability metrics, focusing on user engagement and “stickiness.” Highlighting the role of Permutive’s new identity hub in streamlining these efforts, Mazzamarro said her team has been busy finding ways to use contextual with addressable audiences. They are also focused on finding ways to make them stickier and have created a scorecard internally to measure them.

Amid the furor of made-for-advertising sites (MFAs) and external companies deciding the premium status of publishers, is a focus on quality and equipping premium publishers to tell their own story through insights, which can be used at every stage of the sales cycle. Washington Post, for example. is moving towards quality over quantity, emphasizing time spent and exposure. They are also using clean room interactions for better post-campaign analytics and insights.

Peters told the audience the publisher is being more precise with its actions and feedback to advertisers. For example, if an advertiser spends money in one area, Washington Post can point out another area with better performance and time on site, suggesting they focus more there. He said: “That’s what the advertisers are looking for and that’s where the dollars are going to end up.”

The challenge here is different for broadcasters, particularly given the proximity to its end users in the app environment and considering both linear and digital buyers. TelevisaUnivision is packaging digital metrics with traditional video and CTV platforms, aiming to provide comprehensive audience insights and drive better market adoption. “I’m pulling those linear buyers through,” explained Bethany Hillman at TelevisaUnivision. “Not just saying you have to purchase video and big-screen, but giving them the full concept of all the digital metrics, we’re not just looking at households. Pulling that market along has been the most important piece for us.

3. Identity management: Connecting disparate data

TelevisaUnivision and The Arena Group both see identity management as an important part of their strategies, particularly the need for consolidation and easier data access to drive forward resource allocation and storytelling. Referencing Permutive’s Collaboration and Connectivity products, Bethany Hillman at TelevisaUnivision said: “We have offline pieces. I’m calling APIs to get data in. I’m trying to find coverage in different places. For me, the consolidation is going to be huge.”

Nuzzo at Hearst stressed the responsibility of managing identity data, including consent management and internal collaboration to maximize data utility.

It’s important to be transparent about that data, too. Hearst integrates identity and data with media activations, determining value through CPM uplift. Washington Post has developed a dashboard to track audience transactions and contextual performance, providing transparent and actionable insights company-wide.

4. Clean room: Scaled activation versus single solution

Washington Post and The Arena Group both discussed the challenges of adopting and implementing clean room technologies, calling for clear next steps and collaboration to fully leverage these tools. Mazzamaro said “it’s a checkbox” for agencies when they ask if publishers can access clean rooms. It’s always a positive reaction when a publisher says yes, but that agency always runs something else that does not require a clean room. “Working through adoption is really hard as an industry,” explained Mazzamaro.

TelevisaUnivision highlighted a partnership with Home Depot to illustrate the potential of clean rooms but said that “it’s an oxymoron that clean rooms equal data collaboration.” She said: “What I’ve seen so far is you load your data in, and you get a match rate… where I am collaborating on data? My big hope for clean rooms as we stand them up, is that we see the activation, not just from a one-to-one match perspective, but really to see that growth scale and to collaborate for the first time. So what data can I bring to the table to help that person expand their consumers.”

The critical role of data collaboration

In the face of signal loss, publishers and broadcasters play a vital role in addressing advertisers’ needs for audience reach on the open web. As our panelists have discussed, advertisers are coming to them with requests because they possess highly engaged audiences and access to a wealth of data points.

By leveraging data collaboration strategies and connectivity tools, publishers can advance the industry by consolidating disparate data for effective identity management and fully realizing the potential of clean rooms for scaled activation and data collaboration. These strategies will enable the media industry to continue providing effective audience targeting and drive greater success in an evolving digital landscape.

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Data clean rooms are not one size fits all. What do you really need?

November 21, 2023 Alexandra Theriault, Chief Growth Officer – Lotame

Right now, publishers and advertisers have data collaboration firmly on their minds. That’s because collaboration is key to driving the most value from their respective first-party data. And there are good reasons why data clean rooms (DCRs) have been cited as publishers’ best bet for successfully collaborating with advertisers – and their data. However, it’s a challenge to understand how today’s DCR options differ and which one (or more) to select.

Armed with the right DCR, publishers stand to take back control of their customer data and media revenue. Some factors may put publishers at an advantage: percentage of authenticated traffic from logged-in users, breadth and depth of first-party data categories, and overall footprint of data per region. The end goal is to bring as much first-party data, on a common identifier, that is relevant to an advertiser – and to do it in a controlled environment. That’s all necessary to produce a meaningful, useful output.

A needs evaluation

Before unpacking four common DCR categories and how they vary, it is critical to have a clear understanding of your specific needs so that you can make the best choice for your media company (and maximize the value of your data).

Honestly evaluate your organization’s:

Use case. What are the specific needs of your advertising clients?
Technical resources. What current staff do I have or need to properly prepare first-party data and execute clean room implementation, analysis, and connectivity into the tech stack?
Time to value. What timelines am I willing to work with, without negatively impacting revenue?
First-party data. What data do I own? And what volume of it is tied to a hashed email (HEM), mobile ad ID (MAID), or other common identifier?

Categories of digital clean rooms

Ok, now that you have a better understanding of what you really need, here are the four main DCR categories we’ve seen emerge this year along with some tips about which might be best for your needs:

Data warehouses/clouds

In this variety, the data is stored in a warehouse, then transferred to a clean room for partner collaboration. This is how Snowflake operates – built on Amazon Web Services. Many pubs favor the cloud model, as it reduces both the need to port data sets from one location to another, and the related risk of data leakage. There are opportunities here for technical customization, for a business with the engineering or data science resources to take on the task. Attribution and measurement are a good use case for this category.

Walled gardens

Some Big Tech platforms offer their own DCRs – Google’s Ads Data Hub, for example – while also partnering with other tech providers’ clean rooms. Walled gardens may offer straightforward implementation for businesses with limited tech resources. They may also provide some flexibility for publishers and advertisers to work with the data sets and partners they want – but any customizations may demand an assist from a data scientist. Keep in mind walled gardens are often resistant to move data from their own respective ecosystems, after participants port it over. Use cases for advertisers include activation, suppression, and measurement.

Data collaborations

Here, participants onboard their data and use one of several available common identifiers to collaborate. In some cases, a participant can bring in another partner to collaborate without paying extra fees. Data collaborations allow for activation in environments outside of a walled garden – a feature walled gardens themselves don’t offer. They deliver user-friendly implementation, and advertiser use cases include data analysis, data enrichment, and activation via monetization of a desired audience.

Queries

Query clean rooms are engineered for collaboration in a neutral environment. They connect various clean rooms and environments, and they don’t require participants to port over their data. They’ll support any common identifiers the participants choose. As such, analyzing data overlap is an advertiser use case here. Query clean rooms will require tech knowledge and resources to oversee data orchestration, but a generalist with some training may be able to manage it successfully.

Looking beyond factors like the use case and the resources available, publishers will need to ask questions about the data itself while vetting potential partners. Some critical questions to keep in mind:

Do the participants have enough compliant data available now for successful collaboration, or can they count on having it in the future?
Can the data be enhanced or modeled out using machine learning?
Who needs to access the data, internally or externally?
Where is the data currently stored?

Tailoring clean rooms to publisher needs

Ok, so it’s clear that one size does not fit all when it comes to DCR’s. But your specific needs may not be met out of the box, regardless of the solution you choose. Media companies may also find that getting all of their preferred advertiser partners into the same clean room is a challenge in itself. You need to consider whether your organization has the tech resources to support clean rooms from multiple providers. The tech itself and its capabilities (or limitations) might not be the core problem, though. The more basic issue may be with relationships between partners. This is where a strong identity framework can be a bonus, as it can provide interoperability.

One more consideration: Publishers will find that many clean rooms are engineered for marketer use cases. And brands that have a good deal of influence in the marketplace will also want to push their publisher partners into their own preferred clean room environment. Publishers need to make sure they or the clean room provider can manage integrations across various clean rooms, to provide the reach that incentivizes advertisers to spend.

There’s no such thing as a universal DCR that can manage all relevant use cases and business needs. While there has been plenty of talk about clean rooms, turning talk into action has been minimal thus far. Publishers would be wise to coordinate with their largest, most strategic advertiser partners to identify which clean room(s) support their primary goals and align with available resources.

About the author

Alexandra Theriault is the Chief Growth Officer for Spherical, a suite of CDP accelerator solutions, at Lotame. Alex oversees the Spherical team working alongside brands, helping them maximize the value of their first-party data to enable personal development, enrichment, analysis and advertising activation. In her prior role as Chief Customer Officer, she led the organization’s customer focus, programs and strategy across six continents. Alex brings 16 years of experience designing, developing and delivering world-class customer success for global brands, agencies, platforms and publishers across martech. She serves as an advisory board member on Lotame’s Diversity & Inclusion council, and served as an advisory board member for a martech start-up in the affiliate space. Prior to joining Lotame, Alex was with IndustryBrains, a leader in monetizing B2B & Financial publisher content through contextual advertising, a subsidiary of Marchex.

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Publishers vs. walled gardens: Can your data tech compete?

February 16, 2023 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Google’s deadline for deprecating third-party cookies has been looming on the horizon for the digital industry for a while now. But at this point in 2023, even with the continued delays by Google, it’s staring us in the face. According to the IAB, digital media has lost up to 60% of the signals that were accessible for targeting and measurement just a few years ago. And while publishers have always been more restricted in resources and spending than advertisers in general, publishers are feeling the heat. And we can see that in how they’re investing in their tech stacks.

The publisher community has long feared third-party cookie deprecation would lead to a bifurcation in the digital ad marketplace. On one side would be the walled gardens, with their large volumes of verified first-party data – not to mention advanced tech stacks. On the other would be the entirety of the open web, which would require collaboration and a scalable identity solution to hold its own.

Top priority in the publisher ad stack: making data work

In the latest installment of Lotame’s Beyond the Cookie report, our survey of publishers and marketers indicates that there really is a sense of urgency for open web media outlets to up their game. In the near future, 37% of marketers plan to increase spending in walled gardens, and 54% expect to reduce programmatic spend. Publishers know they need to onboard the right tools to compete – that is, to build audiences, and to analyze, enrich, and activate their data.

Fortunately, publishers are taking action. While strategizing about how to invest in their tech stacks, tools for managing and processing data top the list of priorities. In the next six to 12 months, our research finds that 35% of publishers will be looking to adopt a data management platform (DMP), 35% will be considering a customer data platform (CDP), and 32% will be exploring identity resolution tools. Not only that, but publishers cite DMPs and CDPs as the tools they would be least likely to retire from their tech stacks.

In the drive to process first-party data from as many sources as possible, CDPs have progressed through their hype stage and have demonstrated real value. Today, 44% of publishers and marketers alike use a CDP, and similarly, 45% say that they plan to build or buy technology to perform CDP functions in the coming year.

Don’t believe the hype. Believe the results

Unfortunately, the hype we heard around CDPs in 2022 admittedly created some confusion about their best use cases. A CDP shouldn’t necessarily be treated as a simple replacement for multiple other tools in the tech stack. For marketers, CDPs deliver value by helping improve customer experience. However, for publishers, it’s about experience and data consolidation.

To maximize their investment, publishers need to put CDPs to use collecting data from all possible online and offline sources. (As opposed to relying too heavily on, for example, data from logged-in known users, at the exclusion of other sources such as unknown users that can provide scale.) These use cases explain why publishers are investing in both CDP and DMP technology.

The rush to gain meaningful data insights that will attract advertiser spend has also driven a great amount of interest in clean rooms – despite reports that there’s still some lingering confusion about how they’re best implemented. At this point, 48% of publishers are using clean rooms. That means they’re more likely to use them than marketers (37% of whom are doing so).

A focus on balancing privacy and identity

Publishers remain concerned about the level of privacy provided by clean rooms. They’re also concerned about the reliability or actionability of the data – which they fear may be compromised by outdated emails or limited scale of authenticated IDs. Publishers do need to keep in mind that clean rooms are helpful in gaining more value from their data, by allowing participants to compare their data sets. But they’re not intended to effectively replace third-party cookies.

Publishers are also increasing their exploration of and investment in identity solutions. For a while, it may have seemed to some publishers that Google’s delays in deprecating third-party cookies put the task on a lower priority level. But interest in probabilistic solutions grew 50% YOY in 2022, while interest in contextual targeting and authenticated or email-based solutions both held steady over that same time period.

In 2023, digital ad spend is projected to continue rising, though not as rapidly as in 2021, when consumers’ digital behavior was also changing rapidly. Publishers are compelled to make wise, well-considered investments, to keep up with the industry’s evolution while keeping the business’s bottom line strong. Those who have been lagging need to step on the gas. It’s time to start testing and implementing the tech that suits their goals and advertiser partners, empowering the open web and putting their data to work to compete with the walled gardens.