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Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

Automating O2C processes will resolve pain points and ensure scalability

From a 10,000-foot view, order-to-cash (O2C) is a seemingly simple process. However, the O2C cycle causes pain points across a number of business in various industries — notably in the media marketing and publishing industries. Orders are received, processed, sent through billing, and revenue is recognized. But anyone using order-to-cash in their business workflow will tell you that it’s much more complicated than it seems. This is particularly true in the digital age.

Reviewing the O2C workflow in any company reveals that a number of processes are involved. Many of these include manual aspects that create higher costs, elevate error margins, increase delays and limit scalability. This is especially true in the media and publishing industries where growth is critical and scalability hinges on resolving O2C pain points. Fortunately, many of these processes are repeatable and scalable, which makes them prime candidates for automation. 

That being said, the thought of reengineering long standing order-to-cash processes can seem daunting. For many this involves enabling new systems, integrating different business units and systems together, updating to a modern data collection model, and syncing a proper tech stack. All of this is required to execute a well-functioning automated O2C process.

Often, the perceived complexity of such an undertaking will drive companies to put off automating their O2C processes. However, it is becoming more and more evident that the order-to-cash process must automated in order to simplify and streamline them, especially for industries with media buys.

Identifying O2C pain points

Media industry players are encountering a need for scalability in their ad campaign business now more than ever. Order volume is out-scaling manual elements of existing processes to execute campaigns. This is particularly true in companies with an ever-growing large daily volume of short-lived ad placements. 

No trafficking team, no matter how skilled, has the ability to execute 100% accuracy when manually processing hundreds of ad campaigns daily. From tag checkers, to the volume of unique URLs needed for creatives, to requests for targeting large sets of DMAs, to endless rule sets and executing a wide variety of product packages for their clients, it all comes down to reducing the manual aspects of these repeatable processes. These are all essential to allow for scale with ease. This will also limit error margins almost completely. The good news is that all of this can be achieved through automation.

In reality, the repeatable aspects of trafficking workflows are all prime candidates for automation. These include target sections, creating unique targeting rules and UTM trackers, DMA cloning, and establishing rule sets. Executing a well-rounded automation strategy to address these aspects of O2C will free up bandwidth for tasks and process that must be manual. Thus, the process also facilitates scale.

Why automating O2C Processes is crucial

Order-to-cash issues in publishing and media can be both internal and external. However, they all involve the ad placement campaign cycle. Internal processes involve inventory management, subscription management, order process, and ad placements. Processes that are external include order processing, ad management, programmatic, and audience management.  

Of course, there are some crossover points between the two. Some processes involve the client needs (advertising) and the means to flight ads (audience management and inventory management). All effect the bottom line in terms of profit. 

O2C processes regularly involve segmentation which generally tends to be a manual process. The more manual the process, the longer the campaign completion times. This results in extended periods of time between order placements and recognized revenue.

Streamlining an ad placement campaign cycle in the order-to-cash workflow, with automation will make processes faster and more efficient. Creating smaller to zero error margins while enabling publishers and media marketing companies to complete order cycles and recognize revenue faster. 

Real world examples

Consider, for example, the process of manually selecting rule sets in ad trafficking. Rule sets are a standard element in the O2C process and often come with a high margin of error pain point. For each campaign, ad, and platform, a particular rule set must be implemented to meet the client’s targeting criteria. Multiply this by hundreds or thousands per day and you have the perfect scenario for errors to occur. These types of errors effect ad performance and tracking UTM’s causing significant inaccuracies in reporting.

Thankfully simple and repeatable aspects of the ad trafficking workflow, like rule sets, are perfectly constructed for automation. Although the particular type of automation will vary depending on the use case, automating these elements will greatly reduce inaccuracies and speed up campaign cycles.

In addition, many publishing, media and streaming companies offer a vast array of product packages to their ad clients. Some offer 50+ types of product packages, each with their own set of guidelines for trafficking, enabling a host of issues that can occur during campaign setup, deployment and reporting.

In this instance, trafficking appropriately and enabling the correct tags for reporting is key to successful campaign execution. Reducing manual efforts and human error margins is essential and the best way to do so is through automated DMA updating capabilities.

The payoff

The order-to-cash process has become more arduous as the digital ad market has grown. This is particularly true within the publishing and media marketing industries. As the scale of ad business increases, the need for simple and accurate solutions to O2C pain points has become critical.

In markets that rely heavily on order-to-cash workflows for recognized revenue, the answer is simple: Optimize your O2C workflows with automation to eliminate error margins, reduce delays in revenue recognition, increase bandwidth, and ensure scalability.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Building your sandcastle in the privacy sandbox

Last year we warned about the imminent approach of a new consent economy, born out of privacy regulations, that would completely reshape the ad tech ecosystem publishers have used to develop their monetization strategies. To no surprise, it has arrived with consent and first-party data as the new currency. The consumer now has a seat at the table and the ecosystem is experiencing a total rebuild of itself as we speak.

Now that the consumer has a louder voice, and with regulation forcing the issue, the major tech titans are at war with one another to emerge as the frontrunner in establishing privacy enablement. Each one is making attempts to change the game by leveraging their technology to align with the calls for privacy from regulators and consumers alike. Certainly, these concerns are legitimate. However, the outsized influence they have in the space allows them to take a favorable position. In particular, they can corral everyone in their ecosystems into their new privacy sandboxes. 

Apple’s sandbox

Applying Apple’s rules within their ecosystem isn’t new. They were making moves around privacy long before the other tech giants. Publishers felt the loss in monetization when Apple began blocking third-party cookies in Safari. With Apple’s eyes now aimed squarely on the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and strict adherence to the terms of use around it, publishers must adapt to yet another rule change and monetization threat. By controlling a large percentage of a premium market, Apple has the power to make rules everyone will be forced to follow. 

If DSPs believe IDFA is the only and best buying signal, publishers and suppliers will need to prepare to support it to comply with advertiser demand and ensure inventory is eligible for DSPs to bid on. Yes, publishers can still monetize without the IDFA signal. But if a buyer wants to transact utilizing IDFA vs. a publisher’s own first-party data signal, what choice does a publisher really have? 

Google’s sandbox

Google, on the other hand, seemed to hope to ride out the waves of conversation around privacy and didn’t eliminate third-party cookies right away. When it became clear the issue was gaining traction and that regulation loomed, they introduced their own sandbox. Through the introduction of the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), Google is essentially proposing privacy policy that ends up favoring their ecosystem more than it already has given their existing ad tech stack dominance around the globe.

With Chrome currently accounting for 46% of browser share and Android accounting for 40% of the mobile operating system market share in the U.S., publishers will find themselves forced to play along yet again to a rule change that they had little influence in formulating. As of this writing, Google will be the one defining the FLoC cohorts (their version of IDFA) and allowing publishers the opportunity to feed their data into the respective cohorts. Peculiarly, they will be the only player able to do cross-site tracking and attribution, leaving publishers with little influence on garnering their fair share. 

As a result of these big tech players calling the shots and the rest of the industry trying to figure out how to play in this new world, other players have also begun building sandboxes. For example, The Trade Desk is working with independent industry organization Prebid.org to introduce a Unified ID 2.0 and Magnite introducing a PARROT proposal. Globally, there are many other ID initiatives also in development as the entire industry tries to figure out how to thrive in these new sandboxes. 

Build your sandcastle 

As with any change made by big tech, it is in the best interests of publishers to adopt an agnostic view in attempting to evolve strategies for each respective sandbox. Regardless of which sandbox you’re playing in, you must build and fortify your own sandcastle.

The first step in doing so is to remember that big tech needs the publisher in this equation. Why? Because the publisher is the one collecting user consent and in control of the first-party data, which are the key components of trade in this consent economy. This is why it’s critical to defend data at all costs and only use it as leverage for garnering a fair share of the transaction with advertisers. 

Creativity rules

With third-party cookies dead and gone, advertisers will still seek to trade around audience and context. With publisher first-party data the most critical and stable component to monetization, developing strategies for understanding and monetizing audiences in a cookieless world remains a priority. 

Publishers will need to leverage new offerings to provide advertiser options in scenarios of consented and non-consented traffic. For example, non-consented traffic can be supplemented by semantic data points or other valuable, non-identifiers. Industry inflection provides an opportunity for publishers and advertisers to come together to discuss how to best reach and speak to the consumer via varying deal types or placements.

Despite the flux around the ecosystem’s evolution, there’s no time to waste in beginning to build your castle to ensure you’re getting your fair share. By remaining engaged and being protective of your data and your partners, you can begin to lay a foundation for establishing your place in the sandbox. As the topic depends on the outcome of future decisions, it’s important to stay informed on its evolution and to ensure your castle is strong enough to withstand any future headwinds. 

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

How cookie deprecation puts publishers in a sweet spot

Among the many changes witnessed in 2020, cookie deprecation has sparked conversation throughout the industry. Technological shifts, driven by browsers, alongside increased privacy legislation combine to create new challenges for advertisers looking to reach specific audiences. As a result, IAS found that 49% of industry experts surveyed in our 2021 Industry Pulse Report listed third-party cookie deprecation as the top challenge for the upcoming year.

The implications for advertisers have been widely listed: targeting, measurement, and attribution will all be affected. But what does it mean for publishers? And how will it shape relationships with advertisers and ad tech vendors? 

How did we get here? 

While browsers are undoubtedly driving the pace of cookie deprecation, consumer concerns about privacy and data collection also play a role. Last year, IAS found that 88% of consumers are aware that websites and apps collect and share their data for advertising purposes. And, unaspiringly, this finding coincides with increasing global privacy legislation. Between cookie deprecation and legal requirements, the industry is witnessing a seismic shift in how digital ads will reach consumer audiences. 

What are the implications? 

The bad news is obvious: Third-party cookie deprecation challenges current methods of audience targeting, attribution, cross-channel targeting, and measurement. However, that doesn’t mean third-party cookies provide the best method for reaching consumers.

Third-party cookies are not only limited to web environments, but they also have device and household limitations. In other words, third-party cookies don’t necessarily have a one-to-one relationship to actual consumers. Therefore, it can’t represent a precise “identity.” The good news? Knowing this, third-party cookie deprecation presents the industry with an opportunity to find something better. For publishers, the shift creates an opening to regain control over the value of their media and how they provide it. 

How do publishers play a role? 

In the short term, publishers can help advertisers leverage current technology that bypasses the use of third-party cookies. By proactively responding to the shifting environment and enabling the use of existing, developing solutions, publishers can establish themselves as partners to advertisers in this new era of digital advertising.

Verify that inventory is viewable, brand safe, and fraud free 

Publishers should take time to review their inventory and assess for viewability, brand risk, and fraud. Ensuring that ads have the opportunity to be seen by real people, in brand suitable environments will remain the first step for advertisers looking to connect with consumers. By proactively evaluating content, publishers will be positioning themselves as partners to advertisers in the evolving digital landscape.   

Work with a partner to optimize advertiser KPIs 

Verification companies can provide more than reporting capabilities. Publishers should consider partnering with a verification provider that delivers solutions which automatically optimize their inventory toward advertiser KPIs. 

Unlock value with contextual targeting

As the industry seeks alternatives for audience targeting and identity resolution, contextual targeting is experiencing an innovation renaissance. Industry innovators have been revisiting the technology, improving it, and creating new, exciting solutions to propel targeting tactics forward.

Publishers who package their inventory with content in mind will have an advantage in building relationships with advertisers shifting toward contextual methods. Additionally, publishers can work with verification partners that pre-screen pages and develop curated pre-bid segments to ensure they’re helping brands target the right environments for their audiences.  

What about the longer term? 

In the long run, the future of identity resolution will require advertisers to work directly with trusted partners across the entire ecosystem. While there is unlikely to be a single silver bullet solution, publishers should be considering the consumer, what devices they’re using, and how to marry various identifiers to create a robust understanding of their user.

All aspects, from email addresses in an effort to build Pseudonymous Deterministic Authenticated Identification, to latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, to CTV IDs should be considered when thinking about working with brands to identify consumers. With direct access to first party data, publishers have intimate knowledge of their consumer base. This will allow them to help advertisers start to piece together identity in the absence of third-party cookies. 

As cookie deprecation approaches, publishers should expect brands to become more reliant on their data and content expertise. However, despite the challenges ahead, publishers hold the key to establishing themselves as trusted partners in this rapidly changing ecosystem. 

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

The year of publisher-driven identity

Many publishers have not realized the full promise of programmatic advertising. And that is largely thanks to the use, and misuse, of third-party cookies. By providing user information access to everybody who would listen, and by enabling less scrupulous players to harness this information outside of the publisher sites, third-party cookies have devalued premium publisher inventory. These practices have enabled brands to harvest and reuse data. They have also put user’s personal privacy at risk.

Programmatic advertising could have driven vastly increased yields for publishers. Initially, many publishers benefited from opening up to global competition so that they reached more brands and marketers than they could contact directly. Programmatic advertising offered the ability to monetize each user individually to its true value. The publisher was able to access the increasing amount of programmatic demand funneled through the agency trading desks, and with much more transparency and control than working with ad networks.

Algorithms could be set to optimize for further revenue growth. This freed up the sales team to focus on more strategic buyers, higher margin activities like creative solutions. It also increased the importance of technical operations. Its growing efficiencies and economies of scale could be delivered by this automation.

Sadly, many publishers have yet to fully experience these benefits. Instead, many have suffered from a race to the bottom in terms of prices, from information imbalance with buyers and ads that have had a negative impact on their users’ experience.

Third-party problems

The single biggest factor responsible for these missed opportunities is third-party cookies. Therefore, it will come as a relief to many publishers that third-party cookies are being deprecated from browsers. Both Safari and Firefox are already blocking them by default. And Chrome plans to deprecate them from its market-leading browser “within two years” of January 2020.

Publishers should view this as an opportunity to redefine the user identification infrastructure that powers the digital advertising ecosystem. The year of publisher-driven identity has arrived.

However, it would be a mistake to wait for third-party cookies to crumble without working on an alternative. We still need advertising to be workable, and for all parties, but in a more balanced way.

Solution-oriented

Brands require user identification capabilities to engage with their audience online in a controlled manner to measure the performance of their marketing investment. Because of this, having no identification would be worse than using an imperfect identification system. In fact, there is a significant risk that it would drive brands’ investment to the places where they can identify users without third-party cookies. (Yes, that means the walled gardens with their logged-in authenticated audiences which have volunteered a wealth of personal data.) Many savvy publishers understand this and have already invested in identity solutions that work for them as well as clients.

Publishers are the “first party” that their readers, viewers and listeners engage with. Their audiences trust them to provide valuable content and reliable service. Thus, publishers are in the best position to inform users of the value exchange between content and advertising, gain their trust, and collect their consent to enter into a personal relationship. In the privacy-first world we now inhabit, they are in the driving seat.

Publishers are also in the driver’s seat from a technical standpoint. Now that Apple and Google have decided to end autonomous access to devices by third parties – via the removal of cookies and MAIDs – identification will be enabled by publishers. It will be websites that decide when and with whom to share user IDs. It will be media owners who will allow brands to identify users, access data, manage frequency capping, and measure campaign performance. And they will reserve this privilege for the brands who truly value their audiences and will refuse it for all the “free-riders” who have exploited them over the past decade.

Identity matters

When working with identity solution providers, it is important that publishers keep these objectives in mind. They must ask themselves the following questions: Can I control the user IDs I am sharing with brands? Is my audience data protected by these solutions? Do I have guarantees that the privacy choices my users make will be respected? Only a clear, positive answer to these questions will ensure that publishers’ leading role in the future of identity management is guaranteed, and that they come out as the clear winners of the current infrastructure transformation.

The core benefits of programmatic advertising remain clear. Price discovery, increased competition, granular audience segmentation, and automation will continue to provide value to publishers who can harness them. But with increased control over when, how and by whom their audiences are accessed and used, these benefits will truly translate into incremental revenue for publishers. The pendulum is about to swing back towards publishers. And this serves the greater good for the open internet, digital advertising, and consumers.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Protecting ad revenue and prioritizing transparency in mobile

Mobile internet usage continues to climb and 90% of mobile internet usage is spent in apps. This trend is only accelerating due to the global pandemic, which forced consumers to stay home and find new sources of entertainment. In parallel, ad spending continues to grow in the mobile environment, reaching $240 billion last year. 

Given the current state of play, mobile publishers continue to require innovative tools and technologies that enable them to connect their audiences with marketer demand. But this isn’t without its challenges, especially given new restrictions handed down by device manufacturers, like Apple.

Privacy enforcement

At their 2020 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled a new framework dedicated to enhancing consumer privacy—the AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework. ATT will apply to iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14. It represents a fundamental shift in how app publishers engage with consumers. 

When Apple requires implementation of ATT, expected in early spring of 2021, app publishers will need to request permission to use app-collected data for tracking and accessing device identifiers. This includes Apple’s mobile ID, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Publishers can only ask for permission once. It is persistent thereafter, until the app is uninstalled or the user changes their permissions

Put simply: Advertisers will no longer be able to target users by default, unless users explicitly opt-in.

What’s at risk

Once complete, this profound  shift will have far-reaching implications. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of users are expected to opt in to share their IDFA. Without users opting in, the majority will suddenly become unrecognizable. Mobile publishers will be left with a proverbial—and unappealing—black box. 

This will affect targeting, suppression, and measurement. Advertiser interest in in-app advertising will likely wane, and with it, the resources mobile publishers require to reinvest in building new products and acquiring new users. These changes may result in fewer free mobile apps, which could dampen the consumer experience and reduce industry competition. 

Although ATT is designed with consumer privacy in mind, we need to focus on more than privacy. We must do more to evangelize transparency. Transparency allows the industry as a whole to preserve the consumer experience and consumer privacy in a way that limiting access to free apps does not.

Mobile monetization must-haves

How do we do this? Here are three strategies that will equip the mobile publishers to monetize by delivering transparency: 

User Authentication

Users will provide login information (i.e., authentications) and share ATT consent in order to gain a closer relationship with the content they love. We need to champion authentications as a mechanism for transparency. An added benefit is that authentications are people-based and not device based. Therefore, they drive higher revenue. 

Additionally, new authentication strategies allow mobile app developers to reach the right end user and increase ATT consent rates. By authenticating themselves, individuals gain access to valuable content, brands are able to deliver better experiences, and publishers can develop closer, trusted relationships with consumers while protecting ad revenue.

Frictionless Demand

Understanding user session times, engagement and in-app purchases at the person level helps publishers hold on to as many unique audiences as possible. This allows them to activate against accurate data to achieve more ad revenue and efficiency. Publishers need frictionless demand pipes in order to seamlessly work with a partner that has strong demand-side connections.

Privacy and Security

Upholding consumer privacy, control and choice is imperative. Mobile publishers must find a way to improve the customer experience while maintaining compliance adhering to global regulations and app store requirements. This is the only way to continue to deliver key workflows necessary for business growth.  

The time is now

The impact of ATT and other near-term privacy shifts is nothing short of seismic for the mobile app industry. The stakes are high. App publishers may lose their ability to monetize valuable ad inventory. However, they may also lose also direct relationships with consumers who value the fun, exciting experiences they provide—especially during the ongoing pandemic. 

These three strategies are imperative to act on now. They are the foundation upon which app makers can start to build direct connections to audiences seeking trust and transparency in a time when few authentically provide it. 

Advertising | Perspectives

Raising the bar on ad quality and transparency

In recent years, the discussion around ad quality has become much more specific and tangible. The goals have become more quantifiable and the insights easier to act on. Today, there’s a lot riding on the publisher’s business in that moment when the page loads, and all page and ad content is revealed. And, frankly, there’s more money riding on that moment now.

As the programmatic market has grown more refined and valuable to advertisers and publishers alike, buyers increasingly pay attention to the environments their ads appear in. Quality advertisers demand that they appear adjacent not only to high-quality content, but also to other high-quality ads.

Meanwhile, increasingly sophisticated users expect publishers to host trustworthy, relevant ads alongside the content they’re engaged with. At the end of the day, reputation and revenue are on the line – from the moment the page loads and the ad content is revealed.

Context matters

The simple fact is that you can’t separate page content from ad content and from the content of the ad’s landing page. The user certainly doesn’t make that separation. The user assumes every ad on the page must be intentional, and the publisher must have co-signed on any page any ad links out to. It is time publishers view the page as a unified piece while also thinking about the ad experience beyond the page.

Today’s users are sensitive to ad content that sends a noticeably different message than the page content. They are sensitive to offensive, dishonest, or salacious ad content. They are also sensitive to clickbait-style, irrelevant, inappropriately partisan, and disruptively designed ad content. Unwelcome messages like those can lead users to lose trust in (and decrease monetizable engagement with) an otherwise high-quality publisher. And clicking through to a landing page containing misinformation, fraudulent products for sale, a phishing scam, or any other type of questionable environment can ruin a user’s relationship with a publisher for life.

Let’s face it, for publishers, there’s always been a push and pull between maintaining the integrity of the user experience and opening up ad inventory to the broadest range of programmatic buyers. And the traditional QA means to verify any and all ads on the page are relevant, on-brand, and legit often comes down to inefficient and inexact methods. This requires ad ops teams to manually refresh pages, or to check samples of ads from earlier scans.

The big picture

It may sound daunting to manage. However, today’s technology solutions help empower publishers to retain user trust and loyalty far better than, say, posting a disclaimer that explains to the user the complexities of programmatic.

Now, publishers seeking the highest level of ad content quality and control can view all 360 degrees of their ad inventory in one dashboard. This allows them to solidify their brand’s content strategy, avoid ad related annoyances, and ad quality issues. Considering how elusive real transparency in ad content/page content alignment has been, it’s about time.

When it comes to content quality control, publishers, have long been familiar with categorizing ad and page content by parameters like keywords, content vertical, domain, and blocklists. However, broad categorization is not good enough and leads to an abundance of inappropriate ad experiences.

Even worse, using blunt force to block entire categories of ads will fail to make good on the full revenue potential of premium ad inventory. In fact, 91% of publishers feel blunt-force blocking is hurting their rightful earnings. And 88% think that more customizable ad quality automation would increase their revenue.

Publishers know best

As a publisher, you recognize unwanted ads when you see them. But first, you’d have to see them. Without full transparency and vision into all of the ads on your site, that can be a tough ask. It’s tricky, time consuming, and resource draining. To streamline the process, publishers should employ ad quality tools that are customizable to the requirements of their own page content and the expectations of their particular audiences and advertisers.

Ultimately, though, the publisher knows those requirements and expectations better than anyone. Publishers absolutely need to apply a human layer to their QA process, which gives them complete control over what appears on their pages. When it comes to quality, it’s best not to simply “set it and forget it.”

Publishers need an ad content management solution that provides a full, unified view of all the ads on every page on the site, and that allows the publisher to instantly remove any unwanted, off-brand ads. Content quality QA might seem pedestrian, but it has the power to accelerate a publisher’s business, revenue, and relationships. Indeed, this is the level of real transparency the digital industry has talked about for years. Now’s the time to act.  

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

DCN leads new era of quality content signaling with trust.txt

Since its founding, Digital Content Next has been at the forefront of emphasizing the importance of brands as proxies for trust and advancing the future of trusted news and entertainment. 

We share this message about trusted digital publishers with policy makers, advertisers, and the public. We share how the trust DCN members’ brands have built – both their reliability and integrity – is critical to their on-going relationships with advertisers and consumers. And today, we also share that message through an innovative new way – through the trust.txt framework.

What is trust.txt? 

The idea is disarmingly simple. 

Trust.txt is a machine-readable text string that enables any web-crawling robot to easily understand there is a relationship between DCN and our members who also choose to install a trust.txt file on their sites. The concept will be familiar to anyone familiar with robots.txt or the more recent ads.txt. Scott Yates, founder of JournalList.net is the caretaker of the trust.txt framework, along with a few members of his non-profit board. 

This simple idea helps to solve a long-standing challenge: Research has repeatedly shown that membership in DCN is a clear positive signal of trust to the industry, press and others.  However, that “trust signal” is not actionable for social networks, search engines, programmatic ad networks, researchers and others that wanted to transact only with trusted publishers. Over the years, platforms, agencies and advertisers have asked us to manage lists of trusted publishers however we’ve always been concerned those lists would be too narrow unless they recognized the entirety of the media ecosystem – not just DCN members. And that’s what the trust.txt framework does.

In support of this framework, DCN has placed a small text file on our website. You can actually look at it here.  

We recommend that all of our members install a similar file. It’s easy. And, significantly, it signals that the trusted publishers that do so have a relationship  to DCN. It confirms our association with each other in a decentralized and secure way. 

Why do this? 

As you likely know, DCN has consistently expressed concerns about how Google and Facebook have undermined the power of brands to serve as proxies for trust. We’ve held their feet to the fire in many ways. But they do have one valid excuse for why they do not send more users to more trusted publishers: They don’t have a way for their web-crawling robots to see that trust relationship. The same can be said for automated advertising systems and brand safety filters begging for automated inclusion lists.  

What they need are machine-readable signals that they can plug into their algorithms. With trust.txt they will have that and their last excuse for why they don’t more prominently feature trusted digital publishers evaporates.

When these trust.txt tags are on more trusted publishers’ websites, DCN will have a new way to hold the platforms accountable. We’ll also be able to use it with new and emerging advertising systems to encourage smart ad spending on trusted content creators. 

Trust us 

Members of DCN: I encourage you to install your own trust.txt file. The instructions to do so are here. I also encourage you to join JournalList.net, a member-owned cooperative that manages the whole system. It also means that Yates, the founder of JournalList, can help you get your trust.txt file built and installed.) 

DCN is pleased to be the first national organization to sign up for JournalList, and we encourage every other membership organization to start using this tool right away so that the network effect of trust will be visible as quickly as possible. The framework was built as a starting point that is truly open and available to all. DCN is, and will be, only as trusted as its  members. The same holds true for any other membership, whether it be a new coalition or an organization that has stood the test of time like the Associated Press. 

The last few years, and especially the last few months, have provided stark evidence that the underlying problems that plague society are made worse when the information ecosystem is weak. It’s time to strengthen our digital infrastructure with trustworthy information, We are hopeful that trust.txt is another powerful step in the right direction.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

When Apple closes a door, malvertising opens a window

A lot of mobile app developers are looking toward March and sighing something along the lines of: “It’s been fun, but the salad days are coming to a close.”

As promised in the iOS14 update, Apple will begin enforcing the user consent requirement for apps to share its Identifier for Advertisers (aka IDFA) in March. This was delayed from September; however, it’s been a dark cloud rapidly approaching for anyone advertising or monetizing in the mobile app space.

IDFA was a giant boon to mobile advertising. Arguably, it kick-started in-app programmatic by enabling cross-app targeting and measurement for advertisers similarly to the way third-party cookies function in browsers. While third-party cookies are (reportedly) hitting the end of the road in 2022, Apple’s IDFA will live on. However, advertisers, adtech companies, and publishers alike are pessimistic about the percentage of users who will opt-in due to a rather negative permission window from privacy-centric Apple.

Eric Seufert, who has become somewhat of an IDFA whisperer with his Mobile Dev Memo blog, predicts that only 20% of app users will opt in to sharing IDFA. While Facebook and Google are both expected to take billion-dollar revenue hits in the next 12 months due to the privacy switch, this will be a calamity for app developers of all shapes and sizes.

Unfortunately, those developers may get hit with a double whammy. They face severe revenue loss and a storm of malvertising and malicious ads taking advantage of a drooping programmatic marketplace and mobile vulnerabilities.

Publishers’ incessant mobile troubles

Mobile has been a long, hard road for digital publishers. As more and more of their traffic creeped over to smartphones and tablets during the last decade, publisher revenue opportunities dwindled. Less screen real estate was available to show display ads, visitors scrolled by impressions at warp speed, and the available formats not only failed to satisfy advertisers, but also alienated audiences.

And that was before Apple’s Safari, the most widely used mobile browser in the US, introduced Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) and cut off third-party cookie support. Eventually, Apple plans to put even tighter restrictions on first-party collection.

At AdMonsters Publisher Forums, ad ops professionals described their mobile web environments like ghost towns. “Oh yeah, the advertisers know that iOS users skew more affluent and that we have solid first-party data segments. But they won’t bite without client-side measurement capabilities and attribution.”

Scammers step in

No surprise then that the scammers saw a weak mobile programmatic marketplace and came to play. The current age of ad quality challenges started with omnipresent mobile redirect campaigns. For a while in 2018, it seemed like every weekend you could be greeted by scam announcements that you’d won a gift card if you dared to brave the mobile web.

Much has changed since then. Publishers have creative blockers at the ready for redirect barrages. But bad actors now seem to be favoring malicious clickbait slathered in cloaking code over the ol’ redirect.

And their interest in compromising mobile users has only grown. The biggest named malvertising threats of 2020, including LuckyBoy and IcePick, used fingerprinting to pinpoint mobile devices.

Late 2020 and early 2021, The Media Trust saw a dramatic rise in malicious ads on mobile devices. (And when we refer to an incident, we mean a specific malvertising campaign; the amount of infected impressions is exponentially higher.)

Malicious advertising on mobile—web and apps—skyrocketed at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021.

As Pat Ciavolella, Digital Security and Operations Director at The Media Trust, explained on a recent webinar, “Mobile is a juicy target for bad actors…. Most people access the Internet through their mobile devices and malvertising is harder to detect. Malicious actors are starting there to make sure their code is working before expanding onto desktop and reaching anyone and everyone.”

A significant slide in in-app programmatic CPMs—due to unidentifiable or unmeasurable traffic— will simply open up new testing grounds for malvertisers.

Double whammy

So, the enforcement of consent for IDFA—with Apple messaging that’s likely to dissuade users from opting in—couldn’t come at a worse time. As noted elsewhere, even rosy opt-in predictions could have devastating consequences on app developers’ revenue. We know because we’ve seen how advertisers pull out when users are unidentifiable and unmeasurable on Safari. (On mobile and desktop).

And when benign advertisers step back, we’ve then seen how the malevolent ones step forward. A simple examination of the rise in malicious advertising during the early days of the pandemic is enough to set your hair on end. An explosion in supply with lowered CPMs is a scammer’s paradise. The scam opportunities around Covid will once again hit fever pitch as bad actors try to capitalize on vaccine distribution.

Rise in malicious advertising detected between Jan. 2020 and April 2020—the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

App developers face a dual threat. First, the are likely to see a serious drop in revenue as in-app programmatic CPMs decline when users fail to opt-in to IDFA-sharing. And then a host of bad advertisers will try to infect their users with malware or rope them into some kind of scam.

As tempting as it may be to send the programmatic bid floors to the basement, app developers – and mobile publishers in general– have to keep their guards up against malvertising. The must also demand better protections from their upstream demand partners. It’s never been more important to scan and track where bad ads are coming from.

In the long run, infecting your users with malware or a credit card skimmer could have far worse ramifications than a revenue shortfall.

Advertising | Perspectives

3 insider tips to enable unified cross-channel measurement

With billions of dollars transacted on metrics that didn’t exist a few years ago, precision and rigor in detailed measurement matter more than ever before. Yet connecting and rationalizing fragmented data across multiple channels remains one of the most significant barriers in advertising. This poses a pressing challenge when considering the unpredictability of this past year and how it has impacted consumption habits.

To deliver a successful cross-channel strategy, marketers and publishers require special insights about how to precisely measure the impact of advertising attention and optimize consumer experiences. It requires unifying all views of prospective consumers in the TV and digital landscapes.

Here are three insider tips that enable you to unify your view:

1. Monitor cross-platform saturation to avoid ad overload

The struggle to achieve visibility goals has flummoxed the most-savvy professional. This is in part because of the historical barriers to measure fragmented data regarding de-duplicated frequency between platforms. However, it is essential to span the measurement gap to ensure that activation strategies align with measurement capabilities. However, you would be surprised as to how often this falls short. For example: 

  • Marketers and publishers deliver on valid and viewable as the de facto standard. Yet reach and frequency are often being measured without this crucial filter in place.
  • When campaigns are delivered, particular audience segments are curated across 1st and 3rd party datasets. Yet measurement of that performance is based on demographic buckets that only roughly align to how your campaign was carefully targeted.
  • With the growing evolution and consumer adoption of connected TV (CTV) programming, it’s apparent that there’s a significant opportunity to access valuable audience share. Still, it’s challenging to unify your CTV strategy with the remainder of your digital and linear advertising approach. And this leaves you blind and unable to advance.

No one wants a wasted ad budget. Instead, leverage measurement solutions that enable detailed analytics of all ad buys across all households to work for you. They can help pinpoint hurdles or make inflight changes while the campaign runs. This degree of analysis on any-time intervals across a digital and TV portfolio will also help you develop best practices for future campaigns.

2. Pinpoint inefficient ads to untangle cross-platform performance

How can you tell when ad waste occurs? This question undoubtedly plagues our ad tech industry, which  faces epochal changes. Consumers encounter ads, even when they are off-target audiences. And relevant ads hit the same audiences ad infinitum. Learning to pinpoint inefficient ads and untangle cross-platform performance allows you to identify how much you spend efficiently sending real messages to real people.

Sophisticated cross-platform measurement solutions provide tools to measure trillions of impressions across TV and digital–and stop bad actors in their tracks. For example, the teams at Moat by Oracle recently uncovered StreamScam, characterized by forged household IP addresses, app IDs, and device models to make it look like ads were playing in digital environments when they weren’t. 

Note the following industry-wide digital ad expenditures for reference:

  • 20% serves to bots only—and never end up on the screen
  • 20% serves an empty room
  • 25% serves inattentive viewers
  • 30% serves digital, 40% TV
  • 10% serves a saturated audience

3. Unlock sophisticated audience relevancy 

With the constant evolution in ad tech, sophisticated audience relevancy means something different now than it did even five years ago. With new and emerging channels, platforms, and technologies, reaching the people you care about and in a cross-platform capacity is both more important, and in some cases, more daunting than ever.  

Today we know that people have, on average, six devices from which they consume media. All of those devices present a fundamentally different engagement experience and are all vying for our attention.

Let’s be honest, when it comes to reaching people, a one size fits all approach rarely fits the bill. Relying on imprecise definitions measured only by age and gender audiences is one clear example of potential constraints. Focus on finding better alignment with your campaign goals. This requires more inclusive data on audience interests, family structure, past purchase behavior, and more—compared to a national industry-recognized baseline. 

It is critical that marketers and publishers earn how to leverage solutions to tie relevant audiences with a unified view from TV to digital. This will provide true cross-channel clarity and empower more informed decision-making for your next campaign.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Video

Preparing for advanced TV’s 2021 take off

The new year brings new cheer to the advanced TV advertising sector, with an exceptional outlook for 2021. Following months of accelerated change in 2020, a remarkable 84% of marketers across five European markets expect to increase their investment in advanced TV during the next 12 months. This positivity signals a recognition of the channel’s potential to reach highly engaged audiences in premium video environments that are on-demand, connected, and addressable.     

Media owners – whether programmers or distributors – have a golden opportunity to tap into this wave of optimism for a channel that includes multiple interconnected solutions and platforms. This includes video-on-demand (VOD), connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT), to audience-based linear, programmatic, and addressable. Here are just a few of the trends media owners should be aware of as they prepare for advanced TV’s take off in 2021.    

Unification of linear and digital

Linear TV and digital video have been on a convergent path for some years. However, in 2020 it became perfectly clear that viewers see no difference between the two. People switch effortlessly between channels, platforms, and screens to satisfy their appetite for video content everywhere, any time. Advertisers are adapting to this evolution. They want to deliver seamless experiences across all premium video environments, regardless of whether they are linear or digital.

In 2021, the ability to sell and deliver inventory across all devices and platforms in a unified way will be a top priority for media owners, enabling them to meet advertiser demand. Significant steps are already being taken towards achieving this goal, including the advance of linear schedule optimisation through digital ad decisioning tools. However, more still needs to be done to achieve greater unification over the coming months so media owners can make a greater portion of inventory available for advertisers to buy simply and holistically.

Availability of addressable inventory

Marketers are increasingly keen to target TV advertising at household level through the use of high-quality data insights. Traditional TV advertising is still the most effective option for achieving scale. However, marketers can supplement it with addressable advertising to access niche audiences and achieve incremental reach.

Across Europe, over three-quarters of marketers expect to increase investment in addressable advertising next year, with a 9% growth predicted overall. This does vary however, according to the maturity of individual markets, the technology capabilities and the availability of addressable inventory. Spain has the most optimistic outlook, forecasting a 13% increase in addressable advertising, while France is the most cautious at just 4% growth.

To take advantage of increased investment in addressable advertising, media owners should focus on making more of their inventory addressable. This will mean breaking down silos between TV and digital teams. It also requires exploring how they can effectively use first-party and second-party data – while complying with data privacy regulations – to enable richer targeting.

Preparing for addressable advertising will require a degree of collaboration and European media companies can take inspiration from the U.S. Across the Atlantic, industry initiatives such as On Addressability are driving progress towards simple, scalable addressable capabilities across TV formats. And project OAR (Open Addressable Ready) is establishing a common technology for dynamic, addressable advertising management.

Collaboration with competitors

The trend for cross-industry collaboration doesn’t just apply to addressable advertising, but to advanced TV as a whole. Advertisers demand more streamlined solutions that allow them to buy across channels, platforms, and devices. So, media owners will need to put aside traditional rivalries and take a collaborative approach. In this case, working with competitors well help them gain mutual advantage.

There are already examples of successful collaborations around addressable TV within European markets, including partnerships between FranceTV and both Bouygues Telecom and Orange, as well as the LOVEStv platform in Spain. In the U.K., Sky, Virgin Media and Channel 4 are all partnering on AdSmart. ITV has extended an open invitation to broadcasters to join its Planet V platform. More established cross-market collaborations are also in place, such as the European Broadcaster Exchange, which was established in 2017 between Mediaset, ProSiebensat.1, TF1 and Channel 4 to enable programmatic video advertising across multiple countries.    

Over the coming year, more media companies will form partnerships or join existing collaborations. This will allow them strengthen inventory offerings to allow advertisers to access premium, brand-safe advanced TV environments at scale.

After a turbulent year all round, the next 12 months look extremely promising for the TV and video ecosystem. Media executives will be poised to maximize the opportunity by embracing the unification of linear and digital and making more of their inventory addressable. If they also find ways to collaborate with partners and competitors across the industry, media companies can put themselves in the best position to make the most of advanced TV’s 2021 take off. 

Advertising | Perspectives

To thrive in the post-cookie era, web publishers must act now

As we enter a new year, most tech departments look to create a product creation and upgrade schedule for the year, which then gets divided into two or three-week sprints. As publishers undertake that process this year, I have two overarching thoughts:

First, recent events continue to suggest  that Google will deprecate the third-party cookie by the end of this year. As a CTO, it seems to me that publishers must deploy minimal but real changes to code-on-page to take advantage of new identity marketing solutions.

Second, most publishers declare a “code freeze” in the fourth quarter due to heavy advertising volume. Indeed, with its lower ad volumes, the first quarter is when publishers typically implement new technical capabilities.

These two facts lead me to recommend that web publishers immediately begin to deploy the code associated with new identity resolution services. This will allow them to capture the highest revenues, avoid hectic scrambling, and minimize technical risk.

Will Google eliminate the third-party cookie on schedule?

Early last year, Google announced it would eliminate third-party cookies “within two years.” Subsequently, Google officials stated that this timetable might be delayed, mainly if the industry’s replacement solution was not in-place.

At BritePool, we believe Google will follow-through with its original timetable. At a recent PRAM (Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media) meeting, Stu Ingis, chairman of the Venable law firm, discussed the urgency of completing PRAM’s work (in conjunction with the IAB Tech Lab) to be prepared for the elimination of third-party cookies.

Similarly, eMarketer recently spoke with industry experts to review the changes confronting advertisers and publishers that will have “significant effects on how they do business.” This list prominently included “Google’s planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome by early 2022.”

But won’t Google provide a lengthy notice period?

Google’s initial announcement included a schedule, with a two-year period, for the adtech ecosystem to prepare for the demise of third-party cookies. There is no reason to believe Google will provide an additional lengthy notice period before acting. It is easy to imagine that at the start of this year’s fourth quarter, Google will simply confirm that by the end of the year, it will eliminate third-party cookies, as planned.

How does this fit into privacy reform?

BritePool’s COO previously wrote that a Democratic election victory would lead to national privacy legislation. Now, Republican concerns associated with social media “censorship” mean a bipartisan consensus for legislative reform is developing.

In this firmament, we believe Google will conclude that it will benefit by following Apple with privacy-centric browser management. Moreover, Google officials who suggested the possibility of delay indicated Google would act when the industry is ready.

Now, multiple industry solutions are available.  For example, BritePool and LiveRamp have both demonstrated the viability of their cookieless identity resolution offerings. And PubMatic has launched its Identity Hub.

My advice? Act now

eMarketer concluded its review by stating, “It’s critical for advertisers to start testing approaches to targeting these types of users and measuring results now—while the traditional signals are still available for them to make comparisons.” My advice for web publishers is the same: It is critical to start implementing new cookieless targeting capabilities.

Acting now benefits publishers in multiple ways. It eliminates the high technical risk potentially associated with scrambling to adopt identity resolution services late this year. Publishers gain experience by running pilot campaigns with these new capabilities and can optimize their offerings for 2022. Finally, it increases the CPM’s for programmatic traffic throughout this year, in part by accessing the users of Safari and Firefox browsers, which currently block third-party cookies automatically.

Editor’s note: This article was submitted, and set for publication, before this week’s Wall Street Journal article confirming that Google would eliminate third-party cookies. This Journal reporting reinforces the significance of the related analyses in this article.
Advertising | Perspectives

Supply path optimization: only the best for publishers and advertisers

Just this past week I was buying lemon sole for dinner at our local seafood market.  My friend Joe D, the proprietor, has been running this business for more than 30 years. Yes, you will pay a premium for his tuna, crab legs, oysters and salmon. But as the saying goes: “You get what you pay for.”

Sure, Stop and Shop, Acme and even Whole Foods are cheaper. But when the family sits down to dinner it is worth that extra 10% or so to benefit from the highest quality supply path to your table. That’s the kind of optimization you can taste!

Complexity deconstructed

It occurred to me while thinking about this article that our sole meunière might be a nice way to demystify the sometimes overly complex language and the digital advertising industry’s fascination with jargon and acronyms. After all isn’t what we want just a better experience for our audiences, publishers and advertisers?

There are so many things right about the incredible content that can be discovered and enjoyed on the internet. And our industry has rightfully become the largest advertising marketplace on the planet as a result. Nevertheless, some aspects of the business are due for renovation. Apologies for extending the cuisine theme again, but let’s face it, there are too many cooks in our kitchen. We have every reason to ask ourselves why we tolerate an overabundance of SSPs who are largely undifferentiated sources of the same impressions.

Quality vs. commodity

A successful SPO strategy will benefit publishers who consistently deliver the highest quality content, engagement, audience, and impression value. Time on site, viewability, editorial excellence, desirable demographics and psychographics will be worth more to buyers. These publishers will capture share and increase revenues.

Simultaneously, we must build more effective and more efficient methods for buyers to identify, select and purchase only good, better, and best content within the internet’s marketplace of ideas. In effect, we must de-commoditize supply. This will go a long way toward eliminating fraud, increasing transparency, and reducing the non-media leakage of third-party fees.

Only buy the best

Industry leading programmatic consultancy Jounce Media states:

Supply path optimization is an emerging technique by which programmatic buyers bias their bidding toward a short list of preferred pathways that enable high scale, high efficiency inventory access.

Therefore, when shopping for the highest performing supply available buyers should pay special attention to the pathways they choose. Supply Path Optimization done right will focus on tangible qualities such as viewability, IVT and scale enabling KPIs to be met with fewer wasted impressions and greater efficiency.

About the author

Bruce Brandfon is Chief Media Officer of Duration Media. Prior to that he was EVP of Webspectator, and before that VP and Managing Director at Publicitas. Before joining Publicitas, Bruce was VP and Publisher of Scientific American. He has also held leadership positions at The Philadelphia Media Network, Newsweek, and Time Inc. Bruce is Director of the Board of Advisors at Planet Forward, and an Adjunct Professor of Media Studies at Westchester Community College.

Ping Bruce if you’d like to know more about why and how Duration Media consistently outperforms almost all other Supply Paths in the programmatic ecosystem. (And, yes, he’ll also tell you where Joe D’s fish market is.)

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