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Tags containing: "identity"

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Diversify your advertising options to drive revenue

Media owners may feel like their cups are half empty. Admittedly, it’s a tough business to be in right now. Certainly, the advertising industry is in the middle of a “Great Reset.” However, we must remember that change also means opportunity. Like most businesses, media owners don’t want to guess about the future and they don’t want to make directional bets that could leave their business in dire straits. The good news is they don’t have to. 

Although media owners aren’t fortune tellers, they don’t need a Magic 8-Ball to see that they have a wealth of choices as they move forward. Upheaval driven by the deprecation of the decades-old technology of cookies, a global pandemic, and new regulation focused on consumer consent and transparency have all enabled a tremendous amount of innovation in our industry. As a result, tools for media owners are rapidly becoming more agile and more privacy forward. They are also becoming more effective.

Now, you can target in context. You can target in real time. You can target on first-impression. And you can target across devices, sequentially, with managed frequency, with your own data, with second-party data, with enriched data.

Diversify to thrive

Diversification is key for media owners as we continue into this new era. Marketers want and need options. Many publishers are leaning into contextual as a response to the changes in our industry. While context is a fine option to realize the value of publishers’ great content, it’s not the only lever you can pull, nor should it be. 

Marketers agree. In fact, two-thirds of marketers are not confident that contextual targeting alone is a sufficient replacement for audience targeting. That’s a significant percentage of paying customers looking for alternatives. 

Media owners, marketers are looking to you for those alternative solutions. Are you comfortable putting all your eggs in one basket and one that appeals to a fraction of your customers? 

No one said change would be easy. However, media owners have the tools and partners available today to compete. Google is only part of the story — but you shouldn’t let them be the only story. 

Yes, the Chrome browser is important. However, when you zoom out, there are multiple browsers in common use; tablets and phones that are proliferating in the billions; connected televisions, and a vast proliferation of connected devices, spanning the globe. There’s a prodigious open web opportunity up for grabs. Consumers are hungry for your content and willing to pay good money for it. 

Real solutions

Google may not embrace identity within its walls (except on its own account, of course) but identity solutions are plentiful across the open web. The walled giant may try to woo you with dumbed down tools. However, you can be sure that, for their own marketer clients, they’ll be surfacing all the sophistication attendant to the rich wealth of data that they have for their own clients. Don’t force your buyers to reprogram dollars to those walled gardens. (And by the way: Enriched data can still be activated via Deal IDs, even in Google.)

It would be wise to fill your cup up with solutions designed for you. From deterministic to probabilistic and everywhere in between, there are smart people working hard to ensure your content, your employees, your business can gain an advantage. So, give them a chance to show you what your options look like. 

Deterministic will help you drive your known customers to repeat purchases, while probabilistic will fill the funnel with the other 80-90% of customers that you don’t know or can’t recognize. New privacy regulations are driving better tools for consent and transparency — not the reverse. You’ll be surprised how motivating consumer privacy is for many in the industry. Remember, we’re consumers too. This is the time to test, test, and test again. It will get easier with each test and iteration. 

The current climate may seem rough and complex, full of new regulation and uncertain tech modes; however there is no shortage of solutions. There is an extensive buffet of partners and technology that can make identity frictionless in a regulated world, so you can focus on results and not painful implementations. Have your cake and make room for more!

Advertising | Perspectives

Building a 360-degree customer view to thrive in post-cookie publishing

Last year was a whirlwind ride in ad land. Publishers navigated through a tumultuous period of reduced ad spend, axed campaigns, and overzealous keyword blocking. However, 2021 brings with it a new and arguably more significant challenge: the deprecation of third-party cookies and other universal identifiers.

But don’t listen to the nay-sayers as they opine the prospect of a doomed ad ecosystem. Instead, know this: The impending changes to online advertising, while no doubt disruptive, present incredible opportunities for advertisers and publishers alike. Publishers and content creators possess troves of first party data. Given their direct relationships with audiences, they may be in the best position possible.

Publishers: Seize your moment

Eliminating third-party cookies and other universal identifiers alters the dynamics of the digital advertising market. The “cookie-free” world aims to serve the needs and wants of consumers first and foremost. Consumers will set the terms for digital advertising. This marks a fundamental change from what we’ve been used to.

Publishers currently have the strongest and clearest connection to consumers through their large networks of audiences. As the market makes its shift away from universal IDs, we can expect to see many brands and advertisers work more closely with publishing partners. But this additional leverage doesn’t mean publishers can get away with business as usual. Innovation is crucial. For publishers to establish staying power, they’ll need a sophisticated first-party data strategy that’s proactive and meets the needs of today’s advertisers.

Diversification is key

As the digital advertising industry moves beyond personal identifiers, diversification will be key to success. A single-point, silver-bullet solution to replace cookies or MAIDs isn’t what anyone’s calling for. It’s unlikely that such a solution will exist given the ubiquity and heavily embedded infrastructure we rely on today.

Rather, the answer will more likely involve a diversified portfolio of solutions and approaches to data-driven targeting and measurement. The fundamentals for sound data strategy won’t change, though. In the “cookie-free” world, publishers will still need to:

  • Preserve customer experiences and deliver heightened value to visitors
  • Support advertisers in reaching the right people with the right message at the right time
  • Optimize yield through diversified approaches to inventory packaging

Strategic shifts

However, changes to data strategy will center around three core areas. Publishers will need to maximize data to build stronger advertiser relationships, leverage context-based technology to increase understanding of one’s inventory and commit to measurement that extends beyond baseline metrics.

Publishers must:

1. Maximize the value of your greatest assets: Harness the power of data and enrich the understanding of your customers.

As premium publishers move towards a subscription model and first-party data becomes critical, we expect to see the shift to gather as much known first-party data as possible. Many will leverage new subscription models in order to do that. The new data will primarily reveal demographics and online behavior restricted to a publisher site portfolio. However, publishers will need to enrich that data to get a 360-degree view of their audience to better sell inventory.

2. Learn how contextual intelligence drives value.

There are myriad signals on a page. Sentiment, for example, reveals the tone and context of an article. Understanding this context (and doing so at scale) will play a more integral role in ad targeting as cookies disappear.

ID-free technology such as contextual intelligence maintains an acute focus on content and consumer mindset. This allows intelligent publishers to curate inventory packages, based on high value content, which their advertisers seek.

Tapping into reader sentiment will be of particular interest to both advertisers and publishers. Research shows the value of emotionally connected customers. They buy, visit, and pay attention at higher rates compared to people who don’t share the same emotional connections. As context gets more advanced, expect to see this area explored with great interest from both advertisers and publishers as they aim to create detailed views into the content interests and subsequent consumption behaviors of their audiences.

Furthermore, brand safety, suitability, and sentiment-based decision making opens up publishers to more curated, bespoke solutions. This will more accurately value their supply and subsequently make addressable media more valuable. Plus, contextual advancements across a variety of formats, coupled with new and more data-informed approaches to context, will create additional opportunities for advertisers to reach people in an anonymous capacity. Sky’s the limit for the future of contextual.

3. Find out how analytics and insights matter more than ever.

Among the adtech lessons of 2020—media moves fast. Measurement must keep pace during critical times. It must also operate across all channels and platforms to ensure a comprehensive view of success and uncover areas for optimization.

We can also expect a greater focus on analytics with limited reliance on personal identifiers. Publishers will want to prove that their sites are safe for advertising. They’ll need viewable inventory that features low invalid traffic (IVT). They will also want to provide rich insights to show the best creative performance, media attention across multi-format content (such as video, CTV or streaming audio, eSports, desktop, and mobile).

A portfolio approach for the future

We cannot overstate the importance of looking ahead, beyond universal IDs. Digital advertising exists to evolve, and businesses need to adapt. The change to identity unquestionably baffles the best of us. However, some may mistakenly invest in only one solution when we’re certain another shift will closely follow. The nature of this business requires more forethought and imagination, especially now. By widening the array of solutions and ap

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

How to choose the right approach – and solution – for a cookie-less world

The demise of third-party cookies offers an opportunity for the digital advertising industry to rebuild on a better foundation. This is particularly true for publishers who are willing to leverage the right approaches and technologies to monetize their audiences and protect their data.

When Google announced its deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, advertising technology providers, industry consortia, and Google itself started to work on alternatives. The goal is to build solutions that ensure addressability without compromising privacy compliance.

Finding a valid alternative to the cookie is particularly important for publishers and ad tech platforms operating in the Open Web. Google and other Walled Gardens can count on billions of authenticated users to deliver personalized ads. However, the rest of the industry needs to find alternatives that enable them to address users efficiently to stay competitive.

Publishers can already see what a non-addressable internet looks like. In Safari, where third-party cookies are already blocked, media owners see their CPMs decrease by 50% as compared with Chrome.

Two popular approaches to identity

Today, there are two popular approaches to solving the identification challenge in the post-cookie world. One is based on cohorts and the other uses pseudonymous universal identifiers.

The cohort-based approach

Google has been working on its Privacy Sandbox. This collection of proposals is aimed at preventing individual user information from being shared with the ecosystem. The initiative focuses on local data processing. The goal is to provide technology platforms with APIs to collect aggregated data about user profiles, as well as aggregated campaign performance data. According to Google, the mission of the Privacy Sandbox project is to “Create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default.”

Grouping users in cohorts may give the illusion of compliance because, arguably, you cannot individually address people. But this is not the real problem. This approach prevents publishers from engaging in a real conversation with people about the value exchange between their data and the services they receive. Moreover, it doesn’t offer transparency and control to consumers. They have no way of knowing in what group they have been added and why. They also lack the ability to remove themselves from a cohort.

The approach based on pseudonymous universal identifiers

The other method available is based on pseudonymous identifiers that are created when a user opts in to share some pieces of information with the publisher or authenticates on a website. This information can be used as a consistent identifier by all the websites that have collected and passed along the advertising value chain. Brands can use the ID to collect information, deliver messages and measure the performance of campaigns.

Pseudonymous identifiers can be created using different types of information and require users’ consent to comply with data protection regulations. When publishers can provide signals such as hashed email addresses or login IDs, these can be used to anchor consistent identifiers across the websites that have collected them.

Most of the time, email addresses and login IDs are not available. With this approach, probabilistic algorithms use passive identification signals, such as IP address and the device’s user agent string that are shared via the HTTP Protocol. This enables the ability to infer the uniqueness of a user across websites. This method can be particularly useful to address and monetize users that are not ready to authenticate yet but are willing to share some level of information with the website.

Why one approach is better than the other

Unlike the Privacy Sandbox, universal identifiers work in all browsers, not just Chrome. Thousands of publishers that are keen to monetize their cookie-less traffic on Safari today and in all browsers tomorrow have already adopted universal identifiers. Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox, on the other hand, is still a set of proposals at their infancy stage. And, so far, they’ve only been tested by Google.

So why would you sit still and wait for Google to develop and test its Privacy Sandbox when universal identifiers are already available and working? Even more so, why should publishers and the rest of the industry rely on an alternative that will further increase its dependency on the tech giant and, most likely, work on Chrome only?

By partnering with the right identity providers, publishers monetize cookie-less traffic in Safari today and prepare for the post-cookie world.

Choosing the right universal identifier

So, if you decide to try the universal identity approach, the first step is to choose which ones to use. As of today, there are over 25 different identifiers that publishers can test in preparation for the cookieless world. No publisher will have the bandwidth and resources to try them all. So, below are some questions and considerations that can help to select the most suitable options for testing.

Privacy and transparency

Does the identifier use privacy-by-design technologies to capture consumers’ data privacy preferences? And does it give consumers the option to opt-out in the future if they decide to revoke data processing access? Make sure that your identity solution provider can guarantee your users’ privacy protection and control over their data.

Data protection

What about your data? What mechanisms does the identity solution provider have in place to ensure the information that you’re sharing in the bid stream is only accessed by your authorized monetization partners? Data leakage was one of the main concerns with third-party cookies. Ensure that your identity partner can safeguard your and your users’ data.

Footprint and adoption

How many platforms have adopted the identifier? An identifier is useless if ad tech platforms are not using it. If you’re considering several identifiers, verify they have enough footprint to provide some results. Most user ID modules are available on Prebid. (See how many platforms have adopted each of them.)

Cross-domain linking methods

What methods does the identity solution provider use to link IDs across domains? Most of them use deterministic methods and are only able to link authenticated users. No matter how many logged in users and email addresses you have, you will always have unauthenticated users visiting your website. So why miss on the opportunity to monetize that audience if they are willing to be addressed through passive identification signals?

Prepare today to thrive tomorrow

There are only a few months left until cookies are deprecated by all browsers. If you haven’t started testing universal identity solutions yet, start now. You can already see what the cookie-less world looks like in Safari so use this to your advantage. Utilize Apple’s browser as your testing ground and work closely with your monetization partners to understand what solutions bring the best results and why.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

4 proposals for navigating post-cookie identity

In early March, Google announced that it was committing to its FLoC method of targeting and would not support alternative identifiers in any of its adtech products. The industry had a small, and understandable, panic attack.

Don’t worry. This is good news. There are still a lot of alternatives available for each use case. Alternatives include cohorts, contextual, authenticated identity, and probabilistic identity.

Cohorts

FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) is technically the addition of a semantic classifier to the Chrome browser. It will scrape page content and URL data and qualify users into small segment groups based on their navigation history. Everyone’s still being tracked, but now only by Google.

It’s a pretty blatant data land grab. Google is using the specious legal argument that if a consumer browses the Internet with Google Chrome, all of the data collected while they browse is the first-party data of Google. Publishers, marketers, and most importantly users of the internet should take a careful look at what Google is doing.

Critical questions:
  1. Is the algorithm that builds these cohorts going to be open to publishers and partners for investigation?
  2. How exactly will Google decide what cohorts to qualify users in? And how can we be sure they won’t be the cohorts that make Google the most money?
  3. How will Google differentiate between valuable and less valuable scraped content?
  4. If one company controls the advertising of, the discovery of, the navigation of, and the monetization of the internet, how is this not an antitrust issue?
  5. Are cohorts privacy safe and are there controls for the consumer? Why, for example, has the Hague flagged FLoC as potentially non-GDPR compliant? 

If it’s neither privacy-compliant, nor competitive, nor pro-publisher, then what’s FLoC’s value to the industry? 

Contextual targeting

Contextual has gained a lot of traction in recent months. There are some that think contextual targeting is a privacy carte blanche. The truth is a little more complicated. Contextual does not require user consent as long it’s scoped to a single page of content.

However, as soon the context of more than one page is combined, even in session, even on a single publisher’s site, it becomes tracking. Thus, it carries the same legal burden of consent as any other tracking method. Further, without cookies, device IDs or other third-party identifiers, contextual has obvious struggles. These include precision, scale, frequency capping and, most importantly, measurement, which is critical to attract spend from advertisers.  

Our recent survey of publishers and advertisers found more than 69% of U.S. publishers are bullish on contextual targeting as a replacement for audience targeting. However, 66% of advertisers disagree. That’s a big enough divide to question placing all bets on context.

Authenticated identity (deterministic)

Authenticated, or deterministic, identity requires the user to provide a known piece of personally identifiable information, such as an email address. To obtain that email address, publishers, data providers, and brands ask consumers to log-in or register to a site/app to access free content, deals, or other services.

There are a lot of worthwhile pros here. Because it can be tied to a person, it’s a highly accurate solution and great for targeting and measurement. Additionally, user consent is easy to track, which allays privacy concerns.

However, how much of the web requires logging in? Early estimates expect the authenticated web to capture 10-20% of users. Scale is a real issue. Some publishers have a clear advantage in the authenticated lane. The vast majority of publishers will struggle to drive authentication, while others have built their value around free and open content. Without deep technical and monetary resources to draw on, authentication could be a game-over for many.

Non-authenticated identity (probabilistic)

To capture the rest of the 80% of the open web, publishers can use non-authenticated identity. This is better known as probabilistic ID. The tech behind the probabilistic method assigns a cluster of devices and browser signals to an ID that can be moved via established pipes into activation channels. Publicly available, IAB-approved signals can include IP address, time stamp, or browser user agent.

Probabilistic identity is the perfect complement to deterministic identity. Probabilistic is data minimized with no email, home address, or phone number required. It scores points for consumer privacy and ensuring that no brute force attack on an encrypted ID can reveal an email or a phone number.

Unfortunately, probabilistic identity is also widely misunderstood in the industry. While it does rely on IP address, some misconstrue it as fingerprinting. In fact, probabilistic identity has no more or less privacy burden then multi-page contextual targeting that leverages a first-party cookie. IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework 2.0 stipulates that “with consent, vendors can create an identifier using data collected automatically from a device for specific characteristics, e.g., IP address.”

Certainly, it’s up to you to pick the best solution for your business. That said, it always makes sense to diversify your toolset to capture the most revenue possible. It’s too early to tell which tools will perform best for which marketers. So, having all of them at your disposal allows you to work with more brands.

Perspectives

Publishers: Marketers care about identity and you should too

Change is the “new normal” in 2020. Everything comfortable in our personal and professional lives has been upended. But in the face of massive amounts of discomfort, the digital advertising industry is beginning to collaborate like never before on the many challenges in front of us. 

Identity is front and center, and for good reason. It’s become a highly divisive topic with those in favor and those firmly against (and without an alternative, innovative idea). On the pro-identity side are marketers who believe identity is an essential tool to understand, find, and accurately target and message their customers. 

Marketers are asking for what they want. It’s our duty – and in our best interest – to listen. 

Get real, people

Marketers want to engage real people – and as many as possible. That real person is not a device or a one-time page visit. We’re talking about a real person with multidimensional needs, desires and passions. Ask any marketer (or agency, for that matter) about the arduous work of crafting personas that represent those people. It requires an enormous lift to create, validate, and test these personas. You can imagine how defeating it is to turn your personas into addressable audiences, only for them to fail or be unable to prove that they didn’t fail. 

Identity can solve this marketer pain. The duopoly understands identity well, which is why they’ve put up walls. (By the way, they can afford to put up walls as all of their users are authenticated. By contrast, publishers can at best hope for 10% authentication.) 

Marketers can answer their important questions inside the walled gardens but can’t build on those learnings on their own. Publishers already feel the heat from competing with walled gardens and from marketers who want and need to prove they’ve reached who they intended to and that their ad dollars are well spent. Everyone’s job is on the line. Identity can solve for the pain we’re all feeling.  

If we invite marketers to the conversation versus solving in isolation, we may be pleasantly surprised. Marketers have a lot to say. They also have a lot of opinions on what a bright future for digital advertising looks like. The Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media is one such group of enterprise marketers and adtech that are collaborating to find solutions that work for all of us, rather than a select few. (Full disclosure, Lotame is a member of PRAM.) Let’s dig into why identity matters to marketers.

Five reasons identity matters

1. Customers

A marketer’s most valuable asset is the customer. The same is true for publishers. What we know about our customers is limited by our interactions, no matter whether we’re a marketer or a publisher. Identity helps fill in the blindspots in our customer intel.

Data enrichment is one method marketers use to expand their knowledge of changing behaviors, passions, and interests. If we want our messages to resonate with customers, we have to be on top of their ever-changing habits. We have to find a way for marketers to bring their own customer data to the party. 

2. Privacy

Privacy is a human right. PRAM sees privacy as the bedrock of its six principles. Consumers must have transparency and control over how their data is used. Navigating privacy is increasingly more difficult for everyone in the digital advertising ecosystem. With privacy laws changing all the time, even well-meaning companies are having a tough time keeping up. It requires deep resources to do the right thing by consumers. 

However, it can be done and identity can help in a cookieless world. Those spinning fear about the impossibility of universal opt-out aren’t telling you the truth. It’s possible and happening right now: Consumer choices can be respected and cascaded across the digital life of the consumer. Privacy should be controlled by a consumer, not a device or browser. 

3. Addressability

Identity helps us identify our customers so that we can engage with exactly the right people. Any marketer that wants to keep their job must be able to prove their ad spend worked. Will a single page visit comfort marketers that they’ve reached the right person? Unlikely. 

If we can’t reach our customers with confidence, we’ll invest elsewhere, because we have to. Identity helps us make investments in publishers with greater assurance that ad spend is going toward engaging someone who is actually interested or has a high propensity to be interested in our products. Context does matter but it comes second to identity. 

4. Frequency Capping

Customers are only human. And anyone will get annoyed by an ad they are not interested in or have seen too many times. Identity solves the frequency capping problem. When devices are connected down to the individual-level using identity, we can ensure that the consumer is encouraged toward conversion and not enraged by the recurrence of an ad. Frequency capping is a win-win for marketers and publishers. 

5. Measurement & Reporting

With the insight provided to enable targeting and frequency capping, marketers also have access to accurate measurement and attribution with identity. Marketers need proof our campaigns worked. With identity, we can follow the customer through their journey from exposure to conversion to repeat purchase, etc. We can also understand which channels are responsible for that conversion. No one wants to return to the John Wanamaker days of “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Change for the better

No one said change was easy. But it’s certainly worthwhile to examine our practices and processes and strive to do better. Investing in identity benefits marketers, publishers, and consumers. We don’t need a white knight to save us all. We need our best and brightest to come together and debate solutions. Frankly we need each other to survive. Let’s build a future that connects rather than divides us. 

Advertising | Perspectives

Advertising’s great unknown: Why audience intent matters more than identity

Today’s publishers are leading the way when it comes to reimagining advertising in a world without third-party cookies. They started thinking about a future based on first-party data long before Google announced that it would discontinue support for third-party cookies.

But now, publishers have an opportunity to reshape the industry for the better by focusing on relevant audiences and intent rather than identity. 

Advertisers don’t need to know the identity of an individual that they are targeting; they just need to know that they are reaching a relevant group of people for their brand. And individuals will be able to retain their right to privacy.

Aiming for the right target

How has identity become such a hot topic??

Publishers have been hit by an onslaught of restrictions about the way they use data, with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, and browser changes from Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox barring third-party cookies by default.

After these browser changes, publishers were no longer able to target their audiences with third-party data in Safari and Firefox. Publisher CPMs are lower in Safari compared with Chrome because these users are not able to be tied to a record or matched to a third-party identity. This has negatively impacted publishers’ advertising revenue. 

With Chrome still in play, many advertisers have simply shifted spending and seen reasonable returns. Although as much as 40% of traffic falls on browsers where tracking cookies are blocked, they are currently able to monetize and measure their campaigns on Chrome. However, that will soon change. Before the end of 2021, advertisers will have no option but to find a new way of targeting users.

Attention has turned to the thorny issue of identification. Without third-party cookies marketers will struggle with audience targeting, frequency capping and attribution. They require new ways to measure their campaigns that are not blocked by browsers or inhibited by privacy standards.

Key considerations

As advertisers, publishers and ad tech providers start to reimagine the entire ecosystem, there are three key things to consider:

Are identity solutions privacy compliant? 

Ad tech vendors are developing solutions to replace cross-site tracking with third-party cookies. Many of these solutions are still based on third-party cookies or probabilistic matching. This approach is a band-aid solution, not the answer. The IAB’s solution through DigiTrust had to shut down because of its very reliance on third-party cookies. For authenticated solutions where an email (or similar ID) can be leveraged to match users, there is the issue of scale.  

Before considering investing in an identity solution, publishers should ask:

  • Does  incorporate techniques that could be fingerprinting? Is the user being probabilistically matched to target them in a new environment without their knowledge?
  • Has consent been accepted in all areas where user data is being leveraged? Are you able to provide data on a user or delete it easily if the user requests access?
  • Will this solution work without third-party cookies?
Are you prioritizing user trust?

On publisher sites, users typically fall into three distinct segments: authenticated, recognized (via a 3p cookie) and anonymous. To ensure scale for targeting, publishers need to address each.

Authenticated users are logged in or have a common identifier; recognized users are based on third-party cookies or device IDs; anonymous users are not associated with an ID but their behavior or contextual data can be viewed by publishers. 

Across the majority of publishers, the number of authenticated users will be limited. They are typically loyal readers that trust the brand enough to form a relationship. On average, less than 10% of a site’s traffic will be authenticated and even with driving efforts it’s unlikely that number will rise above 25% for all but a few.

Publishers should be thoughtful around how and who they share this user data with in order to retain that trust. 

There are some great solutions for authenticated audiences however it is important to recognize that when you factor in match rates to advertisers data is going that scale will be limited.

Considering the type of identifier that a vendor is asking the publisher to release is important to evaluate. Once an identifier leaves the publisher’s environment, whether in hashed form or not, it is susceptible to many different types of nefarious activity, including fingerprinting which is aggressively being blocked by browsers.

The most pertinent considerations for publishers are:  

  • Is an identifier being shared in the bidstream that can expose user identity without their knowledge? Are you protecting your most valuable and unique audience by sharing an identifier that can be probabilistically matched? 
  • What is the long term impact of sharing identifying information on your revenue and business? Who benefits from the data?
  • What percentage of your audience can be reached through this tactic? What is the plan for non-authenticated traffic? Is there unique first-party data that can be used for campaigns instead of third-party data?
How will you target anonymous users and scale your audiences with first-party data? 

When Chrome starts blocking third-party cookies, the only companies that will be able to collect and process data on these “anonymous” users will be those with direct relationships, such as brands or publishers. In order to view data on these users, companies must have both a legal relationship (i.e. ability to collect consent) and a technical relationship (own the inventory). 

Publishers will essentially become their own walled gardens and will hold the keys to audience data for advertising because they gain legal consent directly from users on their site and serve ads on the same domain. They will be the gatekeeper of that audience data on behavior or context for these anonymous users and should ensure that this unique data retains value. Publishers must focus on collecting first-party information on both anonymous and authenticated users, including browsing behavior and contextual data.

For example, Entrepreneur Media, a large business-focused publication, was missing out on valuable revenue opportunities because it was unable to target users in real time on Safari and Firefox with third-party cookies. 

Working with Permutive, Entrepreneur Media was able to segment and target users across Safari and Firefox without third-party cookies and immediately benefited from a 7.6x increase in targetable inventory. Entrepreneur’s ability to provide advertisers with rich first-party audience offerings allowed the publisher to drive an impressive 11x (1094%) ROI within just two months.

Publishers should look at their existing data and understand:

  • Are they collecting first-party data on anonymous users?
  • What can they do to prepare for the time when Google blocks third-party cookies?
  • What should they be offering advertisers today to start the transition away from third-party data targeting?
  • Are their sellers able to communicate the value of their own data? What steps can be taken to make teams more operationally ready to be successful in leveraging data?

Trust and transparency will help build the bottom line

There has been little transparency around the fidelity of third-party data. And, frankly, the industry has done too little to change – until now. Publishers have an opportunity to ensure that their data is the cornerstone of a new currency. But we must have honest, collaborative conversations about the framework needed.

There are paths in place with the IAB data labels and consistent taxonomy. But for it to be successful, publishers need to build a long-term strategy.

An advertising industry, built with privacy in mind, can deliver what users expect. True targeting and personalization connects with an audience in the moments that matter, and you don’t need a name (or an email address) for a marketing campaign to be successful.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

As identity solutions evolve, smart publishers see an opportunity

As Chief Revenue Officer of BritePool, I am on the front lines every day talking with publishers, agencies, SSPs, DSPs, and advertisers about our identity resolution service. As you can imagine, Chrome’s announcement that it will end support for third-party cookies comes up in every one of those conversations.

My non-scientific sample of these conversations finds publishers fall into three distinct groups. The first group talks about “Chromageddon,” and the “identity crisis.” The second group is preoccupied with managing the current business during this pandemic and tells me “we will deal with the issue in 2021.” The final group sees this shift as the “identity opportunity.”

As a salesperson, it’s my nature to be optimistic. It’s also my nature to make things happen, with determination. My goal is to shape the future, by identifying problems and offering the best possible solutions. Of course, my position also makes me inherently biased. Nonetheless, I believe the future belongs to those who accept the dimensions of the new cookieless world and shape their business to grasp this opportunity. Where some see lemons, they see lemonade.

Those who see an “identity opportunity” seem to share five beliefs or approaches:

1. They have a strategy and they are not complacent.

At this moment, there are many reasons digital publishers are putting off addressing the identity issue. The most common reasons I hear for “call me next year,” are: (1) The IAB will develop an industry response, (2) The Google Sandbox will solve our problems, (3) Google won’t really do it, or (4) My plate is full as I try to remotely manage a business that should be run in-person.

On the other hand, publishers who see opportunity recognize that all solutions will require a long-term effort, which must start now. I have met with publishers who tell me, “no matter what happens with the IAB or Google Sandbox we have an internal goal of increasing self-identified visitors,” often “by 5X or 10X in the next 18 months.” The phrase that most sticks in my mind was from the publishing executive who said, “If we know our visitors, everything else will fall into place.”

As part of their strategy, this group also has a clear sense of how identity targeting with their properties fits into the marketing needs of clients, and the distinct benefits these publisher offer as compared to CTV services, mobile apps, social media, and a myriad other digital alternatives. This guiding purpose informs the questions executives at these publishers ask me, and ultimately their choices for solution providers.

2. They plan to grab share from Google and Facebook.

In an earlier article for DCN, BritePool’s CEO, David J. Moore, argued that Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising for a simple reason: They know the identities of their users, who log-in to use their services. In contrast, most web publishers know the identities of a fraction of their visitors.

Inaccurate and inefficient third-party cookies created the illusion of effective identity targeting. Now, publishers have realized that accurate, 1:1 identity verification leads to far higher CPM’s, a better experience for consumers (through true ad frequency caps) and the opportunity to compete effectively with the walled gardens. They also believe that advertisers want to reduce their dependence on Google and Facebook.

These digital publishers are actively looking for providers of identity resolution services that will help to fulfill this promise.

Many advertisers believe the walled Gardens are far too opaque in their reporting. Thus, in addition to precise 1:1 ad delivery, digital publishers are looking to solve the problem of attribution,

3. They are strategically skeptical.

The many issues associated with brand safety, transparency in the supply chain, inaccurate delivery of cookie-based campaigns, and bidding issues in programmatic buys have justifiably led publishers to ask that vendors demonstrate they can deliver on their promises.

Moreover, I have yet to meet a publisher who plans to rely on a single identity resolution vendor. As a strategy, digital publishers who plan to win will ensure they have multiple options for ad delivery in a cookieless world.

4. They want simplicity.

The potential complexity involved in identity targeting is high. PII (personally identifiable information) may need to be securely and safely exchanged. Data sharing agreements may need to be negotiated. And, the list goes on.

Web publishers seek solutions that make their lives easy, simple, secure, and safe, as they approach and realize the cookieless future.

5. They look for indications of credibility.

Recently, Adweek noted that “Identity is one of the fastest-changing and most competitive spaces in digital advertising.” For this essential but highly competitive space, publishing executives know that many solutions will be marketed, but few will survive. Moreover, these executives recognize that their time is a precious resource and allocate it thoughtfully.

As a result, as I work to schedule initial meetings, many publishing executives effectively ask: “Why is meeting with you a good use of my time?” This is a critical component and we need to have good answers. (I have several, but most compelling is the fact that two of the nation’s largest advertisers are testing BritePool’s service.)

Conclusion

I have always believed that in business, and in life, we create our own opportunities. Luck is a factor. But luck will not decide whether the demise of the third-party cookies leads to success or failure among digital publishers. In this case, I’d say luck favors the strategic optimists: those who recognize that success will require a long-term effort, one that cannot wait.

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