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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Industry-Research | Revenue

Data and revenue diversification dominate publisher strategies 

Publishers continue to remain highly focused on revenue diversification and the value of first party data according to new research from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), a UK industry body that represents digital publishing companies. The AOP undertook its Digital Publishing: Meeting the Future survey to provide “a snapshot of how digital publishing companies across the UK are continuing to respond to the challenge to change.” The research offers a look at publishers’ business priorities and the future-readiness of the media industry.   

The AOP carried out its survey between January 5 and February 9 of 2022. Of the 111 responses, 83% were from publishers and 17% from organizations providing solutions to the publishing sector. 

Diversifying revenue streams  

Across all types of publishers (B2B, B2C, or a combination), respondents said that their highest priority is developing new revenue streams through product innovation. Ensuring data privacy compliance and transparency ranked second. 

The AOP’s publisher respondents ranked opportunities for revenue growth over the next three years. More than half (55%) feel that subscriptions are the big revenue opportunity right now, with lead generation-based revenues ranking second (33%). The report concludes that these findings mean that publishers are highly focused on building direct relationships with audiences and leveraging their first party data. 

Audio and ecommerce tied for third (31%) in terms of revenue priorities, which points to continued revenue-model innovation. The research finds that both B2B and B2C publishers agreed that subscriptions have the most potential for growth. However, publishers that target both B2B and consumer audiences saw ecommerce as the most promising revenue generator. 

Data dominates  

While publisher concerns about ensuring privacy and providing transparency rank high, they clearly know the value of their first party data and seek to maximize its use. According to the report, publishers are focused on building the right ecosystem of commercial, data, and tech partnerships.  

In the shadow of cookie deprecation, some publishers are considering collaborating on data initiatives. AOP found that, while 12% of publisher respondents are unsure of their next moves and 12% do not expect to collaborate, many publishers are either already collaborating (20%), are discussing collaborating (16%),  or are open to the possibility of collaboration (40%).  

The majority (75%) of publishers said that they are working to ensure that audience data informs everything they do and that they are investing in tools to help achieve this. Despite the emphasis on data, however, only 17% of publishers said that all their teams are aligned internally around their audience data. Half of the solutions provider respondents suggest that, while publishers understand being joined up internally around audience data is important, many don’t yet have a strategy in place to achieve their goals. 

Workforce and workplace concerns 

Interestingly, recruiting and retaining talent, and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace, are rated higher (tying for third place with “developing new first party data strategies”) than the tech-based challenges you might expect the digital publishing sector to be focused on.   

Most respondents (75%) report that “supporting and retaining current employees” is their top priority when it comes to recruitment and workforce development. This was followed by adapting the publisher’s offering to appeal to new talent entering the industry.  

Putting in place recruitment processes that eliminate bias and support the development of a more diverse workforce is ranked third here. However, when asked how they would describe their organization’s diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) strategy, respondents suggest confidence in their progress on this challenge. Just over half (51%) believe they have made good progress with areas for continued improvement, and 24% believe they have an effective DE&I strategy. Only 5% of respondents don’t believe they have a clear strategy on DE&I. 

As Covid-19 restrictions are being eased in the UK and elsewhere, publishers are evaluating their working environments and plans to return to offices. This survey found that 37% of respondents say their ideal working pattern would be to work from the office two days a week and 24% would be happy to come in for the occasional key meeting, but primarily work from home.  

Nearly a third (30%) of respondents expect their employers to be fully flexible and happy for them to choose to work as they wish. However, 66% believe they will be asked to work at least a few days in the office each week. 

Clearly, the past couple of years have seen trends like ecommerce intensify and placed increased pressure on publishers to innovate. That innovation has, unsurprisingly, focused on product and revenue. However, it has also required publishers to reexamine workplace culture, recruiting, and retention strategies. The AOP’s survey finds that digital publishing companies that understand the bigger picture challenges and have identified many opportunities. However, it appears that they may still be working through the best tactics and strategies to provide the requisite competitive advantage moving forward.  

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Why privacy fuels possibilities for publishers

The time is ripe for publishers and advertisers to embrace privacy as an opportunity to fuel new possibilities.

As consumers, we value our privacy and want to control what, where, and with whom we share our personal information. With rising concerns and a lack of trust in brands, consumers are now taking various measures to take back control. Research shows that 63% of North Americans would rather purchase from organizations that protect their privacy.

Regulators have a sharper focus on privacy in advertising too. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a release stating: “A healthy market is one built on data protection by design, enabling privacy-respectful innovations focused on the individual’s interests, rights and freedoms. Meaningful choices benefit individuals and underpin effective competition between businesses. Proposals looking to replace the use of cookies and similar technologies need to ensure they raise the standards of data protection and privacy, and not dilute them.”

Advertising now requires a clearer, transparent, and fairer ecosystem that will benefit advertisers, publishers, and consumers.

Privacy is no longer a nice-to-have

News UK is one of many media owners keeping an eye on privacy changes ahead. Bedir Aydemir, Head of Audience & Data, said: “I’m keen to start to see some real clarity with regards to what’s required for ICO and how the GDPR is interpreted. I think what we’ve been doing up to now is sticking plasters. We’re trying to make what’s happened in the past possible in the future, and that’s not going to be allowed: the ICO made clear.”

In an FT article, it was reported that Meta was suffering the impact of Apple’s privacy policies that “make it harder to track users and target advertising.” The data that was once available to deliver personalized advertising on the web is disappearing. The mobile ecosystem is also disrupted, only 21% of users worldwide have opted into ATT, which requires opt-in consent from users to track them across apps. 

The changes we’re seeing in advertising is about more than third-party cookies, it’s about data privacy. Aydemir added that we would see “some real-world changes with regards to how data is parsed into the open market, how it’s valued, how it’s activated” and that publishers will be at the forefront because they have consent data, identity and scale.

If advertisers want to rebuild trust with consumers via responsible marketing and safeguard themselves from the impact of privacy regulation, the key is to work collaboratively with publishers. Many advertisers are already working in this way. They’re moving away from their reliance on a complex system of third parties towards more direct way of buying.

Publishers, and their wealth of first-party data, are valuable because they can build nuanced audiences for advertisers to target, aligned with target audience definitions. This gives advertisers the ability to reach new audiences and achieve marketing goals without compromising user privacy or unnecessary exposure to risk.

First-party data cohorts offer a solution

Advertising is still about reaching relevant audiences at scale on the right channels. With increased privacy concerns, addressability tactics will shift away from reliance on third-party trackers to an increased focus on publishers’ first-party data and publisher cohorts, which groups people with similar characteristics and behaviours without identifying them. 

Visitor-based rankings publisher, Ranker saw a 25% increase in RFP win rate within six months of taking their first-party data strategy to market and demonstrating the value of their unique first-party cohorts. Ranker can tell advertisers what their users are doing and their other interests and likes, this includes data designed to inform planning, optimization, and future targeting.

According to Ranker’s senior director of sales operations and planning JR Hoffman, “As the industry figures out the privacy piece, it helps our clients feel confident that we have a strategy in place for dealing with the ongoing changes around third-party cookies and privacy regulation.

Working directly with publishers and targeting via publisher cohorts alleviates challenges caused by privacy because they use consented first-party data. In this way, publishers and advertisers work towards a more responsible web, using privacy-compliant and sustainable approaches to engaging high-value audiences.

Don’t be afraid of the challenges ahead

It’s an exciting time for advertisers and publishers. But it’s also challenging, as have other major shifts in advertising. There are over 100 post-cookie solutions, according to continuing analysis by MMA Global and Prohaska Consulting, but all differ in regards to how data is used.

Publishers and advertisers need the infrastructure to connect safely with multiple publishers at a global scale, in a brand-safe environment where no data is leaked, and personalized advertising at scale is possible for first-party data owners.

Rethinking privacy as an opportunity to fuel possibilities will help publishers and advertisers emerge from the cloud of confusion that has shrouded them in 2021. Critically, it will also put people back into the decisions we make in advertising.

About the author

Elizabeth Brennan is the Head of Advertiser Strategy for Permutive, which powers the future of targeted advertising on the Open Web. With over a decade of experience in digital advertising, Elizabeth is a champion of women in business and a strong believer in the power of coaching. A graduate of The University of Reading, Elizabeth is a former winner of the prestigious NABS Fast Forward award and has gone on to achieve Code First certification as part of the organization’s initiative to increase the number of women in tech.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

It is time for publishers to take back control

The adtech ecosystem hasn’t always been easy for publishers to navigate. Managing complexity around data privacy, dealing with opaque fees, and working around anti-competitive behavior has become standard operating procedure. And 2021 brought no relief with more change than ever introduced into the ecosystem.

Big players have caused big waves

Last year, publishers had to deal with Apple implementing their ATT framework under iOS 14.5, which changed the way apps collected data about end-users and shared it with other companies for tracking purposes. This major move had a strong impact on IDFA tracking. It resulted in lower opt-in rates, less ability to serve personalized ads, and a shift in spending from iOS to Android where lower CPMs were available. All of this led to a decrease in revenue from iOS users.

Google followed with their announcement to postpone cookie deprecation after they were challenged by both the UK competition authority and GDPR to release their privacy sandbox. And, revenue was further impacted with European authorities taking a stronger approach to enforcing GDPR. We saw consent rates drop from 94% to 85% after the French data privacy authority (CNIL) required websites to ask users to accept or decline consent at the same level.

With each of these changes, publishers were forced to relinquish more control and adapt. In this climate of uncertainty, publishers are left questioning who they should trust. But that may be about to change. 

The tipping point 

As the industry awaits the resolution of ongoing legal battles—such as the Google antitrust lawsuit filed in Texas—we’re set to reach a tipping point. While any outcomes are impossible to anticipate, we can look to what’s happening in Europe for hints of what to expect. 

Last year’s ruling by the French Anticompetitive Authority resulted in Google sharing a set of commitments focused on increased access to data and transparency. This opened the door for publishers to partly regain their choice of tech partners without compromising revenue. Google also agreed to a test run with a select group of French publishers to validate their commitments. These tests are currently underway and the proof points are expected to be released soon. This could provide additional confidence in the increased level of control they have promised. However, we will have to wait and see.

In addition, publishers have historically innovated to create solutions when faced with roadblocks. A perfect example is the evolution of header bidding as an industry standard in response to pain points imposed by Google. As publishers began looking for additional ways to make the most of their non-consented traffic last year, we saw new targeting solutions emerge. We expect these to become more widely adopted in the year ahead as they allow for even greater revenue and control over content, data, and audience relationships. 


What’s a publisher to do? 

There’s still a lot of uncertainty around what lies ahead when it comes to the industry as a whole. But those who are ready to embrace change have never been in a better position to thrive with all of the independent players and options available to help take ownership of first-party data or content, their most critical assets.

Curation is a great start for reducing reliance on a big tech walled garden. In addition to offering better brand safety, it streamlines the value chain through a more transparent deal process to offer enhanced accountability and efficiency. This means fewer intermediaries and fees. It also allows you to avoid data leakage and provides more control over your inventory through direct deals with buyers.

From there, another big step is protecting yourself from data leakage. By partnering with an independent SSP, you will be able to input first-party data in clean rooms. This safe and secure environment can serve as a basis for privacy-safe targeting with no risk of data leakage. And it can also be leveraged for audience extension and creating direct deals and PMPs. This way you will be able to leverage the full value of your first-party data and generate a new revenue stream.

Then, once you are ready to embrace large-scale change, the independent players can help you replace your full-stack to create your own private garden. This approach gives you full control of your data and revenue while opening the door for the creation of publisher networks or alliances to increase scale and better identify audiences. Independent providers can offer more innovation than the big tech player solutions. In instances where the walled gardens act as an adblocker and do not monetize non-consented traffic, an independent player allows you to provide buyers a path to targeting this traffic through performance and contextual targeting.

Change takes time. But, as the landscape finally begins evolving in their favor and more transparent solutions emerge, publishers are well-positioned to be in the driver’s seat as we enter this new era. 

close of of hand ready to use tablet resting on persons leg
Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Why prioritizing personalization can build trust between consumers and brands

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

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

Start with first-party data

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

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

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

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

Personalization for omnichannel experiences

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

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

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

Enter data management platforms

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

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

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

Prioritizing personalization for the future

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

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

Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

Avoid the hype. Focus on policy for 2022.

From political races to red carpet award shows and global sports competitions, there are very few “franchises” that aren’t being stretched longer and longer to capitalize on the public’s interest. We find ourselves once again at the time of year when industry prognosticators offer their curated lists, social media hot takes, and opinion pieces in an attempt to memorialize the most important events of 2021 and to make predictions for 2022.

In tech and internet policy circles, this cycle seems ironic, given that forecasts are delivered daily – often several times a day, depending on the latest news cycles. But as we head into the final stretch of 2021, I have a few thoughts about how we need to avoid the distractions and stay focused on the one big change likely to occur in the new year.

Reality check 

To start, I’ll set the table on what I am skeptical about focusing on as we move forward: anything “metaverse” or “creator economy.” And I’ve got some good reasons to hope that, as we head into a new year, we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

Amidst the current hype around virtual worlds, augmented reality has certainly emerged as a powerful tool. And it is entirely possible that virtual reality will have practical applications beyond gaming (and not akin to never-quite-there 3D TV).

However, I feel compelled to remind everyone how the pivot to video became an industry obsession. That massive shift was not because of consumer demand; it was driven by Mark Zuckerberg’s 2016 prediction that nearly everything on his kingmaker platform would be video within five years.

So much has happened in the ensuing five years, not the least of which has been a steady and escalating series of revelations of how utterly deceiving this particular CEO and his company have been. And, unsurprisingly (at least in retrospect), we learned that this prediction was at least partially built on a Facebook deception. And, while we can ask ourselves why we had so many years when Facebook said “jump” and publishers and marketers blindly responded, “how high?” – perhaps the most enduring and meaningful lessons are learned from mistakes.

Facebook is not alone in the self-serving prophecy business though. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages also became an industry obsession, not because it was in the consumers’ best interests as Google claimed. Rather, it was simply a function of another industry-take-all-platform shaping the market to its liking. As we recently learned in unsealed antitrust allegations, it was a means for Google to bolster its advertising interests by slowing down competition. 

Creative control 

The hype cycle is also obsessed with the “creator economy.” There is an absolute flurry of innovation in providing platforms for individual creators. Though this isn’t entirely new. Google’s YouTube, for example, has both inspired and capitalized on it for ages. The same can be said more recently about TikTok.

Yes, it is very exciting to watch. However, these creator models are essentially comprised of typical vendor services: subscriptions, newsletters, distribution and, more recently, audio services. It’s not a coincidence that much of the investment and press hype—bordering on industry obsession—can be tied back to Facebook or its board of directors. Don’t forget that the company has its own Substack-like “creator platform,” Bulletin. Neither the hype nor the investment is surprising, though, given Facebook’s longstanding interest in disrupting media institutions.

What you should really be watching in 2022 

The most important industry story of 2022 will continue to be the at-times dull, but critically important, accountability around antitrust and data policy. We can thank Facebook and Google for adding a sprinkle of excitement to these conversations through whistleblowers, code names (Project NERA, Bernanke, Jedi Blue, and Poirot to name a few) and improperly filed redactions. As an increasing number of privacy laws come into effect, regulators may want to consider more Star Wars-inspired naming conventions to spice things up a bit.

Names notwithstanding, we are going to see regulation continue to intensify next year. In the near term, Europe appears set to finalize two landmark regulations: the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. If these prevail, Europe will be first to have a purpose-built “gatekeeper” law for the 21st century.

The Digital Markets Act addresses the imbalance in negotiating power in a networked economy that results in both individuals and businesses lacking autonomy and choice, which harms the public at large. It recognizes that no individual publisher or consumer can truly opt-out of Google’s search engine that scrapes the entirety of our lives via the internet. Almost as impossible to avoid are Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which connect people to communities. And then there’s the binary mobile and app store marketplace, delivered by Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android.

With this level of market power, publishers and consumers have little to no choice in negotiating rights to their data and consent with these powerful gatekeepers. The European approach mirrors the work of Australia’s competition and consumer protection regulator — and it looks like U.S. authorities are headed in the same direction. In a market dominated by superpowers, regulation follows to govern how that market power is used or abused.

The Digital Services Act will then modernize the rules for content liability and possibly how advertising can be targeted when based on surveillance capitalism by companies that, in many cases, consumers don’t even intend to interact with. The DSA and DMA have two main goals: First, to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected. And second, to establish a level playing field to foster innovation, growth, and competitiveness, both in the European Single Market and globally. Not many can argue against these goals, it’s only a matter of whether the legislation will achieve them.

Bringing it home

In the U.S., California’s CCPA is currently the strongest data protection law for digital advertising stateside, followed closely by Colorado’s new law. However, as state and federal laws are negotiated to carry the baton, all eyes and minds are on Europe. There is an acute concern about making sure to address market power and create a sustainable path for publishers going forward, one that isn’t determined for us by industry gatekeepers like Facebook, Google and Apple. This likely requires laws that directly integrate competition and data policy rather than developing rules in the same room as the industry titans, which has failed to result in anything fair if even legal.

So, as we look forward, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. When the dominant digital power players press their self-serving agendas, we do not have to buy in. We don’t have to follow their lead. We don’t have to amplify their messages. And for goodness’ sake, we do not need to pivot.

Instead, we should stand our ground, steady on the bedrock of consumer trust and responsible business practices. If 2021 showed us anything, it is that consumers value great content. It’s what we do. And we will continue to do it well. Nothing meta about that.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Building a privacy-first infrastructure for digital advertising

Privacy is rewriting the rules of adtech, causing seismic shifts to the way media is bought and sold.   

Over the past 10 years, digital advertising has run on personal data and identifiers that connect consumers across domains. Today, tightening privacy regulation and heightened consumer awareness about how their data is being used has triggered global changes. We already see the effect. The third-party data that fuels digital advertising is continuing to disappear. And Snap’s shares dropped by 25% because of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature in iOS 14.5, requiring consent from users to track them across apps and websites. It’s also reported that Snap, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are set to lose nearly $10bn due to ATT. 

As privacy disrupts the way digital advertising has operated for years, we’re seeing two seismic shifts in the ecosystem. Firstly, there is a transfer of power in digital advertising towards first-party data owners. Secondly, there’s a move to processing data on-device. Digital advertising increasingly requires privacy at its core. Therefore, first-party data owners will need the infrastructure to control, connect and scale their data while planning and buying campaigns. 

The shift to first-party data and on-device  

Data that was once accessible by ad-tech is now deprecating because of privacy. Control of this data has returned to its rightful first-party owners. This includes publishers, advertisers, and other businesses that have first-party data. 

First-party data owners are able to build businesses from their data because they have a direct relationship with their users. Publishers such as Penske, Insider, Future plc, and others are launching successful first-party data platforms and packaging up their consented audiences for advertisers. For example, Future’s first party-data platform, Aperture, has increased the addressable inventory sold to advertisers by 150%. And Insider sees 19 out of its top 20 advertisers using its first-party data platform SAGA, at a 95% renewal rate. 

Advertisers are also bringing their first-party data to publishers to match and model audiences and businesses like Instacart, Doordash, Uber, and Amazon see tremendous advertising opportunities because they have first-party data. 

First-party data is made useful by on-device technology, but not at the expense of people’s privacy. This is because on-device makes it possible for data processing to happen in real-time. And user data stays on the user’s device instead of being sent to the cloud. It’s the direction of travel for the industry, moving adtech from an era that leaks data to a privacy-first era that protects it. In fact, other tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google have and are re-architecting their technology for on-device processing. 

Rebuilding for privacy 

We believe that privacy is a force for good in advertising, and on-device is the future of digital advertising. However, we need to rebuild and provide first-party data owners with the necessary tools to scale. 

For advertisers, the supply paths can be inefficient today because they need to build it publisher-by-publisher. Publishers also have no consistent way of making their data available to advertisers in a privacy-compliant and sustainable way. To seize the opportunities ahead of them, first-party data owners require a privacy-first infrastructure for digital advertising to be immune to any dramatic regulatory or browser-level changes, 

This infrastructure will help publishers and advertisers to connect safely. It’s a way for personalized advertising to continue for first-party data owners, a place where digital advertising can continue to thrive — without the data leakage we see happening today. 

Building on a privacy-first infrastructure is a long-term, sustainable strategy for publishers, advertisers and other first-party data owners. It will bring much-needed transparency, scale and privacy to digital advertising. It’s no longer the time for band-aid solutions to the impact of privacy on digital advertising. Any solution that isn’t grounded in privacy won’t stand up to oncoming regulatory, browser changes, and consumer scrutiny.  

About the author

Joe Root is co-founder and CEO of Permutive. Following a BEng Computing at Imperial College and MSc Computer Sciences at Oxford, Joe started Permutive with his co-founder, Tim Spratt, joining Y Combinator in 2014.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

9 criteria for driving business results with analytics in 2022

Even before Google sent brands and publishers slow-walking to wean themselves off third-party cookies back in early 2020, both the buy- and sell-side had a data problem. 

The issue has been that publishers and brands have historically managed audience data in siloed systems. Therefore, critical information surrounding ad revenue, subscriptions, content engagement, and customer profiles is all stored separately. 

However, to create truly relevant experiences for consumers, any digital businesses must be able to tie all this data together in privacy-compliant ways to achieve a full picture of the customer journey. The IT department no longer governs data and analytics to the degree that it once did. So, commercial teams like marketing, sales and finance now have the opportunity to more heavily influence these areas than ever before. 

Time to get your data analytics in order

Next year will be the last full one brands and publishers have before third-party cookies expire. So it is the perfect time to fully get your data analytics in order. Here are nine criteria to consider when rethinking your strategy. 

1. The ability to customize your data model

To begin piecing together data from multiple touchpoints, it’s important to first introduce a unified data model approach across the organization. A tailored data model that covers the entirety of a business’s objectives as well as those of the different company stakeholders provides access to a reliable 360-degree view of customer data. This enables any team that needs to tap into the data to create immediate value, improving speed to market and the ability to react to trends faster.

2. Access to live, quality data

Whether you want to integrate with other technologies or enlist your data science team to work on a special project, you want to ensure you have streamlined access to fully denormalized, real-time data. This reduces query time and improves targeting and personalization, while avoiding the costly joining of disparate databases.

3. Enriched data that does deeper

Make sure you can automatically correct, enhance and remove data based on third-party metadata and advanced processing rules, with no retagging necessary. This will allow you to do more with your behavioral data to explore different perspectives that can inform your business decisions. 

4. A universal tag for data hygiene and cleanliness 

Tag health is critical for proper data cleanliness and consistency. Many businesses have multiple tags running. That increases the number of server calls and overall time spent on tag management. By instead leveraging one universal tag, you can duplicate traffic across various sites to a virtual site with 100% accuracy and for half the cost. 

5. No data sampling

Data sampling is the practice of analyzing a subset of your traffic data, which is used to estimate the overall results. Instead of gathering all the data, you only get access to a limited sample. That means that any analysis you carry out after that will be an assumption based on existing patterns. Having a complete set of data to analyze boosts accuracy and can unlock previously undiscovered audiences.

6. Compliance with all privacy regulations

This might seem like a no-brainer, but with evolving and emerging laws, it’s easy to fall into violation when it comes to data privacy. Ensure whatever tool you work with is compliant across all of the global privacy regulations and that you can tweak your consent model as needed. 

7. Integration across your stack

Your data is only as good as it is useful. If you are using disparate systems to manage and activate it, there is a chance of data loss, inaccurate customer views and privacy non-compliance. Ensuring interoperability across all systems streamlines execution and management while reducing business risk. 

8. Democratization of data

Once you know your data is clean and accurate, make it available to everyone in your business who needs to act on it. You want to keep the end user experience in mind when choosing the right tools. Whether you use dashboards, data exploration tools, smart alerts when anomalies occur or direct API feeds for personalization, make sure they are user-friendly.

9. Professional services help

Even if you have an in-house analytics team, ensuring all of your data flows through your systems well might require additional support. The best technology vendors will have robust professional services teams  that can help you implement your analytics strategy. This includes determining your KPIsand measurement approach in addition to  best practices that drive both compliance and results.   

It’s prime time to harness the true power of all the data at your disposal. With the right technology and talent, you can fast be on your way to turning insights into action that drives additional business value — more website traffic, subscriber, and revenues. 

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

The great privacy reset is here. Publishers, are you ready to capitalize?

The advertising industry needs to adjust its focus from big tech’s micro-changes to the bigger privacy picture.  

Something is happening at a macro-level that requires more attention than incremental changes and band-aid solutions that we see at the forefront of digital advertising. We are heading towards a great privacy reset. A sharp focus on privacy is pushing everything towards the protection of people’s data and strengthens the requirement for first-party data and closer relationships between publishers, advertisers and their end-users. 

Unfortunately, publishers and advertisers are currently working through a disruptive and chaotic period caused by changing privacy regulations and regular browser announcements. And the results aren’t positive. A study conducted by Permutive in June, surveying 501 senior decision-makers within publishers in the U.S. and U.K., shows that almost three-quarters (74%) of publishers say that browser updates negatively impact advertising business models. And 75% say that privacy regulations are impacting the ability to future-proof advertising revenue. 

There is another way. We need a stable and sustainable foundation for digital advertising that protects publishers’ work, enables advertisers to reach their consumers, and protects people’s privacy and access to information. That approach and solution exists today. It’s an advertising ecosystem built from publishers’ first-party data that prioritizes privacy and protects revenue.   

First-party data drives brand results 

The way media is traded is rapidly changing, shifting fundamentally from third-party cookies and identity to consented first-party data. With this shift towards privacy, first-party data is becoming the new gold standard. This creates an opportunity for publishers to be fairly compensated for their data and improve campaign performance. 

In a recent event, held by Permutive and New Digital Age, publishers pitched their first-party strategies to a panel of agencies. The pitches showed agencies the maturity of publishers’ solutions for advertisers and the impact of first-party data on brand metrics, compared to third-party and publisher averages. 

One publisher was the Guardian, one of the world’s leading English-language news publications that reaches 8.8 million readers daily. The Guardian showed that its first-party data had an average brand lift of 65% and ranked 39% higher on preference and intent metrics. For one particular campaign, the Guardian created a bespoke cohort for luxury furniture brand Rimadesio focused on readers interested in architecture, interiors, art and luxury. The campaign achieved a brand consideration increase of 102% and an intent uplift of 79%. 

Digital Media Services (DMS), the digital arm of Choueiri Group — the leading media representation group in the Middle East – also took part in the event. In a campaign for a telco brand in Iraq aiming to drive awareness of 4G in the nation, DMS created first-party cohorts from data points across its 40-plus sites. 

The campaign resulted in an 85% increase in clickthrough rate, a brand awareness increase of 12% and an ad recall increase of 38%. The agencies who participated, including Starcom, Carat, Mindshare, and Havas, concluded that publishers’ first-party data stands up as a privacy-safe solution for the open web that’s available today. 

Focusing on first-party collection and scale 

Publishers recognize the value of their data as they look to build direct relationships with advertisers. The in-depth-cohort insights they can proactively promote and add in their RFP responses only looks to secure that revenue stream. In our study of the impacts of privacy, consent and browser updates, 80% of publishers say that collecting more first-party data to fuel advertising revenue is a priority.

This is also reflected in buy-side demand for these insights, as almost half (49%) of publishers say their first-party audiences are requested in over 60% of RFPs. Insider, for example, launched its first-party platform, SAGA, in February 2020. The publisher is seeing 400% growth year-over-year with advertisers using Insider’s first-party data for their campaigns. Today, 19-out-of-20 of Insider’s top advertisers are using SAGA.   

An appetite for these audience insights has spurred publishers to collect more behavioral and contextual first-party data and invest in technology to scale first-party data. In fact, according to our research, these are the top two priorities for publishers within the next six months. 

Upside of first-party relationships

The benefits of building privacy-safe direct relationships based on first-party data are many. It adds transparency between the buy and sell-side, first-party data is used to create cohorts that improve campaign performance, and it protects people’s privacy. Plus, it’s a solution that is available today and does not require third-party data or the use of identifiers. 

When publishers and advertisers control their data, they control their fate. Significantly: User privacy is centred, not an afterthought. The great privacy reset is here. Those that don’t take it seriously open themselves up to risk. Publishers are proving that digital advertising can be successful for both themselves and advertisers without using identifiers and third-party cookies, all while increasing revenue and maintaining users’ trust. 

By resetting to protect privacy, publishers and advertisers can build a foundation for digital advertising based on knowledge, understanding and experience and run successful data-driven campaigns without sacrificing privacy for performance.   

About the author

Michael Ogunjobi is Manager, Customer Success, Americas, at Permutive. Michael, and the customer success team, consult with enterprise publishers to enable them to increase their data-driven advertising revenue and make revenue diversification a reality — while keeping user privacy at the heart. Prior to joining Permutive, Michael was Senior Customer Success Manager at Qubit, responsible for product adoption and customer retention. Michael champions the value of publisher first-party data, especially as the industry navigates the impact of data deprecation and identity challenges.

Advertising | Perspectives

Publishers: Consolidate your tech stack to drive growth

The rate of change in ad tech is intense. It’s being driven by demand for improved performance, trust, transparency and privacy. Many solutions to these problems target buy-side players. So, publisher technology has often been reactive, adding in-house or one-off solutions to solve specific problems.

The most successful publisher organizations are able to synthesize vast amounts of data to make optimized decisions. Unfortunately, the tools that enable this process have a tendency to make operations more disparate and isolated over time. Increasing numbers of advertising partners, technologies, and tools make it difficult to see the forest through the trees. In an ad tech world – where complexity is the norm – striving for simplicity has become a lost art.

From silos to synergy

While most organizations can see the pitfalls of an overly complex tech stack, many of these technologies are unavoidable. Each part of the stack serves a purpose and may meet the needs of a specific department. However, that doesn’t always lead to scalable outcomes that benefit the entire organization. For executives trying to improve cross-team collaboration and transparency in order to find new growth opportunities, the tech stack must be constantly scrutinized.

Time spent maintaining disjointed point solutions can be a full-time job. In addition, each department in your organization has increasingly complex goals and responsibilities that threaten to add more technology to the stack:

Each team often maintains legacy systems that may not be ideal for the changing scale of the entire business. There is an opportunity for media companies to undertake top-down initiatives that align team goals and processes at a higher level through unified data and technology. Many publisher tech stacks include most, if not all, of the solutions below. By unifying data between these tools and making data visible to more teams, decision making is improved and business goals are more easily achieved.

Economies of scale: playing the long game

Over time, tech solutions and workflows solidify. This makes it difficult to know how much time is spent maintaining these systems versus focusing on company goals. Reducing dependence on in-house or one-off solutions will have massive cost benefits as publishers scale.

With a unified data foundation and goal alignment, data silos created by disparate software are eliminated. Workflows are cleaned up. And holistic views of performance allow for additional optimization opportunities and more time is spent on growing revenue. The costs of the required technology solutions are also reduced. Instead, they are replaced by tools that can bring data together for multiple departments and use cases.

How to know when it’s time to consolidate

In smaller teams, individual operators may add specific tools that help one person do the work of many. But as an organization grows, you will reach a plateau that limits scale unless data, results, and opportunities can be easily shared. Increasing collaboration between departments presents exciting revenue opportunities, but only if those teams speak the same language. A simplified tech stack becomes a way to increase transparency and reduce the barriers for collaboration.

Questions to ask when evaluating your tech stack:
  1. What are the high-level business goals that each piece of technology supports? Technology should be added only after goals and supporting processes are clearly defined.
  2. How do department needs differ? Where do they overlap? Identifying areas where technology can meet more than one need for the company can help simplify operations.
  3. How much time is spent maintaining in-house or point solutions? In many cases, dedicated roles are required to keep solutions up and running.
  4. Do your systems talk to each other? How difficult is it to create a single view of performance? With the volumes of data that businesses rely on, it’s common to struggle to bring it all together in meaningful ways.
  5. What is the short-term investment needed to simplify your tech stack vs long-term benefits? This can mean looking at specific technologies, how they’ve been configured, or overall costs. It can be painful to think about rebuilding tech implementations for a cleaner, more effective foundation, but in the long run, you might be better off.

Tech stack consolidation allows your team to improve interdepartmental cooperation and transparency in order to capture new revenue. Less time and money will be spent maintaining and translating KPIs from various point solutions. The sooner your organization begins scaling its tech stack for the future, the sooner you can begin accomplishing top-down organizational goals with less overhead.

Advertising | Perspectives

Here’s how publishers are preparing for the cookie-less era

Apple’s June iOS 15 announcement was the latest in a series of initiatives from large tech companies focused on consumer privacy. For a long time, consumer trust has eroded due to data leaks and murky practices by bad actors. However, the demise of the third-party cookie will impact all businesses across the digital advertising spectrum. Unfortunately, premium publishers will be hugely affected by these policy changes. At the same time, they have minimal control over what the changes are and when they’ll come into effect.

Survey says

We recently surveyed our publisher partners, of which 419 participated from all over the world. The results offer a fascinating look at where we stand on the cookieless future, halfway through 2021. Significantly, more than 50% said they were unclear as to how new cookieless identity solutions would impact their business models.

A good deal of weight and attention has been placed behind unique ID solutions, namely Unified ID 2.0 spearheaded by The Trade Desk and Liveramp’s Identity Link. Thus, it’s no surprise that they are seen as potential ways forward to solve the issue. In our survey, almost half (47%) of those considering adopting logins indicated their intent to work with one of these two solutions.

But, given the high volume of interest given to first-party data solutions, it’s more surprising that 65.3% of respondents said they were not planning on increasing usage of logins to specifically combat deprecation of third-party cookies. This is predominantly due to the potential disruption of user experience for readers. Logins could negatively impact site traffic.

Not flocking to FLoC

Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) claims to give advertisers the ability to target groups of users without giving away identity information. It does this by placing users within cohorts according to their interests. However, this will only be available within Google’s Chrome browser. It has a significant market share but is by no means comprehensive. Publishers are also still uncertain how it will work in practice.

At least Google has started work on the technical details of its Privacy Sandbox model. However, other key browsers such as Safari and Firefox have yet to announce their plans. When it comes to these Privacy Sandbox solutions, the approach for publishers and advertisers should be the same. A cookieless tool to be included in the mix rather than treated as the basis for a whole strategy. 

Technical details and dominance

The devil will be in the details with FLoC. But the key concern is that such an update will be limited to the open web and give Google further competitive advantages in market. Publishers haven’t had the easiest ride in monetizing premium editorial content. So, it’s critical they are supported in ensuring precise targeting isn’t only possible within walled gardens.

Unfortunately, many publishers are choosing to play a waiting game to see what further privacy protocols will be introduced and, therefore, which targeting options remain and are viable solutions for advertisers. This leaves the industry heavily reliant on – and beholden to – updates from the tech giants. Our survey results reflect the lack of clarity that publishers already face when it comes to these potential new solutions. Just 23.7% say that they fully understand the implications of the various industry initiatives.

With such uncertainty and lack of transparency, how can publishers get ready for the cookie-less future that is fast approaching?

Change your targeting perspective

While criticism can be levelled at the lack of transparency for these updates, we must remember that a privacy-focused internet is what users, and government regulators, are asking for. So, relying on a single, one-size-fits-all solution isn’t a good long-term strategy for anyone in digital.

The credibility and feasibility of multiple approaches will need to be understood, tested, and combined to maintain the same levels of ad effectiveness. Publishers will need to stay aligned to various industry initiatives as they evolve, which takes deep technical knowledge and resources. Most of the cookie-based replacements are unavailable to all, and worse than that, are not testable yet, and time is running out.

Consider critical context

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Contextual targeting has been a viable and reliable revenue source for publishers. It provides solid strategic results across all markets around the world. When integrated with a good media plan to ensure proper actionability, publishers can use their first-party data, cutting edge tech tools and insights to learn which contextual signals can be used (as well as when and how). Where contextual targeting wins is that it has never required the use of cookies. Contextual allows publishers to stop chasing precise audience targeting and consider their natural advantages and differentiators: the power of their content.

Whatever happens though, there is no doubt that publishers need answers to be fully ready for 2022 when third-party cookies will take their final bow. Publishers will need support from monetization partners and advertisers alike to find the right balance. It is essential to run concreate tests with partners that offer actionable – and not theoretical – cookieless monetization capabilities. This is critical in order develop reliable revenue streams. It’s not enough just to be ready for the death of the cookie. Publishers need to be positioned to profit within a privacy-first ecosystem for many years to come.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

Aftershock: What the industry looks like after Apple’s privacy update

The tectonic plates of the internet advertising economy shifted last week as Apple began to push out iOS 14.5 to over one billion devices worldwide. We’re also feeling frequent tremors as various proposals to address Google’s unilateral decision to ban all third-party cookies bubble-up in the industry lava. As we react to this industry tumult, it is important to keep one thing in mind: Pervasive user “tracking” has eroded the advertising opportunities of publishers large and small.

Tech inventory takeover

Just over six years ago, nearly half of the impressions across DCN members’ websites and apps, including both video and display, were sold directly by the publisher. When we receive final 2020 numbers next month, we expect that number will have dipped below 20% for the first time. The driving force here is data.

Third-party adtech firms have a competitive data advantage because they are able to track users without their knowledge across the web and apps. This pervasive audience-targeting, combined with the scale and ease of buying through these large third parties, has significantly shifted sales channels away from publishers and into the arms of data aggregators.

Tech financial takeover

Shifting to a reliance on third parties to sell 80% of publisher impressions didn’t need to be bad. Unfortunately, it is. Very bad indeed.

A majority of these ads are purchased based on microtargeted audiences — often using Apple’s IDFA or third-party cookies as a proxy for real people. In this process, publishers’ apps and websites are treated as interchangeable commodities. These third parties, Google being the largest, extract data and detach it from the inventory. This allows audiences to be targeted elsewhere on the web at the cheapest price available. That’s why advertising purchased directly from a publisher is sold at 5x the rate of inventory purchased through these third-party channels. Publishers are able to monetize the value of their brand, content and user relationships when selling the ads rather than being repackaged into a nameless audience bundle.

Two big winners: the two biggest “trackers”

In the two largest sales channels (Facebook and Google), premium publishers’ inventory must also compete against the two firms’ own inventory, and an insurmountable data advantage.

Between 2015 and 2019, this data advantage allowed the “duopoly” to capture 86% of the incremental U.S. digital advertising growth. Last year, the trend continued with the two taking 87% of the digital advertising market growth in the U.S.

Industry, regulators and, most importantly, the public, have grown to understand the core of the two companies’ business models relies on unbridled data collection. The numbers below clearly back this up. The bar chart on the left shows the change in sales channels of U.S. digital advertising from 2015 to 2019 and the percentage of the growth (right pie chart) captured by only two companies in 2020. 

The privacy and data protection scale is tipping

There is little debate that users overwhelmingly choose privacy over tracking when they are asked which they prefer. The most famous privacy law to date, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has yet to fully bare its teeth. However, it is grounded in clear purpose limitations that minimize tracking and other uses of data that fall outside consumer expectations without very specific consent.

This inspired the most significant privacy law in, not coincidentally, the most populous U.S. state: California. Its latest incarnation (CPRA), which allows users to opt-out of tracking, is set to go into effect next year. It has even spawned the Global Privacy Control (GPC) to make this a simpler process which the Attorney General has recently endorsed as legally enforceable. 

Meanwhile, Apple’s restricted use of its universal identifier IDFA, which has long been used for tracking, in the latest push of its iOS. Apple now mandates, for the first time, that apps ask their users to make a choice: They need to either ask the app not to track them or give explicit consent to track them. Unfortunately, this can create collateral damage even when an identifier is only being used by a service provider to the publisher that the user values and trusts.

Early reads on the data are that well over 90% of the users choose not to be tracked. So, Facebook had good reason to predict an earthquake coming its way since it’s not a service provider — but is the poster child of distrust. I can’t endorse a podcast more highly to distill the implications of this battle between Apple and Facebook than NYT The Daily. They elegantly illustrate that this is a high-stakes global war. And it’s patently obvious you wouldn’t want to line up on the side of Facebook in a battle over privacy.

But won’t this hurt ad prices and only make Google and Facebook stronger?

The two key arguments against data protection like Apple’s update are that 1) it will hurt ad prices and 2) make the duopoly even stronger. Indeed, third-party inventory is worth a lot more when it is coupled with third-party data. Unsurprisingly, adtech-funded research likes to tout this.

However, that perspective only looks at prices for a narrow type of targeting. There are very few empirical studies that examine the full marketplace. And these tend to show only modest benefit to publishers from unbridled third-party data. Publishers that have leaned into their first-party data ahead of the market are in a position of strength going forward. And, as the bar gets raised across the industry, they should see the increase in value from other more acceptable forms of targeting. Blunt technical solutions that fail to understand the nuance and trust of the publisher pose a risk to this opportunity.

In terms of Google and Facebook getting stronger, remember that they already have an insurmountable data advantage and their business results back it up. Clearly, Facebook wouldn’t have run national ad campaigns against Apple (even — ironically — threatening an antitrust lawsuit), if Apple shutting down IDFA tracking would have actually helped Facebook. 

And no one actually believes that the Facebook behemoth is the champion of small business. They claim that personalized ads are the lifeblood of small business advertising and that offering consumers the option to forgo tracking would limit these businesses’ ability to effectively reach customers. Apple, however, points out that users are welcome to opt-in to data collection, thereby enabling personalized advertising. And let’s face it: In a privacy first digital advertising environment, those with first party data and trusted relationships with audiences will still reach them.

However, Facebook’s data dominance isn’t based upon a clear exchange of data for services. In fact, U.K. regulators issued a report (figure 2.3, page 50) showing that more than 50% of Google and Facebook’s data is collected when people aren’t actually intending to use a Google or Facebook service. This is the very definition of the kind of unbridled “tracking” that is so damaging to trust and the digital advertising business. That’s a critical data point — and one these companies aren’t crowing about in national ad campaigns. 

Ok, yes, both companies have a significant amount of first-party data. However, shifts towards privacy pose a significant challenge to keeping this data fresh and enriching their interest profiles. This is spelled out in their 10Ks every time they file. Additionally, antitrust lawsuits focused on their data practices, along with new regulations like the Digital Markets Act in Europe, are squarely directed at them. Soon, they will appropriately put heightened data limitations on these powerful “gatekeepers.”

What to do if you’re a premium publisher

These changes are happening with or without us. The timeline, like all tectonic shifts, is unpredictable but the aftermath will be significant. However, publishers who understand the possibilities, see the emerging white space, invest in their direct consumer relationships, and are forthright about user expectations will have an advantage. Risks lie in allowing large tech platforms and lawmakers to define the terms and conversations impacting premium publishers.

I encourage publishers to lean into DCN to make sure we’re properly informed on your plans. We’re here to help you evaluate the risks and face unexpected challenges. DCN has technology supporters that are paving the way for publishers who need help. No doubt, there are elements of Apple’s move which can break core, and expected, functionality as they limit tracking.

Apple has used the definition of “tracking” developed years ago by a multistakeholder group, which included DCN and all sides of the industry. However, blunt technical enforcement always creates unintended consequences. We need to understand these issues so that we can help guide tech firms, lawmakers, and regulators to address consumer interests and the publishers who serve them day in and day out.

We feel the digital advertising landscape shifting. Yes, things will get broken. Some of those will not be missed, however. And, when the dust settles and we take stock of the reshaped landscape, we will see that the crumbling cookie and the fall of pervasive and invasive “tracking” will clear the way for our industry to build better solutions. These will be based upon quality experiences and transparent and in-context data collection. And this, in turn, will build a strong foundation for effective marketing and revenue that rewards companies that truly value their customers.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives | Revenue

Audience trust means authentication – and revenue

In business, sometimes incremental improvements are the right course of action. Small steps allow companies to maintain stability and balance while testing out new protocols and procedures. The advertising industry, however, can no longer take such an incremental approach. It’s time for a complete reimagining. After many years of gradual change, advertising is at a critical inflection point. It must enact a completely new and transformational strategy to restore the ecosystem and drive better business outcomes.

What will be the key to a successful reimagining? A clear vision that offers a view — not just of what could be — but of what should be. We must reframe past and pending changes from browsers, device manufacturers and regulators. They offer a massive opportunity to build a modern system that prioritizes consumer trust and transparency, gives publishers control, and delivers high performance for advertisers. 

Remember: Consumers love transparent brands they can trust

First, we should recognize that a system that prioritizes people is one that reevaluates the whole experience, not just the moments when data and consent are collected. A study conducted by Microsoft Advertising, tells us 87% of consumers believe data privacy is a human right, not a privilege. Microsoft Advertising also conducted a series of research studies on the importance of trust to brand love and loyalty. The research showed that 85% of consumers will only consider a brand if they trust it. As trust in a brand increases, so does people’s expression of love for that brand, and their loyalty.

When consumers trust the intentions of advertisers and publishers, they are more willing to authenticate themselves. They will actively share their identity and provide other information, which can be used to deliver more value.

Building that trust requires a commitment to developing great customer experiences. This includes guiding language that clearly explains the value exchange. People must be allowed to signal both what they want and what they don’t want from a publisher or a brand. In the digital and mobile worlds, a strong CX capability that enables dynamic personalization serves as a more effective test for finding different ways to engage consumers and uncovering best practices for how and when to request authentication.          

Avoid unsavory shortcuts when building new customer relationships 

Consumers clearly want a say in how their data is collected and used. True innovators view consumer privacy as the foundation for building the future we all want. Publishers must embrace consumer control of their data and focus on delivering a trusted value exchange that delivers a great user experience. This way, we enable consumers to share their data and identity in exchange for valued content.

It’s time to debunk solutions that bypass direct consent. They are unlikely to stand the test of time. The practice of fingerprinting, for example, creates a synthetic ID in place of a cookie by aggregating signals not meant for creating identifiers. Yet again, such off-label data collection is not transparent to the consumer. Therefore, it can quickly erode consumer trust, resulting in serious reputational risk.  

Take control of data to maximize revenue 

Results don’t lie. Publishers that lean into the consumer value exchange authenticate more users. People who trust a publisher enough to provide an email or mobile number tend to be more engaged. The impact can be disproportionately valuable to publishers even with authentication rates as low as five, 10 or 30%. 

Authenticated users consume more content on average. Therefore, they can deliver more page views. As just one example, the initial results of Microsoft Advertising and LiveRamp enabling brands to buy authenticated inventory show that Microsoft Advertising CPMs alone increased by over 40%.

This is not an either/or scenario. Even before cookies are officially deprecated, publishers can begin to attract more demand. They can also create multiple paths to stable revenue while still running traditional campaigns. This allows them to learn which strategies work best before they are forced to decide on one path or another. Publishers should layer in authentication capabilities now. This lets them use the next few months leading into this year’s holiday season to experiment with multiple, secure solutions that put them control. These experiments should be addressable, contextual, and cohort based. This will allow them to understand the value each approach can generate for their business.

Underscoring the importance of coalescing addressability and authentications, our collective goal should be to increase trust and accountability. We must first focus on authenticated experiences that deliver real value for consumers and marketers alike via permissioned data sets.

Publishers of all sizes need to be single-minded about maximizing their margins. The global ecosystem benefits when we have a diverse landscape of publishers who can cater to the broad and unique interests of individuals. They must also have flexibility and control over their revenue streams, without fear of pricing changes or other potential taxes. 

With clarity of vision, our industry can ensure a win-win-win situation  

Publishers must not become reliant on single solutions that come with additional expenses based on volume. They risk giving away yield they can’t invest back into their content or their user experience. The only way for advertising to thrive is when publishers have the power to alternate between effective monetization solutions. They must reduce dependence on any one, especially those with the power to squeeze those margins unpredictably. This is exemplified by the recent changes with IDFA. This seismic shift in inhibiting mobile in-app advertising will have far reaching implications, when 80% of app users may suddenly become unrecognizable to mobile publishers. 

It is important to recognize the long-term, commercial impact of creating a more sustainable, healthy, and competitive web that works better for everyone. Prioritizing consumer trust and transparency is ethically the right thing to do. However, it turns out it helps the bottom line too —for publishers, advertisers, and their partners. And it’s impossible to overlook the tangible business impact and the halo effect this imparts on enhancing the holistic consumer experience. The fundamental shift toward a more trusted ecosystem is not an incremental approach, it’s a visionary one.  

About the authors 

Travis Clinger is the senior vice president of addressability and ecosystem at LiveRamp and serves as a IAB Tech Lab board member.

As senior director of global audience ads at Microsoft, Jeff Nienaber supports the native programmatic marketplace and video advertising business as well as data and identity assets.

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