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Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Is your programmatic data strategy missing the commerce connection?

Commerce data unlocks rich insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and purchase patterns, meaning brands can now craft programmatic strategies with more precision than ever before. The integration of commerce data with programmatic represents a new inflection point for digital advertising, arming brands with a competitive advantage that drives more personalized campaigns and better results. For media companies, this means partnering with the right DSP so that you can access and leverage these data signals to help your advertising partners reach their goals.

Why traditional data providers are falling behind

The first question you might be asking is: Why does the industry need commerce data at all? Don’t we already have plenty of data providers in market right now?

In short, yes. But not all data is created equal.

Traditional data providers have historically faced significant challenges which, over time, have undermined the quality and effectiveness of their insights.

Here are a few examples of areas where current data models fall short [FH1] [GI2] from the demand-side perspective:

Data quality and accuracy

  • Incomplete data. Modeled data often leans on partial information, leading to inaccurate insights.
  • Outdated data. In fast-changing markets, stale data can lead to ineffective targeting.
  • Data silos. Data often lives in silos, making it hard to create a cohesive model that works across platforms.

Algorithmic bias and transparency

  • Biases in data. If the data used to build models is biased, it can lead to skewed targeting that reinforces biases.
  • Discrimination. There’s a risk of unintentionally excluding or targeting specific groups, leading to unfair practices.
  • Transparency. A lack of transparency around how models operate can erode trust from consumers and regulators.

Introducing commerce data—a new approach to data-drive marketing

In today’s digital world, commerce is everywhere.

Shoppers generate a wealth of information at every touchpoint, from their first product search to their final purchase. This rich data reveals not just what people buy but how and why they make decisions.

Commerce data combines consented purchase and intent signals, built on real-world consumer behaviors. It covers everything from demographics and location to product views, last purchases, offline sales, and ad clicks. Layer in some AI, and patterns begin to emerge which can supercharge audience targeting and ad strategies.

In the context of programmatic, commerce data is made up of various events and signals based on consumer behavior, including:

  • Product views and cart additions
  • Purchases and ad clicks
  • Contextual data like URLs, categories, and keywords
  • Product details like categories, SKUs, prices, and descriptions
  • Identifiers like hashed emails and visitor IDs
  • Offline sales

Putting commerce data to work

When combined with commerce-focused AI, commerce data powers some of the most effective advertising strategies for today’s modern marketer. That includes:

  • Identifying in-market consumers: Knowing who’s ready to buy and the best time and place to reach them.
  • Product recommendations: Suggesting products and bidding based on the value-to-cost ratio of each impression.
  • Audience building: Creating lookalike audiences to find new prospects and zero in on people actively shopping for specific products.

How to get the most out of commerce data

When you’re evaluating a commerce data provider, asking the right questions is essential to getting the best results. You’ll want to dig into a few key areas to make sure you’re making the right choice.

First, consider data collection and sources. It’s important to understand where the provider’s data comes from and how it’s gathered. Is it collected directly, such as onsite, or inferred through modeling? Knowing this helps gauge the reliability of the data you’re working with.

Next, think about data quality and accuracy. You’ll want to ask how they ensure their data is accurate and complete. Are they refreshing it in real-time, daily, or on another schedule? Consistency here can make or break the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Then, there’s data segmentation and customization. How is the data broken down, and what criteria are used for segmentation? Can the provider integrate data across multiple devices and channels? Flexibility here can be a big win when you’re targeting your audience across platforms.

Of course, data privacy and security is the cornerstone of any digital activation. You need to know how your provider protects the data they handle. Is personal data anonymized or pseudonymized, and can they offer you transparency into how they’re collecting and processing that data?

Time to leverage the commerce data opportunity

There’s no doubt that commerce data presents a huge opportunity for brands to enhance targeting, personalize messages, and drive better results. By working with the right DSP, you can quickly and effectively leverage these new data signals in order to help your advertising partners more effectively achieve their objectives.

Advertising | Perspectives

How inclusion lists fight misinformation

Programmatic advertising may be the most ubiquitous, influential market in the world. Yet almost nobody, including most of its participants, understands how it actually works. It’s something I cover in a chapter of my new book The Death of Truth. The chapter – which attracted a lot of attention after it was excerpted in WIRED is (appropriately) titled “Buying Blind.” It documents how so many publishers and even marketers are blindsided by the unintended consequences of programmatic’s dominant role in advertising.

Even those working with programmatic advertising every day were surprised at how it can actually undermine the journalism ecosystem. It has created a marketplace in which blue-chip advertisers unknowingly finance the worst peddlers of misinformation and disinformation at the expense of publishers who still care about informing readers.

A striking example of this phenomenon occurred in 2019 when my team discovered that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was the biggest advertiser on Sputnik News, a Kremlin-controlled disinformation website, through its subsidiary Geico. This was, of course, not because of a deliberate decision made by Buffett or executives at Geico. Instead, Geico’s funding for Sputnik came in the form of ads the company inadvertently placed on the Russian disinformation site because of the black hole that is programmatic advertising. Comscore and (my company) NewsGuard have estimated there is $2.6 billion a year in programmatic advertising unintentionally going to publishers of misinformation—revenues that quality news publishers badly need.

Companies like Geico use ad tech tools offered by “Demand Side Platforms” — DSPs — to buy these ads. The largest DSPs, as you might know, are Google and The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk (now a partner with NewsGuard in helping to combat this issue) has real-time bidding technology that uses advanced algorithms and extensive data to place ads across the web at the scale of 5.4 million ads per second. But for all the sophisticated data powering the operations of the DSPs, one crucial detail was overlooked as programmatic was invented and flourished: The identity of the websites where a brand’s ads are placed. This has left advertisers flying blind, sending hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars into the ether without knowing where their ads will appear. The result: Ads appearing in environments where studies show they are less likely to get cost-effective responses – and also likely to embarrass the brand.

Exclusion and blocking: Blunt, ineffective advertising tools

Seeing how brands have been burned by placing their ads alongside unsavory content, many advertisers and agencies have taken blunt approaches that range from bad to worse:

  • One approach involves using “exclusion lists” — a list of websites that an advertiser deems inappropriate — instructing the DSP to block the brand from running its ads on any sites on the list. This approach has some appeal, but it is reactive and never fully effective because, new, hoax websites crop up daily, wreaking havoc on our information ecosystem long before they make it onto an advertiser’s exclusion list. This is true now more than ever as phony websites created by generative AI looking to get in on the programmatic gravy train are popping up every day.
  • Another approach involves using “keyword blocklists” — lists of sometimes thousands of keywords like “Ukraine,” “war,” “gay” or “Black” that the advertiser deems dangerous. These blocklists instruct the DSP to block ads from appearing on any webpage that contains even just one of these keywords. But studies have shown that news — especially news serving minority or underserved communities — are disproportionately harmed by keyword blocklists.
  • Worse yet, some advertisers have decided to remove their ads from news altogether by blocking their ads from the entire category. This has the obvious effect of harming the news industry, slashing already dwindling revenues for news outlets. But it also has a negative, dollars-and cents impact on advertisers themselves: Missed opportunity.

    According to studies, such as those from the IAB and Stagwell, advertising on news can be highly effective. In a 2020 study, the IAB found that “nearly half of consumers find brands that advertise in the news to be more customer-focused and engaging, more innovative, and relevant to them.” Newsreaders are a large but overlooked demographic: 25% of Americans are “news junkies,” according to recent research by Stagwell. Therefore, any strategy that simply avoids or excludes news is failing to reach a large, engaged audience.

Inclusion creates a better ad ecosystem

There is a better way: Website inclusionlists. Inclusion lists allow advertisers to focus their ad spend on pre-vetted, high-quality websites that align with their brand values and target audience. This ensures better placement and engagement, and ultimately increases the return-on-investment (ROI) of ad campaigns. And, of course, this proactive approach reduces the risk of a brand having its ads appear on low-quality or inappropriate sites, including sites propagating misinformation.

My company, NewsGuard, offers one solution for building a high-quality publisher inclusion list. We deploy a team of expert journalists to rate and review the reliability of news sources across the open web based on a set of apolitical criteria of journalistic practice. Using these ratings for more than 10,000 top news and information sources, NewsGuard offers inclusion lists of highly credible news publishers, which can be activated via pre-bid segments through The Trade Desk, Peer 39, and Comscore, or via private marketplaces of trusted news domain lists in SSPs including Pubmatic, OpenX and Magnite.

Because the focus is on websites that pay attention to best journalistic practices, every member of DCN is probably on NewsGuard’s highest-quality inclusion list.

You should brag about It!

Quality publishers can play their part in advocating for the use of inclusion lists as the superior advertising strategy. Publishers can make advertisers aware of inclusion lists in their advertising marketing materials. Many publishers now signal their trustworthiness to advertisers and readers by including their high score from an independent third party in their marketing materials. They can encourage ad agencies to end the harmful practices of boycotting news or using overly broad keyword blocking. They can work with the supply-side platforms to ensure that only other quality news websites are included in ad buys.

This next, logical evolution in programmatic advertising requires that everyone in the process step up to do their part.  Publishers and advertisers would be the most immediate beneficiaries, with news departments getting the revenues they need and brands getting the more efficient purchases they seek. Especially in an election year, we should also keep in mind that democracy will function best with more news resources to support an educated public. Democracy matters. The news matters. And it pays to be the smartest players in the programmatic marketplace

About the author

Steven Brill is the co-founder of NewsGuard. His new book, ”The Death of Truth,” comes out June 4 from Penguin Random House.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Addressing uncertainty: testing addressability with programmatic curation

In the new reality for digital media, advertisers will require a multifaceted approach to targeting and attribution. This approach includes the use of alternative IDs, first-party data, contextual and Google’s Privacy Sandbox (PSB). However, understanding where to invest time, resources, and money, is proving to be a challenge for many media companies.

Curation: A programmatic advertising multi-tool

Programmatic curation can be an indispensable tool to alleviate some of the issues created by the deprecation of third-party cookies.

But what is curation? Programmatic curation is the process of packaging data and supply from a variety of partners into unique private marketplace-based deals, which can then be activated on the buy side though any DSP.  This process is different from simple deals-based trading, where a publisher packages its own inventory into a deal ID to offer buyers.

Curation creates a more fluid and interoperable supply and data marketplace. A publisher can package its own supply with someone else’s data to satisfy advertiser needs. Or a data owner can package its data with supply from publishers they don’t know to create a data-enriched inventory package to satisfy advertiser interests.

Because curation relies on existing programmatic processes, it’s a quick and straightforward way for both the sell and buy side to transact. In fact, curated deals can be created and activated in a matter of minutes using the same programmatic platforms and pipes which already power thousands of private marketplace (PMP) deals every day.  It also ensures that publishers are on the receiving end of premium media budgets from advertisers without worrying about data leakage.

By bundling premium data—including addressability signals—with media, curation can act as a bridge between ad inventory and audience data, something that becomes increasingly important as third-party cookie deprecation draws closer.

Layering advertising addressability signals

Programmatic curation is being used by advertisers to test out various addressability solutions, as they map their approach to a post-cookie world. Working directly with a single publisher or across a network of preferred publisher partners, advertisers can curate inventory based on the presence (or absence) of specific addressability signals. This allows them to run side-by-side tests to understand the relative impact and scale of each solution. Some of the signals that advertisers are using curation to test are: Alternative IDs, Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and first party data.

Alternative IDs

There are several dozens of Alternative IDs in use today across the programmatic ecosystem, looking to replicate much of the third-party cookie’s functionality in more privacy-preserving ways. These IDs can be free or can come at a cost. They can be deterministic or probabilistic. They can be open sourced, or privately operated. In all cases, though, they require some level of effort by both brands and publishers to implement, maintain, and evaluate for efficacy.

Advertisers can use programmatic curation to test the effectiveness of different ID solutions by creating unique supply packages, executed via a deal ID, based on the isolated presence of a specific ID in the bidstream. Keeping everything else the same, advertisers can see how effective different IDs are at driving specific campaign outcomes. Once they’ve determined what works best for them, they can then work directly with publishers to increase the penetration of those IDs in the bidstream to ensure scale.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Like Alternative IDs, addressability signals from Google’s Privacy Sandbox APIs can also be packaged with publisher supply. These signals are currently available on 1% of traffic from the Chrome browser and can be used as a point of comparison with other addressability signals to see which drives better outcomes for the publisher’s demand partners.

Advertisers can leverage Google Topics signals in curated deal IDs to test the scale across multiple publishers within their preferred DSPs. While limited to the signals collected from the Topics API, advertisers can begin building out A/B tests with curation to compare addressability and performance without relying upon their DSP to fully support PSB.

While stable testing has only begun in March 2024, publishers should prioritize analyzing PSB signal impact and assessing performance as the PSB may be a key driver in a publisher’s addressability strategy after the full deprecation of third-party cookies on Chrome. In addition, as PSB testing scales, advertisers should be able to capitalize on using other addressability signals from the Privacy Sandbox APIs.

Publishers’ first party data

The first-party data publishers hold on every visitor to their website(s) is incredibly valuable to advertisers. And their ability to use that audience on other supply go double once third-party cookies disappear for good. Historically, this has been a sticking point with publishers. That’s because to allow advertisers to target their audiences outside of owned and operated environments (aka audience extension), they would traditionally need to relinquish some control of their data—and they won’t necessarily get it back.

With curation, first-party data can be protected. By layering publisher first-party data into curated deals using third-party inventory, or using it as a centralized match key, publishers can drive incremental revenue without the need to give media buyers direct access to their audience data. They’re always in the driving seat.

Addressability testing and timelines

Curation can package these data signals within existing programmatic workflows that media buyers use day in, day out. That means that programmatic curation is a natural fit for publishers looking to monetize their audiences in a low-friction way. 

Future-focused digital advertising solutions

Third-party cookies have already been deprecated on Safari, Firefox, and Edge browsers, as well as on 1% of Chrome traffic. This provides a unique time-limited opportunity for publishers to test out what works best for their inventory, and for media buyers to partner with publishers to activate these strategies closer to supply. 

Nonetheless, there will not be a panacea for addressability: Digital media companies will need to combine different addressability solutions to ensure that they are maximizing the return on their inventory. By using curation, publishers can test different strategies within their existing programmatic workflows to ensure that they are not leaving revenue on the table.

Advertising | Perspectives

MFA’s 15 minutes of fame and the silver lining for publishers

Last Monday, the ad quality and transparency platform Adalytics generated shockwaves with new research on the high volume of ads on made-for-advertising (MFA) websites. Designed to measure investment in the wake of the ANA’s Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency study, the report sheds an unflattering light on where hundreds of prominent brands, including 16 of the 17 named participants in the ANA study, appear online. Within one day, the entire industry was asking how, after the ANA clearly showed that 15% of spend is wasted on MFA, this could still be happening.

When the ANA’s findings rocked the industry in June 2023, media buyers and ad tech platforms quickly vowed to eradicate MFA from their supply chain. Nine months later, it’s clear that their efforts are still a work in progress. All seven agency holding companies were found to be transacting on MFA for prominent clients, as were the top DSPs, ad networks, exchanges, yield optimization services and most SSPs (save for two). Most confounding, many ads on MFA sported tags from vendors meant to combat this problem, including Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify (DV), Oracle Moat, Fou Analytics, Pixalate and HUMAN (formerly White Ops).

With so much talk of MFA, these results leave us wondering: “Why is this still happening?” And more importantly: “How do we fix it?”

You get what you pay for. Except when you don’t

No one should be more perturbed by all this than advertisers, whose money is being wasted. Next up are premium publishers, who aren’t seeing the kinds of media budgets they deserve. 

Media buyers meet MFAs

It’s easy to blame media buyers who have an unquenchable thirst for cheap CPMs. However, it’s unlikely that any brand cited in the research said to their agency, “Let’s buy some MFA.” Most who publicly stepped up and vowed, in good faith, to stem the flow of ad spend to made-for-advertising content likely took steps to do so only to be foiled by an overreliance on MFA exclusion lists and misaligned incentives that prioritize cheap reach over more costly quality. Also to blame is the inherent complexity of the adtech supply-chain, which thrives on secondary, multi-hop auctions through which even the most carefully-curated domain inclusion list becomes lost.

Case in point: across all of the SSPs evaluated by Adalytics, the only two that were totally free of MFA inventory were the two that represented exclusively premium inventory and did not permit secondary auctions: TRUSTX (the company of which I am CEO, which represents premium news, sports and entertainment content publishers across North America) and The Ozone Project (which represents UK news publishers). Kargo, a mobile rich media advertising platform, was also named as MFA-free.

Never let a good crisis go to waste

While last summer’s ANA report erred on the side of caution, this time, major advertisers have been publicly called out, putting pressure on the buy side to take action. These advertisers are seeking answers, and premium publishers are well-positioned to rise to the occasion.

A quality education about MFAs

There’s a timely opportunity for high-quality inventory sellers to coach their client-side and agency partners on how to get more from their media investments. And the good news is that the solutions are actually uncomplicated.  

  • Establish an inclusion list of high-quality inventory sellers. MFA exclusion lists are like trying to count all the grains of sand on a beach: an exercise in futility.
  • Buy through direct paths to programmatic supply—i.e., Brand (or Agency) to DSP to SSP to publisher. Every extra reseller hop in the supply chain adds cost and reduces the likelihood that your client will get what they paid for.
  • Demand the data to validate that their media budget went to the publishers they specified. Log level data is the gold standard for verifying that an inclusion list was honored, though with highly trusted partners, detailed reporting may also suffice. Point being, the buyer should ask for data at whatever level of detail they need to be comfortable. 

Why are these steps of critical importance? For publishers, every ad dollar diverted from MFA is a dollar that could be spent on quality inventory. Looking through the lens of an advertiser, the reasons to avoid MFA are even more urgent.

The stakes are high for brand advertisers

  • MFA is cheap, but cheap can become very expensive. MFA sites notoriously struggle with frequency capping. According to Adalytics, a single site visitor was shown the same ad for one brand 835 times at a cost of $5.49, resulting in an effective CPM of $5491. So, yes, in some cases, you get what you pay for, but not in this one. Encouraging your advertisers to seek out the most direct path to your inventory possible will help avert this kind of disaster.
  • MFA isn’t brand-safe. According to Integral Ad Science, 82% of consumers care about the quality of the content in which they encounter a brand’s ads. 75% will have a less favorable opinion about brands whose ads they encounter on sites that spread misinformation. Furthermore, 51% say they are likely to abandon a brand whose ads appear in inappropriate content. Clearly, ad placements on MFA, whether intentional or inadvertent, have a negative impact.
  • MFA is unsustainable. Lowering emissions is a top priority for advertisers, and understandably so—according to McKinsey and NielsenIQ, 78% of US consumers care deeply about the sustainability efforts of the brands they buy from. Given that adtech accounts for 1.5% of global energy consumption, programmatic seems like a good place to start. It should give them pause that MFA generates 26% more emissions on average than higher quality sites.

Adalytics’ findings are another chapter in a demoralizing story that affects our entire industry. Seeing the continued MFA waste must be particularly painful for publishers of high-quality content. But sunlight is the best disinfectant. Thanks to Adalytics’ no-holds-barred research, the insidious nature of MFA has been laid bare for all to see. We think the empirical data opens the door for buyer and seller dialogues on the value of premium inventory, which creates a golden opportunity for premium publishers to talk to their clients about redirecting ad spend to where it rightfully belongs.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Programmatic advertising has a quality problem

In the ever-evolving world of programmatic advertising, marketers’ quest for transparency and efficiency is paramount. The 2023 ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study found that marketers have major concerns about the quality of programmatic buying. The report identifies that approximately 15% of programmatic spending and 21% of impressions appear on low-quality made-for-advertising (MFA) websites. And while marketers include 4,500 MFA sites on exclusion lists, few provide inclusion lists of quality sites for their advertising campaigns.

The study also reveals that the main problem centers on accessing and analyzing data log files. In fact, only half of the 67 initial participating advertisers (52%) owned direct DSP data access through their contracts. For the remaining advertisers (48%), their access to DSP data was mediated through their agency’s DSP contracts.

As background, 67 ANA member companies agreed to participate, but 46 encountered legal issues or could not access their log data from DSPs, SSPs, and Ad Verification providers, effectively barring their participation.

The research identifies additional issues and recommends a more transparent and efficient open web programmatic marketplace. It is based on log-level analyses across $123 million in spending with 21 advertisers and 35 billion impressions and supplemented with 35 qualitative interviews with supply chain intermediaries.

Recommendations

The report observes several operational challenges in programmatic practices. It also offers corrective steps to get more value from the programmatic ecosystem.

Information asymmetry and waste

The study identifies information asymmetry as a significant roadblock to achieving transparency in the programmatic supply chain. Advertisers often lack crucial information about the quality of media inventory sold in auctions, leading to overpayment, inefficient decision-making, and wasteful media investments.

To address this issue, advertisers must demand access to comprehensive and reliable information about the media inventory they purchase.

Data access challenges

Despite the growing interest in data-driven marketing, many companies struggle to access log data from demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and ad verification providers. This lack of data access creates transparency issues, inefficiency, and wastage.

Advertisers should establish direct data access contracts with primary supply chain partners to maximize transparency and gain control over their media campaigns.

Misaligned incentives

The study reveals that advertisers often prioritize cost over value in purchasing programmatic media. Chasing cheap cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPMs) may seem attractive initially, but it often leads to downstream issues in ad quality.

Advertisers must balance cost and quality to avoid wasteful investments and focus on the value their media buys deliver.

Website overabundance

The study shows that campaigns utilized an average of 44,000 top-level domains, raising concerns about fraud, viewability, and brand safety.

Advertisers should streamline the number of websites used while ensuring fairness for small or minority-owned service providers. By reducing the number of websites, advertisers can concentrate on high-quality inventory and mitigate the risks associated with excessive website usage.

Low-quality made-for-advertising websites

The study highlights that low-quality made-for-advertising (MFA) websites, which are created simply to generate ad revenue through sensational headlines and subpar content, accounted for 21% of impressions.

Advertisers must evaluate the suitability of MFA inventory for their brands and consider their tolerance for including such sites in their campaigns. Striking a balance between reach and brand safety is crucial.

Sustainability concerns

Programmatic advertising has a notable environmental impact due to its energy-intensive nature.

Advertisers can contribute to sustainability efforts by making more productive and non-wasteful media buys. Certain website types, especially MFA sites, generate higher carbon emissions. Advertisers should prioritize sustainability in their media buying strategies and opt for environmentally conscious platforms and vendors.

Importance of log-level data (LLD) analysis

The study emphasizes that improved data matching and analysis can significantly reduce the “unknown delta,” which refers to unattributable ad spend.

Leveraging log-level data allows advertisers to achieve a zero-percent delta, gaining valuable insights into their ad spend and performance. Analyzing log-level data empowers advertisers to make data-driven decisions and optimize their media investments effectively.

Manage the supply chain

The ANA report emphasizes the importance of properly managing the programmatic supply chain. This enables advertisers to make informed decisions based on transparency and data-driven insights. Further, it allows advertisers to analyze ad impressions’ impact on consumers and evaluate the financial transaction between the publisher and the overall value delivered to the target audience. This way, advertisers can optimize their campaigns and publishers can improve the ad placements and enhance the overall effectiveness of the advertising.

Effective advertising is not simply a question of reach. While programmatic advertising allows for efficiency and scale, marketers must manage the supply chain in order to make the most of their investment.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Why publishers see success in direct-sold programmatic

Advertisers that solely opt to access publisher inventory through the open marketplace (OMP) face significant addressability problems. While the OMP completely changed the way media owners and advertisers collaborated, becoming the “path to least resistance” for both buyers and sellers, it is now creating more resistance. But as with so many things in life, what’s old is new again and direct-sold strategies are delivering benefits to publishers once again.

Open programmatic no longer serves its purpose

Even with Chrome’s third-party cookies still in play, only 30% of audiences on the open web are targetable. This is because 40% of Chrome’s users make their data unavailable to advertisers and the Firefox and Safari browsers already operate without third-party cookies.

Open web addressability is a big problem: Why would advertisers want to use the majority of their ad spend to reach 30% of audiences? There is also no guarantee of premium inventory and placements as well as a lack of control and transparency in the OMP as a result of ad fraud and third-party targeting that doesn’t deliver on the audience advertisers are trying to reach.

In light of this, publishers are re-evaluating their strategies. For example, one parent and lifestyle publisher made the proactive decision to reduce their reliance on the OMP, not just because it isn’t a reliable source of revenue, but because they can’t control their narrative with buyers in that environment. Working with advertisers directly means they get to highlight non-endemic audiences at a scale they can achieve.

Publishers need to make revenue and ensure they are giving their audience the best possible experience, while advertisers only want to reach the most relevant people within this audience. The lack of addressability in the OMP leads to failure on both fronts.

The building blocks of going direct

Between October and November 2022, the IAB surveyed 223 buy-side ad investment decision-makers and found that 53% planned to increase their focus on ad placements with publishers using first-party data. According to a report by Adweek, brands like Hershey’s, which spend between $350M- 450M annually on advertising, realise they are spending a lot of money and not showing up in premium environments. Hershey’s now has a target of buying 80% of addressable media via private marketplaces (PMPs) and only 20% on the OMP.

Publishers’ first-party datasets—built on authenticated, contextual, declared, and behavioural data—can be leveraged by advertisers directly to activate unreachable audiences. But for this shift to work, publishers must continue encouraging buyers to see the benefits of working directly with them and perhaps even educate an entire population of buyers that have worked primarily with OMP.

To do this, publishers need to satisfy advertiser demand by providing quality audiences from interest, intent, and in-market audiences, provide scale and ensure reach across all relevant platforms and browsers, tell rich and compelling stories about their audiences via deep insights, showcase how audiences are built and be transparent about audience creation, and demonstrate how their first party audiences can help deliver and improve performance mid-flight and achieve advertiser objectives.

Reaping the benefits

Publishers already working this way benefit from using their first-party data to drive direct deals, and buyers are seeing an improved performance. Trusted Media Brands (TMB), whose titles include FailArmy, Family Handyman, Reader’s Digest, and Taste of Home, have been working on their data strategy to ensure they can understand audiences across all browsers, especially in cookie-blocked environments such as Safari.

TMB now delivers direct-sold campaigns 94% of the time using first-party data. The work has resulted in a 140% increase in revenue from deals using first-party data, a 31% increase in RFP win rate when data is on an IO and a 2X increase in deal size when data is present on an IO vs no data.

Similarly, Gumtree is seeing results from using first-party data in direct deals, with a 36% increase in click-through rates in Q1 2023, and a 14% increase in average cost per thousand impressions.

The driving force behind addressability

The best way for publishers and advertisers to maximize their revenue and budgets, respectively, is to focus on addressability. First-party data and direct-sold will be the driving force behind that.

Direct deals deliver quality first-party data and scalable first-party audiences that meet advertisers’ needs, increase transparency, and control, and enable access to premium inventory and ad placements. Working direct also results in insights and reporting into audiences on how they inform an advertiser’s targeting strategy. Advertisers know where their ad spend is going and which audiences they are reaching with more accuracy.

Advertising | Industry-Research

The programmatic ad market benefits from standardization and transparency

Two years ago, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) examined buy-side data to map the programmatic advertising supply chain from advertiser to publisher. Unfortunately, there were significant data quality and transparency issues, specifically the inability to identify 15% of ad spend to delivered impressions. Given these results and marketplace concerns, industry organizations created a task force and toolkit to help improve transparency in the programmatic process. Results from the second report, ISBA Programmatic supply chain transparency study 2022, show supply chain improvements.

The 2022 study examined industry progress using the toolkit developed to improve data access in the programmatic supply chain. The toolkit defines five important questions to lead the impression match rate audit process:

  1. Does the Audit Permission Letter (APL) accelerate data access?
  2. Does the Data Fields List (DFL) improve the data quality?
  3. Does improved data quality lead to improved impression match rates?
  4. Is the unknown delta reduced?
  5. Are there clear, actionable next steps?

The research is based on 1.3 billion impressions from September 1, 2022, to October 31, 2022, with the complete analysis taking place over nine months. Participants included 11 advertisers, 10 publishers, seven agencies, and six DSPs and SSPs, each.

Findings 

The research identified a total of 104 million impressions served from ad tech vendors to publishers. Of the 104 million impressions, they matched 61 million impressions (58%) from the buy-side (DSP) to the sell-side (SSP). The match rate is nearly five times greater than the 12% in 2020. The latest report also track 65% of advertiser spending reaches publishers compared to 51% in 2020.

The higher-quality log-level data and data fields allow for a deterministic rule-based approach to matching the data sets with predetermined algorithms and calculations. Also contributing to higher match rates were private marketplaces, with an above 70% match rate (approximately 20% of matchable impressions). Notably, the 2022 study finds a distinct difference in the delta between open marketplaces (3%) and private marketplaces (<1%), showcasing the benefit of advertising with select auditable private marketplaces. Like 2020, the 2022 study focused on premium advertisers, agencies, tech vendors, and publishers which do not necessarily represent the broader programmatic ecosystem.

Improvements

The toolkit was a prime contributor to data access improvements in 2022. The Audit Permission Letter (APL) allowed for more efficiency, cutting the study time from 18 months to 9 months. However, the full adoption of the APL letter varied among the participants.

Participants who provided log-level data for each impression showed significant improvement in data quality in the audit process. The Data Fields List (DFL) also improved the data quality. However, while ad tech suppliers offered approximately 80% of the data fields, there was a remaining 20% of data fields that needed to be shared. In addition, inconsistencies in some data formats, like names, currency, device type, etc., still prevail and need to be addressed.

Recommendations

Overall, the study recommends for advertisers, ad tech vendors and publishers to work with well-curated private marketplaces (PMPs), given their higher impression match rates.

Advertisers and agencies:

  • agree to separate display side platform seats for each advertiser,
  • appoint centralized contact for Audit Permission Letter approvals and extraction and reporting of buy-side log-level data, and
  • consider private supply chain audits chain every one to three years.

Ad tech vendors:

  • invest in the ability to filter, retain, and share log-level data, covering all of the Data Fields List,
  • agree on consistent taxonomies and naming conventions for ads.txt, and
  • drive adoption and use of ads.txt and sellers.json.

Publishers:

  • agree on consistent taxonomies and naming conventions for ads.txt, and
  • drive adoption and use of ads.txt and sellers.json,
  • consider working with fewer SSPs, and
  • consider private audits of them every 1 to 3 years.

The 2022 study demonstrates the improvement of data quality with the Toolkit usage. Developing data standards and protocols offers insight into supply path optimization. Further enhancements in data access and retention with the additional collaboration of data practices will make financial audits more common and successful.

Advertising | Perspectives

4 challenges to leveraging attention in a programmatic world

Attention economy is arguably the ad industry buzzword for 2022. Publishers and brands have realized that they need to move beyond traditional viewability metrics to focus on how a user is interacting with content in the moment.

In simple terms, there’s a measurement gap between what is viewable and what is viewed. But how simple is it to leverage attention through programmatic data?

Here, we take a look at four common challenges to extracting programmatic insights.

1. Analyzing metrics that matter

Let’s imagine a line graph, with a steadily increasing curve representing the volume of online content over time, while a flat line represents the time a user has to consume it. The gap between those lines describes the attention deficit.

A few years ago, viewability metrics (e.g. video completion rate, dwell time) became the accepted way of measuring the performance of online content. However, as Playground xyz’s CEO Rob Hall describes, as the attention deficit widens, standard viewability metrics are fast becoming “preconditions for [online content]. But really, they’re more hygiene factors.”

And while hygiene factors are important, publishers are now looking to dig deeper into engagement by using attention metrics, such as attention time or active time in view.

Attention metrics can be measured in different ways. These include as scroll rate, scroll depth, touch rate and cursor position. All of these can show how the user is interacting with the page when the content is in view. Crucially, they also reveal whether they are interacting with the content itself.

Taking this one step further, publishers are also beginning to use advanced image-streaming technology that detects when a user is zooming in on content, or viewing it in full-screen mode.

Just like viewability data, attention data can have a significant steer on programmatic advertising. By making the leap to include attention metrics in the mix, publishers can serve more relevant content programmatically, optimizing the experience for users.

2. Getting close enough to real-time data

According to Lumen Research, the key to analyzing engagement is to create a predictive model of attention to content that can be used to inform programmatic bidding in real time. ​​By collecting huge volumes of impression data on visual attention, they have created a powerful model that can project how much attention an ad or a piece of content is likely to receive.

The reality is that many publishers are still reliant on data platforms that refresh data sources once a day at best. But by switching to more advanced tools, they can get access to much fresher data than ever before. For instance, they might use software that refreshes the data every few hours. Once they have real-time attention data, they can then look to build more advanced data models based on predictive analytics.

Armed with this vast (and ever-growing) pool of fresh data, publishers can extract more relevant insights for more effective programmatic advertising based on user attention. However, analyzing data at scale can be laborious and error prone without the right tools in place.

3. Extracting programmatic insights at scale

Some larger publishers handle petabytes of impression data each day. That’s a heck of a lot of data from which to extract useful insights. Until now, publishers have faced the daunting task of building out their own strategic data asset. But this can take months, if not quarters, before their business teams can get to the data they need.

Thankfully, there are heavy-duty data unification tools on the market that can handle growing volumes of data with ease, providing business teams with the bespoke reports they need, while freeing up engineering teams for other business-critical projects.

But, of course, it’s not just about scale. It’s also about versatility.

4. Blending different reports for a holistic view

Having access to large data sets is no use if they remain in silos. For instance, while drilling down into programmatic data is important, so too is having a holistic, blended view of all ad spend. Likewise, inventory yield reports should provide up-to-date reporting across all digital revenue channels including display, mobile, CTV, social, DOOH, etc.

However, for many publishers, generating these high-level reports is still a challenge. It takes too much time and effort to manually aggregate the disparate datasets. And then it takes even more time to build custom reports that are accurate and speedy enough for business teams to act upon.

Get the tech to do the heavy lifting

The speed at which today’s media teams are expected to build, measure and optimize programmatic campaigns to remain competitive is daunting. But it is not impossible.

Whether choosing the right metrics, accessing the data in real time, or bringing together disparate data sets at scale, implementing automation tools to do the heavy lifting will give publishers the confidence – and the time – to focus on user attention. Only then will they start to drive more meaningful ROI for their brand advertisers.

About the author

Navid Nassiri joined Switchboard as Head of Marketing in 2021. Switchboard’s data engineering automation platform aggregates disparate data at scale, reliably and in real-time, to make better business decisions. In his role at Switchboard, Navid is focused on driving growth and brand awareness through innovative marketing strategies. Navid is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive, including leadership roles at PwC and NBCUniversal.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Prospering in the increasingly dangerous open programmatic market

It was a fourth quarter to remember…and a fourth quarter to forget. The main reason to remember is so other Q4s will look positively luminous in comparison. I’m not just talking about the wrath of Omicron, which ruined holidays for countless families and continues to cause illness, death, and emotional distress across the globe. I’m talking about an alarming rise in malvertising that endangers publisher revenue and consumers’ online safety.  

As publishers struggle more than ever to balance user experience and monetization, the perils of the open programmatic marketplace require higher levels of vigilance, lest audiences be lost in a storm of malware. Let’s explore the factors behind the rise in malvertising and what publishers can do to combat its impact. 

Malware incidents on the rise 

While malvertising typically subsides in the fourth quarter with higher inventory prices, Q4 2021 malware levels were disturbingly high.

In the digital ecosystem, The Media Trust detected a 64% increase in malware incidents during the final quarter of 2021 — which can account for thousands of impressions or hits — as compared to the same time period in 2020. And 2020 levels were already high as the programmatic marketplace struggled to snap back during the early days of the pandemic. 

Malvertising levels this high at the end of the year are unusual. It typically subsides a bit in the fourth quarter. Because increased advertiser demand enables publishers to increase CPMs and raise programmatic floors most malvertisers are priced out of the market.

However, Q4 2021’s record malware numbers weren’t the result of a few blanket attacks. The industry was assaulted by a wide variety of malicious code and content: 

  • Redirects peaked in October, growing 170% over the course of the year. 
  • In November, Digital media was awash in FizzCore, a notorious form of malicious clickbait that employs cloaking technology to hide its devious content. The amount of FizzCore detected grew 9X over two months. 
  • An outbreak of fake antivirus/software update ads also hit hard in November, marking a 50% rise since the beginning of the year. 
  • E-skimming typically increases in Q4 as bad actors hunt for consumer credit cards, but the amount detected in Q4 2021 was 63% higher than the year prior.  
  • Scam ads, which surged in 2021 and made up nearly a third of malware in the space, stayed high and ticked up an extra 9% in December — nearly exceeding the summer peak. 

A most malicious year 

While 2020 saw a surge in malvertising caused by advertisers’ pandemic pullback, the amount of malware in the digital ecosystem in 2021 has been dramatically higher. 

Unfortunately, these numbers are representative of  2021 as whole, where malware simply exploded. The Media Trust’s Digital Security and Operations team managed an average 2,210 malware incidents daily. That’s a 64% increase over 2020 and well above the ~1,000 historical average. During the summer — the height of the 2021 malware blitz — average daily malware incidents stayed above 3,000. 

Overall, The Media Trust identified 26,664 new malware incidents in 2021, a ~30% increase over the number cataloged in 2020. And our creative blocker, Media Filter, halted four times more malware than in the year prior.  

The proliferation of malvertising is simply breathtaking. 

What’s behind the rise in malvertising 

Certainly the 2020 surge in malvertising followed advertisers’ pause in spend; bad ads flooded the programmatic advertising space as publishers lowered floors to grab whatever revenue they could. But even as the pandemic drags on and on, programmatic markets seem to have rebounded. So, what’s behind this incredible 2021 surge in malware? 

First, from a programming perspective, the malvertising barrier to entry is very low. The dark web is full of malware kits for sale including turnkey phishing solutions and the ever-popular ransomware-as-a-service. There’s a whole black market ecosystem for selling pilfered data and access to infected devices — and often no legal repercussions for bad actors (though there were some impressive arrests in 2021). 

Secondly, research from eMarketer found that private marketplaces account for more RTB spend than the open programmatic marketplace. With $15.4 billion in advertiser spend in 2021, private marketplaces made up 56% of all RTB-transacted dollars. The open marketplace sat at $12.3 billion and had a 44% share.

According to eMarketer, the shift to private marketplaces is only going to accelerate in 2022. Spend is predicted to increase another 21% and make up 59% of all RTB spending. However, the open marketplace will only grow 5% and dwindle to a 41% share of RTB spend. 

We also see premium advertisers are investing heavily in connected TV (CTV) — although they’re struggling with campaign measurement — direct, and programmatic. These advertisers shifting their buying power away from the open marketplace is likely depressing CPMs. It is also making more room for bad actors to spread a variety of malicious wares.  

Is it time to give up on open programmatic? 

So, if the open marketplace is suffering from a rapidly growing malware infestation, am I suggesting publishers turn off their open programmatic pipes post-haste? Heavens, no! That’s not really an option for most digital publishers. Can you imagine the amount of revenue left on the table? All the unfilled inventory?  

It’s obvious why private marketplaces are increasingly attracting advertiser dollars: high viewability, actually engaged human beings rather than bots, and impressions on well-respected publications. We’ll see top-tier publishers layering in high-impact audience segments that will likely outperform third-party cookies.

But the challenge with private marketplaces has always been getting them to scale. I still hear publishers lament long-lingering Deal IDs with laughable fill rates. Truly getting private marketplaces to hum requires time and resources, something many publishers in the “fat middle” struggle with. 

Premium advertisers will keep buying in the open market. This may be to cherry-pick super-cheap inventory on premium publishers or for prospecting purposes. Smaller advertisers may find it easier to reach target audiences across a wider crop of publishers. Publishers also use the open marketplace to find new advertiser prospects and evaluate the market value of various types of inventory and audience segments. 

Your best defense against malvertisers is high quality data 

The open programmatic marketplace may be getting seedier but diligent publishers can still drive a ton of revenue. It’s just going to take more work to keep audiences safe from all the fraudsters spread across the programmatic pipes. 

Having a page/app-level creative blocker to bat away malware before it hits your property is table stakes. But with this massive expansion of malware in open programmatic, the quality of data fueling your blocker is more important than ever. Publishers can’t go cut-rate. Their ad-quality provider should be pumping data into the blocker in real-time from an in-house team of malware analysts. Third-party malware data isn’t going to be fresh enough. It may also lead to revenue-bleeding false positives. 

And finally, publishers need to be a lot more discriminating when it comes to their open marketplace partners — and by extension, those partners’ partners. Especially during the pandemic, publishers have been willing to install most demand sources that might give them an edge with bid density. But open programmatic is getting too dangerous to be carefree about the companies you monetize with. Ensure all your demand partners are scrutinizing both tags and landing pages (preferably from a variety of device and geographic profiles). And if a high percentage of the ads they bring you get shot down by your malware blocker, maybe they’re not the right fit for you. 

Open programmatic is definitely becoming a more dangerous place for monetization. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the revenue. With the right tools and policies, publishers can make bank — and keep their audiences safe and happy. 

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Optimizing your supply path requires a scalpel not a chainsaw

Dean Kamen, the brilliant engineer who invented both the Segway and iBOT once said that every innovation eventually becomes a double-edged sword. Initial positive outcomes will inevitably need to be weighed against future negative unintended consequences… the internal combustion engine, social media, Open RTB – for starters.

Our industry continues to pivot away from vendors who have contributed to unintended consequences (fraud, loss of publisher control, etc.). However there is an enormous risk to unilaterally severing ties with all your 3rd parties in a mad rush toward SPO nirvana. The culling of the herd needs to be done. However, it must be carried out with precision lest we cut off our noses to spite our faces.   

Len Ostroff, SVP at Critero, had this to say about the programmatic supply chain in a recent article in AdMonsters:

Publishers are working with far more SSPs than they were in the past and we have seen a rise in duplicate bid requests, leading to an increase in infrastructure costs and multiple bids for a single impression. While there is typically value in seeing a few bid requests per impression, there is a point of diminishing returns which can cause a degradation in value and a drop in yield while also increasing fees and costs.

So, what are you going to do about it?

This legitimate observation about our ad industry’s Achilles heel has led to calls for Supply Path Optimization (SPO). Let’s face it: There are obviously too many cooks in the kitchen. Reduce or eliminate 3rd party vendors, say some industry leaders. Moreover, publishers don’t want to see nearly 50% of each programmatic advertising dollar slip through the cracks into the hands of redundant intermediaries. Nor should they allow themselves to be victimized by fraudulent activity.

Don’t throw every baby out with the bathwater

The fact is that SPO is not a zero-sum game. Certainly, there are bad actors whose main goal is to siphon off another point or two from your bottom line without adding value. However, there are also great 3rd parties whose entire focus is to increase income, and improve reader engagement, ad viewability, and UX for their partners.­­

Most of us remember when Marc Pritchard of P&G famously called for “the death of the crappy media supply chain,” at the 2017 IAB ALM. However, I don’t believe that his intention was for anyone to amputate value-added partners to eradicate the cancer that had developed in the ecosystem of our industry.

Rushing to judgement leads to errors that can be avoided with deeper due diligence. Ask your 3rd parties to articulate specifically what they contribute to your business goals, and most importantly to your income. Require that they provide you with data that supports their contribution. Consult with industry experts and ask your peers about their experiences working with partners and vendors. Look to industry award nominees from the various highly valued trade publishers whose evaluations are objective and authoritative.

https://lumapartners.com/content/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape/

Trade your gas guzzler in for a Tesla

It is incumbent upon all of us in the industry to seek higher ground and work with the best. With apologies to our friend Terry Kawaja, the LUMAScape does give some insight into the problem we have created for ourselves. Too much is just too much…and not of a good thing:

I’ve written about the “tyranny of choice” here before. There are simply too many players in the ad tech ecosystem. That’s part of the problem publishers face. My suggestion is to K.I.S.S. Identify those vendors who are not adding tangible value, then say bye, bye. Your ad ops and dev teams will thank you. So will your CFO, shareholders, and maybe even Dean Kamen himself.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Publishers can’t afford to ignore data leakage

The problem of data leakage is one often not well known or understood by publishers. Therefore, addressing data leakage is rarely prioritized. This particularly true if the pressure to monetize their inventory is high and resource is limited. But what does data leakage mean? And are there ways publishers can protect their data from leaking? It’s crucial that publishers learn more about this problem and about the solutions available that help prevent it.

Data leakage typically occurs when a brand, agency, or ad tech company collects data about a website’s audience and subsequently uses that data without the initial publisher’s permission. The core concern with data leakage is that it causes a publisher’s ad inventory to depreciate in value. If bad actors collect data about a publisher’s users, they can use this information to target these users elsewhere — potentially on cheaper inventory. In other words, programmatic spend is diverted from the original publisher. This results in a reduction in demand and, therefore, a lower yield.

Data leakage can happen transparently with the publisher’s knowledge or consent. For example, a company might request that a publisher install code on their page that allows data to be gathered about their users in exchange for something else such as a minimum spend commitment. In some cases, this might be considered a commercially worthwhile proposition providing the appropriate regulations are complied with.

More frequently, however, data leakage does not happen transparently. In the context of programmatic, this usually occurs when publishers choose to work with numerous technology partners in an effort to maximize revenue and yield. There frequently a correlation between the number of partners a publisher chooses to work with and the risk of data leakage.

How data leakage happens

There are a few ways data leakage can happen:

Open RTB bid requests

Data leakage can occur when Supply Side Platforms send bid requests to Demand Side Platforms via using the OpenRTB protocol. This contains a wealth of information about the user, the content they are consuming, the device they are using, their cookie id, where they are located to mention a few. (See the Site, App, User, Publisher, Content Objects). Much of this is information integral to the programmatic auction process. However, it could be used to profile users and target them elsewhere. How much this actually happens is unclear. It may even occur unintentionally by machine learning, bidding algorithms.

Cookie syncing or tracking pixels

Data leakage can also happen when a third party gets access to a publisher’s page either via cookie syncing or a tracking pixel. A pixel is an invisible piece of code that marketers or ad tech platforms use to track users, apply campaign strategies such as frequency capping and monitor performance. Pixels can also collect information about a publisher’s audience. Unfortunately, that can be used to enable the targeting of those users elsewhere.

Today, the vast majority of players in the programmatic digital supply chain are reliant on third-party cookies for user identification and for campaign targeting, optimization, measurement, and attribution. Cookie synchronization is a process that is required to communicate user identity between platforms.

The problem of data leakage arises when platforms that publishers work with give other platforms that have no direct relationship with the publisher access to the page to cookie their users. That platform is then able to build user profiles, which allows them to reach that audience elsewhere without having to buy any media on the original publisher.

How to ensure your data is protected

One way to prevent data leakage is for advertisers, agencies, ad tech companies and publishers to have legal contracts that stipulate who owns what data and how other parties can use it. You might be protected contractually. But how do you monitor and enforce these contractual obligations in practice?

Publishers can also leverage tools that track which platforms are dropping unnecessary pixels or bringing unwanted data collectors. These tools can be used to undertake periodic audits to identify where data leakage is happening. Alongside, publishers should implement policies and practices to qualify, monitor and deal with bad actors.

How to balance the risk and rewards

It is important that publishers find the balance between a closed, safe environment and a risky but sustainable monetization strategy.

With the impending “cookie apocalypse,” publishers are already opting to work with identity providers that are not reliant on third-party cookies to ensure they maintain a healthy programmatic revenue stream and protect themselves from data leakage. Next-generation identity solutions provide a foundation for user identification, which is fundamental to campaign targeting, optimization, measurement and attribution. They also offer new safer mechanisms and tools that limit the amount of data leakage.

When choosing a provider, check that they have built mechanisms that will only assign your users an identifier if they have consent to do so and only share those identifiers with the platforms you have authorized. Finding the right identity provider today can help you prevent data leakage, respect consumer preferences and local privacy regulations while facilitating sustainable monetization.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

3 Digital advertising resources to help publishers optimize sales

In an advertising ecosystem that often can seem complex and opaque, digital publishers must find ways to stand out from other websites that offer advertising.

The industry has developed several resources to foster greater supply chain transparency and help publishers take greater control of their inventory, stand out for their commitment to quality and earn more revenue. It is important for digital publishers to be aware of these resources and integrate them into the selling process to maximize revenue opportunities.

Here we look at some of these resources and share how they benefit publishers and buyers.

1. Private marketplaces

Programmatic technology has made it easier for marketers to buy advertising at scale. However, not all exchanges provide them with publishers that have been vetted by a trusted organization.

Private marketplaces give buyers access to quality inventory while participating publishers also benefit from higher CPMs and by knowing the ads placed on their sites are from legitimate marketers.

You’re probably aware of TrustX, a premium private marketplace developed by Digital Content Next. It offers buyers access to inventory directly from more than 250 member publishers, bypassing resellers and intermediaries. Similar exchanges are taking hold globally including The Ozone Project in the U.K. and the Maple Network Exchange in Canada. By joining a premium private marketplace, publishers can find strength in numbers and greater exposure to buyers looking to buy inventory from quality publishers.

2. Industry programs

Several organizations have created programs to identify publishers that have taken steps to stand out, whether that’s by providing transparency, offering quality local journalism, or integrating industry standards and best practices into the buying process.

The Alliance for Audited Media’s Digital Publisher Audit is an in-depth, continuous audit of a publisher’s website traffic and business practices to verify that a publisher is effectively minimizing ad fraud risk. This new assurance solution addresses ad fraud at the publisher level and complements other industry initiatives like private marketplaces. We include all AAM-audited digital publishers on the AAM Audited Domain List, which can be downloaded from AAM’s website. It can also be found at the IAB Tech Lab Transparency Center, a resource that buyers can access to learn more about sellers and the compliance programs and industry standards they adhere to.

The Local Media Consortium is an association of local newspapers, broadcasters and online news outlets committed to quality journalism. The LMC Local News Advertising Inclusion List includes thousands of local media advertising opportunities for national brands.

And finally, The Trustworthy Accountability Group sets standards that promote greater supply chain transparency and includes organizations from across the industry including brands, agencies, publishers and tech providers. The TAG Registry lists members that are committed to increasing trust in digital advertising.

By taking part in these programs, publishers can be easily identified by media buyers who access these resources to build inclusion lists and prioritize quality partners.

3. Supply chain validation

Publishers also can use industry tools to easily gain insight into who sells their inventory and discover ways to make the process more efficient.

The IAB Tech Lab develops solutions to bring greater transparency to the supply chain through tools such as ads.txt (app-ads.txt) and sellers.json. The organization recently launched a new service that analyzes publishers’ ads.txt files to validate who is authorized to sell their inventory. Supply Chain Validation allows publishers to verify that their ads.txt file adheres to technical specifications by alerting sellers when issues arise such as an incorrect or missing entry, which can lead to missed revenue or an unauthorized sale. The service also compares the publisher’s ads.txt file to their selling partners’ sellers.json files to determine if there are any inconsistencies between the two. The results are then published in the Transparency Center and are also available from the IAB Tech Lab via an API.

As a premium publisher, it is important to integrate industry solutions into your selling strategy to stand out to advertisers. Putting the right processes in place will give your site — and your ad sales efforts —the best chance for success.

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