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Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Newsweek and Discovery are ready for the cookieless web. Are you?

We all know that the days of the cookie as the primary means to ad targeting and personalization are coming to an end. From increased legislation to ongoing browser updates, the time has come to put the cookie behind us and move forward. The good news is that there are tried and true methods that ensure the free flow of information and effective advertising. 

While brands, publishers, and platforms are likely to leverage cookies for as long as they can, the industry has viable solutions and advertisers should take advantage of them. Those who have gotten a head start already see the benefits of an addressable, cookieless solution that enables authenticated user experiences. Brands and publishers that have already made the transition should use this time to establish stronger relationships based on trust through first-party data strategies. Those who haven’t yet started the journey away from third-party cookies should get started right away by leveraging a trusted, first-party authenticated solution. 

Authenticated audiences

Previously, brands looking to reach their audiences have been overcompensating for the lack of a transparent, authenticated solution. Data-driven publishers, with established, first-party relationships can leverage their authenticated data so marketers can target audiences and measure campaign outcomes with people-based identity. 

In the past, marketers looking for a measurable solution had to turn to social platforms’ walled gardens, which have enjoyed the benefits of disproportionate media investments. Historically, advertisers spent 60% of their digital advertising budget on reaching audiences in walled gardens, allotting only 40% of the budget to the open web. Yet, consumers spent more than half of their time on the open web (66%), compared to just 34% on closed platforms. 

As independent publishers embrace the tactics of walled gardens, they leverage first-party authentications to deliver better, more targeted advertising. Initial campaign results from two publishers, Newsweek and Discovery, illustrate that an authenticated, cookieless solution has proven effective.

People-based solutions

Publishers and brands can now connect identities without the use of cookies or compromising data. For example, Newsweek was able to better plan and execute on advertisers’ marketing campaigns by leveraging a people-based, privacy-safe, cookieless solution that enabled publishers and brands to match identities. 

Leveraging solutions independent of third-party cookies, the Newsweek team saw a total lift in eCPM as high as 224%, with an average lift of 52% across all web browsers. The lift in specific browsers — a CPM lift of 55% on Google Chrome, and a 93% and 60% CPM lift on Firefox and Safari, respectively — indicates the significant impact the new, cookieless solution can drive as an alternative to third-party cookies and in cookieless environments. 

Although third-party cookies are still a capability in Chrome, Newsweek benefited from an audience lift on the browser by activating on the new cookieless solution. Because both Firefox and Safari no longer enable audience reach with third-party cookies, the lift on both browsers demonstrates how the cookieless solution enables a new, more premium channel based on authentications where marketers and advertisers can reach an audience they were not previously able to.

Newsweek’s COO Alvaro Palacios said, “Newsweek has proven through testing that digital media does not need third-party cookies to increase yields and the value of our inventory. This ID solution provides the infrastructure to match our readers with a brand’s customers, for marketing that could be more effective than with third-party cookies.”

On mobile devices, publishers are also seeing a higher CPM than on cookieless mobile web inventory. Through their new ID solution, Newsweek also achieved a CPM lift of 53% on iOS, compared to those that did not activate on this ID. Discovery Inc., a publisher with sites including HGTV.com, TravelChannel.com, FoodNetwork.com and DIYNetwork.com, also saw an average eCPM increase of 44% when enabling activation on the same ID solution on their cookieless inventory. 

A new ecosystem where publishers and brands win

The CPM improvements that benefit Newsweek  and Discovery are just an example of the incremental revenue opportunities achieved by leveraging an authenticated solution. As publishers continue to grow their addressable inventory, their revenue will also flourish. Brand marketers can now buy inventory activated by authenticated, first-party data. This enables them to reach more consumers on more channels than ever before. And that’s something third-party cookies were never able to achieve. 

While third-party cookies may still exist in the near-term, advertisers should take advantage of the proven, more viable solution already available. Consider the cellular network transition from 4G to 5G. With speeds 100 times faster than 4G and better connectivity for seamless user experiences, 5G is the clear winner for a preferred connection. Yet, 4G still exists. In this same way, having already proven themselves to be more effective, authenticated cookieless solutions have also become the preferred solution while third-party cookies remain. 

The digital advertising industry is constantly balancing the interests of publishers, brands, and browsers. The sometimes-competing interests may feel like a three-way tug-of-war at times. However, there are proven viable alternatives to third-party cookies that benefit brands and publishers equally.

To get ahead of impending browser changes, publishers must own their trusted first-party consumer relationships through authenticated solutions. Once publishers succeed in establishing trust with their consumers, they will then be able to develop a relationship that’s independent of cookies. And that will improve the user experience and increase yield for publishers and the brands that work for them.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

How dynamic creative optimization delivers advertising results

Today’s online consumers expect ads to show them what they want, when they want it. An overwhelming 80% of shoppers say they’re more likely to make a purchase when a brand offers a personalized experience, while 70% say they’re more loyal to companies that demonstrate a clear understanding of their personal needs. So it’s not surprising that personalization has become a must for digital marketers.

To deliver these kinds of highly targeted and hyper-relevant marketing campaigns at scale, savvy advertisers use innovative display ad technologies like dynamic creative optimization (DCO). Powered by a combination of dynamic, data-driven content and automated machine learning, DCO is quickly becoming one of the most effective strategies for delivering the types of personalized campaigns that today’s online audiences demand.

How DCO works

DCO is a type of programmatic advertising technology that gives marketers the ability to optimize dynamic creatives in real time. It creates a highly personalized experience tailored to the user’s needs, at that exact moment, by using data that’s collected when the ad is being served. The system updates dynamic elements instantly to provide content that’s most relevant based on a broad range of data signals. These include location, weather, gender, device, buying behavior, and where the user is in the buyer’s journey.

One of the reasons DCO is so effective is because the process is completely automated and continuously improving itself. AI takes care of multivariate testing and automatically optimizes ads based on data. This not only improves performance but also allows marketers to produce a high volume of ad variations quickly and at scale. DCO is also easy to implement when integrated with a data management platform (DMP) for access to data feeds and a creative management platform (CMP) for access to creative assets like copy, images, and display.

Getting it right: 5 best practices for dynamic creative optimization

While DCO is a hands-off marketing tool in many respects, it does require some forethought and strategy for success. To make the most of your next campaign, keep the following best practices in mind.

1. Meet customers where they are

Successful DCO campaigns adapt to the audiences they serve at every touchpoint. This includes determining where users are in the sales funnel and displaying creatives that best match that mindset. For example, creatives served to customers close to action might feature harder-selling pitches than those designed for higher-funnel consumers. You can also use conversion tags to track your creatives’ performance in the buyer’s journey and replace poor performers with new variations that might catch customers on their way out.

2. Include contextual elements

Use data triggers like location, time, and weather to keep campaigns grounded in a user’s environment. For example, images for a fast-food restaurant can be set to reflect time of day, displaying breakfast sandwiches and coffee in the morning and fries and burgers in the afternoon. Or a retailer can recommend umbrellas and Wellies during a rainstorm and sunscreen and visors on a sunny day.

3. Diversify your assets

DCO gives you the opportunity to test a wide range of creative assets and it’s important to take advantage of this technology and use it to the fullest. The more diverse your variation of CTAs, headlines, images, and other creative assets, the more your campaign will benefit from DCO.

4. Trust the machine

As the “O” in DCO implies, one of the biggest advantages of the technology is that it’s specifically built to optimize your creatives. But the platform only has as much control as you allow it. Resist the urge to make ads too busy and overload them with as many products as a template will allow. Trust the DCO platform’s AI to do its job and select the most effective elements for the moment based on data.

5. Review performance

While DCO handles the minutiae of multivariate testing, it’s up to you to examine your campaign as a whole and determine if it needs adjustment. Make time to review your creative’s performance data regularly so you can identify the elements that are most effective in driving engagement and optimize your strategy accordingly.

Deliver on expectations

DCO is a must-have tool for creating highly targeted and personalized dynamic ads. Using a powerful combination of advertising display and analytics, the technology helps brands deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. It drives engagement and increases brand loyalty by creating the contextual relevance that today’s consumers not only prefer, but have come to expect.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

When browser extensions attack: Meet LNKR, an ad ecosystem nightmare

My toddler and I share a love for the misadventures of Shaun the Sheep. In particular, we love the episode where sheepdog Bitzer is cleaning the farmhouse window. But the Farmer keeps pointing out specks that Bitzer, try as he might, cannot see.

After countless elaborate attempts to clean the windows, Bitzer notices a chunk of dirt on the Farmer’s coke-bottle glasses. The windows were spotless. The Farmer’s smudgy glasses caused him to see phantom blemishes and incite a great deal of (highly entertaining) chaos on the farm.

Recently, this episode came to mind when talking to a DSP about why a slew of their ads were being blocked on various publishers sites (by a different ad quality provider). The DSP shared the report with us. As we examined the wide variety of blocked ads, we confirmed they were clean. There was no cloaking or malicious code, no compromised landing pages. They were basically spotless. After some analysis, it clicked: We were witnessing fallout from LNKR.

LNKR is the smudgy glasses problem transported to digital media. However, it is far more devious and likely to wreak havoc throughout the digital advertising ecosystem.

The trouble with browser extensions

At heart, LNKR is the browser extension heir to the malicious toolbar, a classic form of adware. Browser toolbars tended to create extra ad slots on publisher pages to serve ads. (These sometimes came with even more noxious malware.) However, LNKR simply injects malicious code right into one or more existing ad placements—on top of publisher-served ads. Most often, the malignant code prompts an auto-redirect with a fake software upgrade or antivirus tool download. (Surprise—it’s really more malware!).

Consumers knowingly (perhaps looking for some unique feature like “change text into pirate speak,” ya landlubber), or unknowingly, install a browser extension with LNKR code. Once that’s done, the LNKR operators can deliver redirect code into any ad slot at any time when the infected browser visits any website. If the malicious code is injected and the redirect is served, the consumer comes under attack.

Reputation and revenue

To compound the problem, they they’ll think that the publisher they just visited served them malvertising. The publisher’s brand is damaged even though it had nothing to do with the attack. (That character defamation also gets passed upstream to the SSPs and DSPs serving ads to the user.)

A publisher’s bad-ad blocker may shut down legitimate ads because users with the LNKR-infected extension have unwanted code injected on top of them. That could rob publishers of revenue. That’s because every single ad campaign served to the infected user will be mistaken for malware and slapped away.

If not corrected at the user level, or discounted from malvertising reporting, most eligible creative sent to an infected user will eventually be blocked. Thus, the scenario in the be bad ads ad infinitum. SSPs will scream at DSPs for pushing malware through the pipes when the accused advertising creative and supply chain is legit. This can further come back to bite the publisher if SSPs pause or cut off relationships with lucrative DSPs.

The publisher and its demand partners end up becoming patsies for LNKR’s bad deeds, because with these malicious extensions… The malware is coming from inside the browser!

A greater danger

Of course, this confusion damages relationships between AdTech platforms. (And let’s face it, they already have serious trust issues). But beyond that, it muddies the waters for malware hunters. More and more innocuous ads are falsely labeled malvertising. This distracts ad quality providers from the job of tracking down the real bad apples—which are always employing clever new evasive measures to avoid detection.

LNKR also represents more of a danger to consumers beyond a malware delivery channel. The browsing of infected users can be tracked and LNKR can also grab search parameters when a user employs any kind of search engine. LNKR has already exhibited the ability for advanced microtargeting. It can infect actual web pages where a user has write access, enabling it to spread to additional users.

Worse, information from infected browsers—as well as access to them—is sold on the dark web to malevolent actors with more malignant schemes. Indeed, LNKR is a key player in the ransomware ecosystem. It’s an ideal tool for extracting personal data that can be exploited for great harm.

Consumer awareness is critical

Distinct LNKR incidents, with each one accounting for thousands of individual hits, have been on the rise since the beginning of 2021.

LNKR is an effective malvertising tactic. The number of incidents (which can account for thousands of individual hits) detected by The Media Trust has been swelling since the beginning of 2021. Nipping this ever-growing threat in the bud relies on something that’s long been difficult for the digital advertising industry: consumer education.

Browser extensions are sticky. And consumers often forget what they’ve actually installed. Unused extensions can easily pile up and extension apathy is exactly what the bad actors behind LNKR prey on. That’s where the smudgy glasses issue hits full stride: infected consumers keep getting hit with redirects. They also have no idea that a browser extension causes the issue, let alone which specific extension.

Alongside software updates, operators of the main browsers often prompt users to check their extensions to make sure they’re only housing ones they want. In addition, users need to keep their approved extensions updates—not always a simple task. But older versions of extensions can have unseen vulnerabilities and be compromised.

The rest of the industry needs to spread the truth wherever possible. We must explain that LNKR is a bigger threat than just some annoying redirects. Extension hygiene may not be sexy, but it’s key for an overall good experience on the web and helping you stay clear from malware and unwanted data tracking.

Cleaning up the LNKR smudge

Publishers, though, need to demand more from their bad-ad-blocking services. Ad quality providers must be able to identify LNKR and confirm blocks are not false positives, discount LNKR from bad-ad counts. In addition, the creative blocker needs to ensure it’s stopping the delivery of adware that will further spread the LNKR menace. That’s right: They must block pop-ups, scams, and ads distributing unwanted programs.

Finally, being able to recognize LNKR and alert publishers’ upstream partners ensures less legit creative gets caught in the crossfire. Discounting LNKR in malware reports will limit ire between AdTech partners that could eventually impact publisher revenue.

In real life, a little microfiber cloth makes quick work of a blemish on your glasses. Unfortunately, wiping browsers of the LNKR smudge is going to be a complex, industry-wide struggle. The first step, however, is widespread acknowledgement of the danger at hand.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Create premium digital experiences consumers will pay for

Publishers have experimented with paid-for digital content since the 1990s. In the time since, they have gained valuable experience, which has given them a much clearer view of what does and does not drive engagement. These days, organizations of all types are laser focused on digital. For media companies, that increasingly takes the form of direct-to-consumer offerings such as subscriptions.

However, paywalls are no longer one size fits all. In fact, the models, gating, messaging and more have all become increasingly sophisticated. That said, everyone is trying to figure out the optimal model. Which new products and services should publishers explore? What are the barriers and challenges they face to effectively monetize their unique digital content offering?

Here are some key considerations that will help media companies figure out what will work best for their content and consumers.

Understand consumer consumption

Content should be optimized for each intended channel. Unfortunately, even now, print content is too often repurposed for digital—an entirely separate platform with different demographics. The same goes for video, social, and more.

Simple redistribution doesn’t constitute a digital strategy. Instead, a digital approach and mindset is needed to create content optimized for individual digital channels. One of the most important questions to ask, then, is: How do people consume content in a given digital channel?

The content or service is, of course, central to the success of a digital offering, but so too is the experience. Publishers need to make it their business to know when, where, and how customers consume online content and services. And they need to understand, and optimize, that specific experience. Without platform investment and the right levels of quality assurance and testing, consumers may find your digital product lacking. Needless to say, they won’t be likely to pay for it, and certainly to keep paying for it when their subscription is up for renewal.

Three hurdles hindering transformation

To figure out — and stay on top of — emerging challenges and opportunities, it is critical that media organizations transform their approach to focus on customer experience. Vindicia’s data shows the top three areas where many subscription approaches fail:

1. Insufficient digitization and payments support

For some publishers, adopting new digital models and diversifying into a range of additional paid-for digital products and services presents multiple challenges. High on the list is a lack of relevant skills and capabilities. In fact, App Annie discovered that app store spend via mobile and tablet has reached 20% year over year growth. This points to the necessity for in-app purchases and payments to be available and ready, enabling consumption. Your payment systems must be easy to use, flexible, and up to date.

2. Under-representation of customer-driven insights

Product managers and marketers are often in the dark about what audiences want. That will severely limit their ability to produce and promote successful new products and services. A lack of customer insights is the direct cause. This results in an under-representation of customer-driven offerings and features that a subscription showcases. Equip yourself to monitor and respond to customer usage and behavior quickly and effectively.

3. Lack of data expertise and scalability

Mather Economics recently found that 50% of digital newspaper subscriptions churn after four months. The primary reason? A lack of data analytics expertise and scalability. This same reason is the cause of why converting free readers into subscribers proves challenging in the absence of data analytics expertise, which urges publishers to undertake extensive A/B testing that hinders scalability. There are tried and true methods proven to generate more conversions in the publishing space. Whether the churn type is active or passive, publishing subscriptions need to pay close attention to churn indicators. For active, an indicator is low usage or usage that has tapered down. For passive, an indicator is chronic or semi-regular late or bounced payments. The ability to view and merge customer and churn insights allows publishing subscriptions to nurture each subscriber’s experience and retain them longer.

The critical role of a digital-first strategy

McKinsey recently reported that many companies are creating a new role: Chief Digital Officer.  This role is charged with ensuring that the organization has a digital-first strategy and integrates it into every facet of their business. Their analysis of how companies with a high [McKinsey] Digital Quotient (DQ) operate shows that “90% of top performers have fully integrated digital initiatives into their strategic-planning process.”

In fact, one publishing house in McKinsey’s study set a target of generating 50% of its revenue and profit from digital media within 10 years. With a full focus on digital, it accomplished that target in half the time. With the coordination between CDOs, content creators, and CEOs, there are specific ways to extract growth opportunities from transitioning to and effectively monetizing digital content.

The path is clear: Determine a digitization and content distribution strategy that fits the demographics your subscription is targeting. Leverage customer and churn insights to create offerings and features. And look to data to manage churn at the individual subscriber level. Digital is a fast-moving business with a whole lot of upside. With an organizational and leadership strategy that keeps digital innovation at the forefront, you will be positioned to keep pace and reap the rewards.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

The revenue model for search is broken. So are the results.

Twenty years ago, search engines put in motion a revolution in how we access and consume information. In the span of two decades, billions of people across the globe now have a world of information at their fingertips. However, this came with a tradeoff. In exchange for search engines providing information, advertisements appeared on the search page. In the beginning, consumers didn’t mind when they were occasionally shown an unobtrusive ad along with organic results. 

Ad supported search

A lot has changed since then. As traditional search engines grew, they faced the daily pressure of returning value to their shareholders by prioritizing advertisers and ad revenue. This has had several unintended consequences. These include an ever-increasing ad-load, ad driven content that can be misleading and harmful, and company practices that value profit over user privacy. 

Furthermore, with more ads on top of the search results, the information consumers are searching for gets pushed down and deprioritized. It’s the difference between searching for flu symptoms and being shown an ad for cough syrup rather than a medical article factually outlining the symptoms. Then that ad for cough syrup will follow consumers across the Internet for weeks. And in a worst case scenario, the consumer might be shown an ad containing misleading information about the flu or flu treatments. 

Antitrust-worthy

These problems are further exacerbated by the fact that there is a lack of competition in the search space. With one company controlling more than 90% of the market, consumers have few viable alternatives and entrepreneurs may be hesitant to enter the space. The lack of competition means fewer incentives for traditional search engines to spend the resources and time creating innovative features that better serve consumers. 

Moreover, any industry where one company has outsized control is generally bad for society. This is even more relevant when that industry is responsible for how billions of people gain access to knowledge and information. 

These are certainly not unique problems faced by search. Many industries rely on ad-supported models to drive revenue. And many industries, such as healthcare and agriculture, are witnessing consolidation on a scale unseen since the early 1900s. 

History and experience have shown that monopolies are bad for innovation and bad for consumers. Society and our democracy are better served when you have more choice in the products and services you use. More choice and market competition leads to a better experience for consumers. With more competition and opportunity in the market, there’s greater chance for new companies to create innovative products and compete with the existing leading platforms. 

Opportunities for innovation

Alternative models not only offer choice, they foster creativity — in the tool, yes. But also in the underlying business model. For example, one of the core tenets with an ad model is to keep individuals on the platform for as long as possible to increase the visibility of ads and the likelihood they will click on those ads. In reality the sole purpose of a search engine should be to best answer a user’s query as quickly as possible. Whether that person remains on the site for one second or one hour should be independent from the need to satisfy advertisers. The two goals could not be farther apart, yet, that is what the last 20 years of search has delivered.

When the search business no longer relies on advertisers for revenue, it gets the freedom to dream up new ideas and build the type of search experience that couldn’t exist before. This means giving more choice to consumers on the preferences for news outlets or filters that enable a shopper to search for only small retailers or companies that ethically source materials. Instead of showing an entire page of results, the right answer with an infographic could be shown in the search bar allowing a user to start their journey without ever landing on the search page.   

Not only do alternative models have significant impacts on a consumer’s overall experience, they can have major implications for privacy. Tracking personal data is at the core of today’s digital advertising ecosystem. However, without ads, strong privacy policies and user protections can be core features of the product rather than a business tradeoff. 

Experience matters

Consumers are increasingly aware of the way companies exploit their personal data and they want alternatives. According to a Pew survey, nearly 80% of Americans are concerned about how much data is collected about them by companies. Moreover, Last year, 52% of Americans said they had decided not to use a product or service because they were worried about how much personal information would be collected about them. In a separate McKinsey study, nearly 70% of consumer respondents were concerned about privacy with search. 

We know that competition leads to more creativity, more choice, and ultimately a better experience for the consumer. Alternative approaches to traditional business models such as an ads free, private search, shouldn’t be the exception to the rule, they should be the norm and we should continue to demand a level playing field to let innovation thrive.

About the author

Sridhar Ramaswamy is the co-founder and CEO of Neeva, the world’s first ad-free, private subscription search. He formerly oversaw all of Google’s Advertising products, which included search, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

3 Ways ad measurement is evolving to gauge true ad impact

It is no secret that the last year drove significant changes in consumer behavior. It transformed the way we shop, with 75% of U.S. consumers saying that they have tried a new shopping behavior. And most intend to continue that behavior after the pandemic. During this period, consumers also spent more time on digital media, streaming, digital audio, and online gaming.

Despite consumers’ demand for more content—and the increasing complexity of multi-channel distribution—most media companies are still in the early stages of transforming their operations to take advantage of these new realities. And many brands are not confident they can measure results accurately and completely across media types. That’s especially true in the growing connected TV (CTV) and gaming channels.

Additionally, there’s the ongoing need for diligence around brand suitability through solutions that thread the needle between protecting their clients’ brands and driving media effectiveness. Instead of relying on rigid blocklists, evaluations of brand suitability should examine and understand page activity along with context to address continuous content evolution.

All those changes in behavior lead us wondering—how well do we really understand today’s consumer?  We need to continue to ask questions about the true impact of ads. We need to ask what we are getting in terms of attention, what messaging resonated with whom, do we know if somebody is paying attention differently on one platform versus another, and what media channels drive sales and store visits.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently polled marketers to understand which media KPIs are most important. It’s telling that half focused on ad effectiveness. Proactive marketers are taking steps to understand this campaign performance information. These steps include:

Optimize baseline verification measurement

Verification is the baseline to evaluate ad effectiveness. This includes validity and viewability (e.g., is a real ad served to an actual person who can see a relevant ad)? Ads need to be in a suitable environment as defined and controlled by each brand. And ad fraud is a challenge all brands face.

As an example, we recently exposed a publishing site that appeared to be redirecting traffic to three hidden domains with completely different content that is not safe for work (NSFW). The site leverages domain misdirection and context spoofing to commit blatant ad fraud and subvert brand safety measures.

Track engagement and impact

Once you connect your campaign to datasets that reveal meaningful impact, things rightly center around attention. To succeed, marketing campaigns new measures and metrics suitable for gauging cross-channel impact past the baseline of verification. Human, viewable, and brand-safe impressions still set the standard for core measurement. But true brand effectiveness requires deeper evaluation.   

Measure across channels

Fluid media consumption habits change how we reach and capture audiences. This shift requires both robust content and multi-channel dissemination. It also calls for the ability to understand how consumers actually pay attention across emerging formats to uncover what real viewing means.

Innovative marketers who plan and experiment with formats beyond traditional social media posts and editorial-style content learn much more. That’s because verification alone won’t tell you about impact post view. To get this insight, marketers are using measurement to evaluate key metrics including:

  • How many impressions were relevant?
  • How many uploads of the same ad ran to the same viewer?
  • Did anyone pay attention?
  • Did you capture your audience in the environments where they spend their time?

Evolve and achieve

Effective measurement is a constant evolution. Undoubtedly, results from each campaign can help you continuously refine your digital strategy toward better outcomes. However, without additional insights, advertisers will have performance blind spots regarding true measures of campaign effectiveness.

Proactive measurement and tracking key KPIs will enable advertisers and publishers to determine if viewers are paying attention to an ad (via time on the screen and engagement). Armed with this information, they can establish custom metrics based on business need, and use analysis to help shape future programs

 

 

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Opt out of the bad ads that ruin in-app gaming

Since the inception of smartphones, mobile games have been one of the most popular app categories. However, there is one major downside to mobile gaming: the influx of bad ads.

Anyone who’s developed a minor addiction to a mobile game – be it a classic title like Candy Crush, Words with Friends, or a modern sensation, such as Roblox or Among Us – is all too familiar with the frustration of an intrusive ad. User expectations around in-app advertising differ for gaming vs. non-gaming apps. That said, all users draw the line at malicious advertising.

Striking the balance

For app publishers, trying to strike the right balance between monetizing your app effectively and not inundating users with ads is always a delicate process. However, that’s especially true for gaming apps. The success of mobile games is entirely dependent on the user experience. Therefore, a malicious, interruptive, or offensive ad can entirely derail the entire user experience. Ultimately, when it comes to advertising in-app, it’s about serving safe, relevant, and brand-suitable ads for your users.

The good news for app publishers is that gamers are receptive to advertising so long as it adds to the experience. When that happens, ads can enhance rather than detract from the gamer’s experience. Moreover, gamers are more than willing to view ads in exchange for in-game goods, such as extra lives, power-ups, new levels, and in-game currency. These ads help game makers monetize their titles. But they also make the game itself stickier, inducing users to play longer and more often.

Caution: Hazards ahead

Aside from an offensive ad creative, users are exposed to a myriad of threats after clicking on an ad. Because gaming apps appeal to consumers of all ages and all levels, apart from strict ad content parameters, app publishers must recognize the hazards of malicious advertising.

Recently, malvertisers have shifted their gaze from the ad itself to the landing page the ad leads to. And gaming users are often the target of malicious or deceptive attacks, both of which come at the expense of the user experience. Threats include cloaked landing pages leading to scams to father sensitive personal or financial data. Here, the challenge is sifting out the bad actors and ads with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that only high-quality ads make their way onto your app.

A virtuous circle

When it comes to in-app advertising, bad ads have an immediate impact on monetization and the ability to work with valued monetization partners. For instance, the top five in-app platforms avoid apps with a low rating. Additionally, low-quality ads lead to bad reviews, low ratings, user churn.

Unhappy users will to switch to competitors’ apps, and at the very worst, apps may be kicked out of the App Store/Google Play. Additionally, app developers may be banned from the digital ecosystem due to ads that violate Apple’s new ATT policy. To safeguard users and ensure high ad quality, app publishers can follow the three ad quality guidelines: Ads must not contain malware, disrupt the user experience, or feature off-brand or offensive content.

Closing the loop on bad ads

Here’s what tools in-app publishers can implement to maintain high ad quality:

  1. Adopt a real-time bad ad-blocking solution to thwart all malicious attempts.
  2. Use proactive low-quality ad filtering to eliminate user experience killing ads.
  3. Leverage automated and manual content management tools to define and enforce ad content parameters.

Identifying bad actors is difficult. But, luckily for publishers, they can use ad monitoring tools to conduct automated, round-the-clock surveillance of their ad networks and root out bad ads before they ever have a chance to show up in their games.

The best philosophy is to block in real-time. This eliminates any lag in response time and saving energy while preventing bad users experiences from appearing. These days, it’s critical to be certain you are part of the proactive new world vs. a reactive, old world.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Publishers: Use your data to close and retain more deals

To convert brands in direct-sold sales conversations, publishers are tasked with proving the quality of their audience and inventory. From prospecting to sales decks to wrap-up reports, we’ve increasingly heard questions about how publishers can use third-party data to support the sales process. The good news is that most organizations already have a lot of valuable data that is leveraged by other teams.

However, just because your organization is collecting data doesn’t always mean that it’s being used successfully. This can be due to lack of alignment on organizational strategies or data living in siloed or complex systems. Often, it’s simply about having a lack of time to understand how to effectively leverage the data. Most ad ops teams are plugged into a variety of data sources that can also provide valuable insights and compelling stories to support the sales process.

Ad sales teams can increase direct sales by using data to zero in on the right buyers and showcase value in pitch decks. They can also use it to effectively package inventory and report on campaign performance in a meaningful way to clients. 

Finding the perfect buyers

Prioritizing the right buyers is one of the largest challenges for sales teams everywhere. Leaning on existing relationships or brand recognition can work up to a point. However, informing your prospecting with additional data sets allows you to quickly identify the right prospects to approach and shed light on new market segments. One example of this can be found in a publisher’s programmatic data. With normalized advertiser data, sales teams can identify the biggest spenders on open exchanges for more detailed buyer analysis.

Once those potential buyers are identified, it’s important to understand compatibility to ensure you can tell a story that aligns with a brand’s goals. This typically comes in the form of media quality data from verification vendors that measure metrics such as viewability thresholds, fraud rates, and brand suitability. Based on specific brand goals, content alignment and risk tolerance, publishers can further narrow their list to only include prospects that match up with what their inventory has to offer.

Highlighting inventory and audience value

As a premium publisher, it’s not enough to simply tell buyers that you know your audience. Advertisers only pursue direct deals if they’re confident that the inventory purchased is reaching their ideal audience. First-party data can be helpful here. It allows you to discuss content engagement, demographics, traffic and other metrics that showcase site performance and your user personas.

However, this story becomes even more powerful when combined with third-party measurement and contextual data such as overall viewability, engagement metrics, invalid traffic rates, and more. All of these use established industry standards such as those supported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The biggest challenge here is understanding how to line up these data sets. They you can decipher which metrics are going to resonate most with buyers who want an objective truth. More specifically, which metrics gives them the confidence that delivered impressions will reach these users consistently. When used in conjunction with data-driven prospecting, data used during this stage of the sales cycle can provide an opportunity to easily show clients how you can meet their needs.

Advertisers also want to understand where their creatives will go and how they might perform.  Creating compelling, tailored packages using all of the available first- and third-party data can level up your pitch. It also helps ensure that expectations are clear going into each campaign.

Telling the performance story

Now that you have the client, how do you retain and expand the relationship? Traditionally, campaign wrap-up decks include run dates, traffic drivers, top-performers and other KPIs. This is a great place to leverage data from different sources to drive home how quality, engagement, and context help brands meet their goals.

Third-party data enables you to confidently highlight benefits such as:

  • You serve zero fraudulent impressions
  • Your campaigns met the client’s viewability thresholds
  • Campaigns were served alongside content that positively supports the brand’s image
  • Make goods won’t be necessary due to successful targeting

Whether campaigns meet buyer expectations or not, third-party data sets can serve as a retention tool and allow you to speak the same language as your customer. Your team will be able to outline what worked and what didn’t, while including data-driven recommendations for the next campaign. This strategy will give buyers more confidence in your ability to course correct and maximize their return on ad spend.

TLDR: It’s important to infuse your sales strategy with data

Gone are the days where the only sources of buyer friction came from viewability discrepancies and buffering requirements. Yes, those still remain. However, buyers increasingly value inventory that is brand suitable, fraud-free, and in-geo. This makes inventory scrutiny and sales conversations more complex. But the right data can cut right through that to increase conversions and drive business.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

The best conversion strategy media and publishing companies still aren’t using

When talking about conversion strategies within the digital media industry, we often focus our efforts on the same tried-and-tested methods: email marketing, social media campaigns, SEO, PPC, etc. These are all important and effective ways to drive readers along the path to registration. They make up the foundation for a complete digital strategy, including subscriptions. 

But there’s one aspect of the online content offering that is too-often overlooked, despite being pivotal to a publisher’s bottom line: the on-site user experience.

By UX we don’t simply mean a seamless UI and attractive website design (although these are vital, too). We’re talking about data-driven, deeply personalized, unique experiences that make anonymous visitors far more likely to register, and repeat customers far less likely to churn. 

This improvement can take many forms, such as differentiated trigger points for your most engaged readers, messaging dependent on on-site behaviors, and personalized offers.  Any move to more closely align value with offering – in other words, every step taken into deeper personalization – makes your relationship with  customers stronger and more likely to last.

Ultimately, optimizing the user experience is a commercial gamechanger. It significantly affects two major KPIs : lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Optimize the user experience to drastically lower CAC

With more competition than ever and customer expectations at an all-time high, customer acquisition is tough. This is particularly true in the overcrowded market for digital content. 

However, experience optimization makes it much easier for publishers to target and convert their audiences. When it comes to messaging, 72% of consumers won’t respond to marketing efforts unless they are personalized, according to SmarterHQ. And while personalized messaging alone may not lead directly to a sale (although, it very much could), it may be just what your business needs to stop visitors falling at the first hurdle. If you can’t get your readers to engage, there’s no chance they are going to convert. 

But this is just the first step in a first-party data strategy. Progressively profiling readers by collecting new information at different stages of the subscriber lifecycle allows you to accurately target readers with registration walls at the right time, using user data such as on-site activity, device type and time of day. The incremental build up of your datasets gives your commercial decision makers a better understanding of the customer base. This, in turn, informs their ability to tweak messaging and experiences to nurture leads.

Further down the funnel, unique user experiences will also help get new customers over the line. The first-party data collected on registration can then inform tailored content, offers and timing. This accelerates conversation rates and keeps bounce rates low.

 It takes a lot of effort (time and money) to get users from awareness to intent. So, turning them off with an ill-timed paywall or irrelevant content offer leads to an automatic loss. On the other hand, Marketing Insider Group found that tailored content offerings increase purchasing intent for 78% of Americans. This makes triggers such as a datawall or paywall a make-or-break point for digital publishers.

Focus on personalization to increase LTV

Optimized experience increases your chances of converting a user. However, focusing on the customer experience straight after purchase also sets the foundation for higher value, longer-term subscribers. 

Maintain personalized content to keep engaged readers happy. This paves the way for an upsell opportunity for your most loyal advocates. It is famously 10x easier to sell to a current customer than a new one. However, this is often forgotten in the world of media. Increasing subscription value, or lengthening subscriber lifetime directly boosts revenue and profitability. Doing both has a double whammy effect on your commercial goals.

And personalization isn’t just for those at the top of the funnel. Use customer engagement and behaviors to identify churn risks — the subset of your customer base that seem disengaged and are therefore disproportionately likely to leave. Give them a tailored offer, potentially even a downsell to a lower plan, or nudge them with relevant content to maintain each and every relationship. 

Conversion is nothing without retention. Personalized experiences at the beginning of the customer journey (such as getting the right users to convert with relevant messaging) help keep churn at a minimum just as much as last-ditch attempts.

The bottom line

Experience optimization is the best conversion strategy publishers aren’t doing, But they should be. That’s because it has such a direct impact on commercial outcomes. Purchases are made on relevant, unique experiences just as much as bad impressions are via irrelevant or ill-timed messaging. 

And at the end of the day, optimizing the user experiences at each point of the subscriber lifecycle is an improvement that every publisher can make without needing to build a new team, or create a new marketing channel from scratch. Getting it right can turbocharge revenues. Getting it wrong can ruin all your other commercial efforts.

For most, it’s a simple yet powerful step that you just can’t afford not to take in today’s media landscape. 

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Viewability + engagement = highly valuable impressions

Imagine that you’re driving down the highway and many of the billboards you pass are facing in the wrong direction. Advertisers paid for their messages to be displayed. However, some percentage of these ads have no chance of being seen.

If you were an advertiser, would you be willing to pay a higher price for only those that were guaranteed to be viewable? Or would you rather pay a lower price to buy all the billboards and roll the dice? Perhaps this is a simplistic way to look at the programmatic landscape, but I hope it makes the point. Ads that have a low probability of becoming viewable have little or no value.  

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King

If the above makes any sense, then why does the Media Rating Council

continue to enforce such a low requirement for viewable impressions?  The MRC deems that an impression counts as viewable when only 50% of the pixels are in view for one second. If your answer is that “it is what it is,” then perhaps we in the industry should raise our expectations. Let’s consider setting a higher standard for ourselves and our advertisers, AKA, the lifeblood of our businesses.

Viewable impressions are more valuable to advertisers, command higher CPMs, provide a better ROI, and increase publisher income. So, let’s find a sustainable way to increase supply without jeopardizing the quality of our content, degrading user experience, or resorting to disruptive devices.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

You spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars annually creating exciting, informative, entertaining, beautiful, provocative, and inspiring content for your audiences. Your goal is to engage readers in this content so they spend more of their most precious resource, time, on your site. They read your stories and move from the home page to below the fold with deeper dives into your content. And ad units scroll into view and are revealed during these engaged user sessions.

Intuitively we already know that an ad you can see is worth more than a non-viewable one. However, logically, one that is viewable while you are engaged in consuming content that is of interest is even more valuable than the billboard you cruise past at 70 mph.

When I was a magazine publisher, ad buyers regularly asked for their ads to be placed “far forward on a right-hand page.” They believed that these were more likely to be seen than those within stories in the magazine. The reality was then as it is today: that an ad adjacent to content where a reader is engaged is far more likely to be seen and effective.

And the cookies came crumbling down

While Google’s recent announcement has given all of us a reprieve, we know that the times are a ‘changing. So how do we respond now that publishers have bought some time and tech companies have a longer runway to build alternatives?

There is no question that there will be dozens if not hundreds of “better” data mousetraps in the marketplace during the coming months. Yet the fact is that we already have many of the tools necessary to enhance the value of our websites for advertisers. Your sites already have the right target audiences. You capture their attention and interest with your content. And they’ve come to right place to enjoy that content. Maybe the missing link is that some of your billboards have been installed facing the wrong direction.

So, here’s the big idea. Serve ads only to readers when they are engaged in content and continue to serve them viewable ads for as long as they remain engaged.  It can be done. It is being done on hundreds of sites. (Check out Inc.com or Rightmove to see.) You can do it too. And when you do, your programmatic ad revenue will increase by 20-40%.

About the author

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

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Why third-party cookies should be dead to you (regardless of what Chrome does)

On June 24, Chrome shook the industry once again by announcing it will delay the deprecation of the third-party cookie, which was expected to be in 2022. When the news broke, many industry players gave a sigh of relief. The two-year time frame to migrate to a cookie-less infrastructure was quite tight for many. And not all companies were prepared to buy and sell data and inventory without the good old third-party cookie.

Transitioning a multi-billion-dollar industry to a new framework is not a trivial matter. This is keenly felt in a highly interconnected ecosystem like digital advertising. However, it’s a crucial step that we all must take. The cookie-based infrastructure has been called into question by data privacy regulations, such as GDPR. It is also inefficient.

The many limits of third-party cookies

Third-party cookies are domain-specific and can only be read by the server that created them. Technology platforms need to synchronize IDs with each other to create a common reference and share user-level information. This process, also known as cookie matching, takes place on advertiser and publisher websites. Significantly, this creates several issues:

  • Value loss: the pool of identifiable users is reduced by 10-20% each time platforms match IDs with each other, creating lost opportunities for publishers to monetize their assets and for advertisers to reach their audiences.
  • Privacy compliance: cookie matching represents an exchange of personal data. This is difficult to align with the requirements of data protection regulations such as GDPR and CCPA in terms of control and transparency.
  • Data leakage: because of cookie matching, user data can be accessed by companies that lack a business relationships with advertisers and publishers. This puts their data at risk.

In November 2019, ID5 commissioned a study to assess the scale of the problem. The study, conducted on 68 top news and magazine websites in Europe, found that 58% of vendors that were registered with the IAB TCF had never been seen to take a GDPR consent parameter in their pixel.

Some vendors that were not being sent the consent string were sharing a completely fabricated consent string. The study also found that some of the companies triggered to monetize publisher-branded segments on their sites had no relationship or contract with publishers.

Therefore, we must transition to a cookie-less infrastructure to operate more efficiently and protect consumers’ data. And yes, that’s regardless of what Chrome decides to do with cookies.

Two of the major browsers have already deprecated cookies

The cookie matching process is far from being efficient or privacy-compliant but it still enables user identification which allows the deployment of campaign strategies such as targeting, retargeting, frequency capping and measurement. However, let’s not forget that cookies are already not available on 30+% of the traffic since they have already been blocked by Safari and Firefox. So those valuable campaign strategies cannot be applied in those browsers. That’s the main reason why cookie-less traffic is massively under-monetized. A study by Google estimated that the ability to identify users accounts for 50 to 60% of publishers’ ad revenue. Another study conducted by Bidswitch shows that eCPMs are 50% lower on Safari and Firefox.

Furthermore, Publishers’ first-party data loses its value in cookie-less browsers. First-party data belongs to the domain that has collected it. To activate it and power retargeting or prospecting campaigns, media owners need to find a way to share it with their monetization partners. This has been historically done with third-party cookies. In browsers where cookies are blocked, first-party data sharing represents a challenge.

By adopting solutions that enable privacy-compliant identification without relying on third-party cookies, publishers can benefit from all the capabilities that cookies offer without any of the hassles associated with them.

Use the extra time wisely

Publishers have multiple alternatives available to them. So, they have no reason to continue relying on cookies, which puts their users’ data at risk and causes them to miss out on revenue opportunities.

Many smart publishers have already integrated with future-looking solutions. These enable the individualization of consumers in browsers where cookies are blocked. This enables them to get incremental value from their Safari and Firefox traffic and to lay the foundation for the future when all traffic will be cookie-less. This also allows them to offer their customers a better and more privacy-compliant experience on their website.

If you haven’t started this process already, Chrome’s delay is certainly good news for you. However, you shouldn’t wait. The time to act is now.

There are different approaches and solutions that enable user identification in cookie-less browsers. However, it takes time to evaluate, integrate and measure which of them bring the best results and offer the best level of service. Use this extra time wisely do not delay the process further. Start integrating and testing next-generation identity solutions and encourage your monetization partners and clients to do the same. Migrating to a new infrastructure requires a collective, industry-wide effort. And publishers are positioned best to lead the way.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Will iOS and cookie privacy updates affect Facebook?

Facebook is a peculiarity, even among its fellow ad-supported media giants. Their ability to collect data from their two billion plus users, and package that data for advertisers, is second to none. Facebook’s business model is inherently more insulated from many market fluctuations that affect other advertising platforms because of Facebook’s network effect. Every new Facebook user adds new data to the system. That gives Facebook even more advertising data to sell to advertisers.

Yes, Apple’s iOS14’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) changes, and Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies, now delayed until 2023, will have an impact. However, the amount of user data being collected within Facebook and the value of that data is gold. And that’s even without tracking users across third-party apps and websites.

With Facebook’s vast internal network and collective data, Facebook ads aren’t going away. Instead, Facebook is adopting new privacy standards and will continue to play a significant role in the growth of small and niche businesses. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stated that as a business, he believes Facebook can manage through the changes. He thinks it may emerge even stronger if it becomes harder for small businesses to navigate data targeting without Facebook. Here at MediaRadar, we decided to take a closer look.

Niche industries and ad targeting

Facebook reported revenue of $26.17 billion for the quarter, which was up 48% compared with a year prior. Facebook attributed the significant increase in revenue to a 30% year-over-year increase in the average price per ad and a 12% increase in the number of ads delivered.

The biggest spenders, accounting for 7% of ad spend, were entertainment brands, more specifically streaming brands such as HBO Max, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. One could assume, based on these numbers, that ad spend from large companies like these services accounts for Facebook’s success. Instead, what truly sets Facebook apart is how it caters to very niche audiences.

When looking at our  data, of the percentage of retail industries that advertise on Facebook, a startling 62% fits into the “other” category which is made up of hyper-focused retail categories. Mind you, MediaRadar tracks over 7,500 product categories, and over half of them are incredibly specific.

Niches such as leather goods, herbs, telescopes, or cheese shops are not relevant to a majority of users. However, Facebook pinpoints who needs to see these types of advertisements the most. In addition, Facebook targets people with ads from industries that other platforms don’t. And,  since they target users ads from plenty of market subsets, Facebook’s reach and revenue adds up.

Facebook is quite aware of its niche marketing prowess, and takes pride in it. In prepared remarks for the Q1 earnings release, COO Sheryl Sandberg chose to highlight someone who runs a yoga studio, and how Facebook helped her get the word out, as opposed to highlighting a major brand. It shows the value of their marketing strategy, and how appealing to the everyday consumer is what attracts advertisers to the platform.

Similarities to other platforms – and differences

Facebook’s reliance on niche marketing is strengthened by the fact that they are quite similar to other platforms in areas such as retention and campaign length. We found Facebook had a 34% retention rate between 2020 and 2021, similar to the overall industry average. As for campaign length, 44% of campaigns lasted one month or less, while 38% of campaigns lasted from two to four months. 

The advertiser overlap rates between Facebook and other major forms of media is also a reason to point to niche markets as its success. In reviewing the data, we saw there was a 34% rate of overlap between Facebook and major broadcasters such as NBC and Fox, and those numbers are slightly lower when looking at podcasts and Snapchat.

The key stat for Facebook here is that nearly half of their advertisers are exclusive to their site, including nearly 60% of retail advertisers. While advertisers have the same buying patterns as everyone else, Facebook also attracts a lot of brands that aren’t selling on other platforms, and that makes them even more valuable.

What can we learn

Facebook’s success with niche markets provides a valuable lesson for us all: know your audience. No matter how big or how small, it’s important to make sure you market to your customers in ways that your competition cannot. With their vast network effect and their ability to package granular advertising data, Facebook’s dominance will only continue to grow regardless of whether they are able to track users across third-party apps and websites. But of course, they’ll need to ensure that they get privacy buy-in from their users, particularly as policy and user preference around this topic evolve .

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