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Industry-Research | Perspectives

WebRTC is the newest, trickiest front in the fight against redirects

One of the great challenges in digital ad security is the fact that the bad actors always start this race in the lead. Whenever the legitimate ad industry gets to work eradicating one security threat, malvertisers find another point of entry to deploy their sinister wares.

For the past couple of years, the industry has had its sights on auto redirects, which can abruptly end the user’s session, prevent the affected publisher from monetizing that session, and potentially damage that user’s trust in the publisher’s site. The fight against redirects is ongoing. And now it’s complicated by a new attack vector—vulnerabilities in the commonly-used web WebRTC protocol. Those vulnerabilities are now responsible for a quarter of all identified redirects.

Exploiting a vulnerability

WebRTC is a framework that facilitates audio and video calls and chats across different web browsers and mobile apps, including VoIP tech (i.e., web phones). It’s used by a large number of major digital companies—Google, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera. Back in 2015, media outlets reported WebRTC had a security flaw that could expose users’ real IP addresses. At that time, this was treated as a risk for users who wanted to browse anonymously. Now, malvertisers have gotten in on the game, using that same point of entry to unleash redirects on users.

This rash of redirect attacks is particularly sinister because they take advantage of WebRTC, which is a distributed peer-to-peer service. Blacklisting doesn’t work here as a security method, because there’s effectively no server or domain to blacklist. The perpetrator of the attack will send the request for a redirect to a STUN server, which itself can’t be blocked because it’s used by legitimate companies (Google, Microsoft and so on) running legitimate scripts. If you were to block these attacks, you’d block any data from major cloud-based services.

Targeted and tenacious

The scammers’ strategy gets sneakier from there. WebRTC allows bad actors to identify whether the user already has a public IP or is outside of the targeted range for their attack. It even allows them to identify whether the “user” is likely to be a real person or merely an emulator set up as a security measure. If the user does not seem to be a real person within the desired range, they’ll simply be shown a legit ad from a third-party programmatic ad platform. If they “pass muster,” they’re served a redirect code. And now the perpetrator also has logged their VPN, IP and local network addresses.

In short, blocking any one entity launching these redirects is nearly impossible. Their code is written to evade at several possible security points, using channels that are already difficult to moderate because of their decentralized nature. In researching this problem, GeoEdge found some of these bad actors will evade detection even if it means leaving revenue on the table that they could potentially hijack.

The trouble with header bidding

Technically, any form of malvertising could sneak through WebRTC. But so far, the attacks we’ve identified have been redirects. The bad actors are exploiting vulnerabilities in the programmatic marketplace. In particular, they use header bidding, which has been exploited in 87% of redirects through WebRTC. All told, our research has shown that redirects are costing the digital ad industry $325 million per year, and 24% of those redirect attacks exploit the WebRTC loophole.

GeoEdge studied how these malvertisers operate by reverse-engineering scripts, discovering the malicious code, and using it to launch trial attacks. From that point, researchers could investigate how to block attacks via WebRTC without also breaking WebRTC’s functionality. Ad blockers, they found, were one possible method. However, at times, ad blocking technology can prevent WebRTC from working properly.

The real-time approach

A more effective strategy is one that is already becoming industry standard—analyzing code, recognizing when an unfamiliar script show similar characteristics or behaviors to a known threat, and blocking the problem code before it reaches the publisher’s page. This real-time approach has been embraced by a growing number of publishers in the fight against redirects from other vectors. It’s proven similarly effective in guarding the WebRTC entry point, without impeding the user’s ability to communicate with others across various browsers and devices.

The fight against malicious and low-quality ads will always find its way to new fronts. As it does, all legitimate digital companies, including ad security providers, must find those fronts and engage. When the bad actors manage to evade security methods the industry has relied on in the past, it is time to develop new technology. We may not know what risks we’ll face in the future, but for now, the industry’s best bet is to move toward real-time risk detection and blocking as table stakes in the digital security game.

To learn more, download the GeoEdge white paper. WebRTC Malvertising: fighting a new form of obfuscated attacks.
Perspectives

Reduce, reuse, refocus: How to scale your branded content operation

We’re living in the age of “banner blindness,” where internet users are either subconsciously or consciously (read: grumpily) ignoring display ads.

This means that of the small number of readers that are seeing these ads, a truly dismal percentage — 0.05%, to be exact — are clicking on them. But this wasn’t always the case. If you ask some old guard advertisers about the golden age of display ads, they might speak reverently about the pixelated 1994 banner ad (purchased by AT&T on HotWired.com) that inspired 44% of viewers to click on it. What brilliantly crafted message garnered this level of engagement, you ask? “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL.”

Needless to say, times have changed. People increasingly seek out companies with a human face behind them, and the best way to show your humanity as a brand or publisher is through storytelling.

However, story-driven content has a major problem: scalability.

Fifteen percent of publishers cite scaling content production as a stumbling block. Yet 90% expect their company’s revenue from branded content to increase over the next year. With most publishers creating content for multiple different brands and clients, it can feel like an insurmountable task to give each one the attention they deserve.

The 3 Rs of Scale

If you’re looking to scale your branded content production, there are three words you need to keep in mind: reduce, reuse, and refocus.

Reduce

Rather than over-saturating your readers’ feeds with branded content, consider focusing your efforts on a smaller number of pieces that do more heavy lifting when it comes to engaging your audience and building your client’s brand.

Instead of putting all your time and energy into creating a wealth of broad, generic content, try homing in on a few key topics or issues that align with your client’s goals and your audience’s interests — and be honest with yourself about what those interests are. A quality piece of content is one that tells a story. Stories — especially ones with a compelling character or cause behind them — engage our entire brain, which is why we remember them and forget every banner ad we’ve ever seen.

For example, if you’re working with a travel and hospitality client, hunt for a compelling story about the destination that you’re promoting and then tell it in an inspiring way. The New York Times’ T Brand Studio knew this when they teamed up with the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver. Rather than discussing room service options or bedsheet thread count, their article introduced readers to the quarter of a million honeybees that call the Fairmont home, and shared what its staff are doing to protect them.

Reuse

There’s a great deal of pressure placed on publishers and content creators to consistently produce new, original content. While staying on top of industry trends and addressing topical audience concerns is certainly important, you should also be taking stock of pieces that you’ve produced in the past and coming up with ways to repurpose them.

To effectively reuse (and by extension, scale) your content, start thinking “modular.” Focus on writing foundational pieces that you can then add building blocks onto, like videos, photo galleries, or infographics. If your client has hosted a brand activation or event (or even has just a few evergreen pieces of content under their belt), you could easily turn that into a string of modular content.

Another tactic is to take stock of what kind of content you already have on your site that the client could lend their support to. Maybe you have an exceptionally popular series that their brand could be integrated into. This is a great way to lend your publication’s authority to their company and allow for a more seamless content creation process.

Refocus

The key to refocusing your content efforts is to keep revenue top of mind. Think about what you’re selling and why. Then, consider how you can make the content more profitable for you and your brand partner. The right decision will help you maximize revenue while also giving your sales team room to negotiate with clients.

When it comes to branded content, not all business models are created equal. However, depending on your and your brand partner’s goals (i.e. impressions versus engagement), one model may be much better suited for your needs than another.

Model Behavior

For instance, the Flat Fee model ensures all costs are fixed, from creation to distribution. It’s advantageous for partners who have strictly defined expectations for their content. If you prefer to adapt your strategy on the fly, this isn’t the model for you. Another option is to split the costs of production from distribution. This makes it easier to charge incrementally based on client expectations, while still making sure your creation costs are covered. You can also use this method to turn a single content piece into a significant revenue-earner by selling the client extra promotional assets, like reads and impressions.

Choosing between these two is important, too. The Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) model measures cursory views, not engagements. Therefore, it’s not the best choice for those seeking to build a connection with readers. It is, however, perfectly suited to a campaign that includes a large number of assets like banners and other display ads. In contrast, the Cost Per Engagement (CPE) or Cost Per Read (CPR) model is well-suited to branded content, as it bundles the content with a number of high-quality reads so advertisers know exactly what to expect.

As you’re scaling your content, keep in mind that even a small amount of high-quality content can go a long way if you’re smart about what you’re creating and how you’re packaging it. The overarching goal is to communicate your brand partner’s unique selling features to your customers, so keep your target audience in mind. Set yourself up for success by finding new and unique ways to scale your content, from production through to distribution.

Advertising | Perspectives

Are YouTube video ads getting longer?

When YouTube first introduced the six-second video ad in 2016, it seemed like the future of the industry would be all about shorter ad content. At the time, Google linked the launch to the rise in mobile viewing, saying that “many people prefer to watch on their smartphone – for the control, personalization and ease it offers.” Everyone expected to see more snackable inventory and ad formats.

Among advertisers, these six-second “bumpers” quickly became a commonly used format. A number of marketers claim to love them, and for good reason. The six-second video seemed to address the problem of some viewers ignoring ads outright or complaining about an extended intrusion on their viewing experience.

Quick Success Story

Google was quick to tout the success of six-second campaigns as well. A blog post from April 2017 titled “Say It in Six: Why marketers and creatives are embracing the newest video ad length,” reports that they analyzed 122 six-second US campaigns and “found that 70% drove a significant lift in brand awareness, with an average lift of 9%. On ad recall, they perform even better – over 9 in 10 drove ad recall globally, with an average lift of over 30%.”

To keep up with the industry leader, YouTube’s competitors focused on shorter video advertisements, too. Facebook, for example, rolled out six-second ads almost two years after YouTube’s initial launch of the format. Per this Facebook blog post, “in a mobile-first world, shorter video ads drive results” as consumption patterns have shifted, with people not “watching ads for as long as they used to, on any medium.” However, there is some evidence that the market is recalibrating – at least on YouTube.

Room for Growth

Here at MediaRadar, we analyzed all online video ads that ran in January and February of 2018 and 2019. In doing so, we were able to compare the ads that ran on YouTube to ads appearing on other video and streaming platforms year-over-year (YoY).

Surprisingly, the data shows that, for 2019, longer video ads are becoming more common again. Only 16.5% of YouTube ads at the start of 2019 were six-second ads (down from 20% in 2018) and 30-second videos made up 24% of YouTube ads in 2019 — up from 19% in 2018. This is a statistically significant shift for the site and could even signal a category-wide change

Additional data about video length mined in the study supports the longer-ad trend:

  • 15-second ads were the most commonly used format, accounting for approximately 40% of all video ads running during the study and 47% of ads on YouTube; this was consistent YoY. There is some nuance involved here, however. Fifteen-second ads were previously not available for auction to all advertisers. Only recently has YouTube opened up the supply from a reserved model.
  • There are almost no 0-5 second ads. The format made up only 3% of all online video ads and 1% of YouTube ads.

So What Time is It?

Is this signaling the death of the short six-second advertisement?

I’m not so sure.

However, it does show that long-form digital video content still has a role to play, as it allows for more information to be conveyed and has proven more effective than videos six seconds or shorter. According to analysis by Teads, “six-second ads have an average view-through rate (VTR) of 55% on mobile devices but have an EmotionAll score of 3.6 compared to 5.1 for 30-second ads.” They are viewable, but not always resonant.

However, I wouldn’t count out the six-second video altogether. It has a place in the attention economy, especially when a younger demographic is targeted. Research time and time again finds that Gen Z, for example, which watches YouTube the most – and does so primarily on mobile devices – is more receptive to shorter ad formats. This might be why we’re seeing the 15-second video ad as the house majority. It just may be the video advertising sweet spot, balancing the desire to keep things short but long enough to drive an emotional impact.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Changing consumer behavior drives new advertising priorities

Cord-cutters are having a transformative effect on the entire video advertising ecosystem. As viewers enthusiastically embrace connected television (CTV) advertisers are following suit. They have accelerated their CTV investments in order to engage consumers at every digital touchpoint in a video everywhere world.

In addition, the impact of CTV growth is reverberating across destinations and devices, with premium publishers benefiting from its growth, and mobile moving into second place in terms of percentage of overall impressions by device. These are some of the biggest takeaways from our  Q4 and Full-year 2018 Video Benchmark Report from Extreme Reach, which provides a cloud-based creative asset management platform, AdBridgeTM, tailored to the needs of the ad industry.

Based on the latest aggregate performance data from ER’s proprietary video ad server, the latest benchmarks report reveals emerging ad performance trends as indicated by such metrics as viewer click-through, video ad completion and viewability rates, as well as invalid traffic and time spent.

The report also provides breakdowns related to these numbers based on media destination (i.e., premium publisher vs. media aggregator) and device (i.e., desktop, mobile, tablet and connected television [CTV]). Here’s what we found in 2018 that’s likely to gain force in the years ahead.

CTV Overtakes Mobile as Video Advertising’s Growth Engine

According to market research firm eMarketer, CTV use has soared to about 190 million users as consumers seek out new or additional ways to view TV content on their terms and timelines. That means more than half (57%) of the population has migrated from linear TV to devices like Roku and Apple TV, as well as ad-supported streaming services. Advertiser uptake has not been as robust as that of consumers. eMarketer says CTV represents only a small piece of overall digital ad spending today. However, the spend is enough to shake up the share of impressions being earned across devices and destinations.

For example, mobile dominated video ad impressions in 2017, peaking with a 39% share in Q4 vs CTV’s 16%. But in a year’s time, that number had grown to 44% of impressions. That represents a stunning 193% increase.

On the other side of the coin, the share of impressions served to desktops and tablets has continued to shrink every quarter since Q1 2016.  More specifically, we saw declines from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018 of 36% and 54%, respectively, for desktop and tablets.

CTV Impacts Multiple Metrics for Premium Publishers

As viewers gravitate to CTV, premium publishers are moving there too. In Q4 2018, more than half the impressions served by Extreme Reach to premium publishers ran on CTV platforms, an increase of 154% from the 21% that ran on CTV in Q4 2017.  CTV is having a halo effect on other metrics important to advertisers including ad length, levels of invalid traffic and video completion rates on premium sites.

Regarding ad length, 6-second ads seemed to be positioned to be the next wave, given their performance in the first two quarters of 2018 and all the media coverage they earned at that time. But the declines in mobile and desktop consumption drove a 78% decrease in impressions for 6-second spots from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018. Instead, as first noted in Q3, the rise in CTV seems to be causing a resurgence of longer ads, with 30-second spots increasing their proportion of impressions and more than doubling from Q4 2017 (28%) to Q4 2018 (58%). However, 15-second spots, which held the majority of impressions throughout 2017, declined by 43% from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.

It’s not surprising then that with 30-second ads taking the lion’s share of impressions last year, the average time spent with video ads increased by 35.3%, from a low of 17-seconds in Q4 2017 to 23-seconds in Q4 2018.

For advertisers, directly-bought CTV remains relatively insulated from non-human traffic. This provides marketers with the brand-safe environment they are increasingly demanding. Video completion rates are also very high on CTV, likely a reflection of the level of commitment consumers bring to content on the channel, as well as the inability to skip the ads.

While video completion rates are up for all devices, CTV is the winner in the category with 95% of ads playing all the way through. Premium vendors, who charge premium prices, are investing in CTV and providing the performance advertisers expect.

Win-Win for Advertisers and Audiences

So what do the 2018 metrics mean for the future? Given how quickly and dramatically video advertising has moved from a mobile to a CTV focus it’s difficult to predict how much more change CTV will bring in the year ahead. But with audiences so focused on CTV, it’s reasonable to assume that more major media companies will enter the CTV market via new launches, partnerships and acquisitions, making the market even more competitive. But overall, these developments seem to bode well for both viewers and advertisers alike. 

Visit Extreme Reach’s interactive video benchmarks report to review complete findings for Q4 and the full year.
Perspectives

5 steps to protect your website from digital ad fraud

There are many estimates for how much the digital advertising industry loses to ad fraud every year. Whether the number is $6 billion or $60 billion, fraud is a critical issue that causes advertisers to waste their ad spend and digital publishers to miss out on revenue that is stolen by fraudsters.

There are steps that everyone in the supply chain—including publishers—can take to protect their businesses against fraud. Here are a few suggestions to reduce your website’s risk for becoming a target for ad fraud.

1. Don’t Purchase Traffic

Legitimate publishers work hard to create quality content and drive audiences to that content. There are vendors that sell a fixed number of website visits for a fixed price. If the promise of generating a fixed number of website visits for a few dollars seems too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. A publisher might not know that the traffic is robotic because it was designed to pass through fraud detection as human. The best way to keep bots off your site is to avoid buying sourced traffic. Drive human audiences to your website through legitimate marketing activities such as email campaigns, sponsored social media posts and search engine marketing.  

2. Separate Humans from Bots  

There are some easy-to-implement preventive tools publishers can use to increase human interaction and limit bots. Encourage users to register for website access or implement a paywall. CAPTCHAs are another method that give users simple tests that only humans can answer. Newer CAPTCHA programs are efficient at determining whether a visitor is a human with little or no user input. Another non-intrusive technique to detect bots is referred to as a “honeypot,” which is an invisible image or form field on a webpage. While humans can’t see it, bots parsing through the html code will interact with it. Once identified, this nonhuman traffic can be filtered out of site measurement reports.

3. Continuously Monitor Traffic

It is important for publishers to understand where their site traffic is coming from and to continuously monitor traffic sources. A critical part of every digital marketing campaign is setting up the landing page URL to determine which campaign is responsible for traffic. A publisher might drive traffic by running a social media contest or sending an email blast. These types of marketing activities can be easily identified in web analytics. However, if the source is unknown or if the traffic exhibits suspicious characteristics such as spikes at unusual times or if it’s coming from one location or device type, these are red flags that the publisher needs to address. Publishers can take the proactive step of protecting media buyers by filtering traffic from bots and data centers and encourage their advertising partners to do the same. This prevents ads from being served to nonhuman traffic and increases exposure to real viewers.

4. Don’t Rely Solely on Fraud Detection Companies

Ad fraud detection services are a significant part of how the market transacts because they measure general and sophisticated invalid traffic and add friction to combat fraud. There are, however, limitations to any technology and different methodologies used, so it’s important to implement good business practices and human intervention to guard against bot traffic on your site and help minimize the risk of fraud.  

5. Follow Best Practices

Quality publishers do everything possible to minimize the risk of exposing their clients to fraud. By adhering to best practices, you can assure advertisers that you are taking necessary steps to attract human audiences and eliminate bots.

  • Work with accredited vendors you can trust (and make sure those vendors do the same).
  • Establish good business practices for monetizing your site such as those mentioned above.
  • Educate your staff to make sure they know that they are responsible to follow best practices.
  • Keep up with current and upcoming industry solutions. Publisher adoption of ads.txt, for example, helps demand-side platforms detect unauthorized digital sellers. With the release of OpenRTB version 3.0, which includes “Ads.cert: Signed Bid Requests,” the industry is taking the next step to improve transparency and security in the buying and selling process by ensuring that bid requests cannot be tampered with by downstream parties.
  • Engage in an independent, third-party audit to identify areas for improvement and show advertisers that you are taking steps to provide transparency and a safe place to reach their target audience.
Learn more about what you can do to help minimize ad fraud by downloading the AAM white paper: Three Truths That Help Confront the Digital Ad Fraud Crisis.
Perspectives

Shakespeare, meet Einstein—Making the leap from data insights to artificial intelligence for content marketing

There isn’t a company leader out there today who doesn’t realize that their ability to harness and interpret data will make or break their business. When it comes to data analytics, the bar is constantly being raised. What was a theoretical concept just one year ago is now mainstream practice in major tech companies. Leveraging data to become more AI-driven is (or should be) on every CEO’s mind.

In fact, research suggests that by 2020, 30% of digital commerce revenue growth will be attributable to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics.

As a content marketer, imagine if you were able to microsegment your readers in the moment and understand which content to best show them to drive subscriptions (or continued subscription). If that sounds appealing to you, read on.

First Party Data

Just look at the renewed importance of first-party data (data you own). In the past, third-party data, or data collected from aggregators, was considered the best way to market  to customers. However, privacy concerns (it includes things like purchase and browsing history) have made it less viable.

First-party data, on the other hand, includes website traffic statistics, owned email marketing data, e-commerce data, and the content you publish and promote on your site. The best part is that it’s completely within your control. Also, it builds on itself over the years, which gives you deeper insights than you could have obtained through third-party data alone.

Today, content companies that leverage first-party data are better-positioned to make content recommendations and provide better customer experiences. But to give your customers, users, and readers what they want, you need to be able to process and react to data in less than one second.

And assembling, analyzing, and interpreting the data is no small feat.

From Data to Intelligence

According to 2018 data from Nielsen, Americans spend more than 11 hours consuming various forms of media. And adults between the ages of 18-34 spend as much as 43% of their time reading and viewing media on various digital platforms—a number that’s almost certainly higher today.

All of which is to say: There’s more first-party data up for grabs than ever before.

However, today’s users also expect that content to be relevant. That’s why the most effective content providers not only need to provide content that readers care about, but also content that’s highly tailored to their experiences in that moment.

And in the era of digital transformation, where AI-driven businesses are poised to take in close to $3 trillion, you need a data strategy that performs efficiently.

AI, combined with traditional analytics, can help your company comb through huge amounts of data in real time. And every day you put it off, the data set grows even larger and harder to manage.   

Here’s how to harness the power of the data you already have and deliver the content your users want:

Data scientists are often too bogged down with grunt work to focus on what matters.

Today’s tech clutter (the average business today uses roughly 129 apps) creates data silos that make effective communication nearly impossible.

According to a Deloitte survey, 52% of respondents said they couldn’t make information-backed decisions because the data they needed is trapped in siloed departments. When data is isolated, it’s hard to wrangle and figure out how to analyze it. So data scientists find themselves spending 80% of their time on mundane work like figuring out which data to use, managing data movement on and off the Cloud, and understanding what attributes make the most sense to use in your models.

And after all that grunt work, there just isn’t time to do the high-value analysis.

So when you ask your data science team to tackle a portion of data, you may not understand there are many different moving parts that have to come together besides the analytics. And just because your data scientists have PhDs in mathematics or statistics doesn’t mean they have the expertise in data engineering and management to get it all done.

All CEOs need to make sure there’s a programmatic and structured way to enable data science to be ingrained in the data culture—not an afterthought. This means prioritizing building and updating the infrastructure so that there’s time for the most important analysis.

A strong data science platform makes room for truly valuable analysis.

A lot of the businesses we work with at my customer engagement company, LiftIgnigter, say it’s the operationalizing or the engineering part of data analysis that’s the most time-consuming.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by the challenge of turning data into an integral component of business operations—companies often don’t know where or how to begin.

To access the value of your business’s data, your data science team needs to develop not only a clear data strategy, but also find a programmatic way to make this second nature. Typically, this requires either building a platform or leveraging a third-party platform. A third-party platform helps data science teams aggregate the data, ultimately making data analysis a much more democratic process.

But it’s equally critical that the platform is built and fine-tuned for your company’s specific needs. A generic platform may give you lots of different options to run model testing, but at the end of the day, you need to focus your effort on modeling that is the most likely to yield meaningful insights.

However, with the right platform, which typically combines data science and machine learning, a team of five people can be effective as a team of 50. Imagine how much more efficient your team would be if they could focus their time on higher-level analysis.

AI augments the work your data science team can do, in real time.

With AI becoming increasingly ubiquitous, people are worried it will take their jobs. But AI isn’t replacing the data scientist. It’s actually making them that much more effective.

Here’s why: Training user targeting models is one thing. But then your team has to figure out a way to operationalize the continuous updating of the data.

For example, a large publisher company with 40 data scientists can still take several days to do all of the analytics that their editorial or product teams are demanding in real-time. They can hire 1,000 people—but that’s not cost-effective. The data science team is often called on to find compelling nuggets in your data in real-time. They’re constantly bombarded by your revenue team and marketing teams to come up with the perfect segment that will help drive greater revenue.

Large media companies like Facebook have a keen advantage because they have armies of data scientists to dig through their mounting data and figure out what’s relevant. And this is where AI comes in.

In order to compete, your business needs to make that process as standardized, real-time, and with zero wasted effort.

Third-party platforms enable businesses to create, tune, and refresh high performing models efficiently. Whether it’s generating demographic data for audience creation, or live streaming user behavioral signals to train a targeting system, a third-party platform can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

If you can create a unified strategy across your organization, optimize the data you have, and work only with trustworthy third-party partners—you’ll be prepared to navigate this new landscape.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Spring is in the air for advertisers and premium publishers. But we need to cultivate the opportunity for revenue growth.

Maybe this is true everywhere. But in the northeast, we’ve reached the time of the year when nearly everyone has had just about enough of winter and is eager for warmer days. And, with OTT buds starting to bloom and brand safety and other concerns driving brands to invest with trusted partners, premium digital publishers may also be wondering if their long cold winter of online advertising could see signs of warming.

A recent report from MediaRadar, indicated that programmatic ad spend from a number of advertisers shrunk year-over-year from 2017 to 2018. While some brands may have become more reluctant to spend money in programmatic, directing funds out of the programmatic ecosystem is typically a temporary measure. Advertisers are building their internal expertise and seeking ways to get the benefits of programmatic (such as automation and the ability to leverage their increasing store of customer data) without the downside of low or unknown media quality. Emarketer has predicted increasing momentum towards private marketplace or programmatic direct deals through 2020. This reflects advertiser expectations that trusted publisher partnerships will best meet the demand for quality inventory.

Market Pressure

In addition to the growing sophistication of buyers, other trends in the marketplace are also conspiring to shift advertiser spend to premium publishers. Increasing consumer interest in privacy and data governance, kicked off by initiatives like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, will make it harder for lesser-known inventory providers to use targeting and consumer data to win brand dollars.

The rise of OTT gives premium publishers a unique carrot for digital ad buyers. This makes it difficult for lesser-known publishers to access inventory at scale across this new channel, unless there are significant changes to the ecosystem that empower smaller players. Given that publishers see the nascent OTT market as the first major bulkhead in winning the dollars currently devoted to linear TV, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the market open up to anywhere near the degree we have seen with mobile or desktop advertising. The winning platforms – companies like Apple, Amazon, and Roku – and the winning publishers – the major broadcasters and other household names for video content – are likely to keep the market under tight rein.

Value Matters & Values Matter

However, the wild card in this whole equation is the degree to which advertisers can feel confident that they are getting what they pay for. This applies not only to audience reach, but also a quality playback experience, meaning a viewable, brand-safe, and non-fraudulent impression. Without transparency on inventory quality, advertisers will continue to seesaw between investing in digital and pulling back spend to put it into other channels, as we have seen over the course of the last few years.

Transparency lays the foundation for trust between buyer and seller, and it is difficult for buyers and sellers to work together to establish this trust if they are relying on numbers from two different sources. All too often, publishers measure using one set of numbers while advertisers are using another. This inevitably results in discrepancies. It is difficult for publishers and advertisers to work together to support a transparent marketplace when they are measuring using two different methodologies. Standardizing on a single set of numbers on the buy and sell-side could also reduce the number of calls to supporting vendors’ ad code. It also makes it easier for buyers and sellers to work together to streamline the technology, reducing latency and other issues.

Standards and Issues

The good news is that the industry has never been in a better position to solve the problem of transparent cross-screen measurement. We as an industry have for the first time introduced measurement-specific ad standards. Most notably, these include the Open Measurement initiative, including the Open Measurement SDK, and Open Measurement for web. Prior measurement efforts piggybacked on technical standards like VPAID and MRAID, which were introduced to support rich media, not to provide accurate reporting on inventory quality. Having a standard designed expressly to support measurement that works across all devices is a great development.

We need to move the industry towards a single technical standard for measurement. We must get publishers and advertisers on board to utilize a common methodology to measure inventory quality. And we need to tackle measurement issues head on when they arise. This proactive approach is surely preferable to finger pointing and fighting over makegoods.

Now we are at the point where it’s either springtime or more cold lean years for publishers whose content deserves better. We can let dozens of competing proprietary approaches fragment the nascent digital TV ad industry. Or we can agree not to let that happen and work together to align the buy-side, sell-side, and the standards used for measurement. The outcome of that decision could mean the difference between five years to a fully digital ecosystem – or 15.

About the Author

Michael Tuminello is VP of Publisher Products at Integral Ad Science. He works to ensure premium publishers inventory achieves its full value potential. He plays an active role in helping to develop and improve industry standards. Michael is a two-time winner of the IAB Service Excellence award (2015 and 2019), as well as the MMA Smarties award for individual contribution to the mobile advertising industry. He was previously a Product Leader at Innovid, Sizmek, and Unicast. 

Perspectives

My data, my rules

Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a new company manifesto called “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking.” In it, Zuckerberg acknowledged Facebook’s poor privacy track record: “frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services.” Who knew he had such a gift for understatement?

Zuckerberg outlined a new approach for the company, in which Facebook will build services that allow people to communicate privately. Apart from acknowledging the extreme examples of “child exploitation, terrorism, and extortion,” Zuckerberg doesn’t say how he will address the very real concern that he may be enabling the more problematic aspects of Facebook’s effects on society to flourish without scrutiny. Nor does he say that he is changing Facebook’s basic model of hoovering up data about its users and monetizing it through marketing.

However, Zuckerberg is clearly responding to growing concerns about how the digital world impacts our privacy. I share these concerns. I also have a suggestion for how they should be addressed.

The Problem With Privacy Policies

Let me start with two questions. Have you ever read a company’s terms of service or privacy policy all the way through? Have you navigated through the bowels of your social media service’s privacy settings to establish what data they can collect and how they can use it?

If you are like most people, the answer to these questions is “no.” According to Deloitte, 91% of us don’t read the terms of service. Most of us are not equipped with the knowledge base or willing to spend the time needed to navigate through privacy policies and privacy settings. In 2008, one study estimated it would take a typical internet user 244 hours a year to do so! And it is surely worse today.

The Cost of Free

We sort of get that when we use a “free” service, the real “cost” of that service involves giving a company access to data about ourselves. But we only sort of get it because we don’t really know what we are giving up, and therefore we are not in a position to assess whether it’s a good deal or not. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

For starters, the value exchange between consumers and service providers is completely opaque, with only one side of this transaction really understanding what is going on. Without knowing the terms of a deal, how can you be sure it’s fair?

As my colleague Pooja Midha says, with transparent value exchange, everybody can win. Before the rise of the internet, the value exchange for all advertising was relatively clear: The ads were the cost (or part of the cost) of access to the content. If you wanted the content, you “paid” for it by giving your time and attention to the ads. Sure, we can turn the pages of the magazine, or grab a sandwich at a commercial break, but that behavior was expected and factored into the price. Both consumers and marketers had a pretty clear idea what they were getting and what they were giving up.

The Data Dilemma

With the internet, that all changed. Free services like those offered by Facebook and Google didn’t offer content, they offered functionality. And they offered it in exchange for consumers’ time and attention paid to advertising. Or, at least, so it seemed. But the unique, bi-directional nature of internet-based services allowed for a second source of value to flow to a service provider – data. And data is where the real money is.

A recent survey asked consumers whether they would be willing to share their data for a price and what price. A majority (57%) said it was worth a minimum of $10, while 43% valued it at less than $10. The higher the income, the more likely they were to want more for their data.

This stands in stark contrast to the true value of their data. Facebook’s average annual revenue per users in the US and Canada was reported to be near $112 in 2018. Think about that. US consumers think their data is worth $10 or less, and just one company is generating $112 from their data.

Regulatory Restrictions

Transactions where consumers are faced with huge information imbalances are often targets for government regulation. It is no surprise to see the GDPR efforts in Europe and the activity happening in California with the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act, and the Governor’s recent call for a data dividend to be paid to consumers. While renewed interest in privacy and more transparent value exchange is great, it doesn’t address the core issue. Let me explain.

Today consumers have to choose whether or not they are willing to abide by the myriad privacy policies of all the different companies they engage with over the internet. In my view, that is exactly backwards. It puts the burden on the party with the least information, and in the worst position to understand the details of what they are getting into.

Personal Control

I have a better idea: My data, my rules. Imagine if you could go to a central site and establish what data can and cannot be collected from you, and at what price. This becomes your personal privacy policy. It follows you around the web, and any service you interact with has to abide by it. If you set your privacy policy to be too restrictive a service may not be willing to work with you, or work with you for free. But that’s ok! The value exchange is completely transparent. You both know what you are giving up and getting – unlike today.

This would be a huge step forward, empowering consumers, and making the digital world easier to navigate effectively, and the costs of doing so more transparent.

In a “my data, my rules” world the consumer is empowered and the value exchange is clear, with information and understanding similar on both sides. In a “my data, my rules” world, marketers can be confident that the data they are using is permissioned. This will reduce their exposure to brand damaging charges of “surveillance capitalism.” Like marketers, in a “my data, my rules” world, technology companies can engage with consumers more safely, knowing that the data they are collecting is permissioned, reducing the risk of ugly articles in the New York Times, and political fallout.

Personal Data Protection in Practice

There are two ways this change can happen. The first is government regulation. Think of it as the ‘do not call’ list on steroids. It may well be that this is the only way to flip current practice.

But there is another way. All it would take would be for a few key players to adopt this policy and refuse access to their platforms for any entity that doesn’t abide by a consumer’s stated privacy policy. For example, what if Apple or Google established rules that no app could be available in the app store unless it abided by the user’s stated privacy policy? Or if a large network operator like Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T required that everyone engaging with their customers abide by that customer’s privacy policy?

With one large player having established this as standard operating procedure, it would be hard for other companies not to follow. What consumer wants to use a service that refuses, as a matter of policy, to follow their preferences?

It is time for a change. Let’s stop hiding behind opacity and complexity. Instead let’s all live by a simple principle on the internet. My data, my rules.

Perspectives

People are watching OTT—but not how you think

You’re a cord cutter. You’re a cord never. You’ve extended the cord with your choice of OTT beyond cable TV.

You commute to work. You’re out of home more than you’re home during the week. So, your mobile phone has become life’s remote control for productivity and connectivity with family and friends and media, and social network(s).

As you pass fellow citizens on the go, you see them watching live sports, movies, binging shows, or catching the latest episode of a series. You can get your coffee to go. You can get your tapas to go. And now you can get your TV to go. It is easy to assume that this is the likely way that most OTT is consumed.

The Comfort of Home

However, most OTT is actually watched from a TV turned Connected TV through a smart app or OTT dongle made by one of the big four: Fire TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, or Roku. The big screen is still the preferred screen to watch TV video content. You want to be home. You want to have surround sound. You want to snack.

We consistently see this trend in OTT media from analytics revealed by the largest content streaming service provider; over 70% of the time, Netflix is viewed on Connected TVs. A majority of YouTube TV is also viewed on Connected TVs, although the service is positioned as a mobile-first viewing platform. We also see viewing of direct to consumer (DTC) OTT brands of all genres – whether business, entertainment, or family –  primarily take place on Connected TV, in some cases as high as 80% of the time.

Screen Time

In contrast, just 15-20% of OTT is viewed on mobile devices. Of those views, an interesting and often overlooked statistic “casting,” in which viewers are mirroring or remote controlling OTT to their smart TV wirelessly from their phone. The remainder of OTT streams are being watched on computers.

With the majority of OTT being watched on a Connected TV, the medium is taking the shape and the form of the TV industry. vMVPDs are the new MVPDs. NewFronts are the new Upfronts. Even co-viewing is now a thing in OTT discussions with buyers. In this case, the number of viewers in the room watching an ad on a Connected TV is being considered, as with TV.

All in all, the trend of watching TV over the top compared to traditionally now accounts for a third of total daily TV time globally. The adoption rate will likely continue to grow as access and content proliferate over the top. Although we live our lives on the go and do most things on our smartphone, the preference and actual predominance of watching TV over the top is on a Connected TV, at home. OTT is really the new TV.

Industry-Research

A Chinese news app is quietly referring millions of pageviews—here’s how global publishers can take advantage

Traffic to your most engaging content can come from unexpected places. Case in point: Chartbeat’s data science team recently found that TopBuzz — a China-based news aggregation app — was responsible for a multi-million spike in pageviews among our publishers late last year.

In December alone, TopBuzz referred almost 34 million pageviews across Chartbeat publishers throughout the world. That’s a 36x increase from January 2017. We also found that about half of the traffic referred by this app comes from the U.S. However, we are increasingly seeing a significant share from countries such as Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK.

Here’s a closer look at TopBuzz referral traffic since 2017 through February, peaking around December of last year:

This traffic spike piqued interest among our partners and, in turn, Chartbeat’s data science team. Therefore, we thought it would be worthwhile to take a deeper dive into this referrer with significant potential to drive engaged readers to publishers.

Here’s why TopBuzz is driving pageviews

So what is TopBuzz and, more importantly, why is it driving so many pageviews to publishers? TopBuzz is one of several digital properties owned by ByteDance, a Chinese startup reportedly valued at $30 billion.

ByteDance had already made its mark in the media landscape with well-known news aggregator app TouTiao, which aptly translates to “HeadLines”. To date, TouTiao was thought to be the primary source of referral traffic to our publishers.

In Android land, TopBuzz sits at number 11 in the free News & Magazines apps on the Android Play Store (as of the time of writing). It’s also ranked 16 in News on the Apple App Store.

How is Chartbeat accounting for this finding?

At Chartbeat, we’re updating our Real-Time Dashboard referrer classifications to more accurately reflect TopBuzz as the true source of external link traffic flowing to publishers, as shown here:

We’ll also surface traffic from other apps owned by ByteDance, which will appear as “News Republic”, “BuzzVideo”, and “Buzz Up!” referrers. This should resolve any confusion surrounding the source of this traffic previously classified as TouTiao, as you see in the image above.

What publishers can do next: Position content for stronger engagement

Our data science team will continue analyzing TopBuzz to get a better sense of its long-term impact on referral traffic to publishers around the world. In the meantime, the more accurate referrer classification is intended to better inform your global audience development strategy. This is similar to knowing traffic is actually coming from “Google News” rather than just “Google”.

An increased familiarity with TopBuzz will give you an opportunity for more internal discussions on how to proactively place your most engaging content front and center for this referral source.

Get to know the ByteDance model

While TopBuzz may be largely unknown in the U.S., TouTiao has been massively popular abroad. As an article in TechNode notes, ByteDance’s core competency is its AI-based system for content creation, curation, and dissemination, which forms the architecture behind all of its apps. This can incentivize content creators through financial rewards often based on clicks, curating content according to the preferences of each individual reader.

However, this may come into conflict publishers’ efforts to resist click-centric content. Therefore, be sure to assess your long-term audience development goals before exclusively tailoring content for TopBuzz.

Keep an eye out for other emerging platforms

Take a lesson from our TopBuzz discovery—we’re in a global media landscape. Couple that with our increasing app usage, and there are potential revenue opportunities for publishers all over the world.

This means that even if optimizing content for TopBuzz isn’t right for you, there are and will be many more opportunities to offer engaging content to new, diverse audiences. And don’t worry, we’re keeping a close eye on new sources of referral traffic every day to make sure you get a heads up.

Su Hang of Chartbeat’s Data Science team contributed research to this article.

Innovation | Perspectives

How integrating analytical and editorial teams drives subscriptions

Publishers are reclaiming their voice when it comes to how and when they are reaching their most important readers. As the market continues to feel pressure from ever-changing trends of the duopoly, publishers are putting more effort into direct relationships with their audiences and leveraging actionable intelligence from data. This means much more than ad targeting today. Data allows publishers to better serve their readers and, as a result, better profit from true engagement.

A study by the American Press Institute surveyed over 4,000 consumers of news and found that 78% respondents value getting reliable, accurate facts. An audience survey conducted by The New York Times, found that 73% polled believe “that it has never been more important to support quality journalism.” As consumers are willing to pay for quality journalism, publishers are looking to leverage these trends to deliver their best content and form meaningful reader relationships that will sustain the media business.

Although the vast majority of readers don’t subscribe, those that do are the that do are the most impactful. They spend longer on site and drive greater revenue. Of course, it is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all for subscriptions. Solutions will be different for every publisher and publishers must adapt to audience behaviors quickly, as they change often.

Flexible paths to subscription

For example, some audiences respond well to metered paywalls. Among digital subscribers, it was found in the same study by the American Press Institute that 47% of respondents became a subscriber after they reached a limit on free access. Other audiences engage after enjoying a newsletter. Deciding on what content to show and when to show it is something that needs to be finessed in order to satisfy audiences (and hopefully entice them to subscribe).

Yet, even as subscriptions become a focal point, advertising revenue still accounts for the majority of publisher revenue, despite per-ad revenue declining. At the same time, readers are getting savvy about how they choose to consume content, bouncing quickly from pages when they are blanketed with disruptive ads. Publishers that deliver a clean website experience are more likely to build long-term relationships with readers.

Engagement is key. But getting there is not easy. One route is personalization. In fact, publishers who successfully drive subscriptions share a common theme in understanding the importance of integrating both analytical and editorial teams to provide deeper reader personalization in this digital era. This can mean content personalization, but it can also take the form of personalizing subscription offers based upon customer behavior and preference.

Data driven success

Hearst Newspapers has integrated various initiatives where their growth is fueled by data. The publisher’s goal was to evolve its digital properties into a portfolio of diversified subscription and ad-supported sites. Through the use of AI, Hearst analyzed over two years of subscriber data and can now identify what users are going to convert and where, as well as analyze pre- and post-subscription patterns.

Editorial teams at The New York Times use content analytics platforms to understand readership in real-time. They also centralize the data for actionable intelligence that helps them better serve their audience. (We’ve seen customers who take this kind of approach increase conversions up to 200%.)

Data enhances the reader experience and makes valuable connection for publishers by allowing editors adjust content strategies based on where audiences come from and how they convert.

By being data informed, publishers can better understand reader engagement as well as how that readership consumes their content and what helps convert them from casual readers to seriously committed, and even to become subscribers.

Advertising | Perspectives

Malware and redirects: Publishers need to protect customers now more than ever

As the programmatic revolution reaches its potential, bad actors continue to find innovative ways to exploit the system. The technological advances to increase advertising efficiency are the same ones targeted by bad actors who are incentivized to move at a faster pace in order to keep their revenue streams flowing. The result is an endless scourge of malware and auto redirects that threaten the viability of the overall digital advertising supply chain and the relationship the industry has with the end consumer.

Programmatic provides a green field to bad actors, who consistently evolve their attacks, bypassing defenses and attacking publishers and their digital customers. Once thought the answer to publisher woes, malware blockers have proven to be a short-term fix. Unfortunately, malware incidents have almost doubled since the solution’s relatively recent introduction. Clearly, something has to change. That’s why smart publishers are calling in the experts and forming a joint task force between their Ad Ops and the IT/security teams to combat the problem together.

Bad ads aren’t your only problem

Digital ads are not the only security issue that publishers need to watch. Digital publisher businesses have diversified their revenue streams, evolving from advertising-only models to introduce subscription services and merchandise stores such as the ones hosted by most major news outlets, like The New York Times, NBC, and the The Washington Post. These new revenue channels introduce a new significant security risk for publishers due to the storing of personal data and credit card information.

Publishers are an even more tantalizing target for cybercrime groups, especially those behind large-scale malicious campaigns like Magecart, ShapeShifter-3PC, and ICEPick-3PC. Cybercriminals increasingly use the digital ad supply chain targeting payment pages to steal personal data and payment card information. Publishers trust that the payment processing vendor provides perfect security. However, time and again, these vendors are compromised, either through a direct hack, employee error, outdated code or misapplied patches. Even worse, when a breach happens, the customer will hold the publisher accountable. Headline grabbing news regarding major breaches in the past year focus on the brand, not the vendor. That makes sense since the brand has the relationship with the consumer.

Cybercrime groups zero in on vulnerabilities in third-party code in the digital environment to execute their attacks. Digital ads serve as delivery vehicles for third-party code. Publishers also rely on third-party code to optimize and monetize the user experience. Beyond ad-related platforms, the use of analytics, content delivery systems, video platforms, and widgets carry the risk of being compromised, exposing the website and its users to harm. One recent example is the havoc wreaked by the JuiceChecker malware, which utilized vulnerabilities in third-party code to enable smart malware delivery, which evaded multiple detection efforts including malware blockers.

Interdepartmental partnership

These complicated scenarios leave publishers with difficult choices. While using ads and other types of third-party code help to generate more revenue, they also expose them customer base to more vulnerable code, ready to be exploited by cybercriminals who know how to find and exploit weaknesses. Exposing customers to these threats have long-term consequences. Failure to strike an appropriate balance between revenue and security kills the user experience and creates situations where customers don’t return.

Clearly, a modified approach is necessary if the balance is to be struck correctly. This approach involves bringing product and IT/security teams into the ad/revenue operations fold. An interdepartmental culture is already being fostered by many publishers in order to stay on the right side of legislation such as the EU’s GDPR and California’s upcoming Consumer Privacy Protection Act.

The need for digital security expertise

Moving forward, advertising and revenue operations must work with both product and IT/security teams to review publishers’ existing vendor relationships and strategize how to drive revenue without sacrificing security. Internal security teams are experts in the latest threats and can help develop a comprehensive plan to protect the digital environment and deliver a better user experience.

The ability to successfully generate revenue through multiple revenue streams is important. It is up to the revenue teams to engage with the security experts within your organization to make sure the Internet remains a safe place for advertisers, businesses, and users alike.

About the Author

Steve Stup is responsible for developing and overseeing the revenue and product strategy at The Media Trust. Previously, he ran digital strategy as the General Manager at The Washington Post. In this capacity, he was pivotal in the publication’s digital transformation effort and served on the leadership team that helped position it as one of the most innovative digital publishers in the industry. He led teams responsible for driving product strategy, ad innovation, and revenue operations. Prior to that, he was in technology sales at Lexis Nexis, and other recognized brands. He received his MBA from The George Washington University and is an alum of Virginia Tech.

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