It’s no secret to everyone that the ad tech ecosystem has become highly commoditized. Much of the commoditization stems from the ease with which we white-label technology to spin up an ad exchange. And we’ve seen a proliferation of MFAs — aka websites that are manufactured for advertising (MFA) with the sole intention of engaging in ad arbitrage. This has led to a plethora of low-quality ad units in the open exchanges.

“In today’s environment, it’s critical to differentiate in some way shape, or form. The consolidation we’ve seen, and the rampant commoditization means publishers and tech platforms need to find a way to stand out,” advised David DiAngelo, Global Vice President of Marketplace Development at Emodo.

He recommends the following best practices for surviving in the new open markets.

#1: Think About Your Post-cookie Strategy

Cookie deprecation has been a hot topic since the moment Google announced it would cease to support third-party tracking cookies on Chrome. Several delays later, many publishers and tech platforms have come to believe that a cookie-less world isn’t something they don’t need to worry about. “A surprising number of publishers haven’t formulated a plan. This is a mistake because they need to know how they are going to monetize their business once this identifier finally goes away next year,” said DiAngelo.

In short order, however, publishers will need to find new ways to make advertising relevant to their users, so that it’s not a wasted ad unit. “As we lose data signals, publishers need to give serious thought to what the advertising experience looks like so that it’s still relevant for the consumer and the publisher’s marketing partners.”

#2: Think Native

According to an Emodo study, 76% of publishers that offer native inventory say it delivers better CPMs. Native ads also offer better experiences for the consumer and better performance for the advertiser. Creating native inventory doesn’t need to be a heavy lift for most publishers, as new technologies now allow any display ad to be converted to a native ad at the exchange level. If there isn’t a buyer interested in that native ad, it defaults to a display unit. 

“The benefits to publishers go beyond higher CPMs,” DiAngelo said. “Converting display ads to native means the publisher can offer a far more consumer-friendly ad experience. It will match the look, feel, and function of the website and app, which will drive more engagement.”

This isn’t to say that publishers should only sell native ads, but they should find ways to ensure all their ads have the clean and friendly experience of native ads.

#3: Leverage Generative AI to Improve Ad Experiences Further

Once the publisher (or partner they work with) has created ideal ad environments, the next step is to up the quality of the ads. The combination of generative AI and creative dynamic optimization can lead to captivating advertisements that adapt to individual preferences and optimize their impact. The industry has talked about personalized advertising experiences for decades, but never really delivered it. Generative AI puts the goal within reach.

“Depending on the user and the scenario, we can start to do things like bring in animations to an ad if we see signals that the user would be open to it,” DiAngelo explained. “We can think about adding a pulsing call to action, or a different logo treatment, based on the individual user who sees the ad.”

#4: Know Your Audience

For decades we’ve talked about the importance of knowing your audience, but all too often those discussions addressed the needs of the consumer only. However, it is equally important for publishers to consider marketers as their audience. “The consumer experience and value of the content is obviously the publisher’s top priority, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t think about what would be valuable to marketing partners. The idea of creating engaging, high-quality content that your core audience appreciates and loves and understanding what is valuable to marketers does not have to be a mutually exclusive endeavor. Great and relevant advertising can enhance the reader experience,” said DiAngelo.

#5: Lean into Seller-Defined Audiences

Speaking of the consumer, publishers have a great deal of first-party data and knowledge of their audience demographics, interests, and behavior, and they should use that insight to create target segments. These segments will help their advertisers reach their desired audiences effectively.

Another interesting option is geo-location signals or location as intent. In other words, we measure engagement as intent, but there’s a big difference between visiting a website for an auto manufacturer and visiting a dealership. Location data — i.e. the presence of a mobile device at a dealership — is a stronger indication of intent.

#6: Update Your Partner Evaluation Process

Many publishers continue to evaluate partners based on relevant criteria from five or ten years ago. But the commoditization of the open markets means publishers need to work harder to find premium buyers, and that means they need to differentiate. Ask: can this partner help us differentiate our property? Are they offering innovations that will attract premium advertisers? Are they curating marketplaces that will drive CPMs and reduce fraud? 

“We see a lot of SSPs that are plugged into the same DSPs, which means they’re not offering differentiated demand. Partners are instrumental in building audiences. If they’re not helping build audiences, they’re not helping the publisher to succeed in the post-cookie world,” said DiAngelo.

One final consideration: Does the SSP have a sales organization that is actively sourcing differentiated demand for the publisher? If not, find one that does. Collaboration in the new open markets is essential. If a publisher’s partner isn’t willing to work through problems with them, who will?

The post Best Practices for Publishers to Survive the New Open Markets: How to Differentiate Your Brand in an Age of Commoditization appeared first on AdMonsters.

Before joining Dotdash Meredith, Roberts was a theoretical physicist focused on making dark matter predictions for the hadron collider at CERN and cosmic ray predictions for the AMS detector on the International Space Station. He also created the first-ever canon maps of Game of Thrones for Random House and George R. R. Martin’s “The Lands of Ice and Fire.”

 Roberts says that maps empower people to make decisions using data by helping them understand a way forward. 

 “Mapmaking is an exercise in data-powered decision making, whether it’s in the front of a fantasy novel where I’m helping the reader make a logical choice, or in business where I hand over information in a way that other people can then make informed decisions off a common understanding and framework,” said Roberts.

Just like maps, publishers face a great deal of data and decision-making as they approach the loss of third-party cookies. During his keynote at the AdMonsters Publisher Forum, “Publishers Take the Wheel: Effective Audience Targeting in a Cookieless World,” Roberts will share how publishers can leverage intent data for ad targeting at scale.

 Solving Problems From Physicist to Publisher

Roberts has been with Dotdash Meredith since 2013. As Chief Innovation Officer, Roberts oversees research, data science, and open market revenue. He was previously the President, Health & Finance, overseeing strategy for Verywell, Health, Parents, Investopedia, and The Balance, and has held various senior leadership roles, including Head of Data Science. 

Before Dotdash Meredith, Roberts spent ten years as a theoretical physicist, bringing that training to his current role.

“As a physicist, you must be confident to take on problems and believe they are fixable. That belief gives me the mindset to tackle publishing challenges with an impatience to solve them,” expressed Roberts. 

And right now, that challenge is solving ad targeting for publishers before the cookie gets deprecated in 2024. Roberts believes ad targeting that will work, and scale isn’t with identity targeting but with intent-based targeting. 

“Trying to rebuild an identity signal across a cookieless environment is going back and fighting the fight that’s already been fought and lost. I think targeting who somebody might have been four weeks ago is much less effective than targeting who they are right now. Non-identity or intent-based targeting unlocks the full scale of a publisher,” said Roberts.

Connecting at Key Moments of Intent

In May, Dotdash Meredith launched D/Cipher, a tool that provides intent-based ad targeting without cookies. D/Cipher is based on billions of Dotdash Meredith’s proprietary consumer interactions and content signals from its 40+ brands that help 30 million people daily, providing the publisher with a unique data set.

 “If we were a news publisher, we would tell the world what to care about. We are much more a service publisher, so the world tells us,” shared Roberts. “Our data gives us a heartbeat of the entire world every day.” 

D/Cipher reaches users on all devices and platforms, including Apple (iOS) audiences previously unreachable by advertising cookies for the past two years, estimated at more than 50% of U.S. digital users. 

So, how does D/Cipher reach the right person, at the right time, without cookies? 

Roberts gives the example of targeting a parent reading articles about family vacations versus looking for a Negroni recipe. The promise of cookie targeting is knowing that the person is a parent, but intent-based targeting is knowing a person is being a parent at that moment. 

“Engaging the parent with the right messaging when they’re in that mindset is powerful and requires no prior knowledge of the person. A drink recipe is when they’re specifically not being a parent, and they don’t want to see your messaging even if you got the targeting right,” explains Roberts. “We’ve removed the guesswork and only reach people when they’re ready to receive your message. It’s not surprising that we see vastly higher performance with intent targeting than with cookie targeting.”

Guaranteeing a Non-Identity-Based Approach

As part of the D/Cipher launch, the publisher announced the Dotdash Meredith Performance Guarantee, which promises performance lift versus cookie-based or other audience-based targeting for marketers using the D/Cipher tool. 

Roberts shared that the guarantee’s goal is not for advertisers to shift their entire buying strategy to only intent-based targeting. Instead, Dotdash Meredith wants advertisers to simultaneously test and then scale both a cookie-based or identity-based approach and a non-cookie and non-identity-based approach in the lead-up to a cookieless environment. 

“We can learn so much with a side-by-side comparison. We as an industry must get comfortable with non-identity-based targeting and measurement in the next year to 18 months so that when the cookie gets fully deprecated, you’re not trying to figure out how to do cookieless targeting in the second half of 2024 because you’re going to be doing it with little data to play with and a lot of disruption,” cautioned Roberts.

Roberts says that as America’s largest publisher, it means Dotdash Meredith is in a position to help the industry and is confident in its guarantee.

“We guarantee you that your intent-based campaign will outperform the cookie-based campaign. We know it works because we’ve been doing this a long time, and that takes the risk off the table,” said Roberts.

The post AdMonsters Publisher Forum Keynote Dr. Jon Roberts: Innovating Audience Targeting for a Cookieless World appeared first on AdMonsters.

Predictably, the economy, the growth of attention metrics, and cookie deprecation are top worries for publishers. What is surprising is just how low supply path optimization (SPO) is on their priority list. Only 30% of publishers say it’s important for them.

Despite less than a third of marketers ranking it high in priority, some see SPO as more of a concern for a buyer than a publisher. “SPO is a buy side issue and publishers are concerned about how it’s impacting them but the other issues are bigger concerns, SPO will always be there,” explained Jana Meron, the founder of Lioness Strategies and seasoned digital media monetization and data strategy leader. In other words, SPO is a persistent, but low-grade issue.

But others believe publishers have a vested interest in promoting SPO. The open programmatic markets can be convoluted at best and, for buyers keen to stay within a specific price range, they may be dissuaded from purchasing quality inventory if it has multiple intermediaries demanding a piece of the CPM paid. And all those commissions mean that publishers collect a smaller percentage of revenue for their inventory. 

What’s more, by focusing on SPO, publishers have more direct access to gaining insights into the demand for their inventory, potentially improving transparency in the bidding process.  All of this begs the question: why aren’t more publishers dedicating resources to ensuring the exchanges have direct access to their inventory?

Why Aren’t Publishers Concerned about SPO?

Another possible interpretation of the survey results is that SPO means different things for different types of publishers. Discussions of SPO tend to focus on unintended consequences, such as publishers losing access to buyers if an ad exchange opts to eliminate suppliers as part of its SPO initiative. 

But according to Scott Messer, ​​Principal and Founder of Messer Media, legitimate publishers shouldn’t worry about that as supply path optimization is a correction coming first for the most egregious of publishers.

For instance, In early April, Digiday ran a series of articles about declining prices in the open RTB markets due to ad tech vendors reducing the number of auctions they “listen to.”  At issue: low-quality publishers were initiating an excessive number of concurrent auctions for the same impression, hoping to get the best possible price. Wary of competing against themselves, advertisers flocked to the safe havens of private and curated marketplaces.

“Complicating your supply path is a tactic to drive higher yields,” said Messer. Reputable publishers with genuine value propositions have little need for ploys, which is why he believes publishers are moving towards curated marketplaces. “The average publisher on the good side isn’t worried about SPO because, if anything, it will actually drive more dollars into their pockets. Closing cluttered paths make it harder for the less worthy.”

Messer is an advocate of curated marketplaces, and deal creation as a service (DCaaS). In these scenarios, platforms create a custom marketplace for an individual buyer, one that is free of the low-quality publishers that exist for the express purpose of selling ads.  In this respect, curated marketplaces offer buyers a faster and more transparent path into SPO.

The survey data, however, was surprising when considering Messer’s perspective. The survey found, in fact, that large publishers are more than eight times more likely than small publishers to report having at least 10 monetization partners. And high CPM publishers, perhaps the best proxy for what Messner refers to as “reputable”, tend to have more monetization partners than low CPM ones.

Another theory behind why publishers may not be prioritizing SPO: they simply lack the resources to do more than acknowledge its importance. “I believe that Supply Path Optimization is one of those catchphrases like the cookieless Future.  We are all talking about it, but no one has really figured out what to do about it,” explained Terry Guyton-Bradley, a programmatic strategist who co-founded MediaZinc and spent many years working for multiple publishers running their programmatic operations.

“Unfortunately, most publishers don’t have the resources or time to truly analyze their programmatic partners in order to make meaningful changes to their programmatic stacks. As you can see from the survey results, the economy is having a significant impact on our industry and causing drastic cuts to investment in technology and personnel.” 

Guyton-Bradley warns his partners not to make any business decisions without data to support their assumptions. In his view, the benefits of SPO to publishers are still a hypothesis. Things may change once there’s real data to back up the SPO advocates claims. 

SPO is a Hot Topic for Many

Although Emodo’s survey found that only 30% of publishers consider SPO a hot topic, it’s still a top priority for companies like Emodo, which sees it as much more than simply cutting out middlemen to find the shortest path to inventory. “What it really means is eliminating redundancy by offering unique value and providing the most direct route to that value,” Damian McKenna, COO at Emodo, told Street Fight. 

Emodo also aligns with Messer’s point about curated marketplaces as an essential strategy for buyers and publishers and has a team dedicated to actively creating and optimizing Emodo Curated Deals.

The post Why Aren’t Publishers Concerned about Supply Path Optimization (SPO)? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Let’s be honest; does anyone read the terms and conditions when they sign up for an app or streaming service? 

On June 15, Black Mirror dropped the episodes to its highly anticipated sixth season, and the first episode, “Joan is Awful,” raised paranoia around what streaming services ask for in their Terms of Service (ToS). 

[Spoiler alert] 

When the episode starts, Joan makes a series of morally questionable decisions, including firing a work friend and meeting up with an ex-boyfriend behind her fiance’s back. After she comes home from work, Joan and her fiance Crish search the fictional streaming service “Streamberry” for a show to watch when they come across Joan is Awful. Joan watches in horror as the events of her day play out on the TV show, which subsequently causes her life to fall into complete chaos — her fiance leaves her, viewers villainize her on social media, and her company fires her.  

After consulting a lawyer, Joan learns that Streamberry has rights to her private information and life events to create content for the show since she signed them over in the Terms and Conditions. 

The ad tech community is well-versed in discussions surrounding privacy ethics, consumer protection, and consumer targeting. Still, this episode caused quite a debate about how platforms collect consumer data. No one will wake up tomorrow with a Netflix series about their life, but what are the real-world implications of this episode? 

@realfandcmfigures always read the terms & conditions #blackmirror #joanisawful #fyp ♬ original sound – Fandcmfigures

The Privacy Reckoning and Consumer Choice

Consumer choice is one of the most critical aspects of privacy ethics. Generally, a privacy policy gives consumers “notice about how their personal information will be collected, used, and shared and then informs the consumer what “choices” they have.” Platforms then ask consumers to agree to the policies to use the service. 

However, the structure is flawed because the notice of choice fails to protect the audience’s privacy. It puts the burden of privacy on the consumer, who is most likely unaware of how these systems and standards work. How is their choice when they don’t have all the facts? 

In the episode, the CEO of Streamberry took advantage of this notion to use their subscriber’s information for content. When Joan signed up for Streamberry, I’m sure she would have thought twice about agreeing to the ToS if she knew the platform would use her personal life for content without proper consent. 

Further in the episode, Streamberry’s CEO explains to a journalist that they decided to create shows centered around their audience to create more content tailored toward them. Joan’s show was only the start. She revealed that they tested out shows for each of their subscribers which meant every consumer’s data was up for grabs.  

Publishers and advertisers have broken consumer trust for years, and the only way to rebuild that trust is to put the consumer’s needs first. It’s about walking the fine line between making content relevant and being transparent with your audience to respect privacy ethics. 

“Privacy consent is at the core of a publisher’s relationship with their visitors,” said Dan Rua, CEO, Admiral. “The strongest relationships are built on mutual trust. As such, privacy consent shouldn’t be a silo run by lawyers, separate from thinking about engagement across the full visitor relationship journey.”

Tailoring Content For the Consumer

In the ad tech industry, ad ops professionals use all types of consumer targeting practices with one goal: getting the correct content to the right consumer. The goal was always to give consumers a great user experience, but over the years, regulators criticized publishers and advertisers for some of their targeting practices. 

For instance, the third-party cookie — on its way out entirely in 2024 — was criticized for collecting and utilizing consumer data without transparency and choice. Before the cookie pop-up notification became standard practice, websites used cookies to collect and share consumer information without their knowledge. Although even after they knew what cookies did, many were unaware of how platforms shared their data. 

Web browsers like Firefox and Safari have stopped using cookies, but Google is still working to weed them out. They are currently testing the privacy sandbox, which aims to undo years of persistent cookie tracking of users on their journeys across the web and mobile.

The ad tech community is working towards reconciling their past mistakes with privacy ethics. Regulators and government officials created laws such as the GDPR and state-level laws such as California’s CCPA to combat some of these exploitative practices. Apple also made privacy measures within its framework to help set standards for transparency and consent — Hide My Email and Apple ATT. 

These laws are coming full circle as brands face a rising number of lawsuits and fines if they don’t comply with the updated privacy regulations. This past week the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) fined Criteo €40M ($44 Million) for breaching the GDPR’s laws. While Criteo asserted that their breach of privacy was not deliberate, the regulation pushed them to improve their data collection practices. 

“Shifting our mindset from notice and choice will not be easy and will require agreement in an ecosystem of competing interests,” wrote Jessica B. Lee, Partner, Co-Chair, Privacy, Security & Data Innovations at Loeb & Loeb LLP. “However, in the long term, both consumers and businesses may benefit from this change.”

The post Black Mirror’s Joan is Awful: The Implications of Privacy Ethics, Consumer Choice and Tailoring Content appeared first on AdMonsters.

As we just recently crossed the fifth year anniversary of GDPR, one thing has become clearly evident — regulators will continue their tough stance on violations. I noted as much in my 5 Data Privacy Trends to Watch in 2022 article written for AdMonsters.

Well, just last week, while everyone in ad tech was traversing La Croisette for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2023, the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) levied a hefty fine against global commerce media company, Criteo.

The revised fine of €40M ($44 Million), dates back to complaints filed by None of Your Business (NOYB), an Austria-based nonprofit, and Privacy International in 2018, stating that Criteo did not have a legitimate legal basis for behavioral targeting. CNIL’s initial investigation in 202o found the ad tech company in breach of GDPR, slapping them with a €60M fine. Criteo attests that their actions were not deliberate, nor did they cause any harm. Criteo also argued that the initial fine represented half of its earnings and 3% of its global sales, which is “close to the legal maximum” allowable under GDPR.

I took a deep dive into Criteo’s 40M GDPR fine from the CNIL (one of the highest fines for cookie-related violations). Below are three highlights that jumped out at me:

Proof of Consent Required – Although the collection of consent for cookies was the responsibility of Criteo’s partners, who are in direct contact with their website users, Criteo was still required to verify and be able to demonstrate that these users gave their consent. The CNIL required Criteo to incorporate a new clause on proof of consent in its contracts. Partners must “promptly provide Criteo, upon request and at any time, with proof that the consent of the data subject has been obtained by the partner.” I am interested to see whether the CNIL will come back to Criteo to see if this clause has been exercised. Accountability is the new king. Adtech companies will need a solution for auditing and demonstrating accountability in the U.S. and EU, as regulators in both jurisdictions are no longer willing to allow companies to rely on paper assurances.

Consent Can Be Given and Taken Away – The CNIL alleged that when a person exercised their right to withdraw consent, the process implemented by the company only stopped the display of personalized advertisements to the user; it did not stop all processing activities. Criteo addressed this by putting in place a procedure to allow individuals to exercise their right to withdraw consent directly by clicking the button “Deactivate Criteo Services” in the company’s privacy policy.

Joint Controller Agreements work for Ad Tech – The CNIL did not challenge the joint controller agreements Criteo had in place with partners, but they got dinged for not specifying all of the respective obligations of controllers under the GDPR, such as the exercise by data subjects of their rights, the obligation to notify the supervisory authority and data subjects of a data breach or, if necessary, the carrying out of an impact assessment under Article 35 of the GDPR.

This is a huge fine (2% of turnover), but most of the issues raised seemed solvable to me.

The post A Deep Dive Into Criteo’s 40M GDPR Fine From the CNIL appeared first on AdMonsters.

According to a webinar hosted by Comscore, 2023 State of Programmatic, programmatic spend has experienced exponential growth, doubling over the past four years. Data shows that over 91% of $148 billion in digital display dollars are transacted programmatically. Where does this leave the state of programmatic? 

The short answer is that the automated supply chain is flourishing, but signs indicate an ad spend slowdown. The further context suggests that since programmatic accounts for nine out of ten digital ad dollars, the market is reaching a state of saturation rather than stagnation. 

On the other hand, these statistics only apply to display advertising. Mediums such as CTV, video, mobile, and audio utilize the programmatic supply chain to buy and sell ads. But we don’t have to tell our readers that programmatic touches almost every side of digital advertising. 

To get to the bottom of programmatic in 2023, Proximix by Comscore surveyed industry professionals about how they perceive programmatic advertising outside of what headlines suggest. 

Digital Is King of the Programmatic Court

The agencies surveyed said that marketers would most commonly use digital media channels this year. Eighty seven percent of executives surveyed asserted they would use digital in their media mix. Digital will keep its crown intact. 

While headlines proclaim the domination of channels such as CTV and audio, most brands keep it traditional. CTV comes in second in the ranking, but alongside digital, most don’t expect much growth out of these two categories in 2023. 

Publishers and advertisers expect podcasts and audio to show significant growth this year. This channel is expected to experience the most significant boost compared to last year, so there is a chance that publishers and advertisers will increase more time and investment in the medium. 

Research from this year supports this trend, with a significant number of Americans listening to online audio and podcasts.  Brands are relying on digital this year, but it is possible that audio has stock in the game of thrones next year. 

Data Investments in the Programmatic Supply Chain Is Mixed

The types of data publishers and advertisers are investing in on the supply chain vary widely based upon what works best for their business and the changing landscape with privacy. 

First-Party Data: They expect to allocate a significant portion of their spending towards first-party modeled audiences, emphasizing the value they place on first-party data. 

• This data set is vital as brands work toward building audiences without the use of third-party cookies. Google just announced they will go away in the 2nd half of 2024. 

Third-Party ID-Based Segments: Third-party ID-based segments are also important, with approximately 43% of the budget allocated to this area. Demographics remain a crucial component of third-party ID-based data.

• 24% of the budget will focus on innovating demographic data 
• 19% of this budget will focus on third-party behavioral data. Yet, this data will most likely be a thing of the past after 2024. 

Contextual Data: Brands will direct a third of the budget towards idealist contextual segments, which involve traditional contextual topic targeting or newer third-party behavioral, contextual audiences.

• Over half of buyers and sellers expect their use of contextual data to increase this year compared to a mere 3% who indicate that usage will decrease.

The webinar’s moderator explicitly pointed out that this analysis does not consider the cost of each type of data. ID-less contextual data tends to have lower prices compared to ID-based targeting. Contextual targeting represents a smaller portion of the budget. It may result in a higher volume of impressions overall in the campaign delivery.

Privacy Radically Changed Programmatic: “Step Your Cookie-less Game Up”

The consumer data privacy reckoning on the ad tech industry has affected every aspect of the advertising ecosystem, including the programmatic supply chain. 

For example, when Apple rolled out its iOS 14.5, it allowed users to block tracking at the app level. The update also required brands to get permission to collect and share consumer data. Based on proximity by comScore data, the implications were that up to 70% of us programmatic mobile ideas vanished overnight.

So how are publishers and advertisers dealing with the signal loss?

Many marketers have started to move away from cookie-based targeting. They are represented in the chart by our men in blue. Only 13% of businesses surveyed said they exclusively use cookieless targeting, but many publishers and advertisers have migrated to have cookie-free targeting in their inventory. 

For those using the programmatic supply chain, this is the smart move. According to the IAB’s state of data report, 50-60% of programmatic inventory no longer has a User ID. 

That 18% represents the man in yellow, you are behind the curve, but you still have a year to “step your cookies up” as Google’s third-party cookie deprecation deadline looms closer. A great place to start testing is on Safari and Firefox have been cookieless for over three years. They hold a significant inventory, about 22% of browser traffic globally. 

The post The State of Programmatic Advertising in 2023 appeared first on AdMonsters.

But the identity conversation is loaded with BS because everyone talks about it like they know what the future holds. Worse, they’re presenting solutions based on what they “know.”

In reality, nobody knows what a post-identity world will actually look like because that world is still largely hypothetical. And because there is no “right” answer to what the world will look like, there are gazillions of “answers” masquerading as solutions!

That doesn’t mean these solutions are terrible and won’t work, it’s just important to recognize that they’re built on an assumption that certain hypotheses will come true when those hypotheses could easily turn out to be wrong.

What we do know is that the post-identity world will be shaped by developments in three arenas: regulatory policies for privacy, platform decisions around consumer data, and consumer sentiment. Each arena has complicated dynamics, but the picture becomes even more complex when you try to predict how it all fits together. In other words, a perfect storm for BS.

Let’s do a quick reality check on each arena to understand why it’s impossible, at the moment, to settle on a vision for a post-identity world.

Do you know where privacy regulation will land? I don’t.
Privacy regulation has been the elephant in the room throughout the history of ad tech. A few years ago, the elephant woke up and gave us GDPR. But remember, the first proposal for GDPR was in 2012.

It took six years and countless twists and turns before GDPR took effect in 2018. But that was just one privacy law in one region. Similar efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere have taken even longer to materialize. If the rest of the world catches up to the EU, there’s no telling how regional rules will come together to govern the global internet. Will IP be considered PII? Will first-party data be viewed like third-party data? Will companies be able to use encrypted email addresses? Will there be limitations on fingerprinting?

Ad tech vendors and marketers are stuck planning for a future where it’s impossible to say what the rules of the road will be, or which players will have a hand in setting those rules.

Do you know what the platforms will do next? I’ve heard rumors.
Compared to what we see on the public policy front, the big tech platforms move fast and break things like third-party cookies, device IDs, and other signals that ad tech relies on. In some ways, the pace of change is a blessing because speed creates an urgency to prepare for the future.

The trouble is, the platforms aren’t going to show us their plans, and unlike the regulatory process, there’s no mechanism to force transparency. Oh, and they have ulterior motives.

But it’s not as if the blueprint for the future is under lock and key inside Apple or Google. The platforms also face uncertainty because they need to balance the competing priorities of regulatory demands, positioning their brands for a privacy-conscious marketplace, and their advertising businesses.

In other words, it’s complicated. And while the trade press works hard to chase down rumors, there just isn’t enough solid information yet for marketers and ad tech vendors to act with certitude. Just look at Google. They literally change course on privacy weekly.

Are consumers on board with this? Unclear.
A decade ago, the Web was wide open and consumers weren’t terribly concerned with privacy. Today, walled gardens are ascendent, fragmentation is increasing, and a critical mass of consumers aren’t just concerned about privacy, they’re taking action by using ad blockers, adjusting their privacy preferences, and even paying for content with fewer (or zero) ads. We can thank Cambridge Analytica, Apple’s heavily-funded privacy ad campaigns, and The Social Dilemma for that.

These developments represent significant risk to the value exchange at the center of the current model. But if it took 20-plus years for that value exchange to come together, why would we expect the next iteration of the value exchange to mature overnight? If anything, we’re at the start of an ongoing conversation where consumer sentiment and subsequent demands are a moving target.

How should we think about identity in the face of uncertainty?
Roll up the uncertainties around regulation, platforms, and consumer sentiment, and you see the challenge. We face countless variables, a wide range of hypotheses, and for each hypothesis, a corresponding solution. Prohaska Consulting & the MMA’s most recent count found more than 120 identity solutions across the globe – with more on the way.

So how do marketers and publishers future-proof their operations? Do you bet on a probabilistic solution? A deterministic one? Or, is the future a throwback to the days of contextual advertising?

Here’s a better question: do you know what any of that means? Do you understand how it all differs, how it’s similar, how it can all work together, how it can be done today, and how it might need to be done in the future? Could you explain it to a friend who doesn’t work in digital? Would you feel confident explaining it to your boss and running point on making strategic decisions on identity?

If your answer is ‘no’, that’s okay, you’re not alone. Pretty much everyone is in this boat. A good place to start is to educate yourself. All identity solutions have trade-offs, and no single solution is perfect. But if you understand the methodologies, applications, and commercial constraints of identity solutions, you’ll be able to understand those trade-offs and be better equipped to make decisions based on your hypotheses.

Equally important, the more marketers and publishers know about the strengths, weaknesses, and blindspots of the next generation of identity solutions, the more likely they are to build resilient systems and strategies for any future scenario. But it all starts with education, not a BS conversation.

To learn more about this topic, check out Shiv Gupta’s keynote — Calling BS on Identity: An In-depth Guide to Identity Solutions — at AdMonsters Ops on June 5, 2023.

The post Calling BS on Identity appeared first on AdMonsters.

And ever since, the tech behemoth has continually delayed the cutoff date, with the latest now the midpoint of 2024. But that has not stopped publishers and advertisers from preparing for a post-cookie world, at least not most of them. 

The delays can be attributed to publishers and advertisers needing more time to prepare for how this major tech change will alter their business processes, according to Anthony Chavez, VP of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative. While advertisers are worried about maintaining performance and measurement goals, publishers are concerned about how the changes will impact their revenue and business operations. 

Both sides have experimented with varying solutions, including ID solutions, data clean rooms, contextual targeting, and the Privacy Sandbox. Overall, industry concerns have lessened since last year, According to a study by DoubleVerify, sentiments are becoming more optimistic, and publishers and advertisers are beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Rose-Colored Glasses: Optimism Abounds

The industry is optimistic about the post-cookie future, but that does not mean publishers and advertisers are worry-free. 

Media verification company, DoubleVerify, polled publishers to see how many were concerned about the impact of cookie deprecation, and 59.9% said they were either “somewhat concerned or moderately concerned.” However, publishers who were “very concerned” decreased by 42.6%, and those who were not concerned doubled.   

On the buy side, advertisers emphasized that their biggest concern was multiple browsers phasing out third-party cookies. This issue was the top concern for advertisers in 2022 at 38.5% and increased to 45.1% this year. 

Publishers and advertisers are worried about finding the best solution and workflow for their businesses. Many third-party solutions — Alternative IDs, Seller-Defined Audiences, Email-hashing — exist, but companies are still testing them. Currently, only 24% of publishers surveyed had a post-cookie solution. This is why buyers and sellers believe that Google might delay third-party cookie deprecation further.

Other concerns include:

Publishers: They are concerned about their revenue projections. In 2022, 63.8% of publishers thought their revenue would increase after third-party cookie deprecation, but in 2023 their revenue fell to 48%. 

Advertisers: They are worried about their ability to target audiences effectively, the most effective way to leverage first-party data, and the effectiveness and accuracy of media mix modeling. 

Publishers and Advertisers Seek Common Ground

About 80% of respondents believe that direct advertiser to publishers partnerships will be paramount once the third-party cookie goes away. Although publishers warned they would only partner with publishers with robust first-party data to share. Direct relationships often enable that. 

Contextual solutions are also top of mind for the buy and sell side as they search for privacy-centric methods to maximize scale and performance. Ads perform better with consumers when they are more relevant, and context-based advertising generally creates a better UX for consumers. 

Publishers see the importance as well. A staggering 96% of publishers asserted that contextual advertising would be essential for their business in 2023. On the buy side, advertisers’ sentiments are the same. About 93% of advertisers said they use contextual advertising for some or most of their purchases this year. Both sides see promise in context as replacing cookie-dependent solutions. 

There is some disagreement between advertisers and publishers. Buy and sell provided mixed responses when asked which solutions hold the most significant outcome for replacing cookie-dependent advertising. Confidence around Google’s solutions, programmatic-direct deals, and first-party data hierarchy were the biggest misalignments.

Publishers V. Advertisers: The Fight For First-Party Data Supremacy

On the advertiser side, about 60% boasted about their first-party data capabilities. Almost half of the advertisers surveyed agreed that their first-party data activations are the cookie-independent solution with the most promise. 

On the other hand, publishers are working to improve their first-party data capabilities. One top priority is ensuring their first-party data sets are more appealing to buyers. 73% of publishers invest in first-party data collection strategies, and email marketing is the most common tool for growing first-party data sets. 

Transparency is vital, and publishers say their first-party data activations need improvement. Publishers who described their first-party data activations as “very good” declined 35% this year. Their data sets aren’t abysmal, but they know they have work to put in. 

Both parties highlight that third-party metrics will remain essential to digital advertising transactions despite third-party cookies going away. The survey says, “Combining first-party data with third-party metrics related to context, brand suitability, viewability, and attention can help publishers better position their offerings in the marketplace.” 

Vying For Consumer Attention

Finally, attention metrics will be a crucial focus for both publishers and advertisers in 2023. They see its value as an advertising currency. Both groups rank attention high on their lists as a focus for measurement when third-party cookies disappear. 

Publishers: Publishers have already adopted industry sentiment, with 94% of publishers describing attention as “moderately important” or “very important” to their business this year. Those same publishers indicated confidence in their attention-based capabilities, with 77% stating that their offering was either good or better. 

Advertisers: Ninety-six percent of advertisers plan to rely on attention-based metrics in most or some of their ad buys in 2023. While only 28% of advertisers ranked publisher attention-based offerings as “very good,” they seem satisfied overall with what they see in the marketplace.

Publishers and advertisers must recognize the ability of these metrics to quantify ad performance accurately and meaningfully as a privacy-friendly measurement and optimization tool.

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“The CCPA was the first comprehensive consumer privacy law passed in the United States, and even though it’s a California state law, there was nothing like it on the books that generally applied to consumer personal information,” said Tony Ficarrotta, Assistant General Counsel, IAB. “The CCPA was the first one that said we don’t care what industry you’re in. If you’re processing consumer personal information, then you have certain requirements. In digital media and advertising, there are many questions about how that law applies to the data often processed to select and deliver digital ads.” 

The initial white paper, released in 2020, detailed which companies were involved in the CTV process, explained how to define and use personal information in the CTV space, and how companies can comply with privacy laws. Project Crosswalk 2.0 builds on that study. 

How Is CTV Unique? The Remote Control and the Identity Conundrum 

The Remote Control: With several state-wide privacy laws in place and on the way, CTV providers must offer consumers residing in those states the option to opt out of selling or sharing their personal information for ad targeting. Platforms have years of experience implementing these regulations on mobile and desktop devices, but these regulations have caused user experience issues for CTV providers. 

Remote controls are the primary interface used to navigate connected TVs, and they generally have limited functionality compared to mobile and desktop devices. When consumers hope to enact their privacy rights on CTV devices, they spend longer durations using the remote to enter the necessary information to complete the request. Thus, hindering the UX. 

In response, CTV providers created a pathway for consumers to review privacy notices and exercise their rights to privacy outside of the CTV space. They provide a URL or QR code that leads to a website, and consumers can exercise their right to privacy on a desktop or mobile device. Although regulators are urging platforms to move away from this practice:

According to the FTC report, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, “Consumers should not have to navigate through multiple screens to find privacy settings … [privacy settings] should be presented at a time and in a context where the consumer is deciding their data.” 

The Identity Conundrum: Identifying consumers with regard to privacy compliance is difficult, especially in a space that is so fragmented. Many ID solutions have worked in desktop and mobile devices, even with third-party cookie deprecation, but that has not always translated to CTV platforms. 

The most common identifier in the CTV space is a user’s internet protocol (IP) address. It allows CTV platforms to bridge identity signals to activate advertising audiences and measure the effectiveness of advertising in CTV. Although, IP addresses are generally network-level IDs instead of user or device-level IDs, which causes some issues in the identification process. For example: 

• Very few ad-tech providers have built IP-based opt-out mechanisms. In the past, it was not necessary because of the reliability of cookie-based opt-outs.  
• Even if IP-based opt-outs became commonplace, the reliability of their opt-out signals would be uncertain because internet service providers (ISPs) periodically rotate IP addresses, and users often engage with the same businesses using multiple IP addresses.

The IAB Project Crosswalk whitepaper suggests using internal development resources and first parties that can store user privacy choices made on a CTV user interface directly on the CTV or on their servers, using the GPP. First parties can subsequently make those choices available in bid requests that third parties can apply to identifiers they leverage for advertising. 

CTV Privacy Compliance Considerations

In CTV advertising, processing and transferring consumer information is essential for ad selection and delivery, measurement, and audience creation. Due to the complexity of processing personal information in the connected TV space, platforms must understand their obligations under state privacy laws. Here is what IAB suggests companies consider. 

1st Consideration: Leverage partnerships between cross-functional privacy teams to understand compliance regulations. 

Privacy lawyers, product experts, and privacy operations and governance professionals should work together to tackle the complexities of the data flow process in CTV advertising balanced with compliance regulations. They can each help identify when personal information is processed, when consumers request opt-outs activity, and how to apply rules to these processes. 

2nd Consideration: Clearly define your role in the CTV advertising process.

Every entity in the CTV advertising process should define clear roles for participating, whether they are a business and controller, third party, or service provider and processor. Companies may need to be flexible in their roles in different circumstances, depending on how consumers interact with the company and whether they have opted out. 

The IAB’s Multi-State Privacy Agreement (MSPA) provides an efficient way to define each party’s role in a transaction for privacy compliance while giving the flexibility to play different roles in different circumstances. CTV platforms are often a first-party business or controller, but they may be a third-party or service provider and processor, depending on the circumstances. The MSPA can help companies enter into the required contractual privity with all parties to the transaction. 

3rd Consideration: Create opt-out signals that communicate consumers’ choices in CTV platforms

Businesses and controllers must provide consumers with ways to opt out of certain activities. This responsibility also applies to CTV platforms, app publishers, and advertisers in the CTV environment. Privacy technology vendors offer a way to block information transfer if a user opts out, but using a privacy signaling framework like the GPP is better. Downstream vendors receiving an opt-out signal can comply with appropriate signaling, MSPA, or other contractual mechanisms to prevent sales that the consumer opted out of while allowing limited data processing for advertising.

4th Consideration: Evaluate use cases involving ACR data

When using ACR data, CTV platforms should consider specific compliance steps to ensure the user’s privacy and data protection rights are respected. One of the most important steps is to obtain the user’s opt-in consent before collecting, using, or sharing their ACR data. This is in line with FTC precedent and industry self-regulatory guidelines

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Steven Goldberg, VP of North America Publishers, LiveRamp, shared post-cookie solutions for publishers at PubForum Miami. He told attendees why publishers should be testing strategies now and how to leverage authentication tools, ID solutions, and data clean rooms.

 Increase CPMs With Authenticated Traffic

“The good news is the majority of the publishers are already preparing for a cookieless world. The issue is how aggressive they are with their approach,” said Goldberg. 

Goldberg emphasized that publishers must start testing solutions before Google makes its move. The time is now when they still have a runway to try out opportunities. At LiveRamp, Goldberg works with North American publishers to deploy the Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) product and suggests that publishers should consider an authenticated traffic strategy that shows, from a CPM standpoint, far superior results against other inventory.

Newsweek, a LiveRamp premium partner, saw impressive increases using  ATS. The publisher saw a total eCPM as high as 224% versus cookieless browsers. Newsweek had an average lift of 52% across all web browsers using ATS against Chrome traffic.

Goldberg highlighted a LIveRamp study looking at 70+ global publishers with ATS. It found a 100% improvement in CPMs on Safari and 113% on Firefox. “When compared to traffic that still has cookies, we’re seeing anywhere from 20 to 50% lift on average from most of the publishers,” said Goldberg.

Addressable Inventory Is a Value Exchange

Goldberg pointed out that many publishers think addressable inventory creates friction. But he said they should look at it from the perspective of creating a value exchange. If publishers provide value to their users, then users are likely to provide something to capture in return, such as an email or a sign-up.

Several authentication strategies publishers have tried over the last couple of years include newsletters, paywalls, sweepstakes, and single sign-on from social media platforms.

“But there is not a silver bullet for any one publisher, and it’s not realistic to think that a publisher is going to ever get to 100% authentication,” said Goldberg. But once they reach the 30 to 40 percent authentication range, publishers then achieve a scale where they can begin to have beneficial conversations with advertisers about their data.

Clean Rooms for Data Collaboration

A division of LiveRamp’s business is the commercial side, where the company works with publishers, advertisers, and agencies on initiatives like data onboarding and clean rooms to ensure they can continue to generate advertising revenue and obtain measurable results.

“It has been the year of data clean rooms. Everybody wants to talk about them,” Goldberg noted. “But then, when you ask who is actually using them, the answer is not too many people. They are not used as often as they are spoken about.”

LiveRamp recently partnered with CafeMedia on deploying LiveRamp’s privacy-first data collaboration platform, which enables marketers to securely connect with readers on one of the largest digital properties on the open web.

ID solutions are being considered a promising alternative to cookies. But publishers are often confused about ID’s purpose and where to begin with so many available solutions in the marketplace. 

“The industry has relied on cookies for so long, and when you have a big cookieless problem, there are going to be a whole slew of companies that are going to try to solve it,” explained Goldberg. 

He does not think LiveRamp is the sole solution and advises publishers to look at multiple options for authenticated and non-authenticated inventory and select the most relevant ones to their business. Publishers should weigh the scale of the solution and its uses on both the demand and the supply sides.

The email hash is at the root of ID solutions and first-party data gathering, but companies such as Apple’s Hide My Email are impacting the availability of authenticated inventory.

 But Goldberg thinks the email hash is here to stay as a stable identifier even though he admits that the degree of authenticated inventory may decrease.   

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