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.

Until recently, marketers and adtech have collected data from internet users at the expense of their privacy – but that’s changing. Consumers have felt a shift in the traditional value exchange that powers the internet: Free content is no longer worth being tracked around the web, and consumers are using the tools available to them to opt out of sharing their data for advertising. 

Today, consumers have a range of tools available to them to protect their personal data:  Browsing in hidden environments (such as Safari or Firefox), using Apple devices, and engaging with Apple’s privacy mechanisms (such as ATT and hide my email), disabling tracking cookies in Chrome, using Google’s “reject all cookies” button in Europe. The list goes on.

The result is that 70% of the open web is already unreachable today. Because of this, buyers are – often unknowingly – spending the majority of their budgets on a 30% sliver of the market, consequently driving up CPMs and diluting a budget’s potential reach and performance, not to mention completely missing a large portion of potential customers. This is akin to spending a huge slice of budget on advertising during a major sports event only to reach three out of 10 viewers.

In this new era of declining reachability, we spoke with Danner Close, Senior Director, Strategic Demand Partnerships at Permutive, about why buyers need to focus on maximizing their budgets, why we need a standard for publishers’ first-party data, and why the future of advertising depends on scalable first-party data across publishers.

Focusing on Maximizing Budget

Lynne d Johnson: Why is it important that the advertising ecosystem not wait for the cookie’s complete demise to begin testing and thinking about how to best use alternatives to the third-party cookie?

Danner Close: Programmatic platforms, which inherently rely on data-driven marketing to provide value to buy-side and supply-side clients, also suffer from this dwindling reachability. By limiting reach to only 30% of online users, a platform is not only reducing a client’s ability to deliver against its entire budget (and therefore discouraging greater budgets in the future) but also costing its clients more to do less. This reality of higher costs, lower reach, and inefficient budgets causes an inherent risk to platforms’ value to their clients and therefore their business models. 

Even when we look at identifiers that attempt to replicate the functionality of a cookie, the same problems arise, including privacy concerns, high opt-out rates, reduced scale, and constricting regulations. Without a privacy-first focus, these identifiers fall prey to the same pitfalls as cookies, inevitably returning the market back to its current state. 

As advertising increasingly feels the pains of declining reachability – a trend that will undoubtedly grow alongside continued regulations and increased consumer opt-outs – it becomes clear that waiting for the complete demise of cookies or relying on unsustainable identity solutions is not a winning strategy. 

The Role of Standardized First-party Data

LdJ: One of the issues with making first-party data available for advertisers is that not all first-party data is created equal. What I mean is not all publishers are categorizing or valuing their first-party data the same way, which makes it harder for buyers to scale across the ecosystem. How can the industry solve this?

DC: Ultimately, solutions that don’t harness the depth and breadth of publisher first-party data inventory won’t be positioned for success in this new era of programmatic advertising.

Fortunately, publishers can help solve this addressability crisis and transform advertising using first-party data derived from their high-value and fully consented audiences. Because publishers are responsible for the consumer opt-in process and can collect valuable data on 100% of consented users without relying on a third-party cookie, they are uniquely equipped to provide the market with rich, scalable data. 

Historically, publishers have used publisher-specific criteria to define their audiences, creating fragmented audience definitions for buyers. For example, publisher A may define an auto-intender as someone who visits pages on vehicle reviews and ratings twice in a 60-day period. Meanwhile, publisher B may instead only require users to visit content related to car maintenance and vehicle recalls once over 90 days to be defined as an auto-intender. 

With standard cohorts adoption and publisher first-party data, buyers can take a single audience definition and activate it across multiple publishers.

This lack of consistency creates a meaningful challenge for buyers who seek to activate unified audience definitions across multiple publishers while preserving user privacy and scalability. 

A powerful solution is standard cohorts, which streamline a buyer’s activation of scalable first-party data by providing standardized, consented audiences that are consistently defined across all enabled publishers without the need for third-party cookies.

By mapping standard cohorts to the industry-standard IAB Audience Taxonomy and leveraging transparent behavioral and contextual inputs, audiences can be segmented based on the same definitions from publisher to publisher. 

With standard cohorts adoption and publisher first-party data, buyers can take a single audience definition and activate it across multiple publishers. Further, by not relying on third-party cookies, buyers can activate across hidden environments, unlocking the 70% of the open web that’s unreachable today. These publisher-informed user groups based on unified interests, characteristics, and behaviors reduce buyer complexity and simplify the activation process and provide privacy-first scalability across 100% of the consented web.

As standard cohorts allow publishers to highlight unique features in their data and audience insights that advertisers can’t get elsewhere, marketers are realizing the benefits. For example, a global beverage CPG brand was able to course-correct over-indexing in Chrome and serve 78% of their impressions in Safari and other cookie-blocked environments, as well as achieve 21% lower CPC and 123% higher CTR compared to the benchmark.

A Consented Ecosystem

Lynne d Johnson: In this new era of privacy-first ethical data, it’s coming down to a division between the data-rich and the data-poor. Not all publishers have the treasure trove of data that a New York Times or Bloomberg has. What is the solution there?

Danner Close: Success in this new era of digital advertising will require infrastructure that empowers publishers to unlock and activate their otherwise untapped first-party data, making it available to the wider ecosystem. Access to responsible, scalable first-party data across a variety of publishers will enable adtech to preserve the health of digital advertising by being an enabler and not an intermediary.

As advertisers seek out privacy-centric addressability solutions, platform partners that make rich, first-party publisher data more accessible to advertisers and monetizable for publishers will enable all parties to thrive in a privacy-forward environment.

The post Why Reachability Matters to the Market appeared first on AdMonsters.

That’s why I was excited when I scrolled through this Twitter thread by Ben Guez, Enterprise Sales, Americas, Kevel, about 6 First-party Data Strategies That Publishers Should Consider Adopting in 2023.

I reached out to him and ask him if he could dig deeper into the strategies he outlined in his thread, including user registration, expanded interest level registrations, SSO (Single Sign On), event-based tracking and analytics, and surveys and polls.

5 First-party Data Strategies For Publishers in 2023

1. User Registrations

Lynne d Johnson: I think a lot of pubs are still taking it slow when it comes to preparing for a life post-cookie. But there are some simple things they should be doing right now in terms of first-party data collection, whether the third-party cookie goes away or not. I saw in your Twitter thread that you talked about user registrations as one of the first things pubs should be thinking about. And what are the challenges that some publishers might face when they take this road?

Ben Guez: User registrations can seem simple at first glance, but I believe they show how publishers are thinking about their product in terms of the cookie landscape — gathering first-party data, event tracking, and other related issues. Better expressions of these product strategies will ultimately help publishers to shield themselves from future privacy challenges, legislation, and shifts that they can’t control while also creating more value for their users.

The post-cookie era will come and publishers need to take steps to build and nurture audiences from their own position in the world the first step in doing that is to take inventory of their touchpoints with users. User registrations are usually one of the first touchpoints that publishers have.

Different categories of publishers will need to have different approaches — but registrations allow you to take more steps together with users. It yields more opportunities to gather first-party data, build better audience cohorts, and then create better publishing products through personalization.

But of course, there are challenges to executing. For one, it’s not always easy to prompt users to sign up – especially if you’re a publisher whose revenue model depends mostly on aggregating traffic, impressions, and ad revenue.

We all know what it’s like to sift through news aggregation sites, social media platforms, and newsletters to find topics of interest where links take us to sites we may have never visited before — and may not ever visit again. This type of rented traffic can make it difficult to retain users or incentivize repeat traffic or user registrations.

This is where some thought needs to be applied to the type of publisher you are, the types of users you have, and why users spend their time with you.

Once publishers determine their value propositions to certain cohorts, they can begin to create even more value; and then try and strategize a way to acquire more registrations.

2. Expanded Interest Level Registrations

LdJ: As an extension of logins, I saw you posted about expanded interest-level registrations. Can you talk a little more about what this is?

1B/ Expanded Interest Level Registrations

Not all publishers can execute this strategy, but with some creativity, even companies that don’t have a social feed can provide some type of progressive user-generated profiling so you can tailor user experiences. pic.twitter.com/rrwBYUwWb4

— Ben Guez (@the_ad_dude) January 9, 2023

BG: I love the idea of expanded interest level fields within the registration of a platform or site because it immediately and inherently builds better audiences for the publisher while also giving them the opportunity to deliver increased value for users.

The caveat is, you must be able to actually deliver the interest topics to users in the first place – but if you can – segmenting particular value segments for users can be instrumental in knowing how your total audience is broken down by particular interests.

User registrations are usually only a few steps, i.e. name > email address > activate email address; but by adding extra steps that point to the future value you will deliver, users will oftentimes feel empowered to offer up more personal data.

A counterpoint is you can definitely go too far with your registration process. If you ask too many questions or get too personal for your category, you risk users deciding the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. So stay laser-focused on your audience, keep looking at your platform from their point of view, and you’ll be in a much better position to succeed.

3. Single Sign On

LdJ: Consent fatigue and password fatigue are real problems when it comes to acquiring consumers’ first-party data.  You talk about publishers adopting Single Sign On (SSO) as a solution for those challenges. But SSO also has many other benefits for pubs. What are some of those benefits?

with your own username & password, but your accompanying data eg {first name} {last name} {email}, etc was shared with them via SSO. pic.twitter.com/T2Vbi1h8mn

— Ben Guez (@the_ad_dude) January 9, 2023

BG: SSO does a lot of things for publishers while simultaneously creating a simpler user experience for customers.

From a user experience perspective, SSO enables customers to login into your platform once for frictionless access to everything you offer. They don’t have to remember 101 passwords, and that’s especially important today with more apps available than ever and with remote workers constantly using multiple technologies for business and personal use.

But the benefits don’t stop there. On the publisher’s side, SSO yields better security almost for the same reasons why it’s a better user experience.

When users are constantly prompted to change passwords and fatigue sets in, it has a chain reaction. Passwords get simpler, which makes their logins less secure, and now you have a growing chance for a security breach.

Taking this one step further, if SSO reduces the number of password resets on the user side, that means it also reduces the amount of time your IT team has to spend managing user resets internally. So it can also provide big time savings for teams which means they can focus on different IT issues altogether.

4. Event-based Tracking

LdJ: You also mentioned event-based tracking as another way that pubs should be thinking about their first-party data. Do you see this becoming more of a trend?

BG: Definitely, and especially alongside more progressive profiling-type initiatives that we’ve already discussed — Expanded Interest Level Registrations. Event-based tracking gives more behavioral insights into how users are interacting with your digital properties.

For instance, it’s one thing if a user says he or she is interested in Sports and Technology in their registration, but event-based tracking allows you to debunk that if they spend all of their time in, say, Arts & Leisure categories.

What’s happening more and more in event tracking is the creation of ML and AI-based historical event models based on user behaviors and then predicting what future users with similar behaviors will do.

A more complex use of event-based tracking can be even more powerful for certain types of publishers, too. What’s happening more and more in event tracking is the creation of ML and AI-based historical event models based on user behaviors and then predicting what future users with similar behaviors will do.

This can allow publishers to create first-party cookies and then invest in valuable segments by serving more tailored content to them in other parts of their product like different pages, email newsletters, an app, and more.

Further, event-based tracking just gives publishers and digital owners more control over their user experience and the data that they can collect from it. This enables them to make better insights into how their products affect user behavior and then make holistic improvements in their product or audience-building activities.

5. Surveys & Polls

LdJ: For the past year or so, I’ve been talking about surveys and polls as a means of acquiring zero-party data — a term that everyone in the industry hates me using. But seriously, surveys and polls are an important part of first-party data aggregation. What’s your thinking on this?

BG: In general, and assuming you’ve cultivated your audience and have a product that users love, surveys and polls can be extremely valuable.

In a recent article How to Come First in First-Party Data, Erin Hennessy, Executive Director of Product Marketing & Insights at The New York Times discusses their ‘back to the basics strategy of using surveys to acquire first-party data even though they have a lot of proprietary and sophisticated audience data as well.

In my opinion, the real key to acquiring meaningful data from users is to build products that people have an interest in and a passion for.

One of my favorite quotes from her is, “…building trust and engagement with those audiences is part of it and then figuring out how to operationalize it…[this] highlights our ability to meet an audience’s interests and passions while also giving us a lot of new signals.”

In my opinion, the real key to acquiring meaningful data from users is to build products that people have an interest in and a passion for.

In other words, both hands wash each other in the zero- or first-party data strategy. If you don’t build a great product, you won’t have the opportunity to ask for meaningful feedback.

There’s no shortcut to building something that lasts. It takes time, effort, and trust to transition from just acquiring data from users to building a relationship with them. Once you cross that chasm you’ve started to take more control over your destiny in the cookieless world. But be careful, with great power comes great responsibility.

The post 5 First-party Data Strategies For Publishers in 2023 appeared first on AdMonsters.

He came to Publisher Forum Nashville to share what he’s learned with other publishers and how he’s used that knowledge to prepare his media brands for the cookieless future. 

Wohl got his start in ad operations, and around 2012-2013, programmatic started picking up. He watched the transition of programmatic tech firsthand, including RTB, prebid, and client-side bidders from the very start. He got to see it all at a decent scale because, at the time, the company that birthed his career, Federated Media, bought another company called Lijit, which today is called Sovrn. 

As a publisher, Wohl constantly evaluates content strategy, traffic patterns, traffic sources, search performance, and all the things a publisher should be concerned about. However, at Sovrn, he sits parallel to leadership, where he advises on the continued development of ad management, now known as Sovrn Ad Management. He acknowledges that monetizing programmatic ads is a critical part of the publishing business and has made it his due diligence to hone in on that aspect. 

His team has coined him the post-cookie savior. Core to his role is figuring out how to keep making programmatic money when the cookie crumbles. First-party data is emerging as a solution. Before publishers start panicking about whether they have enough of it, they should closely evaluate the potential troves of it they have at their fingertips. 

How Cookies Stole Ad Tech

We constantly talk about the future of the cookie, but does anyone remember how we got here? 

If you’ve been operating programmatically, cookies were something that happened to publishers rather than something that they were actively participating in. Third-party cookies came from the buy side’s desire to learn more about people’s online behaviors beyond their own websites, and publishers were left out of this process.

The third-party cookie helps buyers serve people personalized ads. Primarily, it benefits buyers with the ability to retarget hopeful customers across the open web. But cookie-syncing causes latency within the programmatic pipes, slowing down auctions and potentially causing publishers to miss out on quality bids. Third-party cookies can also be used to create fraudulent purchases and page activity.

 While all this transpired, publishers were busy doing other things. Publishers spent their time evaluating inventory quality, focusing on their website’s speed, keeping up with click-through rates, and advancing ad viewability. 

So when Supply Path Optimization (SPO) came along, it grabbed the publisher’s attention. As did ads.txt and Sellers.json. These factors had publishers’ attention, but now publishers are scrambling to find cookieless solutions.

Since publishers’ heads were in other clouds for so long, they missed out on learning more about different behaviors, like user syncing and cross-site tracking, according to Wohl. The cookie ending means it’s over for these aspects as well. The end of third-party cookies has already come to Safari and Firefox, which means buying is only happening on Chrome. In Salon’s case, Wohl pointed out that he’s seeing less than half of CPMs from Safari compared with Chrome. 

The cookie apocalypse isn’t something we should wait for. It’s happening now. Instead of publishers wanting to get Safari CPMs where Chromes are, think about the reality: Chrome CPMs will drop to Safari lows by 2023. 

Bridging the Gap

In an open market programmatic world, cookies make inventory addressable for publishers. At the same time, Seller Defined Audiences (SDA) has become one of the go-to concepts that the industry is starting to wrap its collective head around as a cookie replacement. But in his keynote address, Wohl also reassured publishers not to sleep on Bid Enrichment. 

“As a publisher, what more information can you put into the bid request to send to the buy side to benefit the value of that inventory?” Wohl asked the publishers in the packed room. “It doesn’t just have to be Seller Defined Audiences. It could be things like viewability or contextual categories or audience segments.”

Wohl also highlighted the importance of the buy and sell sides being on the same page. For example, he watched Safari rates on Salon.com drop in 2020, and advertisers blocked anything COVID-related. He made it his goal to try and improve the value of his inventory. Still, if the buy side doesn’t adopt these practices, there is no point. 

 Publishers need to take the lead and start supplying the buy side with the best data that shows the value of their inventory. They need to focus on how many requests from all participants are necessary to get the correct information to the buyer, and exchange partners could help pubs accomplish this by creating scale.

“But I don’t have First-party Data”

Publishers often don’t fully realize the extent of the first-party data they have access to. It’s important to audit your data and determine exactly what you have that you can pass. We all have first-party data; we don’t know all we have and how best to use it. Here’s what Wohl suggests.

Contextual Categories: What’s on your page? As publishers, we can index our web pages first and use that information in what we pass to buyers. Page activity is critical; publishers can send that information out to buyers immediately without hoarding that data. Also, first-party data is built into the Wrapper, which means it can be a function of the bid request to grab contextual information and send it out. 

Newsletters: Once ID vendors said authenticated traffic was the way to access their responses, Salon grew its newsletter program to six different products. Now when users click, an email address comes through with it. So, even if people never sign up for your site, if they click through anything in your newsletter, it presents a source of authenticated traffic that we all have the potential to generate. 

User Profiles: This is information that users voluntarily give to a publisher. Some pubs even use their house inventory to run polls and ask users questions. This is another source of rich first-party data.

Behavioral Audience Segments: For publishers who can effectively leverage their first-party data on-site and off-site, audience segmentation is a viable path to increasing revenue. With the right analytics in place, publishers can build high-value advertising inventory. As well, Prebid adapters allow pubs to supply attributes related to their content and users, and then apply permissions so only certain bidders can access those attributes. 

How Can Publishers Better Connect With Their Readers?

As privacy regulations mount, it’s becoming increasingly important for publishers to create deeper relationships with their readers. For readers to give over their data, the value exchange must be clear and worthwhile. 

Wohl pointed out that the sell side could do more to better connect with their readers. These are just a few ways that publishers can advance their connections with their readers:

Alleviate sign-on friction with SSO: This is similar to the ease of capturing data with an email newsletter click, but in this case, you can grab a user’s email address if they sign in with SSO. Knowing where your traffic referrals are coming from, publishers can prompt users to sign in with that specific social media account. At Salon, they are building particular landing pages on the website that are tailored to the referral source. This way, if someone visits the site from Twitter, Salon can provide a user experience they are familiar with. If users come from Facebook, they can show them different content based on that particular traffic source. 

Return Readers – Showing consumers what they expect instead of what the publisher thinks is best allows publishers to capture data and build a relationship with their readers from the moment they sign on. Making the experience more personalized to each user will only bring them back to your website. Salon customizes user profiles of return readers; for instance, if a user is tired of seeing a certain amount of ads per page, Salon can alter that experience. 

Anonymize your Users: Publishers can use IDs and identity obfuscation to create anonymous user profiles. This enables publishers to let people sign in and trust that they are not revealing the user’s identity but rather the narrative, which includes factors like age and gender. 

The Category Frequency: Category frequency is about using behaviors for messaging your users. How do we connect with them better if a reader returns to keep reading food content? It will be a great idea to ask them if they want to sign up for a food newsletter. Suppose you have constant traffic from a person to an article by one of your journalists who also has a newsletter. Then it makes sense to let that person know that the writer has a newsletter they should sign up for. It’s essential to engage with people based on their behaviors.

The post A Post-cookie Survival Guide for Publishers – Tips From PubForum Nashville appeared first on AdMonsters.

The first era of the internet was created in the 90s. It was characterized by static, text, and graphics. The second era of the internet, our current phase, was dominated by social media. Web2 is characterized by its interactivity but is dominated by larger companies such as Google and Facebook which own a monopoly on the data surrounding content creation and advertising. 

Web3 is proposed to remedy the monopoly of these larger companies. It will give power back to consumers to own their own data and allow publishers to create stronger relationships with them. 

In addition, it is believed that Web3 will address many of today’s consumer privacy concerns, specifically those related to third-party tracking cookies. According to Tre Titone, Web3 could “fundamentally alter the ownership and governance paradigms established with Web 2.0.”

The driving force behind this movement is to leverage blockchain technology to create an inclusive web where people are part of the value exchange and have control over their data and privacy.

What Is Web3?

Luke Mulks, Vice President of Business Operations at Brave Software, asserts that the “driving force behind this movement is to leverage blockchain technology to create an inclusive web where people are part of the value exchange and have control over their data and privacy.” 

The term Web3 was first used in 2014 by Gavin Wood, a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain. Most theorists classify Web3 into three main categories which include decentralization, ownership, and transparency. 

Decentralization shifts the storage of information from one central system to a multitude of systems. While in Web2 data is stored on one server belonging to one particular owner, Web3 ensures that there is no single authority on data collection and distribution. 

Ownership of data is enabled by decentralization. Recently, more people became aware that within Web2 their data was being collected and used for profit by tech companies. In Web3, users will have ownership of their data and decide how to dispose of it. Consumers will be able to sell their data and choose who to send it to and how it will be used. 

Blockchain technologies provide immediate transparency to all transactions. Consumers will see more clearly how publishers use their data and who they share it with. This will significantly shift the processes within the advertising ecosystem.

Web3 and Its Influence on the Advertising Ecosystem

Many laud the positive impacts that Web3 could have on the advertising industry if it is fully implemented. However, industry experts believe that more work must be done for agencies to connect with consumers. Since consumer data will no longer be stored by a small number of owners, digital marketing will match publishers and advertisers directly to people without any third-party involvement. 

Vitaly Gerko, CPO and Co-Founder at OTM, insists that “to stay relevant and successful in Web3, brands will have to build closer relationships with their consumers. In this new iteration of the internet, catching users’ attention will require more effort, but at the same time, Web3 will provide more opportunities to build tighter connections with the consumer.”

In addition, Web3 is projected to offer more accurate data. Publishers will have direct access to their actual consumers instead of the image of the consumer that is presented by a vendor. Essentially, Web3 marketing will focus on “building meaningful relationships with your customers and creating partnerships that benefit everyone involved.” Publishers will need to reframe their thinking of customers as numbers in a database and more as people.

Untrustworthy systems, such as third-party cookies will be obsolete. Brendan Eich, Co-Founder & CEO, Brave, highlights that “cookies were invented in order for web-based applications written in JavaScript to preserve state on each local device. The problem with cookies however is that they are created and controlled by service providers, not the user.”

Ad tech within Web 3 will not center around building massive databases and squeezing out huge margins from the advertising supply data chain. It will provide ad tech solutions that benefit the user, publishers, and advertisers. In addition, it could help save revenue that would otherwise go to third-party intermediaries.  

Web3 in Real-Time

Of course, Web3 is still in the early stages of development and it is hard to determine how or when it will begin to affect publishers and advertisers.

Although industry experts assert that it could be smart for the ad tech industry to begin experimenting with Web3. Brett Rakestraw, Director of Strategy for creative branding firm Elevation, insists that “It will affect brands on virtually every level, and the sooner brand stakeholders start experimenting and connecting with their audiences in these new ways, the better.” 

The most high-profile experimentation with Web3 in recent years has been NFTs or non-fungible tokens. NFTs allow publishers to deliver unique value to customers, from specific collectibles like magazine covers and tokens. About $13.8 billion was spent on NFTs in 2021. 

In addition, Mulks alludes to a Web3 dApp called Skiff that offers an end-to-end encrypted email service. 

“Skiff is a dApp that you can sign in with your wallet directly from the browser,” says Mulks. “Instead of going through an authentication process with an email and password that is susceptible to data breaches, you just use your wallet and sign in with your private key from your wallet. You can access your email based on your wallet ID.” 

Wallets could also be used by consumers to connect their identity to sites, and instead of logging in they would sign for transactions using their privacy key. This would reduce any worries of data leakage. Although wallets enable identity portability for consumers, they could still expose them to cyberattacks. 

For anybody to understand the future of advertising, they need to focus on the future of privacy, and the future of data ownership and control, not blockchain. And if you focus there, you will see a very clear future.

Criticisms of Web3

Mulks argues that the biggest challenge with Web3 is determining its usability. 

“I think that the biggest barrier to Web3 has been usability and bringing some value to the market,” says Mulks. “I believe it’s a short-term problem. With any nascent technology, the early adoption phase is always like, when you’re going to have the most extreme Wild West stuff happening such as people getting scammed.” 

John Roa, CEO at Caden, maintains the belief that the decentralized web has a usability issue. Furthermore, Roa argues that the conversation around Web3, or what he refers to as the Semantic Web, has lost its initial purpose. 

“The conversation around Web3 has over-indexed into NFTs and cryptocurrency,” says Roa. “There was a former definition before it sucked into the crypto vacuum. The definition for the last probably 10 to 15 years has been this evolution into the Semantic Web which was to create standardization and normalization of data on the web.” 

Instead, Roa advocates focusing specifically on privacy. 

“The bigger disrupter is privacy and regulation compared to ‘Web3’,” says Roa. “For anybody to understand the future of advertising, they need to focus on the future of privacy, and the future of data ownership and control, not blockchain. And if you focus there, you will see a very clear future.”

The post Web3: Future of the Internet and Digital Advertising or Off Chute Experiment? appeared first on AdMonsters.

While there are pros to cross-site tracking, the heftiest con that comes with all of this user data flying around aimlessly on the internet is the fact that personal data is exposed without transparent consumer oversight or control over how their personal data is being collected and processed for advertising purposes.

We are all tired of third-party cookie notifications popping up anytime we stop by a webpage, and it appears there just might be a solution to retain accessibility in a cookieless universe.

Publishers have longed for a privacy-safe way to make their own data and site traffic translatable programmatically across many sites and sellers. With less than a year to go until the demise of third-party cookies in Chrome, there seems to be a new kid on the block who will serve the same purpose in a less intrusive way.

What Is Seller Defined Audiences?

Project Rearc, created by the IAB Tech Lab, has spent the past two years carrying their firstborn, whom we now know as seller-defined audiences (SDA). The solution presents a strategy for communicating first-party audience information without disclosing user identity.

The Tech Lab made a commitment to address consumer demands for personalization and privacy, and they have successfully fulfilled Rearc’s goals of creating new standards of behavior, codes of conduct, and enabling technologies to bring forth a new solution to privacy woes.

This approach intends to:

1. Support scalable, privacy-centric monetization of open web content and services while reducing disruption to business activities and supply chain behavior.
2. Improve existing open standards like IAB Tech Lab’s Content and Audience taxonomies, the OpenRTB specification, and the Data Transparency Standard to ensure a dynamic and competitive open ecosystem while also incentivizing clear and accountable data access and use that’s in line with regional privacy expectations.

The SDA approach intends to address marketer and publisher concerns as they pertain to audience addressability, as well as privacy and security concerns of sharing data with unauthorized recipients, and it will put publishers in a position to sell over 1,600 versions of contextual audiences to advertisers and “standardize these audiences for buying facilitation across multiple publishers.”

Why use Seller Defined Audiences?

When Publishers go the SDA route they can activate first-party data for buyers without user identifier data being shared with external platforms.

Usually, if a publisher wanted to activate first-party audience data and allow advertisers to buy against it, they would have two options:

• Push the data from a DMP to a DSP and make it available for buyers.
• Push the data from a DMP to an SSP and create a private marketplace deal (PMP) segmented by audience attributes

Either route requires a publisher to share user data and segment metadata with another platform. Let’s try the analogy of a fish swimming in a lake without sharks compared to the ocean with deadly sharks. The third-party cookie is the fish who initially swam in a lake that he knows is safe and free of sharks (publisher database), but when he decides to swim out into the Pacific (an external database,) he will probably get eaten by a shark.

Once the user identifier moves onto an external database, the publisher no longer has control of the data, meaning they cannot guarantee the protection of user data.

The seller-defined audience approach highlights the potential to enhance user privacy and secure the business value of first-party media.

Are Pubs Ready to Try Seller Defined Audiences?

While many publishers are thrilled about the SDA concept, some are far from convinced, as noted in a recent AdExchanger article.

Stephanie Layser, News Corp’s VP of Data, Identity, and Ad Tech Products and Platforms, is in favor of SDAs:.

“That, to me, is a defensible solution in the long term versus some things that rely on an IP address or email addresses,” Layser mentioned at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in February.

Jana Meron, SVP of Programmatic and Data Strategy at Insider, had a contrasting opinion:

“I don’t think any IDs belong on the open web,” she said. “The ID belongs where you have to log in.”

Insider has done a great job of selling the value of their first-party data to advertisers, so Meron’s opposing POV makes a lot of sense.

Benjamin Dick, Senior Director of Product at IAB Tech Lab understands that perspective:

“We wouldn’t want to suggest that this is in any way an exclusive form of monetization for any publisher – let me stress that as much as I can,” he said. “But for those who are comfortable competing on the underlying quality of their first-party audiences, this is a valuable approach to complement other approaches.”

From the looks of it, IAB Tech Lab still has some work to do as SDA is not the privacy savior just yet, but it very much can be in the near future. For now, we advise you to consider it as a tool for maintaining addressability. And of course, it will be extremely easier to get started with SDA if the SSPs are on board.

The post What Is Seller Defined Audiences? appeared first on AdMonsters.

This solution developed by the IAB Tech Lab is a proof of concept released last week as a result of Project Rearc launched two years ago. The SDA draft spec is intended to encourage publishers to work together to monetize first-party data on the open web.

We know this idea is met with a mix of “finally” and “yeah right” depending on where you stand but here’s the promise — seller-defined audiences will allow publishers to scale their own audience data and “transact programmatically across multiple sites and sellers in a privacy-safe way.” The spec will position publishers to sell more than 1,600 versions of contextual audiences to advertisers and standardize these audiences for buying facilitation across multiple publishers.

Publishers remain in the driver’s seat, choosing which adtech companies to share their data with and advertisers will buy through participating DSPs.

Most publishers have been eating and sleeping tactics around first-party data and contextual targeting in preparation for a cookieless future. Seller-defined audiences could make this effort even more profitable, providing multiple revenue streams from both owned ad space and audience targeting on other sites.

First-party data and contextual targeting alone are nearly impossible to scale as is today, but their value guarantees higher CPMs based on relevance and precision. The SDA solution benefits pubs of all sizes as it puts further emphasis on what all sites were initially built on. While this initiative is only successful if publishers band together for the greater good, the payoff could be worth it.

However, the SDA spec does not come without concern and a boatload of questions. From privacy advocates closely examining if this crosses the line of consent to opportunities for fraud as advertisers have to rely on publishers to provide honest and accurate audience data.

The IAB Tech Lab seems to have a viable answer for every concern, from limiting the targeting data to an individual URL to data vetting by the Transparency Standard program and the compliance program that will monitor the quality and legitimacy of a publisher’s audience.

All ducks seem to be in a row. Now, who will be the first to sign up?

The post Never Fear, IAB Seller-Defined Audiences Is Here appeared first on AdMonsters.

Top of mind for the entire advertising ecosystem: data, privacy, and trust. These areas will have major implications as the ad tech industry seeks unified identity solutions to solve for a cookieless future.

Yahoo is already making significant strides into planning for the third-party cookie’s demise through ConnectID, Yahoo’s link to its proprietary first-party data. They provide an environment created with the transparency consumers seek, with 91% associating the Yahoo brand with trust.  

Advertisers also want a safe space with more than three-quarters saying trust, quality, and brand safety are the most important qualities of premium inventory, according to Yahoo’s internal data.

Publishers and marketers are turning to identity solutions to help with trust. The central reason publishers are adopting new identity solutions is data privacy (59%), while marketers say it is to support audience targeting (52%). 

Powering First-party Data Built on Trust

There is a direct link between consumer trust and privacy. Consumers want to know how their data is being collected and used by publishers and advertisers. Yahoo discovered they have genuine privacy concerns, with more than half of consumers feeling they are being tracked online more than ever and 65% agreeing that online ads are more intrusive than they used to be. Because of this, it is crucial that publishers and advertisers be transparent with consumers, empowering them to make informed decisions about how their data may be used.

Along with quality and content, Yahoo found that 60% of advertisers said a publisher’s first-party data, targeting capabilities, and ability to target at the user level with consent are most important.

“Our consumers come to Yahoo for their daily email, their news, and a lot more. We manage all these trusted connections with our users and in turn, we extend that trust to the advertising community. Our advertisers get the first-party data from our users who have consented for its use on our ad tech platforms,” shares Yahoo’s Senior Director of Ads Targeting, Identity & Trust Products, Giovanni Gardelli.

A Privacy-first Solution for the Shifting Identity Landscape

With Yahoo’s unified stack, there are two primary ways that advertisers can target individuals. “We offer both deterministic and contextual targeting for advertisers that are available on both our first-party supply as a publisher and also across the thousands of third-party publishers that we partner with,” says Gardelli.

To leverage that deterministic data, Yahoo launched a key component of its identity strategy 12 months ago with Yahoo ConnectID. It serves as part of Yahoo’s unified identity solution and draws on data from millions of opted-in users across Yahoo’s global portfolio of owned and operated media properties. Yahoo ConnectID addresses privacy concerns by keeping the data within Yahoo’s walls.

Yahoo ConnectID has been scaling quickly. During the last month, over 1,900 advertisers have bought Yahoo ConnectID supply. There has been a three-time increase in advertiser spend on supply among Yahoo ConnectID adopters on Firefox and Safari buys via the Yahoo DSP. 

More than 12,000 web domains have implemented Yahoo ConnectID, including Yahoo properties and leading publishers like Cafe Media, BuzzFeed, The Arena Group, and many more in the works. By leveraging Yahoo ConnectID, ad management provider Mediavine saw an 80% increase in eCPM rates on Firefox and Safari. 

Yahoo is also leaning into third-party data sources through direct integrations with its interoperability partners. Interoperability allows Yahoo ConnectID to match with third-party IDs for seamless audience activation within the Yahoo DSP, while also growing publishers’ potential pool of demand.

Navigating Towards a Cookieless Future

Not only is the deprecation of cookies causing issues with identity, but there are also complications brought on from privacy laws, consumer protection regulations, and iOS App Tracking Transparency (ATT).

Apple’s privacy updates that launched with iOS 14 resulted in 62% of people opting-out of device tracking for ads. This non-addressable inventory, where consent is not given, is the other side of the identity coin. It prevents publishers from knowing the identity of their users when they are not logged in or coming from unknown mobile web traffic. 

Ad tech is taking steps to contend with these identity challenges. Three in four marketers said they were likely to test new or further identity partners in the near future.

Yahoo recently launched Next-Gen Solutions for ID-less inventory, which complements their ID-based inventory solution, Yahoo ConnectID. Gardelli sees having an integrated identity solution that works for both identity-led and identity-less environments as the next step in Yahoo’s progress.

“We see ourselves as a continued support to the publisher and ad ops communities through the transition and a partner around privacy, trust, brand safety, and all the other needs central to the cookieless days that lie ahead,” he said.

The post Are You Prepared to Thrive in a Cookieless World? appeared first on AdMonsters.

That would be a big mistake. 

There’s actually no time like the present for all of the cookieless alternatives to start stepping up to the plate and showing what they’re really made of, and for pubs to get to testing right away. 

Single Sign-On solutions are one such open web tool that’s gaining massive ad tech support. But one of the major barriers to any of these solutions reaching scale is consumer consent fatigue. 

In that vein, Criteo, Prebid, and other industry leaders have set out to help solve this issue through Prebid’s Project Management Committee (PMC) which is responsible for establishing, prioritizing, and building industry roadmap items.

The goal of this PMC is to align with industry leaders and create an open-source and interoperable single sign-on (SSO) solution, helping to reduce the friction between consumers and publishers in the cookieless future, while supporting logged-in and logged out scenarios. 

We spoke with Jordan Cauley, Director of Product at Mediavine, who co-chairs the SSO PMC (alongside Criteo Chief Product Officer, Todd Parsons) within Prebid about opportunities for pubs over the next year and a half and why Prebid is central to the open web’s future.

Lynne d Johnson: Mediavine has O&O sites and also helps thousands of publishers successfully monetize their sites as well. What opportunities are you seeing for publishers over the next 18 months and what do you think some of their biggest challenges will be?

Jordan Cauley: The next 18 months are going to be crucial for publishers. First, the great news: Demand has rebounded from lows during the pandemic and programmatic ad prices are surpassing pre-pandemic comparisons.

Also on the opportunistic side, we’re seeing advertisers begin to trust video from the Open Exchange almost as much as they’ve historically trusted deal IDs. Outstream video is becoming as trusted as instream. Mediavine is continuing to prioritize innovation of video products, which is why we’ve built our own instream and outstream video players. The SSO committee is working to build an open solution that will enable buyers to have enough scale to purchase open video inventory and empower publishers to tap into that demand through a more direct and consolidated way.

The biggest challenges publishers can expect over the next 18 months are the same, in my opinion, as the whole advertising ecosystem: addressability, frequency capping, and attribution. With the deprecation of the third-party cookie, we must provide alternatives to help publishers and advertisers better understand and serve their audiences. Solutions like contextual and first-party data will be key to addressing audiences accurately.

LdJ: Speaking of identity, you co-chair the Single Sign-On PMC within Prebid where stakeholders from all across the advertising ecosystem are working to bring an open-source SSO technology to market. Can you share why you see Prebid.Org as a valuable community and why you wanted to invest in taking a leadership role?

JC: The ad tech ecosystem contains unique stakeholders and pressures, so it’s important that ad tech companies at every corner of the market work cohesively through the complexities that come with the territory. A group like Prebid has a low barrier to entry and allows for vital industry collaboration. 

My goal for joining the SSO committee was to share the knowledge gained from Mediavine’s unique position in the industry. Because Mediavine operates across eight thousand domains, we have a valuable perspective of the problems facing the industry and are motivated to offer a seamless SSO solution to publishers.

More than two years ago we began developing our own SSO/proprietary toolkit, Grow.me, to help address the evolving industry landscape. In turn, I can use the feedback from our internal efforts to help guide the Prebid SSO project into a product supported by large and small publishers, owned-and-operated publishers, and publishers who have an outside company managing their identity solutions.

LdJ: As a global leader of Prebid.org you’re starting to test this new SSO, what are the greatest challenges you expect the SSO working group to solve?

JC: I think the greatest challenge the committee is helping address is to encourage collaboration. Traditionally, advertisers, DSPs, SSPs, publishers, and other players in the ecosystem have operated relatively independently. 

There’s a push toward vertical integration in this evolutionary time for the web. Groups like the SSO Committee and Prebid as a whole have to bring the disconnected parts of the ecosystem closer together and view the space more holistically.

The end solution aims to bring the entire ecosystem together to deliver better relationships between users, publishers, and advertisers with opt-in-based experiences for both content and advertising.

LdJ: There’s been a lot of interest developing around both authenticated and unauthenticated traffic for publishers. But initially, it seemed, the industry was primarily focused on authenticated traffic, where the user shared their email directly with the publisher. What are the key differences between the two experiences for users and their use cases?

JC: Authenticated traffic is traffic that the publisher has been able to verify by a reader logging into their site. A reader understands they have provided their email address and then verifies that email address in exchange for access to an exclusive feature or service. The partially anonymous ID or unauthenticated traffic asks less of readers and users. 

In this case, readers accept an agreement that doesn’t require them to supply their full email address or another piece of personally identifiable information (PII). Instead, it provides a cross-domain common identifier that can be used for many of the same cases as a third-party cookie, but with clearer controls in the hands of the users. 

A user with a semi-anonymous ID can manage some preferences for privacy, can be frequency capped as needed, or even retargeted in some cases. This creates opportunities to build trust in the relationship with a publisher, an advertiser, and ultimately with the proposed entity that is managing an SSO.

I believe the key is developing both options together and in doing so, creating a “good, better, best” mentality. “Good” being contextual signals, “better” being semi-anonymous traffic and “best” being fully authenticated traffic stemming from relationships with the users. This mentality can improve efficiency for advertisers and revenue for publishers without being dogmatic about an all-in strategy that is being actively combated by browser vendors and a public concerned with privacy on the web.

LdJ: And do you see a flow between authenticated and unauthenticated traffic? How will it work?

JC: I think the flow between fully authenticated and semi-anonymous traffic is going to depend very much on publishers and in many ways, advertisers. The committee is still working through the options on the table, but if a semi-anonymous ID user develops the trust to elevate to a fully authenticated relationship? There is a great deal of value in this flow, potentially improving things for all parties.

The post Can SSO Bring the Advertising Ecosystem Together? A Q&A With Mediavine’s Jordan Cauley appeared first on AdMonsters.

That’s what every buyer and seller wants to know.

And now that Google has called a major timeout, and FLoC is potentially being revised to focus on topic groups as opposed to interest groups, finding alternative solutions that can help solve for the loss of the cookie right now has become more important than ever.

It’s also the right time for publishers to start thinking about building stronger relationships with their audiences to think beyond first-party data towards getting started with zero-party data. The strategy: obtaining consumer’s consent to share their data to receive personalized experiences.

But once you have that data you need a means of making that data valuable. You need to be able to authenticate your data to power retargeting, audience building, insights, and attribution.

We spoke with Dev Pragad, CEO, Newsweek, about how the publisher is building better relationships with their audience toward the goal of zero-party data exchange, as well as how they’re using LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS)  to drive CPMs. We also spoke with Scott Howe, CEO, LiveRamp, to learn more about ATS, how Newsweek drove a total eCPM as high as 224%, with an average lift of 52% across all web browsers using it, as well as how publishers should evaluate partners to survive and thrive in the cookieless future.

Lynne d Johnson: Although consumers have found cookie-tracking mixed with programmatic advertising to be creepy, most consumers still want personalized experiences when they visit websites and also to have a seamless experience across devices and properties when dealing with one brand. Can you talk about why zero-party data is the future of digital media and advertising?

Dev Pragad: As a publisher, and as any business in general, it’s necessary to create an environment that is safe and transparent, fostering trust with your audience. When that’s achieved, readers feel comfortable sharing their opinions, intentions, and objectives. In turn, that creates the perfect scenario for zero-party data exchange. If users are inclined to share interests and preferences with a publisher, it gives them vital insights into what products to develop and where best to invest.

LdJ: What are some of the challenges publishers face with getting consumers to share their data and what are some of the strategies they can employ to achieve this goal? Can you provide some examples of the strategies and tactics that Newsweek is using to authenticate first-party data?

DP: With consumers’ growing concerns about privacy and misuse of information, readers are unsurprisingly being mindful about sharing their data. As a result, publishers need to find avenues for adding value to the relationship — through content or creative features, including polls and quizzes — where readers’ are prone to share data in exchange for access and participation. In addition to these sorts of solutions, we are investing in a wider mix of newsletter content to heighten our connection to our users. Keeping a clean database of engaged readers is key for this process.  

LdJ: One thing we keep hearing publishers say is that they’re only going to invest resources in cookieless solutions where they can guarantee that advertisers will buy. The end of cookies seems like a perfect opportunity for publishers to have the upper hand. How is Newsweek thinking about this? Do you have plans to onboard advertiser data, or provide other services to advertisers where you’re helping them to understand their audiences better?

DP: We think of it positively. It is an opportunity to improve user experience and it gives us better control of the data — all being shared in a privacy-safe manner. Matching user-provided data and interests to advertiser needs first-hand would ultimately provide advertisers with better results for their marketing campaigns.

LdJ: Let’s talk about revenue. One of the major concerns that publishers have about life without cookies is an overwhelming reduction in revenues. Is this a concern for Newsweek? What are some of the results that you’re already seeing with your tests of alternative identifiers both in terms of revenue and also in terms of advertiser ROI? 

DP: Newsweek has been concerned about the depreciation of the cookie and our team has been experimenting with potential ID solutions. In particular, we’ve already seen some success with LiveRamp’s Authenticated Solution (ATS). Leveraging  ATS, we have seen a CPM lift of 55% on Google Chrome browsers, and a 93% and 60% CPM lift on Firefox and Safari, respectively. The lift in specific browsers demonstrates the significant impact ATS can drive as an alternative to third-party cookies.

 LdJ: How does ATS work and how does it help publishers prepare to survive in a world without cookies?

Scott Howe: LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) allows publishers to connect authenticated inventory to marketer demand without third-party cookies or other device-based identifiers. ATS provides enhanced user privacy by offering users control over how their data is being used with a single opt-out that is effective for platforms and publishers who work with LiveRamp. 

The industry is embracing ATS because it is a better solution than what it is replacing. Our authentication solution is the only truly neutral, omnichannel, and global technology available. 

Benefits of using ATS include:

• Relevant, addressable, and measurable consumer interactions due to its omnichannel, people-based approach
• Placing consumer transparency and control above all else. It champions the importance of first-party, authenticated relationships, enabling a direct connection between a publisher’s authenticated first-party data and marketer demand. 
• Support of innovative and privacy-centric reader engagement models, resulting in higher yields for publishers.
• Increased audience addressability in cookieless environments.
• Increased advertiser demand while maintaining a responsive user experience.

As a result, publishers make more money, marketers generate higher returns, and consumers gain greater control and transparency over their data. 

ATS mimics the very approach Google has taken but enables these capabilities for non-walled garden publishers so that the open web can compete on a level playing field and publishers can continue to provide the free content we all enjoy. Through login events, publishers can connect data with their ad tech stack. And by leveraging ATS controls, publishers always remain in control of their data.  

LdJ: A couple of things that many publishers worry about with authenticating traffic is disrupting the user experience, as well as sign-in fatigue across the open web. What are some of the ways the industry can solve for this?

SH: One of the main benefits to authenticating traffic is that it champions the importance of first-party, consented relationships, enabling a direct connection between a publisher’s authenticated first-party data and marketer demand. In speaking with publishers, there is nothing more valuable than providing the experiences consumers expect and welcome, so building first-party relationships is a critical foundation for success. When done right, a first-party data strategy will result in a deeper understanding of a reader/user. 

When and where you ask consumers to authenticate (and provide some level of first-party data) requires continuous testing and iteration. Whether it’s your website or a mobile app, be sure to take every opportunity to offer compelling content before asking for an authentication or a device prompt like Apple’s ATT is displayed. What’s key here is understanding when to make “the ask” to convert. Too often, gates or permission dialogues are forced early in the process. With so much focus on collecting data, this is understandable, but can also cause a poor experience early in an engagement.

From there, you can nurture a relationship by providing content recommendations on the same topics or from similar authors the consumer may enjoy (e.g. “weekend edition”, newsletter, etc.) to encourage further engagement. If you’re subscription-based and provide content that resonates with consumers, they may become a paying customer. Regardless of whether they pay or authenticate, you will be able to strengthen first-party relationships and deliver more relevant experiences to consumers.

LdJ: How can publishers either maintain or achieve even higher yields with a solution like yours versus the third-party cookie?

Paving the way for a cookieless world starts where it always has: with the very companies who are producing the content we consume and love—publishers.  

In order to maintain or achieve higher yields with an authenticated solution like ours, publishers need not authenticate a disproportionate amount of your audience to generate meaningful upside. While some publishers enjoy authentication rates in excess of 90% given their subscription content, others are worried about making the transition.  Even at low levels of authentication – 10% – 15% — the impact can be disproportionately valuable.  

Take an illustrative, but absolutely representative, example of a publisher authenticating only 10% of its visitors. We know that audiences who trust your site enough to provide an email, mobile number, or other lightweight authentication, tend to be heavier users. Assuming your authenticated users consume just 50% more content on average, 10% of users equals 15% of total page views. And across all publishers, we’re seeing authenticated traffic monetize at 125% better yields than cookies, which suggests that these same users contribute disproportionate revenue. 

The results we’re seeing with partners like Newsweek are incredible. In a world of true user authentication, everyone wins.

The Newsweek team saw total lift in eCPM as high as 224%, with an average lift of 52% across all web browsers. The lift in specific browsers indicates the significant impact ATS can drive as an alternative to third-party cookies and in cookieless environments. 

Because both Firefox and Safari no longer enable audience reach with third-party cookies, the lift on both browsers demonstrates how ATS enables a new, more premium channel based on authentications where marketers and advertisers can reach an audience they were not previously able to.

On mobile devices, publishers are also seeing a higher CPM than on cookieless mobile web inventory. Through ATS, Newsweek also achieved a CPM lift of 53% on iOS. 

These CPM improvements illustrate the incremental revenue opportunities achieved by leveraging an authenticated solution. Data-driven publishers that have built first-party relationships over time are in a position to leverage their authenticated data to enable marketers to target audiences and measure campaign outcomes with people-based identity — something buying on third-party cookies was never able to achieve. 

LdJ: As publishers start looking at alternatives to cookies, how should they be evaluating partners?

SH: The loss of cookies will have a major effect on the industry. When evaluating technology vendors, we recommend publishers (and brands) take the initiative to work with proven partners. While it’s an exciting time to reinvent, there is no perfect solution. Ultimately, publishers need to use a combination of tools to address the post-cookie ecosystem. The mix will vary based on need: authentications, browser cohorts, and unauthenticated publisher data. 

Here are four criteria publishers should focus on as they are evaluating technology partners, regardless of the solution: 

1. Meet modern expectations for user privacy and security. Does the vendor you’re evaluating have a thoughtful approach and key workflows to support consumer privacy and security that is ready to adapt as privacy regulations evolve?
2. Make the value exchange crystal clear. Does the business clearly explain the value exchange to consumers? Does it deploy robust disclosure, notice, and control mechanisms? We see authentications as a mechanism for transparency. Only when people have a transparent understanding of this value exchange will they feel more comfortable and able to make an informed choice about offering their personal information.
3. Be effective, omnichannel, and competitive with what exists in other channels. Is the solution scaled, competitive and interoperable in order to be effective not only on the web, but in mobile, offline, CTV, and beyond? Identity solutions help ensure consumer dollars continue to be spent on the web, support free or low-cost content, and promote ongoing customer engagement across the tech ecosystem. 
4. Choose a partner with global scale. Content and commerce require reaching consumers and marketers around the world. Even predominantly U.S.-based companies serve customers across many markets. Naturally, this requires a solution that scales globally and can help publishers make the marketing connections they need to drive the business outcomes they desire.

As a publisher, if the solution you’re vetting meets these criteria, you’re on the right path to effectively maintain the addressability enterprises need with the privacy and security features consumers deserve.

The post Newsweek Sees Huge CPM Lifts With LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution appeared first on AdMonsters.