As we hit the home stretch in the Presidential election and other federal and statewide races, digital advertising spend continues to flourish.

But, candidates and their marketing teams may be fumbling on a key component of their playbook that could be the difference between first and second place: advertising to cookieless voters.

Google’s about-face (or flip flop) on deprecating cookies could lead advertisers — including political ones — to abandon their cookieless plans, but that would be shortsided as I explain below.

While the bulk of media attention is on the presidential election, there are also 468 Congressional races and a multitude of local elections. I would go as far as to say that a few politicians could sway their races by embracing cookieless, especially if their opponent neglects over half of the open web using Safari or Firefox browsers for example. There is an ocean of previously unreachable voters right in front of you, the billions of US consumers viewing content on cookieless browsers via mobile and desktop web.

It’s incredibly important to reach consumers where they consume content across mobile, desktop, or CTV. With emerging digital channels growing, those who do not advertise in cookieless environments may miss out on this campaign season’s biggest advantage.

Two Roads Ahead for the Candidates

Elections, at least in the United States, are often about choosing between two options. It’s either Republican or Democrat; left wing or right wing; yes or no on a proposition. Political candidates have some duality choices as well: whether to advertise only with third-party cookies, cookieless, or both. The good news is that candidates can — and should — advertise on both. But, like their for-profit corporate brethren, too few are embracing cookieless.

The polls make one thing abundantly clear: this will be a very close presidential election with multiple states currently within mere percentage points of each other. Even if the polls move in one direction or the other, there’s enough uncertainty that no one will know the winner until election night (and maybe thereafter).

The volume of ads seen in battleground states by the people who are legitimately swing votes are inundated with ads from both parties maligning their opponents and making conflicting claims. And while we historically think of TV ads as the bulk of political advertising, the money spent on digital continues to grow. Some estimates put it at 28% of all spent this cycle; 3x the figure from the last full election.

Valuable Audiences

Would Hillary Clinton have won the 2016 presidential election if she spent any time at all in Wisconsin? Flipping that state alone wouldn’t have procured enough electoral votes, but it was seen as emblematic of a campaign too confident in its superiority to a candidate to not do the simple work. She ended up losing the state by 23,000 votes as well as other important Midwest swing states like Michigan and Ohio. Today’s candidates need to assume nothing is certain and continue to reach every possible voter across the US.

Advertising allows candidates to  reach both cookieless and cookied users across all browsers.

Yes, Chrome dominates the browser market share with 52% in the US, 15% of those users have opted into cookieless settings, Safari has 32% and Firefox has 4% of audiences. There are plenty of registered and likely voters who may not watch much TV and are therefore only going to see political messages if those candidates advertise in cookieless environments.

Increased Attention Share

There’s a reason why both candidates prefer not to campaign in the same state at the same time. You don’t want to share the spotlight. Any candidate who embraces cookieless in a race where the competition doesn’t have a clear space to reach out to key audiences while the competitor is in the noisy cookied environment. Cookieless has a much lighter ad load overall, so every impression you serve has more impact.

It’s always interesting when someone living in an uncontested state travels to a swing state and suddenly sees the political ads they were missing.

Well, right now Internet users in swing states who are using cookieless browsers are just like those travelers. Campaigns that embrace cookieless can reach undecided voters in key regions on previously considered unreachable browsers.

Higher Performance

An underrated component of cookieless advertising is that ad load is generally faster in cookieless environments. Imagine paying good money to get in front of an undecided voter, only to waste that opportunity because the ad didn’t load before the user moved on. Finding the right audience is only one part of the equation; delivering your message clearly and completely is just as important. Cookieless achieves that.

Bigger Gains

Politicians love winning. Since there are far fewer bidders on ads in cookieless environments, win rates can be as high as 10X higher than bidding on third-party cookies. We also see engagement rates as high, if not higher, as in third-party cookie environments. This is crucial in the final weeks of the campaign when politicians have to spend before election day. Being in an environment with higher win rates alleviates stress that ads won’t run and allows the campaigns to focus on other pressing matters.

The Home Stretch

As with all campaign decisions, the best advertising strategies are built upon common sense. If you were driving to the polls, would you take the traffic-filled road or the wide open lane to get you to the polls before everyone else? Political campaigns often need everything to go right to win. Embracing cookieless this 2024 season could be the difference between getting elected versus giving a consolation speech.

The post This Campaign Season, Vote to Embrace Cookieless appeared first on AdMonsters.

Navigating these complex challenges is essential for maintaining trust with consumers and brands.

Unique publishers (diverse, small, and niche) must navigate these complex waters to maintain their competitive edge in an industry where data privacy and transparency are under intense scrutiny. According to Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant, “The ad tech ecosystem was never built for privacy,” making it especially challenging to retrofit existing systems.

These smaller players are vulnerable, with privacy concerns mounting and regulations becoming stricter. They may not attract the same advertising spend as larger entities. Still, compliance with privacy laws is critical—not only for legal reasons but also for preserving their relationships with advertisers.

During our conversation with Jamie Barnard aboard a yacht in Cannes—over cheese and pepperoni—we discussed how brands and agencies can support unique publishers in navigating compliance challenges. He stressed the importance of adapting to the rapidly changing landscape. “Those who fail to adapt will find themselves in precarious positions,” Bernard warned. By approaching compliance as a collaborative effort between publishers, brands, and consumers, these publishers can create bespoke advertising experiences while upholding essential privacy principles.

Why Building Strong Compliance Models Matters More Than Ever 

Developing robust compliance models is no longer optional for unique publishers, it’s essential.  These models should go beyond merely responding to current regulations. They should be proactive frameworks anticipating future changes. Flexibility and adaptability are key to ensuring these publishers can withstand the inevitable shifts in the regulatory environment.

Creating a culture of compliance involves more than simply adhering to rules. It requires a deep understanding of privacy and data protection. This is particularly crucial given the widespread use of third-party tracking and data leakage — practices increasingly under scrutiny. As awareness of these issues grows, larger brands and consumers demand higher transparency and accountability from their partners.

“In our industry, where trust is everything, compliance is the foundation,” Bernard said. “When we approach compliance as not just a checklist, but a genuine commitment to our audience’s well-being, we unlock the potential for deeper connections and long-lasting loyalty.”

Publishers must go beyond compliance to educate their teams and stakeholders on this importance. By cultivating a culture of awareness and diligence, they can embed compliance into every facet of their operations. This shift will mitigate risks and bolster the publisher’s reputation in an industry where consumer trust is increasingly paramount.

Ad Tech’s Role in Adapting to Regulatory Changes

The ad tech industry’s transformation is largely driven by the need to comply with evolving privacy laws. While these changes may seem reactive, they present new opportunities for innovation in both technology and operational practices. With Google’s new 3PC consent framework, smaller publishers have a huge role in reshaping the industry standards moving forward. 

Smaller publishers should leverage technology as a compliance tool to take advantage of this shift. For example, artificial intelligence and machine learning can monitor data practices, identify potential compliance issues, and automate consent management processes. These technological advancements not only streamline operations but also enhance the precision and effectiveness of compliance efforts.

 As regulatory demands evolve, ongoing education and experimentation are crucial. Publishers should stay informed about the latest trends and changes, adapting their strategies as necessary. Abrupt changes brought about by decisions like Google’s back-and-forth dance with turning off third-party cookies, serve as a stark reminder of how quickly things can shift. 

Continuous learning should be embedded in the organizational culture, positioning compliance as not just a set of rules but as a dynamic practice driving industry evolution. With the U.S. regulatory environment beginning to catch up with the EU’s more stringent standards, the pressure to adapt has never been greater. As Bernard pointed out, education, transparency, and consumer empowerment must be top priorities for publishers moving forward.

The post The Ad Tech Ecosystem was Never Built for Privacy appeared first on AdMonsters.

After several delays that had many wondering if it would ever happen, Google finally pulled the trigger on its plan to deprecate third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome browsers. Today, Google has implemented Tracking Protection for 30 million Chrome users, or about 1% of its user base. 

Is this a cataclysmic event, the end of digital advertising as we know it? Or will the industry find a way to somehow survive?

On the one hand, many marketers saw the writing on the wall back in 2019, when Mozilla began blocking third-party cookies by default and began experimenting with new ways to reach and engage users.

In the years that followed we’ve seen the rise of solutions meant to replace the third-party cookie, including myriad universal IDs, seller-defined audiences, retail media, AI-driven contextual targeting, data clean rooms, and so on. All of them had their moment as the future — the no “it” tactic for the ecosystem.

So far, no tactic has become a de facto approach.

Then again, no approach really had to, as many marketers and agencies (or, ahem, publishers) haven’t felt a particular urgency to forge a cookie-free strategy on a practical level. After all, Google’s announcements of delays came like clockwork, so folks weren’t forced to change.

“Let’s not forget that 30-50% of the web already blocks third-party cookies in Safari and Firefox by default, and that has yet to spur meaningful adoption of third-party cookieless solutions from brands and agencies,” said Alexandra Theriault, Lotame’ Chief Growth Officer. “Google adding 1% of their piece of the pie isn’t going to drive the intended reaction necessary to prepare the industry for the end of the year.”

But to others, today is momentous, as it will usher in a new era for the industry.

“The removal of 1% of third-party cookie tracking has the potential to significantly impact advertisers and the overarching digital ad ecosystem,” said Jeremy Haft, CRO of Digital Remedy, Performance Marketing Partner for Brands and Agencies.

He envisions a spate of innovation led by tech providers and ad companies, especially as attribution and personalization take a hit. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.

But, there’s a catch, Haft suspects Google will back off from full deprecation if its revenue takes a significant hit.

Terry Guyton-Bradley, Senior Director of Advertising Technology at Forbes agrees. “I venture to say that the advertising industry is one of those industries that is too big to fail. No one has consolidated around a replacement solution. Agencies are continuing as status quo and publishers are working to find individual solutions that will work for their data environments.  Although Google has hypothetically drawn a line in the sand, they are doing it in a way that will allow them to pull back if the results are not acceptable.  We won’t crash and burn.”

Given the current regulatory climate, it’s also likely that the proposed timeline for a full cookie cutoff could shift.

“Encouragingly, this firing pistol signals Google’s intent to stick to the timeline agreed with the UK’s CMA. However, regulatory hurdles and technological readiness challenges may result in the timeline moving again,” shared Sergii Denysenko, CEO, MGID.  “Anyone serious about preparing themselves for the cookieless future must explore alternatives such as contextual and UID-based targeting sooner rather than later. ”

A Good Day for Privacy

It’s hard to deny that for consumers who resent brands knowing too much about them, it’s a good day.

Google more or less invented surveillance capitalism (an invention that the police found very beneficial) and gaining a modicum of privacy back feels good.

Respect for privacy is an important step for building consumer trust, and may even invoke more participation in advertising if consumers feel respected.

“The development underscores the escalating concerns for privacy among both advertisers and end-users, leaving Google with no choice but to address the issue head-on. While navigating this transition poses a considerable challenge, it marks a crucial first step in adapting to the evolving landscape,” said Mateusz Jedrocha, VP, of Branding Solutions at Adlook.

Baby Steps Lead to Big Leaps

It’s hard to envision how the additional 1% of cookie-free users will radicalize the industry in the short term, as Lotame’s Theriault points out, but big leaps aren’t possible until baby steps are mastered. For many, this move is the impetus for finally taking the plunge.

“We view the initial 1% deprecation of cookies as a crucial first step in assessing the viability of a cookieless environment. This phase allows us to perform essential tests and begin refining our benchmarks and delivery metrics for branding campaigns in a world without third-party cookies. However, we believe that a gradual and transparent expansion of cookieless traffic is necessary for a comprehensive understanding and adaptation of this new landscape,” explained Jedrocha.

33Across President, Paull Bell agrees. But, he also feels that phase 2 of the cookie crackdown could present many challenges.

Of course, this future will only happen if Google doesn’t change its mind again.

The post Google Finally Pulls the Trigger on Third-Party Tracking Cookies appeared first on AdMonsters.

These days the road to success as a publisher depends on who you ask as every publishers journey is unique, but there are lessons we can all learn from those navigating the twists and turns successfully. At AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO on September 26, our own Lynne Johnson facilitated a panel discussion titled “The New Publisher Playbook” with two industry leaders – Mark Howard, Chief Operating Officer, TIME, and Zack Sullivan, Chief Revenue Officer, Future. They offered insight about a world without cookies, scaling your business and the future of privacy. 

In a Cookieless Environment, Building Relationships is Key

The ops industry is moving into a future where having the right data will be key to profitability. Industry professionals previously used third-party data, but that strategy must be amended with changing privacy laws. Direct relationships with consumers and partners will be crucial as we advance. 

Commerce is a huge part of Future’s business, according to Sullivan. The company’s proprietary tech stack is utilized to track users across their journey to illuminate their intent and path to purchase. Having this data about users and their intent is extremely useful. 

“We’re also audience builders. The audience gives us value – we build the brands, they come, it’s a self-perpetuating relationship. The more they come back, the better understanding we have of what they’re doing. Having that relationship is something that only media owners can do,” explains Sullivan. 

He adds that reliance on third-party data has led to newfound problems with attribution. Future is building relationships with media owners to close the gap between campaign buying decisions and their outcomes, increasing transparency along the data journey. 

Howard says that TIME has multiple business models, including B2B, B2B2C and B2C, which makes data more complicated, says Howard. “What ends up happening is you get a data and analytics loop that allows you to understand the different behaviors, the audiences, and the experiences you’re building within the overall framework. That then helps us inform both the user experiences and some of the editorial experiences that they’re going to help us continue to propel forward,” he shares. 

To help understand all of its data, TIME will soon announce a new attribution measurement platform. This platform will create a more holistic story of the data while separating data into buckets of TIME’s various audiences. This will help highlight the outcomes of both campaign and impact metrics that will quantify a return on investment and put the company in a better position to help its partners. 

To Scale or Not to Scale… And How?

Most publishers are now facing the challenge of whether to scale their business and how. This is an evolving issue but best practices have begun to emerge. 

Sullivan says Future can deliver its partners a large portion of their desired addressable audience using its data solutions. “Internally, we’re increasingly looking at using probabilistic data, then saying, ‘Here’s our first-party data. This is why we’ve got really high confidence in probabilistic matching.’ I think things like cleanrooms don’t scale up at a level that’s good enough right now,” he explains. 

Working alongside other publishers will also be a big piece of the data puzzle, for example, by having agreed upon taxonomies at different data levels since there is currently no standardization with taxonomy. 

This is where partnership comes in. “If you’re an agency planner, you want to avoid having  to publish and plan across 15 different specialist brands. You want to be able to say, ‘I’m targeting these cohorts and these taxonomy segments,’” says Sullivan. 

Whether or not to scale has been a question the industry has gone back and forth on for some time now. Howard notes he believes there’s a way for publishers to unite to tackle this issue, not necessarily by forming a coalition, but to share best practices on big issues and go-to-market strategies. 

Painting a Picture of the Consumer in a Privacy-Centric Era

As we move into an era where privacy is paramount, we must find new ways to understand online consumer behavior. One solution to getting a clear picture of individual consumers is identity graphs. 

A big piece of this puzzle will be the value the consumer gets in exchange for giving you their personal information. Sullivan notes that the detail you collect on users depends on the end goal. For example if you are hoping to drive digital subscriptions, you will need more robust data, but at some point, there are diminishing returns. He advises striving for balance. 

Howard says that TIME recently decided not to put any of its content behind a paywall, which makes collecting first-party data more difficult but is ultimately in line with TIME’s overall goals. 

Sullivan adds, “We need to determine what data we make available through an open auction RTB environment versus what we want to share into trade marketplaces? That’s the future.”

Attention metrics are also gaining traction as the latest way to track behavior, which Howard says will be the jumping off point to even greater metrics. These can be more directly attributable and will help direct sales outcomes. He says, “Attention is just the next step in the progression of data sophistication and what we can provide. And I think it’s the gateway into a whole new ecosystem.”

No one has all the answers, but industry experts will increasingly need to band together and share best practices to ensure continued success and growth.

The post The New Publisher Playbook: Understanding Challenges & How To Overcome Them 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.

Google calls Topics an evolution of their previous proposal for interest-based targeting which was called FLoC. 

What Are Topics?

Under the proposal, as someone browses the internet, Chrome will keep a record of the categories of websites they visit e.g. News. Each website can have up to three categories.

Each week Chrome decides the five categories the user is most interested in and then adds a sixth at random to boost user privacy. Chrome will store these six interests for three weeks. For the purposes of initial testing, there are 350 interest groups in total.

In terms of using this information to power advertising, when a user visits a publisher’s website the companies that the publisher uses to monetize the page can access the browser’s interest groups via an API. Chrome will return up to three topics, with one chosen at random from each of the previous three weeks. Advertisers can then decide if they want to show an advert to someone with these interests and bid accordingly.

Topics will replace FLoC, which was a proposal also designed to replace third-party cookies in interest-based advertising. Unlike Topics, FLoC did not have predefined interest groups, instead, Chrome created Cohorts of browsers with similar browsing habits using Federated Learning. During the origin trial, there were more than thirty thousand groups and Ad Tech firms were expected to calculate what they thought a Cohort was most interested in. 

Reactions To The Proposal

Because of this granularity, FLoC was potentially poor from a user privacy perspective. This was because the sheer number of Cohorts when combined with other information meant in theory it could be used to track users on an individual basis.

Topics has fewer larger groups that do not reveal any sensitive information to resolve both these challenges, so from this perspective, the feedback has been positive, except amongst those who take a hardline view that any tracking is unacceptable. 

But some in the industry see this “broadness” of the interest groups as a downside and have questioned whether they will be too broad to be useful.

Google said they want feedback from the industry and do not want to own the final list.

Others think the current number is probably about right for these reasons:

1. Topics has more than twice the number of Interest Groups as Google uses in its own advertising platforms and these are already widely used by advertisers large and small.
2. If Google were to expand this to the IAB Classification it would impact most publishers’ ability to sell their audiences, and in particular, would have a negative impact on niche publishers who can command a premium because advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach the valuable audiences that visit their content. 
3. There is already provision in other Privacy Sandbox proposals for ad tech businesses to create more granular segmentation. FLEDGE as I’ve commented here previously has applications that could stretch beyond remarketing.

Topics will begin testing H1 2022, with many anticipating an origin trial (first test) towards the end of Q1. It will evolve over time and for those interested in getting more closely involved and shaping what happens feedback can be posed and questions raised here. 

For publishers seeking more direct participation in the tests themselves, now is probably as good a moment as any to reach out to your ad tech partners and ask how to get involved.

The first transition period for these initiatives is scheduled to begin at the end of this year.

The post What Is Google Topics API? appeared first on AdMonsters.

On September 20th, 2021, Apple released iOS 15, an operating system update introducing three new privacy features to Apple devices: Hide my Email, Private Relay, and Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). This update, and these features, in particular, alter how and what data publishers (and third parties) can collect. While Apple’s iOS 15 update may have the most significant impact on publishers and advertisers yet, it’s not the first time Apple’s updates rattle the industry.

The Evolution of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

In 2017, Apple rolled out Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) for its Safari web browser. The feature, set as a default standard by Apple, prevents cookie-based tracking across websites. Furthermore, Apple’s ITP prevents companies from using fingerprinting to create probabilistic connections and device profiles for their identity graphs. However, it’s worth noting that while ITP blocks third-party cookie tracking, it does not block first-party cookies from providing essential functionalities on a website, like storing your login information.

Apple’s ITP 2.0 limited advertisers’ ability to store third-party cookies as first-party cookies to get around tracking prevention features. In its latest form, ITP 2.2 uses machine learning on the user’s device to identify the domains with which an Apple device user directly interacts. All client-side cookies are blocked after 24 hours if the users visit a site from a cross-site link, like the redirect URLs commonly used in digital advertising.

Per Apple: “Unless you visit and interact with the third-party content provider as a first-party website, their cookies and website data are deleted.” This is why it’s vital that publishers encourage engagement amongst site visitors. Creating interactive website experiences — rather than simply driving visitors to landing pages where they browse and drop in less than a minute — is critical in today’s world. Publishers who implement interactive tactics on their properties are better positioned to gather valuable data. 

With the release of Apple iOS 15, there’s more red tape around how publishers and advertisers can reach and connect with audiences. Below, we decode how some of the latest features of iOS 15 impact publishers and how they can adapt. 

Hide My Email

What is it?

Hide My Email enables an Apple iCloud+ subscriber to create a one-off email address to fill out forms, log in to websites, and sign up for newsletters without revealing their actual email addresses. The one-off email address created is usable only by the specific app or website for which the user created it. Any email sent to that address is redirected to the personal email account designated by the user.

What does it mean for publishers?

This puts a damper on building subscriber lists as those using Hide My Email will sign up with a “throwaway” email. However, Hide My Email is not available to all Apple mobile users. Only iCloud+ paid account holders using Safari can use Hide My Email in a web form. The good news? Currently, a little less than 20 percent of people worldwide use Safari.

Private Relay

What is it?

Say a person using their Apple device opens their browser and visits a website. With Private Relay, the information about web traffic from that user’s device is encrypted, leaving third parties unable to read or access traffic signals, such as IP addresses, between the user and the website — including Apple and the user’s network provider. Instead, the user’s DNS requests go through two separate internet relays. The first relay assigns an anonymous IP address, which generalizes the user’s location and maps their anonymized IP address to a general region instead of a specific location. The second relay decrypts the web address the user means to visit and connects them to the site. 

What does it mean for publishers?

Because Private relay encrypts an Apple user’s IP addresses, publishers will no longer have insight into traffic coming from specific locations but only state-wide or regional insights. These limited insights mean that publishers now have less granularity when it comes to geo-targeting efforts.

But what about traffic coming from email? Enter Mail Privacy Protection. 

Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)

What is it?

Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) applies specifically to the use of the native Mail app on Apple devices. MPP blocks invisible pixels in emails from collecting information about the email recipient. With MPP, email senders can no longer collect data on email opens or exact geolocations. MPP masks an email recipient’s IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their locations. Additionally, MPP automatically loads email content after delivery, making it impossible for publishers to know when subscribers are opening their emails or if they are truly opening them.

What does it mean for publishers?

According to Litmus, 46.3 percent of all emails were opened in the Apple Mail app on the iPhone, iPad, and Macs. However, whether those emails are actually opened in the Apple Mail app doesn’t matter. If one of your subscribers is accessing their Gmail account using the Mail app on their phone, then any time that Gmail account receives an email from you, Apple will signal it was opened.

With MPP inflating email open rates, publishers need to reassess how they create audience segments, deliver personalized content, and analyze the performance of their email programs. Email open rates are not the only metrics impacted by MPP, however. If you’re a publisher that monetizes email newsletters, the inflated impression rates affect how CPM and CTR are calculated. However, this doesn’t mean your overall revenue is impacted.

Engagement Data: A publisher’s North Star

These privacy changes don’t mean publishers need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Although open rates are now inflated, geolocation data is generalized, and email addresses may be “hidden,” there’s still plenty publishers can do to manage successful email newsletter programs. By focusing on metrics that speak to engagement and tweaking email strategies, publishers can uncover audiences that are most connected to their brand and content, and adapt. Below are steps you can take to hone in on engagement. 

Create an Apple Mail vs. non-Apple Mail list.

By segmenting your list in this way, you can gain insight into how email is performing amongst those who don’t use the Apple Mail app. You can use the non-Apple segment as a proxy for understanding open rate performance.

Focus on clicks instead of opens and other lower-funnel metrics.

Publishers may wish to suppress or remove unengaged audiences from their targeting or email messaging. Accurately identifying engaged audiences will be difficult in a world with MPP if engagement is defined by email opens. Instead of focusing on email opens, look at email clicks to understand which audiences are engaged and what is driving engagement. This provides insights that are further down the funnel and speaks to interests and preferences, which can also help inform your email and content strategy. 

Reassess email activities that rely on opens.

Take stock of your email campaigns and reassess how to evolve those activities to suit today’s changing landscape. For instance, reaching audiences who use the Apple Mail app in a specific suburb of Long Island, NY, isn’t feasible with the new update, so adjustments must be made to address audiences accordingly. A/B testing subject lines is another example of the types of email activities publishers will need to reconsider in a world where open rates are affected. 

Broaden your use of metrics.

If you take care to curate an experience entirely within your newsletter, adding more places to encourage clicks out of your email may not work. Instead, look at incorporating other metrics that indicate engagement, such as subscribing to additional newsletters, upgrading to a paid digital subscription, or time spent with content published on your website or mobile app. Linking these engagements to your subscribers will require you to work with an identity partner, like LiveIntent, who can help you connect activity across channels to a subscriber address.

The post What Does Apple’s iOS 15 Update Mean for Publishers? appeared first on AdMonsters.

What will success look like? The death of the third-party cookie is nigh, and we need to have a philosophical talk about the potential replacements—and how they pull off what they’re offering. And just what are we going to be measuring in the future?

At PubForum+ on Dec. 10, 2020, Happens in Ad Ops co-hosts Erik Requidan, Founder and CEO, Media Tradecraft and Ryan McConaghy, Head of Revenue Operations, The Atlantic, were joined by Amanda Gomez, VP, Revenue Operations, New York Post, and Danny Khatib, Co-founder and CEO, Granite Media to try and get to the bottom of all of this.

Watch the video of Happens in Ad Ops Saves the Internet from PubForum+ on December 10, 2o2o

The post Happensinadops Saves the Internet appeared first on AdMonsters.

These are all questions that the advertising ecosystem needs to answer before Chrome finalizes plans to follow Safari and Firefox in maintaining users’ privacy by killing off third-party cookies.

So many alternatives have been proposed for tracking and measuring in a cookieless world. Google, for its part, has proposed the Privacy Sandbox—a series of browser APIs that are intended to secure users’ privacy while also enabling advertising tracking and measurement—which includes Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory (TURTLE-DOV).

Criteo submitted a proposal, SPARROW (Secure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserver), to the W3C in response to Google’s proposal. Then there was DOVEKEY, proposed by Google to improve upon SPARROW. And now Magnite has another avian-named proposal on the W3C table that intends to improve upon TURTLEDOVE.

We reached out to Garrett McGrath, VP of Product Management at Magnite, to sort out all of these birds so we can figure out how each of them might shape the future of advertising.

Lynne d Johnson: Can you explain PARRROT to me like it was an elevator pitch?

Garrett McGrath: Google’s TURTLEDOVE, part of the Privacy Sandbox proposals authored by Chrome engineers, attempts to maintain retargeting functionality in an environment without third-party cookies and therefore without cross-site tracking as we know it today. TURTLEDOVE aims to accomplish this by centralizing the auction and all component actions within the browser — buyers and sellers only have access to aggregate reporting some number of hours or days after an impression is won. The browser itself becomes a giant black box that only has one key, which belongs to Google.

Whether or not a browser could even computationally handle all of this is an excellent question, to say nothing of this proposal making Google essentially the only ‘trusted’ entity within the programmatic advertising ecosystem.

SPARROW, a TURTLEDOVE counter-proposal from Criteo, maintains the TURTLEDOVE segment management model but recommends moving the auction out of the browser (auctions, like everything else, are handled solely in the browser under TURTLEDOVE), and to some external trusted 3rd-party server called a Gatekeeper.

How an entity qualifies to be a Gatekeeper, how many Gatekeepers there are, and how they are governed are all questions that would need to be answered.

DOVEKEY, also from Google but this time the Ads team, attempts to reduce the complexity of the SPARROW design by using simple key-value pairs to represent audience membership, rather than relying on more complex computations within a browser.

This concept may possibly be workable, however, the likely explosion of key-value pairs necessary to accomplish this at scale and the resources required to manage them are certainly open questions, especially for smaller publishers.

At the heart of all of this is the notion that, starting with TURTLEDOVE, somehow the browser is responsible for actually running the auction(s) and choosing a winner for any given impression.  Digging deeper into that statement, this means the browser would have to have all the information necessary to make these decisions — well beyond bid price, which seems to be the primary input for the TURTLEDOVE auction.

A programmatic auction for any given ad impression must consider many more factors beyond bid price. Frequently the highest bid does not necessarily win.

Within the publisher/SSP set-up there exists a long list of contributing factors: ad quality filtering, domain, creative or buyer blocks, prioritization, buying models, pacing, whether or not the impression is eligible for a Deal and if so how that Deal affects the relevance of bid price, regional factors, dayparting, targeting, custom parameters — this list can be quite extensive and can vary greatly pub by pub and impression by impression. As such, TURTLEDOVE as written falls well short of being a workable solution.

PARRROT (The Publisher Auction Responsibility Retention Revision of TurtleDove), from Magnite, maintains the privacy tenets of TURTLEDOVE but moves the auction decisioning back to where it belongs: the publisher.

Leveraging a proposal called the Fenced Frame, PARRROT gives back the publisher and/or the publisher’s systems (ad servers, SSPs) the job of considering the myriad of contributing factors necessary to determine auction outcome.  It essentially brings header bidding, or any publisher selected transaction technology, back to this model.

LdJ: How does PARRROT aim to improve upon TURTLEDOVE?

GM: Running a programmatic ad auction within the browser leaves out many necessary factors and data points. PARRROT lets the publisher run and decision on the auction while still maintaining the anonymity design of TURTLEDOVE.

LdJ: In that regard, how does PARRROT differ from DOVEKEY?

GM: PARRROT is complementary to DOVEKEY (or SPARROW) in that a server-side entity exists outside of the browser in both proposals.

PARRROT extends the key-value store component of DOVEKEY by allowing DSPs to directly and explicitly declare their bidding wishes; otherwise this is theoretically accomplished through Machine Learning in DOVEKEY.

PARRROT and DOVEKEY simplify the Gatekeeper by removing any computation tasks thereby increasing trust among users. PARRROT addresses where the auction logic is run, not how audiences are handled.

LdJ: There’s been a lot of controversy over whether the gatekeeper should be the browser or a third-party. What would be the benefit of allowing the publisher to retain control of the auction?

GM: Allowing the browser to be the sole repository of audience data or auction mechanics simply isn’t a workable concept — unless you happen to be the owner of that browser.

But PARRROT is more focused on maintaining the aspects of the auction that are beyond audience membership and bid price because, as noted, there are many other factors that need to be considered. And almost none of those additional inputs are available to the browser.

LdJ: Do you see any limitations with any of the proposals, especially in terms of reporting?

GM: Yes, they all have limitations starting with the fact that none of them exist yet and the clock is ticking.

Reporting is an especially big issue since it seems to be marginalized in the Sandbox proposals (most answers are “the aggregate reporting API”, which no one has seen or understands).

However, we need consensus on how and where impressions are transacted before we have the luxury of figuring out how to report on them.

The post What Is PARRROT? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Everyone wants to know: What will replace the third-party tracking cookie (which has outlived its usefulness) as the main tool for measurement and audience targeting?

Alternatives have been proposed to the W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) and are currently being tested and responded to by the industry at large. Google has proposed the Privacy Sandbox—a series of browser APIs that are intended to secure users’ privacy while also enabling advertising tracking and measurement—which includes Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory (TURTLE-DOV). (We’ll be hearing lots more about that at our upcoming webinar with Google, Building the Privacy-Forward Future of Advertising July 15 @ 2PM. Register now, it’s free.)

In May, Criteo submitted its own proposal, SPARROW (Secure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserver), to the W3C in response to Google’s proposal.  The proposal was updated recently, in response to industry-wide feedback, to include reporting capabilities to further secure users’ privacy without compromising advertisers’ performance.

I caught up with Charles-Henri Henault, VP of Product, Ads Platform and Analytics at Criteo to gain a deeper understanding of SPARROW. One thing that’s certain, the industry is going to need to come together on shaping the post-cookie world.

Lynne d Johnson: What is SPARROW? 

Charles-Henri Henault: In February of this year, Chrome published TURTLEDOVE (Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory) proposing how interest group advertising could replace user-level advertising. Criteo’s SPARROW proposal (Secure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserver) aims to enhance Chrome’s proposal by providing more control and transparency while maintaining privacy guarantees for users.  

These enhancements include: 

• Audiences: Adding the ability to drive awareness or reengagement scenarios by creating more sophisticated campaigns based on interest groups (e.g. lookalike audiences).
• Technical execution: Instead of browsers executing real-time bidding, we recommend safeguarding users’ data by having an independent party, known as a gatekeeper, execute sophisticated real-time bidding strategies. A gatekeeper could be a cloud service provider or an SSP. 
• Measurement: Sharing of granular reporting to give more transparency into campaign management, billing, fraud prevention and brand safety while also providing more control over fraud detection, campaign optimization, and A/B testing.   

LdJ: How does SPARROW differ from TURTLEDOVE? 

CHH: We see our SPARROW proposal as an enhancement to TURTLEDOVE. In fact, SPARROW maintains many of Chrome’s objectives within their own proposal. For example: 

• People who like ads that remind them of sites they’re interested in can choose to keep seeing those ads.
• People who don’t like these types of ads can choose to avoid seeing them.
• People who wonder “how the ad knew” can get a clear, accurate answer.
• People who wish to stop being associated with an interest group can do so and can expect to stop seeing ads targeting this group.
• Advertisers cannot learn the browsing habits of specific people, even those who have joined multiple interest groups. Websites cannot learn the interest groups of the people who visit them. 

However, we’ve also added some improvements to make sure that: 

• Advertisers can retain campaign control and performance in privacy-friendly ways.
• All advertising use cases are covered by the proposition, not only re-marketing.
• Appropriate controls over ad safety, brand safety and transparency in billing is provided to both advertisers and publishers.
• User experience is preserved while browsing the web.

Finally, we believe our proposal is key to a healthy ecosystem—one that ensures a privacy-friendly experience for users, value for advertisers and revenue for publishers. 

LdJ: How will taking the logic out of the browser help the industry? 

CHH: Taking the logic out of the browser yields the following benefits: 

• Better user experience: Loading, storing and running all the components and logic in-browser would put a huge strain on the user experience.
• Better marketing: Campaigns would be executed on web servers with computing power vs. mobile-based browsers. SPARROW also allows for A/B testing, helping to improve marketing effectiveness, as well as better user engagement by delivering enhanced creatives that do not have to be stored in the browser. This lifts the constraint on their quality and allows for higher publisher monetization.
• Enhanced advertiser protection: An in-browser execution could, to a certain extent, allow Advertiser A to have access to Advertiser’s B strategy, and potentially even reverse-engineer its proprietary marketing approach. SPARROW ensures that the interests of Advertisers A and B are not at risk when engaging with online audiences.
• Improved spend auditability and budget management: Both the browser and the gatekeeper would have visibility on display volumes and prices and real-time spend reporting would be made available.  

We believe SPARROW still has room to address other topics, though, such as post-view reporting, multi-touch attribution, reach counting and fraud management.  

LdJ: How will the inclusion of a ‘gatekeeper’ broaden targeting and speed up reporting? 

CHH: SPARROW provides the system the ability to build elaborate and relevant audiences by building new interest group categories based on matching other interest groups together. 

By allowing a regular flow of information between browsers and gatekeepers, SPARROW enables fast reporting and precise management of budgets. In comparison, the in-browser logic shared in TURTLEDOVE only allowed for aggregated and delayed reporting.  

LdJ: Would publishers have to change much of what they already do to implement SPARROW? 

CHH: Publishers would not need to change much in that they would still send bid requests to web servers and get bid responses in exchange. SPARROW offers them the opportunity to create their own audience segments. 

LdJ:  There were some questions being raised in the industry about whether SPARROW meets privacy standards. Does the updated proposal now meet privacy standards? 

CHH: We believe SPARROW provides similar levels of privacy as TURTLEDOVE, in the design space set forth by Google Chrome teams whereby users are addressed by their membership to cohorts. 

LdJ: How does the SPARROW proposal tackle transparency, which is one of the biggest issues within the ecosystem right now?  

CHH: Transparency is incredibly important to marketers. Thanks to constructive industry-wide feedback, we recently updated SPARROW’s reporting capabilities in GitHub the other week to further secure users’ privacy without compromising advertisers’ performance.  

The SPARROW update introduces three new reports: 

• A low latency aggregated report, whose purpose is to be used for campaign spend management and billing
• A delayed, personalized, display-level report, defined by the user, with privacy-preserving mechanisms, intended to be used for fraud detection, campaign optimization (machine learning), AB testing, etc.
• A delayed report listing all ad units served (without counting them precisely), for publishers to be able to audit publisher brand safety. 

LdJ: Is SPARROW more theory than real-world framework? 

CHH: The gatekeepers make the entire proposal realistically implementable and would not threaten the user experience browsing the web. Google recently acknowledged the seriousness of our proposal, proposing that SPARROW and TURTLEDOVE move forward along the track toward becoming a standard. Further discussion with the other browser vendors should ensue.  

It’s important to note that we see SPARROW as a continuous work in progress. We designed it to help kickstart ideas in the industry and propel the industry forward. Regardless of which proposal ends up being adopted, we strongly believe the entire industry needs to work together to find a solution, one that respects the end user’s privacy and gives them control or choice over their data. 

LdJ: Can you elaborate on the gatekeeper concept? How do you have a gatekeeper who is independent, unbiased and not self-serving? 

CHH: The gatekeeper is designed to act as an independent third-party between the publisher and the advertiser. It is essential that there is no coordination between the gatekeeper and other parties in the ad tech ecosystem. Gatekeepers would manage a lot of traffic and run the engines built by the advertiser. Thus, running a gatekeeper would be quite compute-intensive and quite low-tech at the same time. A lot of details remain to be clarified, but we think that cloud providers or current SSPs could be interested in stepping in.  

LdJ: How can we maintain privacy protection for users in this proposed ecosystem? 

CHH: At Criteo, we’re committed to maintaining privacy protection for users. All of our solutions are privacy-by-design and operate strictly under user consent. One way we can continue to maintain privacy protection in the SPARROW proposal is by de-coupling advertiser-side user activity and publisher-side one. This will ensure that any participant has limited information about users while still enabling them to serve relevant ads.

Don’t forget to sign up for our free webinar with Google Building the Privacy-Forward Future of Advertising to learn how you can actively participate in the construction of the next generation of solutions.

Register Now

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