Publishers, we know it’s been a wild ride lately. Between the impending third-party cookie total annihilation and generative AI nibbling away at referral traffic, finding ways to keep your audience — and your revenue — intact is more important than ever.

That’s why, in our new survey, we’re diving into audience amplification strategies. We want to hear from YOU about how you’re reaching audiences beyond your site and where you see the next wave of revenue opportunities.

Take the Amplify Your Audience Survey Now!

Your input will help uncover what’s working, what’s not, and what’s on the horizon for publishers. We’ll explore the balancing act of leveraging first-party data without losing your competitive edge and dive into tactics from retargeting to renting access to segmented data. With your insights, we’ll map out the best strategies to amplify your audience, drive revenue, and keep your content thriving in these ever-shifting digital waters.

The post It’s Time to Unlock Audience Amplification: Share Your Insights Now! appeared first on AdMonsters.

Given the breakneck speed of digital innovation nowadays, publishers need a competitive advantage. Standing out comes from the power of rapidly and accurately analyzing data. Take The Weather Company, for example, the global titan in weather data and forecasting, is supercharging their mobile analytics game after joining forces with Lotame and AWS Clean Rooms.

This powerhouse collaboration has slashed insight generation time by an eye-popping 98% and boosted query efficiency sevenfold, enabling The Weather Company to deliver data that’s not just fast but razor-sharp and hyper-relevant to its clients and partners. AWS Clean Rooms facilitates this by providing a secure environment where companies can collaborate on datasets without sharing or copying the underlying data, enhancing data privacy and compliance.

But let’s talk specifics. By digging deep into the behaviors and preferences of their travel audience, The Weather Company unlocked insights that go beyond the surface, fine-tuning strategies for travel advertisers. For instance, by analyzing user interactions on The Weather Channel mobile app, they can distinguish between frequent and infrequent travelers and preferences toward air versus land travel. This granular insight has allowed The Weather Company to craft finely tuned, targeted, and effective advertising strategies that deliver exceptional results for their advertising partners.

In our exclusive Q&A, I spoke with Dave Olesnevich, Head of Data & Advertising Products at The Weather Company, to unpack the technical challenges and victories of the integration. We explored how AWS Clean Rooms enhances data privacy and compliance, tackles the unique hurdles of mobile data, and shapes the future of ad targeting and campaign efficiency.

Lynne d Johnson: Given the increased scrutiny on data privacy and compliance, how does the AWS Clean Room technology help The Weather Company navigate these complexities? How has this transformed your day-to-day operations?

Dave Olesnevich: AWS understood the assignment when it came to creating a privacy-forward environment where multiple parties can collaborate with data quickly and easily. CISO’s office is more amenable to the clean room environment versus moving data out of house for engagements.

The AWS Clean Room isn’t magic though — participants have to bring high-quality data to the table in order to create insights that become actionable. We can control what data is accessible on a case-by-case basis, which is a table-stakes feature. The Weather Company now has a new way of working with our customers to create value. We’re still in the earlier days of utilizing data collaboration platforms for advertising engagements at scale, and I expect a lot more usage in the future.

LdJ: With the new system reducing the insight generation time by 98%, could you discuss how this acceleration has transformed your approach to ad targeting and campaign efficiency? How quickly can changes in weather patterns now influence ad placements?

DO: Time to value is going to change when we fully operationalize the system. The value is first to our customer, we can help them achieve their desired outcomes with a reduced number of hops in the process. The LOE to produce actionable insights for the C-suite is at our fingertips, so it’s not just paid, but owned and earned for the CMO and BPO, with opportunities for the CFO and COO as well. As weather becomes increasingly more impactful to the bottom line, we can help leaders harness weather intelligence for use across their business.

LdJ: How have these faster insights already impacted a campaign or strategy? What have been the most significant impacts on your business and client interactions?

DO: Now more than ever, we’re able to develop what we call a Weather Strategy for our customers across the enterprise, with less time blocking and tackling and more time spent unlocking the value of the insights to drive desired outcomes for advertisers across their entire media mix. Like many in our ecosystem, we’ve been working with Lotame and AWS for a long time. We’re all leaning in to build the next generation of advertising.

LdJ: Looking forward, how does The Weather Company plan to further leverage this enhanced data processing capability? Are there new types of data analytics or services you’re aiming to explore that were not feasible before?

DO: We’re just getting started. Targeting, measurement, attribution. We’re working with our customers to help them understand how weather impacts their customer behaviors and their business operations. End-to-end weather impact in advertising, from planning through activation and measurement is the future state.

The post Weathering Data Storms: How The Weather Company, Lotame, and AWS Clean Rooms Supercharge Mobile Analytics appeared first on AdMonsters.

Pending publisher licensing deals with OpenAI aside, one part of the news organization finds generative AI extremely useful, and in some instances, transformative: the Ad Ops team. AdMonsters has interviewed numerous Ad Ops people across several organizations to see if and how they’re using it.

Reshaping Ad Ops With Generative AI

Ad Ops professionals aren’t just dabbling in generative AI; they’re diving in deep and successfully putting it to work to improve their daily jobs and elevate the overall Ad Ops team. It isn’t a surprise that they’ve largely sidestepped the challenges others have faced using generative AI. As tech-savvy people, Ad Ops professionals are well aware of the limitations of all AI and take active steps to mitigate the pitfalls and problems.

This Publisher Pulse looks at:

• • Popular generative AI tools used by Ad Ops team members
  • Ad Ops personas — distinct ways that interviewees use generative AI to elevate their performance or the performance of their teams
  • AI use cases
  • How generative AI will transform the Ad Ops Teams
  • Tips for getting the best results out of AI
  • Sample outputs

Enter your info to download your copy below!

The post AdMonsters Publisher Pulse: Ad Ops Reimagined — A Guide to Reshaping Ad Ops With Generative AI appeared first on AdMonsters.

As cookies make open web advertising more complicated, the big tech platforms, especially Google and Meta, are using AI to make buying ads on their platforms easier than ever before.

As a result, brands and agencies will be less likely to work with independent publishers, who require that they sift through an individualized catalog of ad products, where tech platforms offer greater ease and scale.

This gap — how easy it is to buy ads on a platform or publisher site and achieve the desired outcomes of digital advertising — will be the dominant challenge for publishers in the years ahead. It represents the synthesis of privacy changes and AI.

The good news for publishers, though, is that they, too, can use AI to make reaching their highly valuable audiences easier. Here’s why publishers need to make it easier to buy ads — and what they can do to bridge the gap.

The Age of AI, or the Advertising Easy Button

By leaning into AI for their ad solutions, big tech companies like Google and Meta are pushing ad buying further into the self-serve era. Take Meta’s Advantage+ for example.

To compete with Google and Meta, publishers must create easy buttons of their own to make it simpler for advertisers to do business with them.  

Through Advantage+, Meta enables advertisers, with as few inputs as possible, to leverage AI to find audiences on Facebook and Instagram and automate their campaigns. The challenge is no longer campaign planning. Advertisers need only tell Meta what outcomes they want, and the tech giant will do the rest.

To compete with Google and Meta (who have taken up 46.6% of the ad market as they’ve made it as frictionless as possible to advertise through their platforms), publishers must create easy buttons of their own to make it simpler for advertisers to do business with them.

Publishers’ Opportunity to Simplify — and Compete

Simplifying the ad buying experience for advertisers requires going beyond the traditional self-service system publishers have offered through the automated guaranteed (AG) model.

The traditional AG model places the onus on buyers to understand the intricacies of inventory options and how to make campaign adjustments manually across a labyrinth of platforms and tools.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Publishers also have the opportunity to leverage AI and automation to significantly reduce the friction in ad buying (and without having to undergo a costly overhaul of their existing infrastructures).

Three places publishers can incorporate AI and automation into the buying process are inventory discovery, media plan adjustments, and performance visibility.

3 Places Publishers Can Incorporate Ai and Automation Into the Buying Process

Inventory Discovery

Publishers can use machine learning-powered analysis of past and current campaign data to generate optimized ad product suggestions for each buyer. That way, publishers save advertisers the time — and clicks — needed to mine through interminable catalogs to find suitable products and generate the highest possible ROI.

Media Plan Adjustments

The next area publishers can automate is booking and media plan adjustments.

After deciding on a media plan, most advertisers have to log in manually to multiple tools and platforms on the publisher side to ensure sufficient inventory and book their orders. Not to mention the manual data entry (and re-entry) required for buyers to tweak their order based on availability or potential campaign changes.

Rather than putting the burden on buyers to go through multiple logins whenever they want to place or change an order, publishers should use robotic process automation to streamline these often tedious steps in the buying process.

Performance Visibility

When it comes to performance visibility, publishers can use AI to send buyers real-time alerts on campaigns. In doing so, publishers save their buyers’ ops teams from having to sift through anOMS or other systems to assess the performance of individual campaigns or surface any campaign issues that need immediate attention.

The AI-first Future of Open Web Publishing

Of course, AI and automation alone may not iron out all the details that more nuanced campaigns bring. But even if AI and automation only get a given advertiser 60 to 80% of the way there with the buying process, savvy publishers would still have saved their buyers hours — if not days — of tedious data entry. And even a 10 to 20% performance improvement in advertising results would represent a massive gain across a few hundred billion dollars of annual ad spend.

By leveraging AI and automation to create operational efficiencies and improve ROI, publishers won’t just better compete with the walled gardens and simplify the ad buying process for advertisers (and prevent headaches for operators). They’ll also enable buyers to take on more campaigns and increase spend while empowering themselves to service more deals — and generate more revenue opportunities at a much lower cost.

The post Publishers Need an Easy Button to Compete with AI-Enabled Platforms appeared first on AdMonsters.

2023 felt like the beginning of the end. It was like the perfect maelstrom.

A recession was forecasted. Oh no, no it wasn’t. Ad spend was plummeting. Oh wait, it started inching back up again.  For publishers, there was just no way to make heads or tails out of the year that was the last before the 3P cookies’ demise.

Political ad spend is on the rise, but there are ad quality challenges for any publisher wanting to jump into that pool. We’ve got a playbook for navigating those waters.  Targeting and metrics are getting a remix and creative could use a facelift. We’ve got a playbook to guide you through attention’s dominance.

What about bad ads, are they tarnishing consumers’ perceptions about your media properties? We surveyed 250 consumers to give it to you straight — along with publishers’ tips for cracking down on those bad actors and making the user experience a priority.

And finally, we took a deep dive into how widely contextualized AdOps data shared with sales and ad product teams. The truth is, AdOps teams are rock stars (party on) but sales teams might not be taking full advantage of their data stardom. We’ve got a playbook for that too. All it involves is making meaningful workflow changes to focus on revenue-generating tasks.

You really should download one of these (if not all of them).

AdMonsters Publisher Playbooks of 2023

AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom?

AdOps teams are data superstars, sitting on a treasure trove of information that contains rich and nuanced context. Many can say which ad units perform best, by format, section, industry and vertical. Some can accurately predict the ROAS advertisers can expect to see from their campaigns.

This is the kind of data that attracts advertisers, especially during a recession when their budgets are smaller and all focus is on performance and business outcomes.

But are publishers taking full advantage of these amazing resources? Our survey indicates they are not. There’s not enough collaboration between AdOps and the sales, product, and business intelligence teams. This is caused by a combination of tech limitations and interdepartmental inefficiencies.

More worrisome, only 22% of AdOps teams say they have access to a wealth of data and insights, which means the remaining 78% can’t help their colleagues succeed in their jobs to the fullest possible extent.

Now that advertisers are cutting back on campaigns, publishers need to work harder to attract brands to their sites. Detailed performance data distributed to all the teams that need it can help publishers win more business and revenue. As it stands, they’re leaving money on the table. Download this playbook now!

How Bad Ads Affect Consumer Perception of Publishers

Publishers have always struggled with bad ads. Nefarious players and scammers, who sought to exploit the digital advertising ecosystem to steal money or data from consumers, have been around almost since the first ad was placed.

But as the world became more digitized, and as global wealth (and access to it) went online, bad actors stepped up their game. Online scams beginning with a digital ad are now dizzyingly complex, with fraudsters going to great lengths to appear legitimate to their victims.

Not surprisingly, malvertising is now a major crime, with 46% of consumers saying they, or someone they know, has fallen prey to a scam. According to the FBI, American consumers lost $10 billion to online scammers in 2022, and 2023 promises to be an even worse year for consumers.

Malvertising and malware are upending digital advertising, with the FBI warning consumers to install ad blockers, and the New York Times telling its readers that “if it’s advertised, you probably shouldn’t buy it.”

Programmatic advertising burst onto the scene in the mid-2000s promising better monetization opportunities for publishers and better access to audiences for brands. That promise led to a robust industry; in 2022 global revenues topped $173.74 billion worldwide.

The scales have tipped, and programmatic has become more of a liability than an asset. Last year, Bloomberg News made headlines when it announced it was pulling the plug on open programmatic, citing bad ads and the impact they had on the reader’s experience.

They’re hardly alone. Jared Collett, Sr. Director of Ad Operations and Analytics, Major League Fishing, also said his company changed who they work with as a result of bad ads. “We’ve had to sever relationships with various programmatic partners and ad networks because they couldn’t get control over the bad ads they were sending us. I would rather serve a house ad, or no ads than serve a bad ad.”

Worse, bad ads are eroding consumer trust in publishers. For 77% of consumers, a bad ad is a signal that the publisher cares more about making money than it does about their safety. Another 64% say that seeing a bad ad on a single site tarnishes the entire industry. It’s fair to say we’re at a crisis point.

“This finding is really important. It brings home the point that rightly or wrongly, the reputation of the advertiser and the reputation of the publisher are really tied together. This is something media organizations will need to address.” said Amnon Siev, CEO, GeoEdge. Download this playbook now!

Targeting and Metrics Evolution: Are Publishers Ready for Attention’s Dominance?

Our survey results reveal that 2024 promises to be a year of rapid innovation, with publishers rethinking what’s possible:

The New Metric: Attention. As the digital advertising landscape undergoes transformations that limit the use of traditional identifiers, publishers are adapting their measurement practices to meet their advertising clients’ expectations. Driven by advertising demand, 82% of publishers said that attention metrics, which evaluate the amount of attention a consumer spends with content, are important or very important to their organizations. We see new metrics emerging, and publishers reporting some success, but new tools and education are still required.

Innovative Ad Formats & Ad Placements. Publishers are realizing that there is a significant opportunity to drive higher attention rates by experimenting with new and innovative ad formats (45%) or ad placements (55%), signaling a new era in which the advertising sector turns its focus from innovating in targeting to innovating in creative and placement.

Targeting Capabilities. While cookie-based targeting was mediocre at best, it did enable advertisers to scale their campaigns and develop proxies for their ideal audiences. Today, however, publishers are seeking privacy-compliant ways to home in on receptive audiences. Key among them: leveraging their first-party data.

Indirect Monetization. Some publishers appear open to granting permission for indirect representation of their inventory, allowing marketers to access approved pathways via ads.txt and other sources, even from non-direct partners. To maintain and optimize the list over time, publishers implement monitoring, regular communication, audits, and data analysis. This ensures a strong ecosystem of indirect partners, maximizing monetization while maintaining control and quality assurance. Download this playbook now!

Navigating Political Ads for the 2024 Season

A staggering $10 billion will pour into the political advertising arena to sway American voters during the 2024 Election cycle. While $10 billion is a boon for digital media stakeholders, that money comes with severe risks.

Navigating misinformation and disinformation will be a key challenge of this election cycle, driven by the widespread availability of sophisticated AI tools. Digital publishers and CTV stakeholders face direct and negative effects on their business, from drops in user engagement to broader societal mistrust.

The proliferation of generative AI, deepfakes, and sophisticated malvertising tactics have empowered fraudsters and foreign governments to distribute deceptive ads via programmatic channels. This alarming trend has forced digital media entities into a rapid and rigorous process of establishing, overhauling, and strictly enforcing political ad quality policies.

Ultimately it falls to publishers to serve as the final bastion of defense for their audiences. Publishers must undertake the critical task of determining whether specific advertisers and promoters of sensitive, hot-button issues can be permitted to run ads on their sites and under which conditions, while simultaneously ensuring malicious actors are kept at bay.

This Playbook provides a robust framework for an ad quality strategy, essential for setting up robust election advertising guidelines. It delves into the tools available to publishers for increased visibility and control, shedding light on challenges in the upcoming election cycle. The Playbook’s goal is to empower publishers to guarantee that political ads on their platforms are informative and accurate and enhance both user experience and their reputation. Download this playbook now!

The post AdMonsters Publisher Playbooks of 2023: Political Ads, Attention Metrics, Bad Ads, Ad Ops Are Rock Stars appeared first on AdMonsters.

This is the kind of data that attracts advertisers, especially during a recession when their budgets are smaller and all focus is on performance and business outcomes. But are publishers taking full advantage of these amazing resources?

AdMonsters AdOps are Rock Stars Playbook survey indicates they are not. There’s not enough collaboration between AdOps and the sales, product, and business intelligence teams. This is caused by a combination of tech limitations and interdepartmental inefficiencies.

AdOps Is an Underutilized Strategic Resource

More worrisome, only 22% of AdOps teams say they have access to a wealth of data and insights, which means the remaining 78% can’t help their colleagues succeed in their jobs to the fullest possible extent.

Now that advertisers are cutting back on campaigns, publishers need to work harder to attract brands to their sites. Detailed performance data distributed to all the teams that need it can help publishers win more business and revenue. As it stands, they’re leaving money on the table.

We understand that if AdOps had more tools and workflows to share those insights, client-facing teams could have more data-driven conversations with advertisers about campaign performance. This in turn will lead to repeat sales, as well as provide the data needed to recruit other advertisers in their sector.

To dive into the results of this survey and learn more about publishers’ challenges, as well as access our pro tips, download AdMonsters AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom? playbook, created in partnership with DV Publisher Suite. 

Download your copy of the AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom? Playbook now!

The post Only 22% of Adops Teams Say They Have Access to a Wealth of Data and Insights appeared first on AdMonsters.

Intuitively, we understand that if AdOps had more tools and workflows to share those insights, client-facing teams could have more data-driven conversations with advertisers about campaign performance. This in turn will lead to repeat sales, as well as provide the data needed to recruit other advertisers in their sector.

Additionally, this data would help product teams design premium ad units and ad packages by sector, as well as the right price to charge for them. Once this data is made actionable, there are even more possibilities that we can outline here.

But how widely is contextualized AdOps data shared with sales and ad product teams? Have publishing organizations succeeded in digital transformations, or are they still struggling with silos that ultimately inhibit a more robust monetization strategy?

To answer these questions, we surveyed 136 people who work in digital publishing in an AdOps, sales, revenue, or product function.

Enter your email to download your free copy of AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom? below! 

This playbook, created in partnership with DV Publisher Suite, dives into the results of our survey while highlighting publishers’ challenges and providing tips to overcome them.

The post AdMonsters Playbook: AdOps Are Rock Stars. Are Sales Teams Taking Advantage of Their Stardom? appeared first on AdMonsters.

The “ad recession” forced all sides of the industry to reevaluate their business practices, and for some, that meant creating new partnerships. 

Daily Yoga experienced a slowdown in subscriber rate and challenges evaluating performance after the IOS14 update. Since the brand monetizes through its premium subscription service, it needed to gain access to audiences likely to become subscribers. Daily Yoga found a solution by utilizing AppLovin’s AppDiscovery platform. 

We chatted with Andrey Kazakov, VP of Demand at AppLovin, about the success of their partnership, the importance of user engagement, and more. 

Andrew Byrd: Daily Yoga and AppLovin created a partnership after a slowdown in subscriber acquisition. Why did you think this would be a worthwhile partnership?

Andrey Kazakov: Daily Yoga is a popular yoga teaching platform that empowers users to stay healthy with on-the-go workouts and guided meditations. This app is available on mobile phones, tablets, and TVs, and their classes serve over 60 million users across all skill levels. With the app, yogis can track their progress, participate in Daily Yoga’s community, and enjoy a selection of peaceful and serene music. 

Recommended through word of mouth, Daily Yoga began advertising on AppLovin’s AppDiscovery. AppDiscovery’s machine learning technology allowed Daily Yoga to optimize toward its most valuable down funnel event, subscriptions – despite iOS challenges. 

By acquiring subscribers at a good profit, and stable price point, Daily Yoga reached new performance heights and a sustainable scale and gained complete control and visibility into its UA profitability. On top of acquiring users that subscribe at a required rate, AppDiscovery remains a continuous source of growth as it continuously delivers new users of required quality, making it a long-term partner.

AB: User engagement is an essential part of any successful business. How did the partnership between AppLovin and Daily Yoga help improve that aspect of the daily yoga app? What new tactics did you use? 

AK: Daily Yoga saw slowing user growth with UA channels and platforms. Since Daily Yoga monetizes via its premium subscription service, they must find audiences likely to become subscribers. 

 AppDiscovery improved D0 ROAS on AppLovin by 62%, achieved 100% MoM growth, and rose US Health and Fitness rating to #16 on iOS. 

 AB: On the AppLovin website, you talk about the success of marketing on AppDiscovery. Why was this marketing tool so successful? 

AK: AppDiscovery helps developers acquire higher-quality users at the right price. AppDiscovery finds users likely to download apps with its proprietary machine learning algorithms and grow apps profitably by optimizing towards the most important metrics and goals. 

With AppDiscovery, developers can run CPP and CPE campaigns, which target based on cost and engagement-related goals. 

AB: Your partnership proved beneficial as Daily Yoga now has 60 million users. What was ONE goal that we prioritized?

AK: Using AppLovin’s AppDiscovery’s Cost Per Purchase (CPP) campaigns, Daily Yoga optimized their most valuable down funnel event, subscriptions, at a profitable, stable price. 

AB: The ad tech industry is evolving, and many companies are worried about how to reach consumers properly. What advice would you give to the industry to help engage consumers?  

 AK: Global macroeconomic changes reshape how businesses think about growth demands and create opportunities for those willing to adopt. As the mobile ecosystem evolves, advertisers will continue to get pushed to experiment with new channels to remain competitive. 

Mobile-first businesses will go beyond mobile inventory to new forms of audience reach that are novel for mobile performance, such as Connected TV. Measurement is also evolving as it takes a broader set of tools and methods – from media mix modeling to up-to-date platform support – to have a holistic view of channel portfolio performance.

The post AppLovin and Daily Yoga Collaboration Exemplifies the Importance of Partnership to Drive Revenue appeared first on AdMonsters.

Metrics and numbers that were once plentiful are now slowly dwindling. The reason for this fallout? Of course, it’s the answers we see repeatedly – cookies, identity, data, privacy, or some intersection of them all.

The demise of third-party cookies limits the amount of data publishers can leverage to enrich their own audience data. They need those prized data insights to get a fuller profile of the people consuming their media. Because without insights, advertisers are paying for access to a rather blurry picture of a publisher’s users.

The publishing industry has been plagued by audience insight issues long before the third-party cookie started its farewell tour, but access to the right tools is more important now than ever to help chart a post-cookie course.

Enriching Audience Data for Future-Proof Insights

Sometimes it sounds like publishers are just having one big party — first-party, second-party, and third-party. But though they are sitting on lots of data, it isn’t exactly a time to celebrate. 

Internally, there are challenges getting a complete view of their audiences as data tends to be siloed across departments and not fully optimized. Externally, publishers face mounting privacy regulations and updates from the likes of Apple and Google, making it tougher to activate their audiences on and off their sites. 

And yet, publishers have more control and power over their first-party data now more than ever; the larger need is how to take this data, analyze it, and turn it into valuable insights. The value of audience staples like demo and location remains, but publishers need to go beyond the basics to monetize audiences truly. Knowing what makes audiences tick, such as interests and behaviors, is where the real value lies.

Let’s say the Tooth Fairy has a site, and she’s offering an audience of parents 18-34. Her competitor provides parents with kids ages 5-9 who spend $25 per tooth. It’s obvious what option sounds more appealing to a potential advertiser.

Insights are where it’s at because these little nuggets will become the foundation of a publisher’s ability to win business — especially in a post persistent identifier world. They can customize their data to the unique needs of each and every advertiser.

Publishers who tap into insights can deliver campaigns based on an advertiser’s audience objectives and are rewarded with a continuous revenue cycle.

A Full View of Audience Insights for the Win

Publishers who have access to the kinds of deep insights about their audiences that advertisers crave have the upper hand. Not only will they be able to broaden their reach and demonstrate campaign performance, but they can also offer buyers more efficient access to the value-added insights they desire.  

But how can publishers glean a clearer understanding of their audiences to make better decisions about monetization? It starts with having the right tools to bring together deep insights plus cookieless, privacy-first solutions. 

An organization that is supporting the publishing ecosystem with these types of tools is Yahoo.

Since launching Yahoo ConnectID in 2020, Yahoo has been using consent-based, first-party data. The identity solution pulls opted-in user data from Yahoo’s global portfolio of owned and operated media properties.

Yahoo ConnectID has over 500 million globally mapped user profiles based on direct, content-driven relationships.  Yahoo’s Director of Product Management, Shalini Vats, says, “Yahoo ConnectID has a wealth of audience information. Through various touchpoints, we have a complete view of audience behavior across various devices to understand insights around purchases, travel, subscriptions, or media consumption behavior.”

First-Party and Privacy-First Solutions for First-Rate Audience Insights

The Yahoo Publisher Insights Dashboard builds upon the Yahoo ConnectID identity solution to give publishers the valuable insights they need to be better partners for their advertisers. 

The informational dashboard leverages Yahoo’s proprietary first-party data — coming directly from Yahoo’s owned and operated users — and cross-references it with a publisher’s user data.

The Yahoo Publisher Insights Dashboard is exclusively available to publishers who adopt Yahoo ConnectID. More than 12,000 web domains have implemented Yahoo ConnectID, including leading publishers like Cafe Media, BuzzFeed, and The Arena Group.

Governance and security controls within the Yahoo Publisher Insights Dashboard ensure the data stays within the Yahoo ecosystem.

Vats says, “We are careful not to bring in any PII [Personal Identifiable Information] to our Publisher Insights Dashboard. For example, we see millions of emails flowing to Yahoo email accounts every day with our Yahoo Mail product. We allow users to opt-out, and we are not touching that data.” 

This treasure trove of consent-driven data provides publishers with a 360-degree view of their audiences. Publishers can monetize the data by providing their high-value audiences to advertisers looking to target specific consumers. 

Vats says the Yahoo Publisher Insights Dashboard benefits publishers because, “They might have their first-party data, but that data may not be good enough or complete enough for them to really compete in this market. Yahoo’s powerful analytics is differentiated because it helps publishers understand deeper insights on users on different test points.”

The post Publishers Need Deep Audience Insights Now More Than Ever appeared first on AdMonsters.

Google’s incorporation of prebid is supposed to make ad ops easier by allowing publishers to manage their header bidding relationships through “yield groups.” This will enable publishers to identify some portion of their inventory for Open Bidders to target, and prebid bidders can now do the same.

Ad servers will no longer need to be filled with line items to heighten header bidding demand. Publishers and programmatic executives over at Bustle, AccuWeather, and Cafe Media are all currently testing out this new feature and seem to be in favor. 

This Google Ad Manager prebid link-up does help to eliminate some discrepancies.

“Currently, prebid rounds all the prices before submitting them to GAM, but in the new setup, GAM is reading the price from prebid before prebid has done any rounding,” said Patrick McCann, SVP of Research at CafeMedia and Chair Prebid.js. “You won’t see the rounding errors. You end up with a better auction outcome when people are bidding closely to each other thanks to the rounding effect in prebid.”

Will This Interrupt Pre Existing Header Bidding Set Ups?

It’s looking like it just might. Yesterday on LinkedIn, we saw ad tech vendors questioning CafeMedia’s CSO, Paul Bannister, after he posted about the “bridge to prebid.” 

“There is an existing setup with the orders and line items which publishers are efficiently running and is a proven model,” said Dikshant Joshi, Director of Publisher Development at AdPushup. “While this seems to be a promising tool introduced by Google, there is no proof the performance would be at par or better or less. Google mentions the setup of yield groups (an additional and different setup). Still, the experts in the industry would want to benchmark the performance of the header bidding yield groups before they make a complete move or stick with what they currently have.” 

Google also mentions an offering of a “NetworkMinimumBidToWin” metric that publishers can access via Data Transfer Files. Nonetheless, this is a paid feature with recurring costs, so you know what that means; many won’t be able to access it if they do not wish to pay. 

If “NetworkMinimumBidToWin” were a tool to help publishers and the ecosystem, we would have seen this as a part of standard metrics accessible through APIs and the query/reporting tool.

What Is the Future of Google Ad Manager and Header Bidding?

I have asked the Universe tons of times to provide me with a crystal ball, but until then, we will have to ride the wave to see how this pans out. When we spoke to Dikshant, he mentioned that ad tech is an ever-evolving space, and with this promising change, it will be interesting to see “the actual value it brings against the current set up.”

Although many publishers will have to change their ways of using GAM’s services, others can see the benefits.

“The timeline is easy to criticize since header bidding has had such widespread publisher adoption for so long, but this still feels like a step forward,” said Emry Downinghall, SVP Programmatic Revenue, and Strategy at Unwind Media. “Google publicly acknowledges that +90% of publishers use header bidding, and they are working to support that. If this provides mediation transparency and simplifies setup in GAM, publishers win.”

The post Will Google Ad Manager’s Link-up With Prebid Reinvent the Wheel? appeared first on AdMonsters.