In the world of digital media, Generative AI sparks both excitement and concern. This is especially true among publishers and independent content creators.

Last week, creators took a stand in New York City with the launch of Raptive’s ‘Keep It Real’ campaign, an advocacy effort designed to raise awareness about the impact of AI on their livelihoods.

As I sat in the room, listening to stories from food bloggers, designers, and country music aficionados, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between their challenges and the ones publishers face.

Digital media and advertising is grappling with a shifting landscape where AI threatens to commodify human creativity and diminish revenue streams. And if creators are rallying together to protect their work, shouldn’t publishers do the same?

Setting the Stage: The Creator’s Call to Action

ABC News anchor Linsey Davis was the surprise host of the day, opening the event by celebrating creators’ work as the “heart and soul of the internet.” Her words resonated throughout, highlighting the core message: creators — and, by extension, publishers — are the lifeblood of the web, facing challenges that deserve urgent attention.

But creators’ work is now threatened by the rise of generative AI, which scrapes content to deliver quick answers, often at the expense of the nuanced stories they bring to life.

Creators vs. AI: Navigating the SEO Shake-Up

The ‘Keep It Real’ campaign centers on a simple but powerful message: AI should innovate responsibly without exploiting the creators who pour their hearts into their work. Creators shared how generative AI scrapes and repurposes their work without consent or compensation. This issue hits home for publishers who have spent years building quality content to engage audiences.

Scott Messer‘s analysis of the latest SEO challenges for publishers sheds light on how Google’s introduction of AI-generated summaries and features like Search Generative Experience (SGE) alters search engine results pages (SERPs). This shift pushes traditional organic results further down the page, impacting CTRs for top organic positions. For creators, this means that even high-quality, nuanced content risks being overshadowed by generic AI outputs, threatening their visibility and revenue.

Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life illustrates the value of discoverable, human-created content: “We slowly but surely started to attract people who were so thankful and grateful to have found us because they were also looking for a similar platform to be able to learn about their heritage more, and cook recipes that kind of were always the domain of their parents or their grandparents or their aunts or their uncles.”

However, with AI-driven search results potentially limiting such discoveries, creators like Kaitlin worry that these meaningful connections between content creators and their audiences may become increasingly rare. It’s clear that AI poses threats, but some publishers are exploring ways to unlock AI opportunities that can preserve revenue and drive growth.

The Economic Impact of AI on Creators

Like creators, publishers rely on nuanced, human-generated content to attract audiences, which opens up the gates to advertising dollars. But with generative AI serving up bland, one-size-fits-all information, creators and publishers risk losing their unique voice — and, ultimately, their revenue.

Michael Sanchez, CEO of Raptive, puts this threat into stark perspective: “Let’s put this in human terms for Raptive creators, this is their livelihood. They do this full-time. It is the primary way they feed their families. There are 1000s of creators across Raptive who earn their living from their content and make less than $100,000 per year for one family, if they lose half of their traffic due to AI replacing their content, they lose half of their income.”

Today, 15% of every dollar advertisers spend on the open web goes through a Raptive site, earning creators over $2.5 billion in revenue. So a 50% reduction in traffic would impact individual creators’ revenue and threaten the broader creator economy, which supports millions of jobs.

Building Communities and Connections

Lindsay and Bjork Ostrom of Pinch of Yum said it best: The internet should continue to be a place where independent voices can thrive. It’s a sentiment publishers know all too well.

Echoing this idea, Tieghan Gerard of Half Baked Harvest, emphasized the importance of community building. “The time I spend on social media is the time I spend interacting with my community and building that community, making that community strong, and making those people feel heard. It’s so important. Nobody feels heard anymore, and we have the power to do that.”

The Role of Advertisers: Supporting Human-Generated Content

The ‘Keep It Real’ campaign calls on advertisers to invest in human-generated content that drives real results and engages audiences on a deeper level. As AI-generated content starts flooding the web, advertisers might be tempted to pour money into platforms that offer quick wins and endless streams of generic content. However, this approach undermines the authenticity that both creators and publishers bring to the table.

Marketers should consider how their media plans and spending align with the campaign’s message. How can the industry ensure that advertising dollars support high-quality, human-centric content?

This could mean reassessing where programmatic buys are directed or prioritizing direct partnerships with publishers who maintain human touchpoints in their content.

Publishers It’s Time to Innovate Responsibly

In creators’ rally for responsible innovation, they want it to be known —  they’re not anti-AI; they’re pro-ethical AI. They want to be part of the conversation, advocating for systems that value their contributions.

Publishers, too, must find ways to leverage AI responsibly while supporting the creator economy, ensuring that both creators and publishers can thrive. That might mean adopting practices that respect the human element of content creation or finding ways to collaborate with creators on shared initiatives that promote authentic, valuable storytelling.

Ad Tech and the Human Connection

Programmatically, ad tech builds a bridge between advertisers and the content that audiences consume. This connector role directly impacts the future of human-generated content online.

It’s time to explore how ad tech can support responsible AI practices that don’t undercut the human connections at the heart of the digital ecosystem.

It’s time to ask: How can ad tech support an internet where independent voices can thrive? It may involve prioritizing ad placements on websites that invest in human-generated stories or encouraging advertisers to value quality over quantity in their content partnerships.

What the Ad Tech Industry Can Do to Keep It Real

• Collaboration: Just as creators are banding together to advocate for their rights, publishers need to engage in collective action. Working with industry bodies to push for fair practices in AI use is a start.
• Support Quality Content: Encourage advertisers to align their spending with websites that offer the depth, nuance, and authenticity AI can’t replicate.
• Advocate for Fair Practices: Push for more transparency in AI’s use of content, ensuring that creators and publishers are fairly compensated when their work is used to train AI models.

The Path Forward: Keeping the Internet Human

At the event, creators emphasized that the fight for fair AI use is only beginning. As they advocate for their rights and the protection of their livelihoods, the entire ad tech ecosystem has a stake in this conversation, especially publishers.

By standing together and championing authentic, human-driven content, you can ensure that the internet remains a place where creativity and community thrive. The road ahead calls for collaboration, innovation, and a shared commitment to keeping it real.

The post Creators vs. AI: Can Keeping It Real Save the Internet? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Google has had a tough few months.

First, they announced an abrupt about-face in their years-long initiative to remove third-party cookies from Chrome. Barely two weeks later, they were officially declared a Search monopoly by a federal court in one of the most consequential antitrust losses in decades (with another concurrent antitrust case about Google’s AdTech business still pending.) 

As the CTO of Upwave (a Brand Outcomes measurement startup) I’ve spent the last decade doing what everyone in AdTech has to do – navigate cautiously and quietly around Google, for fear of drawing their ire (or simply being toppled by their massive wake.) I have spent years participating in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) discussions about Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and I’ve watched the cookie saga unfold with morbid fascination. 

One thing became clear very early in the W3C process – a small number of companies (particularly, but not exclusively Google) believed very deeply that they had both the power and the right to exercise pervasive control over the entire digital media and advertising industries. Now, it appears that Google may have finally found the limits of its influence: at the courthouse steps. 

But with or without third-party cookies, the web must go on. So where do we all go next?

The Privacy Paradox

The Privacy Sandbox initiative was Google’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable objectives: overcoming Apple’s privacy counter-positioning, maintaining ad revenue primarily generated by capturing and applying comprehensive behavioral data about its billion+, and preserving a sufficiently healthy web ecosystem (since what’s the point of maintaining a search monopoly if searchers have nothing to find?) 

However, Google’s approach was fundamentally flawed in its overly simplistic view of privacy, focusing solely on eliminating cross-site tracking. This narrow definition sidestepped uncomfortable conversations about Google’s data collection and use, but also set an unrealistic bar for the Privacy Sandbox APIs by demanding they facilitate effective advertising while rendering cross-site data sharing technologically unfeasible.

Google put a smart, capable team in the Privacy Sandbox, but their mission was impossible from the start.

The Monopoly Question

The recent court ruling confirming Google’s monopoly in search underscores the company’s immense influence in shaping the digital landscape. Google’s control of the most widely used web browser means that its decisions about cookies and privacy reverberate throughout the advertising ecosystem. And Google’s “walled garden” approach to its many interlocking properties has allowed it to build an unassailable flywheel by tightly bundling its proprietary data, unique scaled inventory, and ad tech stack. 

The Privacy Sandbox initiative, despite its stated goals, has always seemed more about protecting Google’s flywheel than about safeguarding user privacy. And whether the ongoing antitrust trial focused on Google’s ad tech business finds that Google’s dominance of the plumbing of ad buying and serving rises to the level of a monopoly, there can be no doubt that the entire ad tech industry still operates in Google’s long shadow.

Forging a New Privacy Path

Google’s announcement that they won’t entirely remove 3rd party cookies doesn’t mean cookies are safe. Industry analysts anticipate Google will likely implement a consent mechanism similar to Apple’s “App Tracking Transparency,” effectively decimating cookie availability without outright eliminating them.

This scenario presents significant challenges:

1. The industry loses momentum in its efforts to move beyond outdated tracking methods.
2. The Privacy Sandbox initiative risks fading into irrelevance without the urgency of imminent cookie deprecation.
3. Uncertainty surrounding the open web’s future continues to accelerate ad spending shifts toward walled gardens, paradoxically giving a few tech giants even more panoptical views of user behavior.
4. Google may decide it has bigger problems than the long-term viability of the open web and simply retreat into its castle, leaving everyone outside its walls to pick up the pieces.

The digital advertising industry stands at a critical juncture. It’s evident that where privacy is concerned, both industry self-regulation and unilateral decisions by tech giants have fallen short. 

So what’s next? In a world where big tech can no longer set the rules, what’s needed instead is a collaborative, multi-stakeholder effort to develop pragmatic privacy standards, practices, and enforceable guidelines.

It’s time for an international coalition to unite regulators, industry representatives, academic experts, and consumer advocates. Their collective task should be to craft a flexible, adaptable privacy framework that embraces a comprehensive view of privacy, acknowledging its contextual nature and the intricate realities of data usage in today’s digital ecosystem.

In the interim, we must prepare for a transitional period where cookie effectiveness wanes, but no clear alternative emerges. Advertisers must explore and evaluate various strategies, including refining contextual targeting, exploring emerging privacy-preserving technologies, and learning to think like marketing economists.

Google’s privacy misstep, combined with its antitrust challenges, presents an opportunity for industry-wide recalibration. By fostering collaboration, diversifying our approaches, and constructively engaging with regulators, we can work towards building a truly user-centric, economically sustainable, privacy-respecting digital ecosystem.

Ultimately, we have no choice. Google and the Privacy Sandbox are not coming to save us.

The post What Happens When Google Can No Longer Set the Rules for the Web? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Twenty-five years ago, search transformed the digital world. 

At its inception, Google was a fledgling company that revolutionized the Internet with its search engine. It built and expanded its empire thanks, in part, to the ruling in the antitrust case against Microsoft. The tables have turned today, and Google is on the other side of the bench.  

In early August, Google’s loss in the search antitrust case decision marks a landmark moment for the search industry. As it stands, Google forces user searches to be funneled to its search results page, squashing innovation and extracting tens of billions from search advertisers and publishers in the process. 

The industry now awaits proposed remedies to bring competition to the search market. The door is finally open for browsers and other search properties to innovate and improve the consumer search experience in search advertising by shaping consumer intent.

The Rise of a Tech Giant

In 1998, Larry Page and his Stanford friends invented a brilliant search engine that allowed anyone with a web browser to access relevant results to any query instantly and for free. Google now dominates search and most of Big Tech. 

At the time, the company’s algorithms were so much better than competing search engines that the word “Google” became a verb that was, and still is, synonymous with “search.” 

As Google grew, went public, and eventually added free software like Gmail, Maps, and Chrome, it extended its digital advertising empire. At the time, the only losers seemed to be the news and editorial publications who traded analog ad dollars for digital pennies when they raced to give away content for traffic. 

However, to grow search ad revenue, Google began locking out competitors, raising ad rates, and extracting value from the user experience. As it extended its monopoly into new markets over the last ten years, Google’s search revenue has grown fivefold. 

Unlocking Innovation on the Open Web

Google’s stronghold on the search advertising market is largely due to its exclusive search distribution contracts, which force partnerships like Apple to outsource search experiences to Google, making it the default search engine.

Conversely, “Search on the Open Web” is when a person searches for relevant results outside the search engine, such as on the homepage of a privacy browser like Firefox or through a shopping app like Klarna. In 2023, the size of the Open Web search advertising market was $90-100 billion. Over 90% of that revenue went to Google, according to evidence revealed in the U.S. v. Google antitrust trial.

Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. determined that Google’s exclusivity prevents the largest Open Web search properties from controlling ad selection or experimenting with their results. The tech conglomerate is also guilty of removing search results and ads provided by Google. 

Now that Google has been found liable, the door to competition, innovation, and experimentation has opened. Most importantly, the consumer will benefit because the industry is entering a new era of curated search results. 

How Can the Consumer Benefit?

Search on the Open Web opens the door to innovative, generative AI solutions. When Open Web search properties compete to experiment with search, consumers benefit from a more modern, personalized, relevant, and dynamic experience. With a curated search experience, users can find the best result or offer from the browser or property they are searching on and skip the SERP altogether.

Google’s exclusivity contracts currently prohibit this innovation. As a result, Open Web search properties generate less than 10% of total Open Web search revenue. Today, few Open Web search properties can refuse to forgo Google ad revenue altogether — but that is poised to change. 

What’s at Stake for Advertisers and Publishers?

The Court is poised to require Google to compete in search to create incentives for open Web search properties to innovate the search experience. Breaking Google’s exclusivity would bring transparency and efficiency to advertisers, as publishers could show their search results or ads or curate those from direct sources.

Whether it’s privacy search or Generative AI, everyone from DuckDuckGo to Apple Safari to your favorite shopping app could show Google and their own search results and make revenue from their search media.

For advertisers, tens of billions of dollars in wasted ad spend is at stake – as well as the return of transparency and control over their budgets. With Google’s exclusivity deals prohibited, these advertisers can “go direct,” reducing costs and gaining transparency.

The Future of Search Will Be Curated and Driven by Consumer Intent

Search on the Open Web will more effectively serve the needs of consumers in today’s increasingly fragmented and modernized search journey.

The Court’s decision suggests that it will fashion the remedy most likely to create competition in the search results and ad markets, similar to the Microsoft remedy in the early 2000s.

A potential structural remedy, such as the divestiture of Chrome and Android, would incentivize Google to participate in search markets where competitors produce innovative user search experiences and deliver transparency and efficiency to advertisers.

However, the remedy phase plays out, and one thing remains certain: the future of search will be built around valuable moments of consumer intent that can open up the market for $500 billion in consumer spending.

The post Back to the Future of Search: Google’s Loss In The Search Antitrust Trial Unlocks Innovation appeared first on AdMonsters.

As the digital world embraces AI’s power, publishers can harness this technology to their advantage. To shed light on this transformative landscape, we turn to David DiAngelo, VP of Global Marketplace Development at Emodo, Ericsson’s ad tech division. 

DiAngelo contends that the ongoing AI race is reshaping the power balance in search, potentially disrupting the search advertising industry and influencing publishers’ traffic sources. In the following Q&A, he imparts invaluable insights and recommendations for publishers navigating the AI revolution and successfully preserving and growing their revenue streams.

Andrew Byrd: How has this wave of generative AI impacted the digital media industry and its advertising model?

David DiAngelo: The current wave of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and DALL-E, has created significant public interest due to their ability to provide complete and efficient answers. This could disrupt the digital media industry and the advertising model that supports it. 

Traditional search engines, like Google, have historically delivered search results through a list of links, including sponsored links. Generative AI, on the other hand, offers a more streamlined and user-friendly experience by providing comprehensive responses. 

This shift in user behavior will likely have profound implications for the search advertising business, as users may no longer need to click multiple links to find the information they seek. Consequently, this could render search a less reliable source of traffic for publishers, affecting their revenue streams.

AB: Will AI disrupt the power balance in search, and if so, how? 

DD: Yes, AI is poised to disrupt the power balance in search. AI search offers users greater efficiency and complete answers, which could diminish the reliance on traditional search results with sponsored links. This could lead to a significant shift in the advertising model as users are less incentivized to explore more profound search results and visit multiple sites, affecting publishers’ monetizable traffic.

AB: How can publishers offset potential traffic loss and preserve monetization in light of AI’s impact on search?

DD: To offset potential traffic loss and maintain monetization in the face of AI’s impact on search, publishers should embrace other generative AI tools. These tools offer several advantages, including strengthening revenue channels, streamlining workflow processes, and ultimately increasing overall revenue. For instance, publishers can employ generative AI to automate content creation, enhancing the efficiency of editorial procedures.

Additionally, publishers can explore AI-powered personalization to provide tailored content recommendations to users, increasing engagement and ad revenue opportunities. Furthermore, publishers should consider partnerships with AI-powered technology providers to develop custom solutions that address their specific needs, ensuring they remain competitive.

AB: How do premium publishers view new AI technology, and what are some examples of their innovative use of AI?

DD: Premium publishers generally have a favorable view of new AI technology because they have the resources to innovate and test AI tools. 

Some premium publishers, like Expedia, Duolingo, Forbes, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg, have already explored AI’s applications for content generation. For example, Expedia uses AI to generate hotel recommendations, while Duolingo provides AI explanations for paying subscribers.

AB: How do smaller, long-tail publishers differ in their ability to adopt AI, and what challenges do they face?

DD: Smaller, long-tail publishers often face challenges in adopting AI due to limited research and development resources and a lack of tech vendor support. This can particularly impact niche sites that rely on search discovery for traffic. AI-generated content, like customized itineraries, can reduce the need for broad audience targeting, posing a threat to publishers dependent on search-driven traffic rather than name recognition or SEO expertise. 

AB: What strategies can publishers implement to adapt to the changing landscape of AI and search?

DD: Publishers should adopt a proactive approach to navigate the changing landscape of AI and search in order to to secure their revenue streams.  

One effective strategy is to leverage their growing influence within the industry. Publisher task forces and trade groups can advocate for AI chat providers to pay fees for crawling their pages, thus creating additional revenue sources. Moreover, publishers can collaborate with tech partners to implement AI-driven solutions that provide a competitive edge. 

They should also consider diversifying their revenue streams by exploring sponsored content initiatives and embracing AI-optimized dynamic ad formats, which can boost campaign performance and help offset any potential revenue loss resulting from changes in user behavior.

AB: How can AI be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat for publishers in the long term?

DD: Publishers should view AI as an opportunity rather than a threat for publishers in the long term. By embracing AI technologies, publishers can enhance their capabilities in various areas. For instance, AI can improve user experiences by providing personalized content recommendations, increasing user engagement and ad revenue. 

Additionally, AI can streamline editorial workflows, reducing manual labor and operational costs. Publishers can also explore new revenue channels through sponsored content initiatives that align with user interests. Furthermore, AI-optimized dynamic ad formats can significantly enhance campaign performance, leading to higher CPMs and compensating for potential traffic loss. AI offers publishers the tools they need to thrive and remain competitive.

The post How Can Publishers Unlock AI Opportunities to Preserve Revenue and Drive Growth? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Reportedly, the companies involved in these talks are the likes of Procter & Gamble, Clorox—CPG players that would be obvious advertisers if Amazon were to carry through with Alexa advertising. It’s not clear whether Amazon will carry through. The company hasn’t made any statements on the topic yet, and as it stands, advertising via Echo devices is pretty limited. That is, streaming services can have their own ads, as long as they don’t sound like Alexa’s voice. There are also sponsorship opportunities for brands—Alexa might suggest a particular brand if the user is searching for a product—but they’re not connected to the user’s shopping history.

The revenue opportunity for Amazon is clear enough. The voice market is booming, Amazon is one of the largest retailers (not just e-tailers) in the world, and advertisers want in on the action. In theory, Alexa advertising would be analogous to search advertising—advertisers would pay for higher placements in search results if the user searched for a type of product they sell. Or Alexa might suggest the user try purchasing a different product sold by a company the user has bought from in the past. Top search results are not as easy to scroll past in voice than they are in a “traditional” web search, which is a tasty opportunity for advertisers.

Voice came up at the last Publisher Forum, in Nashville this past November. In a keynote talk, entrepreneur and tech investor Eric Franchi pointed out that voice is projected to account for 40% of searches in coming years, and my colleague Gavin Dunaway pointed out that chatbots are already quite popular in Asia. (WeChat, which is ostensibly a chat app, allows for in-app shopping and search.) There are huge opportunities in tech that allows users to get away from screens as we know them: “You’re not going to be sitting there with a phone for the rest of your life,” Franchi said.

Now let’s look seriously at how Amazon is uniquely positioned in all of this: Amazon currently commands 71% of the market for voice-enabled speakers. And Alexa-driven devices are flying off of shelves, as this past holiday season demonstrates.

For some context about how significant it could be for Amazon to launch a comprehensive advertising effort using voice, compare the current state of Alexa to where Google was when it launched AdWords. At that time, in 2000—now, I know I was pretty young, but I still had a Hotmail account and used MapQuest for directions. Google had not yet penetrated into just about every aspect of our digital lives. Amazon in 2018 is pretty much universally used here in the U.S. to purchase every possible product, and it has data on many of us going back years, or over a decade. Arguably, Amazon’s position in voice is comparable to where Google’s was in 2000 with plain old regular search—and Amazon touches more disparate corners of our lives than Google did then.

The big questions are, then: How and when might advertising budgets shift over from traditional search to voice, and what’s Google going to do in response? Google has the number-two spot in the voice-enabled speaker market, but we’re talking about 23.8% compared to Amazon’s 70.6%. Gavin, in an early POV on chatbots and AI, suggested Google might go on an acquisition binge, hungry for newer companies that specialize in the tech it needs to go up against Amazon in voice. I think that’s the likeliest outcome—the shortest line between two points for a company that can spend gazillions of dollars. But it’ll be hard for even a Google to beat Amazon’s incredibly deep insights around users’ purchase history. It won’t be as simple as just transferring budgets over to this emerging realm—nothing ever is, and marketers will want to be sure they’ll hit their desired outcomes before they start spending heavily in a new space.

That said, the users in sheer numbers are leading the way, and Amazon so far has been keeping up with them as they turn to voice assistants. Whenever the opportunity comes to bring advertiser dollars into this space, Amazon appears to have a running start in the race for market domination.

The post Assessing Amazon’s Alexa Advertising Advantage appeared first on AdMonsters.

Getting Ready for Sonoma

There’s tons going on over here at AdMonsters, including a major update — we’ve filled all our seats for our Sonoma Publisher Forum. We’re truly excited to have industry leaders from some great companies including the Washington Post Company, NBC Universal, BuzzFeed, and more, joining us in Sonoma, March 3-6.

If you didn’t snag a seat for Sonoma, don’t fret, you can still put your name on the wait list. And, check out our other upcoming events, including our OPS Markets event on April 4 in New York, and our Boulder Publisher Forum, Aug. 18-21. 

A Lot Of Chatter About TV

Just in case you didn’t know, the online world has a sort-of addiction to television – actually, more like a TV contagion. Social networks and television seem to go hand-in-hand. From live tweeting the latest episode of Scandal to figuring out just why you had to wait an extra 30 minutes to see the Ravens win, social media channels are replete with TV buzz – and Twitter’s about to cash in on it even more. 

The kingdom of 140 characters confirmed Tuesday that it acquired Bluefin Labs, a company that, essentially, paved the way for social TV analysis (and, also have scored about $20 million in investments since its founding). We actually hosted BlueFin Labs along with some of their competitors last July at OPS TV, where MPG’s Mitch Oscar and Fordham Professor Philip Napoli analyzed social data for a variety of TV programs. TV watchers love chatting it up about their shows online – and, Twitter takes the cake, with almost 95 percent of social TV discussion analyzed by Bluefin Labs coming from Twitter.

“We believe that Bluefin’s data science capabilities and social TV expertise will help us create innovative new ad products and consumer experiences in the exciting intersection of Twitter and TV,” said Twitter’s chief operating officer Ali Rowghani in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

The announcement comes on the heels of Twitter’s deal with Nielsen to help create Twitter TV ratings; and, signals Twitter’s ongoing commitment to social TV data, which could very well be a goldmine for TV advertisers looking to expand their branding beyond the small screen.

OPS TV will be returning on July 19 in NYC, but before check out another session that shows the incredible power of social data across digital channels. CEO and Founder of Sulia, Jonathan Glick and VP of Operations Claudia Page will be on hand at this year’s OPS Markets event on April 4 in New York to discuss how social data can help reinvent how advertisers target consumers.

It’s Not Just TV Data

Big moves are being made in data-driving advertising. Social ad firm Nanigans recently unveiled a new way to target Facebook audiences by tracking in-app spending, helping to create and cinch current Facebook targeting profiles. Nanigans latest capability effectively gives mobile advertisers the ability to refine mobile-app user targeting, allowing them to target and track proven lucrative users and audiences, helping to streamline ROI and conversion tracking.

“A lot of companies optimize on higher funnel metrics like cost per click or cost per acquisition, but we’ve built an algorithm looking at the lifetime value or true ROI, actual return on ad spend,” Nanigans COO Marc Grabowski told AdWeek.

Data marketer Causata also raked in $7.5 million in investments, raising its total investments to $23 million. Causata’s data platform has been called creepy by Gigaom’s Derrick Harris, who highlights just how much data the platform traps – from a consumer’s email address to their previous customer-service phone calls.  Time will tell if companies like Causata truly change the ad/audience-targeting game; but, right now, many of them have to fight a particular foe – privacy advocates. 

In a recent blog post on his website, Avinash Kaushik, digital marketing evangelist at Google, discusses the implications of the EU cookie and privacy laws on the progress of data targeting. In gist, Kaushik says data collection is as complicated and intricate as the people whom the data is about – and concerns over data use are only normal.  

But, no need to fret, Kaushik argues.

“So you can cry about all the data you won’t have or don’t have” he said. “Or you can be happy that you still have 5,000 times more [data] than you have on any other channel on the planet, and analyze that data and use the insights. “

A New Dive Into Mobile Tracking

Mobile devices offer up their own set of obstacles when it comes to consumer tracking – foremost of which is privacy, which we’ve talked about extensively here at AdMonsters. But, limitations go beyond mere integrity – unlike desktop browsing, it is much harder to track audience data on mobile devices. 

Leading ad tech firm OpenX has joined forces with AdTruth to offer advertisers streamlined RTB solutions based on AdTruth’s patented device recognition technologies and OpenX’s OpenX Market platform. So, what does this mean exactly?

Well, programmatic and mobile ads are both rising the ranks of popularity in the digital-ad realm, but mobile and RTB don’t really play all that nice together. For once, as mentioned, the ability to truly track audiences is limited, while privacy continues to be an important concern.

And, with AdTruth’s “privacy-by-design” approach (AdTruth circumvents the need to collect personal identifiable information from consumers), OpenX and AdTruth may be a winning collaboration.

“We desperately need a privacy by design, universal, audience identification and targeting capability for our advertisers in mobile,” Carl Uminski, chief operating officer of global mobile marketing company, Somo said in an OpenX press release.

 “With the availability of AdTruth DeviceInsight ID in OpenX Market, we can now take mobile advertising ROI to the next level quickly.”

Learn more at OPS Markets, where AdTruth will be presenting.

Search Is Worth 1,000 Words 

Google AdWords is great and all; but, let’s be honest, who’s perusing Google on a desktop anymore (pas moi)? Mobile and AdWords haven’t been necessarily known to play nice, and Google’s set to change that.  Now, advertisers can use one campaign to target consumers on all devices, rather than create campaigns for mobile, one for desktop, etc. But, what are the implications of Google’s newest AdWords iteration? 

Well, according to AdWeek’s Chris Copeland, simplified buying may mean excess buying – a possible gain for Google.

“Google has attempted to make that process easier with a strong shove towards more mobile buying, “ Copeland said. “And as such, is welcoming market anarchy whereby increased competition and lack of deep understanding lead to necessitated buying above optimum price points.”

But, Google’s aggregation of AdWords into one big channel for mobile and desktop is, in the end, quite the win for advertisers and the search-engine giant alike, especially as mobile audiences continue to increase.

The post This Week In Ad Ops: Social Data, Mobile Tracking and More appeared first on AdMonsters.

In contrast to Display, Search over a shorter period and having grown-up as a publisher side solution has 2 million active advertisers – all participating in a real time auction based systems based on a single criterion, ad performance. The contrast is startling as are the results – Search spend will double that of display this year.

Enter the Network Paradigm

Just like Wall Street, Madison Avenue also has that New York City reality – if you’re losing money then someone else is making money. Once spend hits the street it is a zero sum game. Into this fragmented world of media buyers, planners, ad serving and publishers came the ad networks – ostensibly filling a huge need for publishers. Yet it now seems ad networks are the collateralized mortgages of the online world. Just the other day Tim Armstrong declared the AOL want to be the digital equivalent of Goldman Sachs, so the analogy has some credence.

This has allowed two things to happen. On the sell side as inventory increases and prices drop, the media ROI for performance marketers continues to increase. So too does their spending. 57% of display advertising was performance last year (IAB/PWC). This year the number will increase for fifth consecutive year at the expense of branded CPM. First half 2009 online display ad spending continues shifting to pay for performance with greater velocity: (TNS +6.5% (CPM +CPC/CPA); Nielsen -1% (CPM only).

IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, March 2009

On the buy side what’s happening is that while Premium CPMs keep dropping those rising performance spends are being kept at huge margins by networks. For every remnant media dollar roughly a quarter of that is kept by the agencies, a quarter goes to the pubs and half or more of it goes to networks. It’s a damn fine business. No wonder VC’s have funded it up the wazoo to the tune of 2 billion over the past few years.

The problem is all of this is cannibalizing the channel. Better tools have produced lower yield for publishers and higher ROI for performance advertisers.

Consequences

If there is too much weight on one side it sinks the ship. Publishers can’t survive with this inequity much longer. They own the audience and the content. The value is being created in their environment. They deserve more.

The media reality is that publishers are getting $7k in revenue from inventory being monetized at $48k (I know, I’ve run these RON performance campaigns). The content reality is that in digital power shifts away from the content and towards the distribution of it. The same way Search has done this with content so too have the ad networks done it on the ad side. It’s time for pubs to take the power back.

It’s beginning to happen. A number of publishers are turning into marketing agencies themselves. Meredith has just hired Martin Riedy CEO of Publicis Modem to lead its 400 employee integrated marketing unit. Publishers are now building microsites and custom ads for advertisers in order to get their spend. Are we that far away from NYTimes going to Ford and delivering 500,000 leads over a year for $25M? I don’t think so. Disintermediation anyone?

The Final Frontier

But this change doesn’t happen in display unless there is a fundamental shift in the mindset and technology. Like search, visitor and advertiser value can only be delivered and game-changing revenues can only be achieved for publishers if we start optimizing for people and performance, not pages and prices.

For example, we know from Search that content consumption and temporal trends provide amazing intelligence to deliver relevance. Most large publishers are privy to these interest trends but they do not have the data capture systems to quantify it or the targeting systems to leverage it or the advertising systems to monetize it.

Just like Search the forces that drive monetization are everything from personal needs to macroeconomic or geographic issues. By studying content consumption patterns publishers can understand even earlier than Search the opportunities to match the information and services needs of their audience. Intent is not generated in Search. Intent is generated in publishers’ content and then moved to Search by the user.

These huge changes require new platforms and tools. For publishers the revenue generation tools available to them have not kept pace with the investment and innovation on the ad side.  The irony is that while agencies are not staffed to leverage most of the more analytic and technical tools publishers sit on a goldmine of optimization mindshare in with their ad ops teams. If it’s ever going to happen, now is the time. Nothing less than the future of the Display market is at stake.

Jonathan has been pioneering marketing technology for real-time rules based/event driven display ads & landing pages since 2005. Formerly Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Offermatica’s services unit OTTO Digital he spearheaded Offermatica to market domination in the testing & targeting space leading to its $65M acquisition by Omniture. Since Founding RAMP Digital in 2008 he has delivered unprecedented ad functionality and relevance using APIs and semantic technology. In August 2008 RAMP published the industry’s first case study on semantic driven dynamic display ads. In April 2009 it created the first display ads with APIs to SMS and conduct mobile transactions. Jonathan’s clients have included Amazon.com, Ameriprise, Disney, Citibank, H&R Block, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Monster.com, Sears and T-Mobile. Jonathan’s blog Optimize & Prophesize is one of Advertising Age’s Top150. He can be followed on twitter @jonathanmendez.

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