Last week, I had the honor of moderating a session at the IAB Connected Commerce Summit called “How to Supercharge Your Creative Strategy with AI.” Joining me on stage were Mike Brunick, SVP, Head of Commerce Media at Yahoo; Devrie DeMarco, Managing Director at MediaLink/UTA; and Wendi Dunlap, EVP, Business Intelligence and Audience Science at Mediahub Worldwide.

Together, we dove into how AI is reshaping creative strategies and, most importantly, how it’s knitting together the online and offline worlds to build seamless customer experiences.

One of the most compelling moments came from DeMarco, who reminded us that it’s not just about optimizing workflows, it’s about crafting journeys that resonate across every touchpoint. She said it powerfully: “If AI can free people from manual tasks, imagine the potential of a better in-store experience.”That struck a chord. We’re not just using AI for efficiency’s sake; we’re using it to enrich the entire shopping experience, connecting the digital and physical realms.

Brunick emphasized that personalization needs to go beyond immediate transactions. It’s about fostering long-term relationships. Picture a customer’s journey as a continuous thread weaving through both online and in-store experiences. AI helps us analyze behaviors, build meaningful touchpoints, and drive engagement that resonates across channels. But it’s most effective when it amplifies our ability to connect on a human level. We can’t let data and automation drown out the personal touch.

Dunlap added another layer, urging us not to overlook the ethical implications of AI in creative strategies. While AI can enhance creativity, without vigilance, we risk introducing bias into the strategies we create to connect with diverse audiences. “Bias” and “inclusivity” must be at the forefront of any AI-driven approach, Dunlap explained. The technology is only as good as the data it’s fed. Without human insight, we can easily miss the mark in reflecting our diverse audiences and their varied consumer experiences.  This isn’t just about algorithms; it’s about responsibility.

AI Strategy in Three Key Points

Our panel boiled down AI strategy to three essential takeaways:

1. Bridge the Online and In-Store Experience: It’s not about separate channels; it’s about guiding customers through a unified journey.
2. Enhance Creativity, Don’t Replace It: AI should augment the human touch, but always keep a sharp eye on data-driven biases.
3. Start Small: Test a few use cases, learn, and then scale up thoughtfully. Don’t try to boil the ocean.

The Power of Experience

After my panel, I attended several discussions that expanded on these ideas. But the last session of the day — “Unlock the Power of Innovation through Creativity in Commerce” — truly drove everything home for me. Featuring Michael Olaye, EVP, Managing Director at Hero Digital, and Lauren Chesley, Head of Industry, Retail + Restaurants at SiriusXM Media, and moderated by Pam Zucker, Chief Strategy Officer at IAB<, this session wrapped up many of the themes we’d explored throughout the day.

They picked up right where our panel left off and closed the loop on what Walter T. Geer III touched upon earlier in the day during his fireside chat: We need to be creating experiences. It’s not just about selling products; it’s about crafting a journey that resonates on multiple sensory levels and stays with the consumer long after.

Olaye framed it perfectly: “Creativity stays the same, but the canvas changes.” We’ve moved from TV and print to automation and digital platforms, and it’s about using technology to drive human thinking. His words encapsulated what we’d been circling all day — AI isn’t here to replace creativity; it’s here to enhance it, giving us new canvases to paint on.

Chesley illustrated this idea deeper, painting a vivid picture of a European hotel where every detail was designed to engage the senses. The scent in the lobby, the jazz music playing softly, the warm towel handed to guests, and the champagne toast at check-in. “The more senses you activate, the more connected you are to someone,” she explained. It clicked. The same principles apply to retail. She argued that audio is a powerful yet often underused channel, creating emotional connections in a world saturated with visuals. When was the last time you thought about a brand’s sonic identity?

Olaye also introduced the idea of Zero UI — a world that moves beyond screens and traditional interfaces. Imagine stores where sensors, AI, and connected devices know your preferences without you having to input anything. Zero UI is about blending the physical and digital worlds in seamless ways. This dovetailed perfectly with what we discussed during the session I moderated: AI is a tool to build customer journeys that speak to how people want to interact with brands, online or offline.

Key Takeaways from the IAB Connected Commerce Summit

1. Phygital Experiences Are Key: Rose Ferraro of Rockbot emphasized that consistency between online and in-store environments is crucial. Unified media across audio, signage, and other touchpoints strengthens the brand narrative and keeps consumers engaged.
2. In-Store Digitization as a Business Enabler: Nick Ashley of Tesco Media nailed it when he said that digitization isn’t just about media revenue; it’s about enhancing the overall business. Elevating the look and feel of stores fosters long-term customer loyalty.
3. Retail Data Drives Better Impact: Elizabeth Cotogno of Kroger Precision Marketing noted that incorporating retail data earlier in media planning can boost business impact by 50%. But the real challenge? Moving beyond outdated metrics like CPMs and focusing on real-world outcomes.
4. Creativity and Technology Must Work Hand-in-Hand: Walter T. Geer III reminded us that while AI and automation provide incredible tools, it’s the human element — our stories, ethics, and passion — that ultimately drives compelling campaigns.
5. Personalization, but Not at the Expense of Privacy: The summit repeatedly highlighted that AI should personalize and enhance consumer experiences while keeping privacy and ethics at the forefront of every interaction.

Creating the Connected Experience

If there’s one major lesson I walked away from the IAB Connected Commerce Summit with, it’s this: AI is an enabler, not the end goal. Whether we’re streamlining creative processes or building phygital retail environments, the focus should always be on crafting meaningful, holistic experiences.

AI can free us from mundane tasks, drive deeper insights, and open up new possibilities. But at its core, it’s the human touch that keeps the heartbeat of creative strategy alive. It’s about understanding what truly resonates with people and using technology to amplify those connections.

The post Supercharging Creative Strategies with AI: Top Takeaways from IAB Connected Commerce Summit appeared first on AdMonsters.

The IAB releases its State of Data Report every year to understand how the industry is tackling data evolution. This year’s study reveals that the digital advertising industry has acknowledged the lasting impact of data privacy changes and signal loss, but these have magnified measurement and addressability issues.

Consequently, the current state of data has made significant organizational changes, including hiring experts, training staff, forming specialized teams, enhancing legal and technological capabilities, and revising advertising strategies to adapt to the altered addressability, measurement, and overall landscape of digital advertising.

While beneficial, the industry’s shift to a privacy-first approach has reduced the availability of high-quality, usable data. This does not necessarily mean that aligning consumers’ needs with advertising goals is crippling the industry. It just means that as the industry changes, there are going to be growing pains.  

Deterministic data is a marker of the past. Now publishers and advertisers are focusing on AI-based probabilistic techniques and embracing contextual advertising and advanced attribution methods. Advertising budgets now favor channels like CTV, retail media, and social media, allowing for personalized use of first-party data, yet interoperability challenges persist. 

Where does that leave us? 

The Signal Loss Blues 

According to the IAB’s data report, the melancholic strum of signal loss will persist in 2024. Ninety-five percent of decision-makers in advertising and data at brands, agencies, and publishers anticipate ongoing signal loss.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that many industry stakeholders know that privacy laws coming this year will make it harder to create personalized advertising in those specific states. 

Despite the challenges, the industry is demonstrating remarkable resilience in adapting to the privacy-focused ecosystem. The data reveals that they are making strategic decisions to navigate this new normal, instilling confidence in the industry’s ability to evolve. 

Legislation and signal loss have affected the makeup and structure of organizations for 82% of respondents. Nearly 80% are currently training or planning to train their staff in data and privacy-related topics, while half of companies (49%) are establishing or planning to establish dedicated teams and departments and hiring or planning to hire external subject matter experts (48%).

Will the Cookie Crumble in 2024? 

If you ask the industry stakeholders in the IAB’s State of Data Report, the cookie will crumble, but most think it won’t happen in 2024. 

Google’s Privacy Sandbox has been preparing for Chrome’s cookie deprecation for quite some time. But after they started deprecating 1% of third-party cookies, critics came out of the woodworks to say the industry is not quite ready. Plus concerns from the CMA may delay Chrome’s timeline. It seems those surveyed in the report agree. 

As written in the report, “though nine-in-ten expect Google Chrome to deprecate third-party cookies at some point, far less expect that to occur in 2024.” While the majority of surveyed participants agree that Chrome cookie deprecation will happen someday, only 42% believe it will happen in 2024. 

But are publishers and advertisers testing the Privacy Sandbox? The survey says about 57% of participants are currently testing or planning to test it in 2024. Awareness of individual Privacy Sandbox APIs closely follows the overall initiative. The Attribution Reporting API is expected to be the most recognized, reflecting advertisers’ keen interest in assessing campaign performance and ROAS.

Diminished Data Quality

Brands, agencies, and publishers acknowledge significant constraints in data collection, leading to lower quality insights into crucial consumer data like behaviors, PII, location, and preferences, and causing delays in data acquisition. 

An SVP from an agency noted a decline in performance due to data signal loss, resulting in reduced audience quality and increased cost per conversion. Seventy-two percent anticipate decreased access to browser history, real-time signals, PII, and location data, while 61% foresee challenges in gathering demographic, user preferences, and behavioral information from third-party sources. 

Lower data quality and accuracy are hindering measurement effectiveness. Nearly three-quarters of companies are facing and anticipating increased obstacles in measurement, crucial for comprehending performance and ROI. This trend is driving ad investment toward walled gardens, where personalized messaging and conversion signals merge to facilitate closed-loop measurement. 

Seventy-three percent anticipate a decrease in their ability to attribute campaign and channel performance, measure ROI, track conversions (including post-view), and optimize campaigns. Regarding data quality, 57% of companies expect it to be more challenging to capture reach and frequency. 

To remedy this concern, brands, agencies, and publishers enhance data quality by leveraging first-party data and enrichment tools. Additionally, they embrace analytical techniques such as AI, machine learning, and media mix modeling, which rely less on tracking signals and third-party cookies.

What Does the IAB Recommend? 

It’s crucial to adopt privacy-by-design not only for compliance but also as a strategic imperative to prioritize consumers’ interests and reinforce our responsibility as industry leaders. By embedding privacy into operations, businesses can address data collection concerns, enhancing consumer trust and loyalty—essential for economic success.

Ignoring privacy risks can result in regulatory fines and damage public trust, harming consumer engagement and economic performance. Companies thoughtfully integrating privacy into operations mitigate backlash and positively influence public attitudes toward advertising.

More specifically the report details four areas of focus: 

1. Embed privacy principles into all aspects of your business
2. Invest in specialist talent and expertise
3. Implement data practices that mitigate quality challenges 
4. Innovate via new tools and technologies 

Read the full report here. 

The post A Privacy-Focused Ecosystem With Diminished Data Quality: Insights From IAB State of Data Report 2024 appeared first on AdMonsters.

Conducted by the IAB Tech Lab’sPrivacy Sandbox Task Force — composed of senior ad tech leaderships across 65 companies — the Fit Gap Analysis analyzes the APIs of Privacy Sandbox and its impact on essential digital advertising use cases. It paints a picture of an industry at a crossroads, facing the challenge of reimagining traditional targeting and measurement strategies to embrace innovation, collaboration, and adaptability.

The Privacy Paradigm Shift

Privacy Sandbox heralds a substantial shift from relying on third-party cookies to a more anonymized framework aimed at safeguarding user privacy while allowing advertisers and publishers to meet their objectives. Despite this progressive step, the IAB Tech Lab’s analysis underscores a harsh reality: most essential digital advertising functionality encounters significant hurdles under this new schema.

These issues underscore the pressing need for inventive solutions that balance privacy with operational efficiency. Challenges span across audience management, auction dynamics, creative and rendering, reporting, and technology interoperability, each presenting unique obstacles to the traditional processes of digital advertising. The analysis assessed use cases for:

• Audience Management
• Auction Dynamics
• Creative & Rendering
• Reporting
• Technology and Interoperability

Moreover, companies should keep these factors in mind:

Operational and Financial Implications

Advertisers and agencies must innovate and create new strategies to reach and measure their campaigns, while publishers must reimagine content monetization to preserve ad revenue. Financially, this shift necessitates investment in privacy-compliant technologies and collaborations, a steep hill for smaller entities with limited resources.

Complicating matters further, only two companies have achieved “compliant” status, with Google being one of them. The absence of published compliance criteria leaves many wondering what is required, and will undoubtedly pose significant challenges for smaller organizations with fewer resources.  This must become clearer, with resources dedicated to ensuring all users can adapt and comply.

Legal and Compliance Considerations

The absence of formalized agreements between Chrome and the party accessing the Privacy Sandbox APIs, introduces legal and compliance risks, as entities navigate uncertain responsibilities and liabilities, especially when considering potential system bugs that could disrupt ad auctions or servers, causing financial losses for publishers and advertisers alike.

Unlike in the past, where companies could negotiate credits or refunds for losses incurred due to technical issues when there is no formal contract with Google, this leaves companies without clear legal recourse in the event of such disruptions. This situation highlights the urgent need for industry-wide dialogue and preparation to mitigate these risks effectively.

Adherence to Industry Standards

The move towards privacy-centric models brings to light concerns about maintaining transparency and measurement standards set by the Media Rating Council (MRC). The lack of MRC accreditation for Privacy Sandbox raises questions about its ability to adhere to established measurement norms, potentially diminishing confidence in digital ad effectiveness and leveraging them for currency and decisioning.

Additionally, the absence of a paradigm for basic impression counting in an environment where data is aggregated and or there is noise injected, further complicates how constituents can have confidence that billable numbers are correct, challenging the integrity of reported metrics. It is imperative that the Privacy Sandbox team begins discussions with the MRC to understand what is required for accreditation.

Addressing Integration Challenges with Privacy Sandbox

The apprehension that Privacy Sandbox may not fully support or significantly degrade numerous use cases signals potential broader implications for the digital advertising landscape. The Privacy Sandbox team has signaled that in a privacy-centric world, we may never be able to replicate the use cases that the industry has become used to over the past 30 years.  If we acknowledge this to be the case, we must work collectively to understand the trade-offs and make the best transition during these formative times.

Where Do We Go From Here?  Innovating for an Inclusive and Transparent Digital Advertising Future

As we navigate the shift away from cookies, the key takeaway isn’t to critique the Privacy Sandbox but to clarify its role and capabilities for the industry. The assessment by IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox Task Force reveals the complexity of digital advertising strategies, and current assessments suggest challenges in replicating these strategies without cookies, potentially affecting the ability to scale, measure, and optimize with the same efficiency. Notably, the IAB Tech Lab is currently reviewing Google’s feedback of the Fit Gap Analysis, a crucial step in understanding and addressing the nuances of transitioning to a cookie-less environment.

The focus should be on moving beyond seeking direct cookie replacements to fostering a portfolio of innovative, privacy-centric advertising solutions. This requires clear communication about what the Privacy Sandbox can support, what it does not, and where there might be gaps.

It’s critical for companies to understand how and if their current use cases can adapt within this new framework. This effort isn’t about pointing fingers but ensuring a collaborative approach among IAB, IAB Tech Lab, Google, and other industry leaders to identify and establish viable solutions for addressability and measurement, ensuring the industry’s continued success.

This transition is more than adapting to privacy norms; it’s about reimagining digital advertising for a post-cookie future, emphasizing innovation, inclusivity, and transparency. Google’s significant role in supporting use cases, addressing accreditation, and alleviating legal concerns could greatly enhance industry confidence and facilitate a smoother transition.

This is an opportunity to integrate privacy considerations with advertising effectiveness, ensuring a balanced approach where both can coexist. Let’s view this as an exciting challenge, a chance to innovate and thrive in uncharted territories.

The post Can Privacy and Performance Co-Exist Within the Privacy Sandbox? appeared first on AdMonsters.

How often have you been in this scenario: Your sales team receives an RFI for a campaign, and everyone is under pressure to complete the deal. But there’s a pending due diligence form that’s not quite complete. Do you go forward with the deal? Cut-and-paste answers from past privacy questionnaires? Walk away from the deal?

To the IAB, none of these options are ideal. In a perfect world, all players in the ecosystem can submit accurate and complete answers with a push of a button, which is just one of the many reasons the IAB announced the IAB Diligence Platform last week at its Annual Leadership Meeting. Powered by comprehensive questions designed to answer state regulations and a vendor compliance hub created by SafeGuard Privacy, the platform seeks to standardize, modernize, and improve privacy diligence practices for the digital advertising industry.

To learn more about how the IAB Diligence Platform can benefit AdOps teams and the industry, we sat down with Michael Hahn, EVP and General Counsel, IAB, and Richy Glassberg, co-founder and CEO of SafeGuard Privacy.

Susie Stulz: The industry has been adapting to privacy regulations for five years or more. Why launch a new platform now?

Michael Hahn: Digital advertising is quickly becoming a regulated industry under state privacy laws. These laws expect more from us than they ever have. This is particularly true regarding the diligence of one’s counterparties. 

For instance, the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) has rulemaking authority and the power to enforce the CCPA (as does the California Attorney General’s Office concerning enforcement). This coming March, a critical CPPA regulation goes into effect. Namely, whether you conduct diligence on your partners with whom you disclose personal information will become a material factor in determining whether you will be liable for their wrongdoing.  

Historically, privacy diligence around a counterparty was ultimately embedded in the contract. Publishers worked with parties they assumed to be trustworthy, and agreements were in place that included representations and warranties that the partner complied with the applicable law and an indemnification obligation if something went wrong. Perhaps the publisher sent out a questionnaire about privacy practices. 

But new privacy laws require us to do more than that. Publishers, SSPs, DSPs, marketers, and their agencies now have increasing responsibility for what their partners do with their shared data.

SS: How does the IAB Diligence Platform address that new reality?

MH: The goal of the IAB Diligence Platform is to help all players in the industry achieve more effective and efficient diligence between partners. To do this, we have a multiple-pronged process.

First, we created standardized questions for partners to answer. Some of these questions are tied to the specific tech services that are leveraged (SSPs, DSPs, etc.), while others, developed by SafeGuard privacy, are tied to each state privacy law. 

The other significant prong is the vendor compliance hub, built on the SafeGuard Privacy Compliance Vendor Hub. This is a SaaS-based tool that allows platform users to share the compliance questionnaires upon request with IAB members and non-members who opt to use the IAB Diligence Platform.

SS: So if I, as a publisher, answer these questions, whenever I receive an RFI with privacy questions, I can share the answers through the vendor compliance hub.

Richy Glassberg: Yes, the goal is to make it very easy. Going further, let’s say you’ve shared your answers with the account team of a specific media agency. Those answers are also available to other account teams within the same agency. Your AdOps team doesn’t need involvement because the answers are available automatically to the agency.

SS: How are AdOps teams answering these questions currently?

RG: Historically, it’s been a manual process that is far from standard, by which I mean the questions themselves aren’t even standard. 

Typically, the AdOPs team works with an internal GC, internal privacy leader, or an outside law firm, who will write what they consider good, but rather broad, answers. Keep in mind that the RFIs themselves often contain broad questions. Then, it’s up to the AdOps team members to apply those answers to the RFIs they receive as best as they can. 

All questions and answers vary from RFI to RFI and company to company. Some companies use an industry framework or select questions from multiple frameworks. The challenge is that those responses aren’t always tied to specific State laws or appropriate to the use case.

Now consider that a publisher can receive 50 RFIs a month, and a platform can receive 2,000, none of which have the same privacy questions. That’s tremendous friction for the AdOps teams, who must respond. 

The goal is to eliminate that friction by standardizing the questions, covering the entirety of the laws, and providing questions purpose-built for the appropriate vertical, whether that’s an SSP, DSP, media agency, data provider, or publisher.

SS: So the idea is, if you’re a user of the IAB Diligence Platform, your internal lawyer or law firm answers these questions once, and as the RFPs come in, rather than answer each separately, pulling answers from past RFIs, you share the completed questionnaire?

RG: That’s the vision. The platform’s benefit is that users can answer the questions once and share them as many times as needed.

Ultimately, we’d like to get to a point where we have as many IAB members as possible adopt the platform. The more that do, the more the AdOps teams can reduce their workloads because sharing the answers — providing accurate and complete information on how the publisher complies with every State regulation and the appropriate IAB vertical — is pressing one button.

MH: Right now, the AdOps teams often use a cut-and-paste process that needs more in-depth questions and answers. This is not a criticism; it’s just a reality that needs to change. 

As we’ve discussed, we need more effective questions, specific to the vertical and jurisdiction. We also want more efficiency, which we want to achieve through a network-based approach.

As Richy said, if the lawyer fills it out once, they can focus on the intricacies of the questions rather than answer generic questions dozens and dozens of times.

SS: Presumably, it also makes it easier for publishers and other ad tech players to understand what their partners are doing with their data.

MH: Absolutely. You have all these pixels on your site if you’re a publisher. You have partners who receive your users’ PII data in the bidstream, and you want to know what they’re doing with that data. 

For publishers, this is one of the most compelling reasons to use the platform. You have a vast network of companies who have access to your data. The idea is that you can go to the platform and push a button, which then sends to a partner a set of questions that are designed for the specific services the partner provides so that you can understand how the partner processes your PII data and complies with the privacy regulations in each jurisdiction.

Right now, people ask very generic questions. But if you’re a publisher, you want to know what your SSP partner is doing when they receive your Global Privacy Platform (GPP) signal, what information it’s adding to its identity graph, what data it’s using for measurement purposes, and so on.

It’s important to realize that the laws expect you to do more to understand what your partners are doing with the data you send them in the course of doing business together.

SS: Are the questions and answers on the platform auditable?

RG: Yes, the platform has comprehensive, secure auditing capabilities based on the event trail, which is tracked by answering questions and adding supporting comments and documents.

Any publisher that uses the platform can engage a third-party auditor or reviewer to review and verify their assessments. Today, for instance, the SafeGuard Privacy platform supports the COPPA Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) assessment conducted by BBB CARU, and children’s focused publishers that are part of that program can be confident that they will stand up to a CARU audit. That’s the benefit of the platform; it lets publishers feel confident about the assessments completed by counterparties who also use it.

MH: In addition to doing due diligence on your counterparties, publishers can follow up based on what you’ve learned doing that diligence, which is something that is built into these privacy laws, as reflected in the audit requirements.

SS: Any parting thoughts for our readers in the changing regulatory landscape?

RG: Michael’s point at the beginning of this discussion bears repeating. We are in an increasingly regulated industry, and those regulations have teeth. There are real consequences to falling out of compliance, and doing business with a counterparty you haven’t vetted properly is a risk not worth taking. 

This industry needs diligence, standardization, and interoperability, and the IAB Diligence platform delivers just that. It will drive efficiency and help ensure that all parts of the ecosystem, IAB Members and non-IAB members, can meet their obligations under the law. This is an industry solution.

The post IAB Introduces a Diligence Platform To Help Modernize Privacy Compliance appeared first on AdMonsters.

AdMonsters was in the room at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting 2024, soaking up every last nugget of wisdom. We were (I mean, I was) part of an immersive dialogue, a collective exploration with industry trailblazers, diving deep into the core of what propels the industry forward.

From AI algorithms to CTV, nailing down the nitty-gritty of new measurement methods, to retail media, and the emerging role of trust and safety, the well-rounded agenda left no crumbs. 

The importance of collaboration, unity, and direct engagement in creating standards was highlighted as the path to success, shaping the future of the digital economy. Brick by brick, together, we are finding solutions to some of the industry’s most pressing challenges. Following are six things we saw, heard and digested at IAB ALM 2024.

Six Things We Saw, Heard, and Digested at IAB ALM 2024

1. Google Is Not the Problem, We Are

"The identity problem is not Google's problem to solve. It's yours. Google did not create our dependency on cookies, we did." Words of Incoming IAB Chair John Halley, President of @paramount_ads #cookies #google #privacysandbox #identity #IDs pic.twitter.com/RhU19YxW64

— AdMonsters (@AdMonsters) January 28, 2024

At the Annual Leadership Meeting, John Halley, President of Paramount Advertising, dropped many gems. As highlighted in our X post, he did not shy away from calling out the audience. He put forth a strong charge for the industry to solve the identity crisis and nurture a healthy identity ecosystem.

He offered a fresh perspective, likening executives to students on their first day of school. With the industry evolving at breakneck speed, he pointed out, we’re all in a constant state of learning. Halley playfully noted that while we might be showing our age,  the industry remains eternally youthful, perpetually in its adolescence.

“We are now in the digital age, and the pivots that are involved belong to all of us,” Halley declared, highlighting the need for collective effort in steering the digital landscape. “All businesses are in a constant process of change. Nothing stays the same for very long.”

He highlighted how the CTV market, having never depended on cookies, confronted the identity challenge early on and cultivated a collaborative environment in response. “There isn’t going to be a single identity solution. There are only approaches,” Halley remarked. He suggested that a varied strategic approach is key to navigating the post-cookie era. By leveraging first-party data, predictive audiences, and other innovations, CTV provides a glimpse into a potential future for digital advertising.

2. We Learned How to Think like a Futurist

For the first session of #IABALM, @mrdcohen sits down with futurists Jen Brace (@Ford) and Debora Kantt (@jpmorgan): "We prepare for a future that is uncertain by looking at trends and imagining how the external world can be different than the current one." pic.twitter.com/po7PepMr74

— IAB (@iab) January 28, 2024

Dave Cohen, CEO of the IAB, sat down with Jen Brace, Chief Futurist at Ford, and Debra Kantt, Executive Director and Futurist at JP Morgan to explore how forward-thinking perspectives can elevate business.

“Imagine there was a discipline that teaches you how to exist in a world that doesn’t exist yet?” Kantt posed this intriguing question. She delved into the art of envisioning and then strategically planning for the most innovative products, services, and experiences of the future. Kantt and her team harness ‘strategic foresight’ to surf the early ripples of change – those faint ‘weak signals’ that hint at future megatrends.

Brace from Ford highlighted the importance of curiosity and acute awareness of one’s surroundings as key characteristics of a quintessential futurist. The conversation emphasized the necessity of looking past current trends, focusing instead on understanding and preparing for the markets and clients of tomorrow. Brace confronted the hard truths head-on: to remain at the forefront and flexible,  one must navigate uncharted territories and embrace a spectrum of potential futures.

3. CMO’s Talk About Leveraging AI to Enhance User Experience 

Quotes of #IABALM @Unilever's @BraceyEsi on AI pic.twitter.com/gQmKk81dTu

— IAB (@iab) January 28, 2024

Esi Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Unilever; Jenna Lebel, Chief Marketing Officer at Liberty Mutual;  Carryl Pierre-Drews, Executive Vice President and chief Marketing Officer at the IAB; and Jennie Weber Chief Marketing Officer
at Best Buy Co. Inc. discussed the major themes shaping the future of the digital landscape, including the impact of generative AI, the evolution of commerce strategies, the march towards a “streaming-first” future, navigating privacy challenges, fostering responsible media practices, and unlocking creativity in the digital age

The heart of the matter? The CMO gig is morphing by the minute. Today’s marketing leaders must focus on crafting experiences that center on the customer, push the envelope with AI-powered personalization, and drive sales through innovative marketing initiatives. Adaptation isn’t just key — it’s everything. 

They also shared specific examples of how they use AI and other tech, to better serve and engage customers  — think claim processing on steroids, content that writes itself, and futuristic products. 

“What AI does today is democratize skill in the way the Internet democratizes information. So that means we can help people better with more skill,” said Esi Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Unilever. “The fundamental role of marketing is to help people. And what I’m super excited about with AI is that we can better help people. And so we think about AI not as artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence because artificial suggests replacing people.”

4. Gen AI Is a Facilitator, and Then an Accelerator

I spoke with Oz Etzioni, Co-founder and CEO of Clinch, about the state of AI. Together, we hashed out the difference between gimmicky AI and actual operational generative AI. 

“The big challenge is to look at the whole workflow and think of gen AI as a facilitator and then an accelerator,” expressed Etzioni. “You start measuring it by the currency of time. This tool can start generating time, freeing up people to do a lot of stuff faster, and creating more efficiency.”

The industry is getting more complex. There are more channels, more audiences, and less signals. There is a lot to figure out all at one time. When used correctly, generative AI provides teams with more time to collaborate and strategize making it easier to solve these complicated issues.

Just last week Clinch announced its integration with Google Ad Manager’s Creative Transcoding API.

“Clinch’s latest integration with Google Ad Manager marks a notable advancement in ad serving efficiencies,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch. “Our nuanced approach involves pre-ingestion transcoding, eliminating the necessity for transcoding during the initial impression. Transcoded creatives are directly available in Google Ad Manager’s creative repository from Flight Control, streamlining ad serving calls for a seamless viewing experience”.

5. Senator Blackburn Spills the Tea on Kids Online Safety

Senator Marsha Blackburn
expects Kids Online Safety Act to pass this year.
”Our children are precious and worth more than being social media’s product”
Snap & X on board for law pic.twitter.com/T2wRhDIAz1

— Sarah Sluis (@SarahSluis) January 28, 2024

Senator Mary Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee provided some straight talk about keeping kids safe online, and she’s serious about pushing the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) through the legislative hoops.

She conveyed strong confidence in the passage of KOSA, highlighting its bipartisan support and backing from tech companies like Snap and X. Additionally, she highlighted the importance of protecting children from harmful online content and the need for social media platforms to take action.

“I think KOSA will pass because it is something parents want to see signed into law,” Blackburn stated. With 50 senators, evenly split across parties, co-sponsoring it, and over 200 organizations in support, its momentum is clear. The legislation aims to empower kids and parents with tools to disable harmful algorithms and provides a direct means to report issues like cyberbullying, eating disorders, and exposure to inappropriate content, and it compels social media companies to take decisive action. These steps are necessary for the safety of our children. Blackburn expects it to move swiftly through the Senate and onto the House for final approval.

Senator Blackburn also mentioned a push to address Section 230, emphasizing the necessity of a federal privacy standard and the importance of considering the end-use of technology when crafting legislation.  She argued for proactive engagement with lawmakers to mitigate the unintended consequences of proposed legislation, especially when it disproportionately impacts smaller businesses.

6. Why Companies Need to Level Up on Trust

The #ResponsibleMedia track is live! "Brand safety is protecting yours users, not just your company," said Jeff Dunn (@hinge) in an interview with Yakira Young (@AdMonsters) #IABALM pic.twitter.com/5PGklzfTNq

— IAB (@iab) January 30, 2024

Sitting down with Jeff Dunn, VP of Trust and Safety at Hinge, was an enlightening experience as we delved into the intricacies of brand safety.  He shared a wealth of strategic insights and practical steps for companies aiming to become stalwarts of trust. He emphasized the importance of advertisers vigilantly monitoring their ad campaigns, the use of their logos, social media conversations, their customer experience team’s engagement, and beyond.

Dunn schooled us on trust and safety, echoing back to Halley’s ‘first day of school’ metaphor that I mentioned earlier in this article. This constant learning curve is precisely what Halley was getting at. Trust & Safety, as a field, has been rapidly emerging in response to the explosion of online content creation. 

For brands involved in hosting, sharing, or creating online content (and who isn’t these days?), it’s essential to have someone dedicated to Trust and Safety. The role involves staying abreast of the latest forms of online abuse  (like scams, harassment, child safety, etc) and assisting your company in safeguarding your brand and its users.

Even for companies not directly engaged in user-generated content, Trust & Safety extends beyond mere content moderation. It’s about embedding Safety into your products and services from the outset — think “Safety by Design.” It involves conducting risk assessments, envisioning potential brand vulnerabilities, understanding user needs, and ensuring compliance.

Having a dedicated Trust and Safety lead in your company is vital. This person should be a public face, capable of calling the shots and shaping product design. They need to be supported by a squad focused on minimizing risks, ensuring compliance, and maintaining the brand’s reputation. Trust me, it’s the kind of upgrade your company needs to stay lit and legit in the ever-evolving digital world.

The post Six Things We Saw, Heard, and Digested at IAB ALM 2024 appeared first on AdMonsters.

In 2020, AdMonsters launched the Wrapper Newsletter. Our aim: To summarize exciting news items that catch our eyes and link them to wider developments in digital media and advertising. And we also point you in the direction of great podcasts and compelling industry voices to follow on social media.

If you’ve been missing out, here are AdMonsters Wrapper archives. And don’t forget to subscribe to receive each issue every Monday in your inbox.

Now on to the the list. (This list is a compilation of readers’ favorite stories from 2023.)

The Top Digital Media and Ad Tech News of 2023

U.S. AD SPEND PROJECTED TO INCREASE IN Q4 AND 2024 

Ad recession where? At the start of 2023, the ad tech industry was filled with fear-mongering rhetoric that an ad recession was bound to sweep the ecosystem. As the year progresses into Q4, ad spend predictions are much more optimistic. (Read more)

THE TRADE DESK WANTS TO CONTROL RETAIL MEDIA

The Trade Desk’s CEO, Jeff Green, told investors he has his eyes set on the $500 million retail media market. Green is confident he can take a large chunk of that $500 billion pie. The Trade Desk plans to leverage the fact that they are a significant source of demand for ad sellers to capture the opportunities in e-commerce advertising.

“I think over time most of that will be available to The Trade Desk — even things like sponsored listings where it’s optimal for those [placements] to get as much demand as possible,” said Green. “There’s more supply than there is demand.” (Read more)

BOT FRAUD ON THE RISE, DOUBLING YOY

People are spending 28% less time online this year than they did in 2022, yet traffic, as many network administrators will tell you, is up. What’s going on?

According to HUMAN Security, a company specializing in fraud prevention, bot traffic is rising, more than doubling YOY. As a percentage of overall traffic, bad bots are rising faster than legitimate users. (Read more)

GOOGLE’S GLOBAL LEGAL TROUBLES; GOOGLE ANNOUNCES DEADLINE FOR COOKIE DEPRECATION

Google’s Global Legal Troubles

Antitrust season is year-round for big tech in 2023.

The tech titan Google has found itself in another antitrust debacle. The EU dropped a bombshell, charging them with violating EU antitrust laws. Google’s dominance in online advertising has led them down a slippery slope, undercutting their competitors left and right. (Read more)

Google Announces Deadline for Cookie Deprecation, for Real This Time

Google has extended the deadline for turning off third-party cookies in Chrome several times, raising doubt around the ad tech community that the cookie would ever crumble.

Joey Trotz, Director of Google’s Privacy Sandbox, eased all industry suspicion at AdMonsters Ops NY conference in a session about why publishers should start testing Google’s Privacy Sandbox now.

“One hundred percent, we are deprecating the third-party cookie in the second half of 2024 – full stop,” said Trotz. (Read more)

THE DOJ SUES GOOGLE (AGAIN). PUBLISHERS RESPOND; STATE OF DATA 2023

The DOJ Sues Google (Again). Publishers Respond

It’s deja vu for Alphabet’s legal team, as the Justice Department once again filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company. This time, the DOJ, joined by eight states, accused the tech behemoth of absolute dominance over the digital ad tech space. (Read more)

Everything You Need to Know About IAB’s State of Data 2023

We will see five new state-level data privacy regulations coming to life in 2023, with a few already brought to life this month. So, it’s perfect timing that the IAB unveiled their sixth annual State of Data initiative, IAB State of Data 2023: Data Clean Rooms and the Democratization of Data in the Privacy-Centric Ecosystem this past Tuesday at IAB ALM ’23 (and it was one for the books). (Read more)

TRIOPOLY AGREES TO AI SAFEGUARDS; AD TECH SCRUBS MFA SITES; OREGON PRIVACY ACT SIGNED

7 AI Companies Agree to Safeguards; the Triopoly Among Them

The Biden Administration is pretty uneasy with AI for numerous reasons and has wrangled voluntary commitments from seven AI companies to put safeguards around the risks posed by generative AI, including algorithmic discrimination and disinformation.

“Companies developing these emerging technologies are responsible for ensuring their products are safe. To make the most of AI’s potential, the Biden-Harris Administration is encouraging this industry to uphold the highest standards to ensure that innovation doesn’t come at the expense of Americans’ rights and safety,” the White House said. (Read more)

ANA Study Leads Ad Tech Vendors to Scrub MFA Sites

Made-for-advertising sites flew under the radar for some time, but thanks to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) study, MFAs are getting a much-needed crackdown.

Companies like Magnite, Sharethrough, and PubMatic are blocking MFA sites to keep them from profiting from alleged deceptive practices. MFAs thrived in the supply chain for years. However, that changed when the ANA launched an investigation and found sites riddled with disruptive user experiences, tactics that compromised content value, and security risks. (Read more)

Oregon Governor Signs Opt-Out Privacy Laws

In a groundbreaking move, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a privacy bill, granting state residents the power to regain control over their online advertising fate. The law allows state residents to opt out of ad targeting based on their online activity.

The Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (SB 619) ensures that consumers have the right to know what personal information brands collect about them and who receives it. In addition, the language around personal data is relatively broad, covering identifiers such as cookies. (Read more)

The post ICYMI — Top Digital Media and Ad Tech News of 2023 appeared first on AdMonsters.

When the Interactive Advertising Bureau released new insights from this year’s Podcast Ad Revenue Report, there were many important takeaways, but one data point stood head and shoulders above the rest.

For the first time in the seven years that the IAB and PwC have been fielding this study, the results showed that the majority of industry revenue – estimated to be 61% in 2023 – is attributable to brand-building ads vs. the direct response advertising that has historically driven the lion’s share of podcast monetization.

For many waiting for evidence of this revenue shift, the news wasn’t a sign that DR marketers, who continue to drive benchmark-beating results through podcast advertising, were no longer finding value in the medium. 

Instead, it confirmed podcasting’s increasingly well-understood ability to drive performance related to lower funnel, conversion-oriented metrics and deliver on buyer objectives across the entire marketing funnel, including lifts in brand awareness and purchase intent.

Enter the Podcasting Buyer-Seller Checklist

It was against this backdrop of the changing makeup of podcast ad revenue that the IAB also released the Podcasting Buyer-Seller Checklist, which was designed, in part, to further buyers’ understanding of podcasting’s full-funnel impact through the creation of a shared framework for collaboration with their partners in the podcast publishing community.

The idea to create the checklist first came up in an IAB Audio Committee meeting during which Brittany Clevenger, Senior Director of Audio Partnerships at top podcast advertiser BetterHelp, made a simple but powerful point about the need for information sharing within the podcast industry that became the checklist’s guiding principle.

Referring to podcasting’s constantly changing commercial and technological framework, Clevenger said, “I’m sure there are plenty of things I could take advantage of” that she may not know about yet, and as soon as she said it, everyone else at the meeting immediately agreed that the creation of a blueprint to improve communication between buyers and sellers could be worth its weight in gold.

One of the reasons Clevenger’s comments resonated so much with her colleagues on the IAB Audio Committee is that she is one of the experts to whom professionals in the industry most often turn when seeking information and guidance about advertising in podcasts.

As Clevenger put it, if podcasting’s evolving nature means that even she isn’t always sure of what her sell-side partners can offer in the way of flighting and optimizing a campaign despite her vast experience, the odds are that most other podcast advertisers are in a similar state of curiosity and need regarding their own existing or potential investments in the space.

With this basic premise in mind, the decision to produce the checklist was born.

A Special Kind of Content & Advertising Landscape Deserves a Special Kind of Communication

When people listen to podcasts, they listen with intent. In a digital marketing universe filled with data describing the engagement levels of media consumers across different channels, the results of studies measuring the engagement level of podcast listeners stand out.

To cite just one of many examples, a joint study conducted by MAGNA Media Trials and Vox Media revealed that 82% of weekly listeners surveyed feel that the podcasters they listen to have a positive impact on their lives, with a nearly identical percentage saying it’s like listening to a friend.

The strength of these parasocial connections between podcast listeners and their favorite hosts naturally produces a halo effect for advertisers, and brands and agencies have noticed, with 58% of regularly surveyed buyers already investing in podcast advertising and nearly 80% saying that they are actively discussing its use.

Even with this interest in the power of podcast advertising, many buyers are uncertain about everything that can be accomplished in the space. Publishers and advertisers have a laundry list of ad tech capabilities and standards to navigate as podcasting matures.

Addressing this uncertainty and continuous evolution by fostering conversation between buyers and sellers is why the checklist was created, and it has therefore been designed to promote the widest, most granular possible range of information sharing across both sides of the negotiating table.

When first envisioning the strategic requirements of a new ad campaign, for instance, the checklist guides buyers and sellers through the critically important process of identifying – in advance – everything from core brand objectives, KPIs, and targeting parameters to all the data partners and reporting requirements needed to plan and execute the most effective measurement plan.

Similarly, when undertaking the equally important process of digging into the details of a targeting strategy, the checklist will prompt users to ask one another about everything from the potential use of device graphs and audience panels to the availability of sophisticated brand safety and suitability filtering and related advances in contextual targeting tools.

At every turn — from initial discussions about strategic approach, audience attributes, and targeting needs through activation, measurement, and reconciliation conversations — the checklist is full of recommendations and insights to ensure that buyers and sellers are on the same page from the determination of budgets and proper share of voice to the establishment of impression delivery and post-campaign reporting requirements.

Don’t Assume It Can’t Be Done

When working as part of a group of IAB members who came together to develop the Podcasting Buyer-Seller Checklist, Jay Green, SVP of Strategy and Operations at Soundrise, perfectly distilled the checklist’s focus on promoting buyer-seller communication as a means of navigating change by underscoring the benefits of asking questions about capabilities and needs. 

Citing the importance of diving deep into conversations about the design of a proper measurement plan as an example, Jay put his sell-side POV on the importance of information sharing this way:

“While podcasting may seem like it’s been here a long time now, it is still pretty nascent, and our capabilities are evolving daily. (We should) never pass up the opportunity to ask questions and evangelize what we can do. For our clients, the same holds. Don’t assume it can’t be done. That’s the fun of this industry. Someone is always working on it.”

The Podcasting Buyer-Seller Checklist is a launchpad for intensive communication and creative thinking about maximizing ROI with podcast advertising. Whether you’re a podcast publisher or a brand marketer looking to align your advertising messages with the influential podcast hosts and content that listeners have made part of their lives, the checklist will help you have some fun and take your own podcast advertising conversations to the next level.

The post What Is the IAB’s Podcasting Buyer-Seller Checklist? appeared first on AdMonsters.

While there is a ton of opportunity in the retail media world, there are still challenges. Those opportunities and challenges were top of mind at the 2023 IAB Connected Commerce Summit: Reimagining Retail Media event, where industry experts expressed their views on prioritizing consumers’ needs and the importance of privacy as a trend and strategic imperative.

Driven by technological advancements, changing consumer behaviors, and the need for effective audience engagement, brands are embracing that the future of retail is omnichannel. Likewise, publishers — as partners of retail media networks, providing offsite access to an extended audience — are walking the customer-centric walk. 

Prioritizing a Consumer-Centric Approach

During the “Building Consumer Trust in Retail Media” session, all panelists agreed that putting consumers first does wonders for your business. Yes, your relationship with your partners and intermediaries is essential, but the most important relationship a brand or publisher can have is the relationship with their audience. 

“Consumers need to be at the center of everything, as your relationship with consumers is more important than the advertising,” explained Peter Barry, Vice President of Addressability at PubMatic. “What you do with data, what sort of partners you work with, you have to look through that consumer lens.”

The value exchange you demonstrate with your consumers is a win-win because retailers benefit from profitable business lines that allow them to reduce sales fees, which is a plus for the consumer. 

Danielle Brown, Senior Vice President, Data Enablement and Category Strategy at Disney Advertising Sales, made it clear that at Disney, the customer experience always comes first, from their theme parks to their streaming platforms. 

“We have spent years building a proprietary audience graph, allowing us to target consumers with highly relevant ads,” Brown said. “The goal is to provide consumers with content and advertising that resonates with their true needs and preferences.”

Transparency and building consumer trust are primary aspects of the retail media business. Since retailers have a surplus of consumer data, responsible data handling is paramount. With this data, retailers can provide valuable consumer insights and media consumption behaviors, closing the attribution loop. That is why starting with a healthy commitment to transparency is the key to success.

Privacy Management: Transparency’s Three Dimensions

When communicating your value exchange, it is necessary to consider consumer privacy as a strategic choice. Why are we collecting their data, and how does it improve the consumer’s experience? Communicating why you are collecting their data and how it improves their experience can go a long way to building and maintaining trust. Transparency is key.

Agencies also play a crucial role in ensuring a better consumer advertising experience, so they must hold themselves accountable for respecting consumer data.

Transparency has three dimensions, according to Amie Owen, US Head of Commerce at UM Worldwide. “First, building trust with your consumers is important by clearly demonstrating the value exchange. Second, it’s best to be transparent with clients, ensuring that all activities are shared and the learning is mutual,” she stated. “Third is nothing other than simplification. Simplify the processes for retailers, consumers, and your internal teams.”

Shifting from Retail Media 1.0 to Retail Media 2.0 

There is a shift happening in retail media from Retail Media 1.0 to today’s Retail Media 2.0. In the early days, Retail Media 1.0 consisted of retailers realizing the power of media revenue and using their platforms to display ads and monetize their audience. Sounds like easy money, right? We’d say so, but things are changing now as consumer expectations changed.

Retail media 2.0 looks at consumer behaviors to focus on their wants and needs, creating the need for a more sophisticated approach. This new version of Retail Media is about establishing a more integrated and collaborative approach between retail and media, focusing on standardization and better measurement practices. It also addresses the challenges of major players like Amazon and emerging Chinese platforms like TikTok, Shein, and Temu. 

During the “Retail Media 2.0: Balancing Personalization and Monetization” session, panelists stressed the importance of embracing a 360-degree approach. Seamlessly integrating physical and digital retail experiences can lead to substantial growth and better monetization.

Looking Forward to the Future of Retail Media 

In the future, AI will play a critical role in retail media, just as it is in every other aspect of digital media and ad tech. For now, AI is being used to redefine data segments and provide personalization for users. However, the long-term implications include machine learning systems taking over the more tedious tasks for shoppers. 

There are several challenges and opportunities in retail media. These include standardizing measurement metrics, closing the gap with industry giants like Amazon, fostering a healthier retail media ecosystem, and building a more diverse talent pool. The future is bright, and while challenges exist, improving the consumer experience is crucial to navigating the challenges.

The post Customer Centricity: The Key To Retail Media’s Successful Future appeared first on AdMonsters.

Retail Media is a relative newcomer to the ad tech ecosystem, but in its short existence, it gained widespread popularity. It can provide brands with highly targeted advertising opportunities and a lucrative retailer revenue stream. 

It is a form of digital advertising that enables brands to promote their products within a retailer’s e-commerce platform or physical store. It offers shoppers targeted advertisements and sponsored content, capitalizing on customer data and analytics to reach potential buyers. 

Despite its success and proven value to the advertising landscape, there have been challenges with RMNs reaching their full potential. For one, brands must establish a distinct value proposition to attract incremental investment in RMNs, blurring the lines between brand building and performance marketing. Additionally, agencies need help building capable teams and guiding clients in the RMN ecosystem. 

“Retailers transforming into retail media networks must excel as publishers and ad networks, with a focus on data management, media, and ad tech—areas beyond their traditional core functions,” said  Jeffrey Bustos, VP, Measurement, Addressability and Data, IAB. “Establishing dedicated RMN teams is crucial, and a compelling value proposition becomes indispensable in attracting ad agencies and brand advertisers, especially amidst a plethora of options.”

The IAB created the Retail Media Buyer’s Guide to address these issues. But as Retail Media has emerged as a robust privacy compliance tool, we know the medium is here to stay. It is now up to key stakeholders to collaborate to ensure RMNs benefit all involved parties.

Planning for Retail Media

In the era of commerce media, effective planning for retail media relies on retailers and brands working closely together to align business goals and target audiences. Brands must thoroughly comprehend their target audience, media consumption patterns, and behavior throughout the customer lifecycle. Integrating retail media into the brand’s overall strategy is paramount to ensure successful full-funnel planning.

Within retail media networks, diverse solutions are available to optimize performance and achieve business objectives. These networks leverage first-party data to create customized audiences and extract valuable insights into shopper behavior. Brands should break free from the misconception that retail media focuses solely on conversions and instead recognize its potential for forging strong partnerships with retailers and gaining access to first-party data.

A well-executed plan involves:

• Being flexible in budget allocation.
• Continuously optimizing performance.
• Effectively reaching customers at different stages of their shopping journey.

The use of closed-loop measurement in retail media empowers advertisers with a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and the actual impact of their advertising endeavors.

Fostering Collaboration for Retail Media Strategies

Effective retail media strategies require close collaboration among retailers, brands, and agencies, moving beyond mere information sharing to cohesive execution throughout the planning process.

“Collaboration can be fostered through stakeholder mapping, joint business planning, educating on capabilities, breaking down silos between teams/companies, and agencies partnering with retailers on strategy,” said Bustos. “Fluid budgeting and integrated planning prevent duplicated efforts. Open communication and transparency help create seamless partnerships between retailers, brands, and agencies.”

Stakeholder mapping and transparent conversations are crucial to ensure seamless media partnerships to accomplish this. Here are the IABs suggestions: 

Joint Business Plan Negotiations: Joint business plans (JBPs) facilitate collaborative planning between retailers and suppliers, aligning on short-term and long-term objectives, financial goals, growth, and shared business initiatives. JBPs can strengthen relationships between brands and retailers and are co-created based on objectives and priorities from both sides. 

Changing Dynamics and Collaboration Across Retailers, Brands, and Agencies: Organizations should ensure alignment and collaboration between channel and trade marketing and media planning efforts to avoid duplication and maximize efficiency. Successful retail media buying relies on understanding the shopper path, leveraging consumer insights from trade marketing teams, and fostering closer connectivity between agencies and retail media networks (RMNs).

Retail Media Briefing Process: Brands, agencies, and retailers should brief retail media as an individual touchpoint within the overall brand planning process and a commercial and retail strategy driver. The briefing process will vary by brand and advertiser but may include documents like the brand, campaign, and retailer briefs outlining objectives, target audience, messaging, and creative strategies. Understanding the retailer media planning timeline is essential to ensure timely launch dates.

Developing an Effective Retail Media Audience Strategy

Developing an effective retail media audience strategy involves identifying the core audience that aligns with business objectives and understanding their shopping behavior. Brands and agencies should define KPIs, and audience mapping to objectives is crucial. Integration with the overall marketing strategy is essential for a seamless approach.

Additionally, using first-party data is increasingly important in retail media networks due to the depreciation of third-party cookies. Brands should explore advanced data sharing and collaboration options with retailers while considering privacy concerns. Understanding data capabilities, such as taxonomy, technology, and flexibility, helps media buyers make informed decisions. Retailers can offer self-serve platforms, such as Kroger’s self-serve in-house platform, or managed services for data activation to cater to different buyer preferences.

The post IAB’s Retail Media Buyer’s Guide appeared first on AdMonsters.

The same was true when she first started in the workplace, very different from the era of diversity, equity, and inclusion we proclaim now. Despite some underlying racial tension, she allowed her work to speak for itself and has subsequently touched every side of the ad tech industry.

Eng watched the digital media industry evolve into what it is today, and now she works with the IAB as VP of Measurement, Addressability, and Data Center. Her focus at IAB is setting standards, best practices and guides for various topics such as cross-channel measurement, data clean rooms, attention metrics, terms & conditions, etc. One she considers a challenging but fulfilling position.

“When I started working at IAB, Google had just announced the deprecation of the third-party cookie. The industry was evolving just as I started a new career phase, ” Eng said. “Going in, I knew that there were going to be some complex challenges in terms of what we could tackle and what we couldn’t and that we’re probably not going to satisfy the entire industry. Everyone’s always looking for standards. But at the same time, it’s not an easy process and requires a lot of patience and collaboration.”

Early Childhood: Finding Space and Identity

Andrew Byrd: Can you tell me a little about yourself? Where did you grow up and how did your upbringing influence your character and work ethic today?

Angelina Eng: I grew up in a blue-collar family. My father worked in a jewelry manufacturing company, and my mother was a seamstress. She also tried entrepreneurship with a dry cleaning business and owned a sewing factory and jewelry store for a little bit. I could see my parents working hard to acclimate to the neighborhood, my father more than my mother. That mentality has influenced me to this day.

At home, we were very in tune with our Chinese culture, but on the outside, I was an outlier. Outside of my house, it was tough. I was one of the few Asian people in my community, and it was difficult not to experience some form of racism when that was the case. I was one of the shortest girls in class. I didn’t wear the same kind of clothes that everyone else did. I wore the bottleneck glasses. I always had the sense of being the odd one out.

I remember feeling the same way going into the workforce. I started at Y&R advertising, and the industry was still predominantly white male, but I did have a lot of women role models in the organization. There was no overt racism, but an underlying sense was apparent. I remember the executives would often look to others for new pitch meetings. So I had to learn to have a voice and I took on the philosophy I heard from the animated movie Robots. It said, “You find a need, and you fill a need.” I wanted to let my work speak for itself.

Finding the Right Career Path

AB: How did you start your career in ad tech and digital media? 

AE: It’s a funny story. I started school pursuing a psychology degree, but my classes were at 8 in the morning, and I didn’t do well. I started accounting afterward but could not get past macro and microeconomics, which were too structured. My final major was home economics, now called consumer and life sciences. It was more than just cooking and sewing. We learned nutrition, but there were also some marketing and strategy courses. That’s where my interest in advertising started. 

To get my foot in the door, I started working as an administrative assistant in the U.S. Army account at Y&R, and this was around the time the internet was beginning. One of the VPs at the company was responsible for launching the Army’s first website. I worked with them and the digital team to build the website internally through an up-and-coming company called Brand Dialogue. During that time, I had to decide if I wanted to go the traditional media route or take a risk and join this new digital medium on the rise. They had a position open, and I used my experience from the Army account and joined the digital side of the group.

The Evolution of the Digital Media Industry

AB: You are an ad tech vet with over thirty years of experience. What are your thoughts on how the ad tech ecosystem has changed over the span of your career? Has the evolution been good, bad, or a mixed bag? 

AE: So many things are still the same but have evolved drastically over time. When it comes to measurement, there’s been much sophistication that has happened over time. There was no ad serving, DSP, or social media when I started. There weren’t these dashboards that people could go in, and suddenly their campaigns were running.  

Brands’ general business needs and philosophy regarding targeting audiences and connecting with outcomes have stayed the same. What has changed is the data set and the amount of data we have. We’ve also come to a place where we need to be conscientious about consumer privacy, which we didn’t consider before. It’s only been within the last three years that it started to be concerning. Much of that has to do with a couple of different forces. One is remarketing. We have companies with programmatic and remarketing technology solutions that consumers and government representatives believe that the industry wasn’t being responsible with data privacy, and consumers became aware of that. Cambridge Analytical exposed consumer data was being shared with companies they didn’t even know existed.

There was also the rise of big tech and the walled gardens. They’ve created a marketplace where some publishers and advertisers believe they have very few choices but to go through them. They feel they have little options to scale their business without particular walled gardens.

Working Towards True DEI

AB: Like other industries, the new era of digital media also strongly focuses on DEI standards. How do you think the ad tech industry is handling the move toward diversity for the AAPI community and other marginalized groups? 

AE: When it comes to DEI, we’re starting to have good conversations and some progress. It’s become elevated within the last year and a half to two years. We’ve talked about it for a long time but have not reached the point where we’re all satisfied. I love seeing more diverse commercials and ads that reflect various groups. Although, I do think there is lack of Asian representation. Usually, when people talk about diversity, especially when they decide whom they are marketing and messaging, Asian Americans are not a priority or first to come to mind.

There are also a wide variety of ethnicities and cultures within the Asian community, so it is a challenge to understand how to market toward them. From Chinese to Korean to Bangladesh, we are all so culturally different. That can be difficult when trying to speak to the Asian community.

Here at IAB, we’ve discussed how brands commit to spending X percentage of their spend toward diversity or minority-owned or focused content. There’s a struggle with investing in accredited companies, wanting certain-sized companies, and worries about whether a company is culturally relevant to that community. But how brands invest is not all equal. It’s discouraging that companies are like, let’s invest 3% or 6% of our spend on diversity, but that is not close to reflecting the actual diversity in the country.

AB: Any final words you would like to add? 

AE: I’m most proud that during my career, I got to be a representative and a figure in the industry where you, as an Asian American, can have a voice, thrive in different areas, and don’t have to pigeonhole yourself into a career set. I went from account management, media planning, buying to ad ops to analytics, and now I have a position that encompasses all that. 

People must expand their skill sets, knowledge, and network as much as possible. If you’re Asian or part of a marginalized group, it’s important to represent you front and center.

The post Celebrating AAPI Month: Angelina Eng Reflects on the Evolution of the Digital Media Industry appeared first on AdMonsters.