While in Boston, we didn’t just indulge in delicious lobster with garlic butter (which was as amazing as it sounds); we also dived deep into the pressing issues facing our industry.  The timing was perfect, as news dropped about X suing GARM, Unilever, CVS, and others — fueling plenty of conversations during Tuesday breaks.

Our publisher forums are always valuable, but this one hit differently. The focus was clear: everyone was determined to crack the code to retain more revenue. This time around, attendees were in rare agreement, openly discussing their biggest challenges as publishers. The great main-stage presentations and breakout sessions all revolved around one core question:

What is the future of revenue? Three key themes emerged: data, transparency, and diversifying ad revenue across diverse publishers. Let’s explore each of these critical areas in more detail.

Unlocking the Treasure Trove: How Data is the Golden Key to Future Revenue for Publishers

I’d be rich if I got paid for how often data came up in conversations. But it’s no surprise—it’s at the forefront of every publisher’s mind. The conference started with a bang when Claire Atkin, CEO of Check My Ads, took the stage. She kept it real, to say the least, ruffling some vendor feathers, but hey, we’re here to expose the truth. 

Atkin emphasized that the ad tech industry must embrace a new era of accountability and transparency. To empower advertisers and ensure purveyors of disinformation don’t hijack their brand messaging, she advocates for hourly log-level data and “know your customer” requirements.

Jeff Goldstein, Head of Programmatic at Future, shared how they rely heavily on their first-party data platform, Aperture, to collect and unify data signals from their 200+ owned and operated properties. This data is key for audience segmentation and building media products. Goldstein and his team collect data signals that give advertisers better insights and help create more precise targeting products. These signals include brand, model, and category information from the content, which helps Future understand how audiences behave, consume, and shop.

During the Deal Curation session, Scott Messer explained how these curations create a less leaky data-sharing environment. This is crucial, considering how data often leaks somewhere in that black box called the ecosystem.

Rick Welch, who works on advertising partnerships at Western Union, shared how they use their audience data to sell media and create cohesive, multi-touch packages for advertisers. And yes, when we say Western Union, we mean Western Union, the publisher, as they have thousands of owned and operated screens strategically lighting up retail spaces and locations worldwide. Their digital out-of-home network is making waves, proving they’re not just money movers but also a force in the digital advertising game.

Transparency and Collaboration: The Dynamic Duo Powering the Future of Publisher Revenue

Data and transparency were neck and neck in Boston, given how often attendees discussed both. This brings us back to that black box in ad tech — everyone is doing something, but no one knows what anyone else is actually up to. Publishers may know the pipes that generate their revenue, but what happens inside the ad tech ecosystem often remains a black box—how bids are made, who’s bidding, and where the money goes. Brands don’t have full visibility into agency strategies and tactics, while agencies may lack insight into the brand’s internal goals and data.

This has to change, and fast. The only way forward is through collaboration and establishing more transparency. In other words, talk to each other. It’s really that simple even a caveman can do it, jk.

I recall at least four sessions that directly addressed transparency. Jana Meron discussed it in her keynote, and John Shelby, Director of National Programmatic Sales at Zoom Media, Gym-TV, also brought it up in his Ops to Sales workshop. Attendees further explored this topic in the media quality session featuring Addy Atienza, VP of Programmatic Revenue and Streaming Operations at Trusted Media Brands, and Roxanne Allen, Head of Ad Ops at Dotdashmeredith. Finally, Atkin and Goldstein shared valuable insights on transparency during their keynotes. Goldstein also talked about how important it is to partner with advertisers to share sales data, which is vital for validating the effectiveness of high-intent segments. This collaboration explicitly boosts campaign ROI and refines audience targeting.

Meron shared some compelling stats on brand safety and made a strong case for the ongoing relevance of quality news. She stressed that brand safety and news SHOULD NOT be mutually exclusive, and advertisers should feel confident placing ads next to election content. Consumers with high political interests are highly engaged and could be lucrative.

She also emphasized that everyone needs to communicate to enhance brand safety across the board; publishers can no longer be left out of the conversation. Atienza and Allen echoed this sentiment, highlighting the lack of transparency, the challenges in getting verification vendors to address misclassifications, and discrepancies in reporting. They also pointed out how publishers are excluded from brand safety conversations, with agencies often defaulting to broad, non-contextual blocking measures.

The main theme of Shelby’s Ops to Sales workshop was clear: “Communicate, communicate, communicate, educate, educate, educate.” The key takeaway was the need for greater transparency, both internally between ad ops and sales teams and also with clients.

As I mentioned earlier, Atkin also reinforced the need for advertisers to be more transparent and controlled and suggested new strategies.

Spreading the Love: Why Championing Diverse Publishers is the Secret to Industry Growth

Messer’s Deal Curation session stood out for its focus on multicultural publishers. He invited Armando Aguilar, VP of Programmatic Operations at Mirror Digital, and Alex Haluska, Senior Director of Revenue Operations at MyCode, to discuss these publishers’ challenges. Despite representing 40% of the population, multicultural publishers receive only 6% of media budgets—a glaring disparity. 

Promises of increased ad spending on minority-owned and small niche publishers have not materialized. Instead, agencies bottlenecking the budgets, with most diverted to large platforms like Facebook and Google, bypassing diverse publishers altogether. 

Both speakers urged agencies to innovate and be accountable for their spending practices. They also encouraged publishers to engage directly with brands to circumvent agency bottlenecks. Once again, speakers emphasized the need for transparency and accountability in distributing ad dollars. 

The Premium Publisher Shift session began with a powerful visual:  a slide highlighting the disparity between the US Black population (15%) and the ad spend on Black-owned media (2%) to emphasize the issue. Terry Guyton-Bradley, Senior Director of Ad Tech at Fortune, led the discussion alongside Michael Bendell, an ad tech consultant from Ebony, and DeVon Johnson, founder of BlueLife Media and co-founder of BOMESI.

Each panelist offered a unique perspective on how to address this issue. One proposed solution to simplify ad buying was for platforms to aggregate minority-owned media buys. They also discussed the need to dismantle systemic barriers in the advertising industry that prevent minority-owned publishers from thriving independently. 

Advertisers should differentiate their spending on Black audiences from their spending on minority-owned publications, recognizing that these groups have distinct experiences and needs. As an industry, we must find ways to support unique publishers— whether they’re diverse, niche, small — if we want to see real growth. 

Embracing Data, Transparency, and Diversity: The Path Forward for Publisher Revenue

At PubForum Boston, it became clear that the future of publisher revenue hinges on three critical pillars: data, transparency, and support for diverse publishers. The discussions were not just about recognizing these elements—they were about taking actionable steps to make them central to our core strategies.

Data isn’t just a tool; it’s the foundation of future publisher revenue. Transparency and collaboration are no longer optional — they’re essential for defining success. And when it comes to diverse publishers, we need to actively uplift and invest in them, as they are vital to the ecosystem’s growth.

Looking ahead, these themes will clearly shape our strategies, push us to think differently and drive us to work more closely together. The future of revenue is bright, but only if we embrace these lessons, act with urgency, and follow through on our commitments made at forums like this one.

If you missed Lynne and myself chatting about these themes, check it out on AdMonsters LinkedIn

The post PubForum Boston: Three Emerging Themes Redefining Revenue’s Future appeared first on AdMonsters.

Google recently announced changes to their plans to deprecate third-party cookies (3PCs) on their Chrome browser:

“…we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.” 

Emphasis added

Reading these proposed changes has led to many interpretations, including the headline “Google cancels plans to kill off cookies for advertisers.” My careful reading of this announcement leads me to another conclusion: while Google will not deprecate cookies, a workflow will be introduced that allows users to turn off cross-site tracking via 3PCs more easily, similar to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. If this is the case, we may see an accelerated time frame where users may start to opt out of 3PCs sooner than the previously stated 3PC deprecation plans.  

The bottom line is that the advertising industry still needs to prepare for loss of addressability of some cohort of users via 3PCs. This will still be a massive shift that leaves brands wondering: What can we do today to ensure we’re prepared for the post-third-party cookie world? 

Collecting Zero- and First-Party Data 

Brands are likely already using both zero- and first-party data in some capacity for personalization and targeting purposes. Zero-party data is solicited directly from users and generally captured in the form of personally identifiable information (PPI) such as email, address, and phone number. Zero-party data can’t currently be onboarded to Google’s Protected Audience API (PAAPI) or other Privacy Sandbox solutions. Since one-to-one targeting is unavailable through PAAPI, zero-party data should be part of a broader, identification-based targeting strategy encompassing additional retargeting and personalization strategies. 

With first-party data–the data passively captured from site visitors– you can create interest groups within PAAPI. For instance, if a user visits a page for petite women’s jeans, they may be added to a “petite clothing” interest group, enabling brands and DSPs to identify and target these user segments in subsequent auctions. It’s important to note that the current segmentation will be the same for the API, as no changes are expected to be made that will impact the user experience. 

If it’s not a priority already, brands need to start collecting and storing zero-party data in customer relationship management (CRM) or customer data platform (CDP) systems.

Testing Emerging Tactics

The most prominent emerging solution is Google’s Privacy Sandbox, which aims to create a more private internet by reducing cross-app and cross-site tracking, including blocking covert tracking while keeping online content free.

This initiative includes Google phasing out 3PCs and creating new web standards to create technology that protects user privacy while still giving advertisers the tools needed to develop well-targeted campaigns.

While testing is underway, results from the initial trial involving 1% of Google Chrome users indicate that there is still a long journey ahead before completely phasing out 3PCs. 

Evaluating Alternative Identifiers

Deterministic IDs are created via authenticated registration events and rely on a user’s personal identifiable information (PII). Active efforts to collect zero-party data, especially email addresses, are essential because email addresses are the primary piece of PII that creates the most deterministic IDs.

With an email address and a deterministic ID, you can track a user’s first-party behavioral and interest data. For instance, if a user adds items to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, their activity syncs with your CRM. You can then automatically send an abandoned cart email or retarget them with relevant ads using a DSP that supports deterministic ID technology.

However, because deterministic IDs rely on PII, they’re expected to be limited in scale availability. Users must share their email information with publishers who sell advertising space on their website(s) or app(s). That said, deterministic IDs are often highly accurate because the information comes directly from users, which is where incentives can come into play.

Probabilistic IDs rely on multiple cross-channel signals to approximate user identity without collecting PII from zero-party data. They may use the IP address, screen resolution, device type, and operating system. 

Because probabilistic IDs are not reliant on PII, the data involved is much easier to collect and more widely available. Due to this approach, probabilistic IDs are often less accurate and have a lower persistence over time due to browser-readable signals.

 Key Questions to Assess Ad Providers’ Readiness  

While testing Privacy Sandbox APIs and alternative identifiers is limited by the current lack of market adoption and, in some cases, technical readiness, there are ways to gauge whether your current or future ad provider is prepared to help you navigate these tactics in a post-3PC world. To ensure your ad provider is ready to help you as 3PC addressability is lost, you can ask these questions:

•     Have you been involved in the W3C and the development of the Privacy Sandbox API specs?
•     To date, what level of testing have you done on the Privacy Sandbox APIs?
  • Which APIs have been tested?
•     How will a loss in 3PC impact your attribution reporting?
•     Which deterministic and/or probabilistic IDs do you support today and why?
  • Which do you plan to support in the future?
•     Which systems and functionalities are 3PC dependent?
  • How are you future-proofing these systems?
  • What systems will be drastically impacted or not future-proof?
•     What approach(es) will you take to future-proof your technology?

 Potential Red Flags When Choosing an Ad Provider

There are a few potential red flags you should watch out for when assessing ad providers, including, but not limited to: 

• They’re unfamiliar with the extent of Google’s shift away from 3PCs or dismiss concerns about the potential severity of impact.
• They don’t already have a plan to account for the loss of reachable audiences caused by Google’s shift away from 3PCs.
• Collecting and maintaining user privacy and consent aren’t core considerations in their strategies.
• They don’t have methods prepared to leverage first- and zero-party data for retargeting, interest-based targeting, or full-funnel campaigns.
• They can’t provide specifics about campaign attribution, performance tracking, and optimization.

While the future state of retargeting following Google’s shift away from 3PCs is still evolving, it’s unlikely that a single tactic will emerge as the solution. Instead, advertisers will need to leverage each of these tactics in concert to maximize the value of their retargeting efforts. 

The post Google’s New Cookie Plan: Empowering Users, Shaping Advertiser Strategies appeared first on AdMonsters.

The only thing consistent in advertising is change, and the keys to thriving amongst the recurring shifts are innovation, adaptability, and a deep understanding of client needs. Yahoo Creative, under the leadership of Tony Gemma, embodies these principles. Announced at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Yahoo designed Yahoo Creative to help alleviate the challenges advertisers face in programmatic. Its services promise to deliver personalized ad experiences alongside cookie deprecation.

Integrating the Yahoo DSP provides a seamless connection between ad creative and programmatic media buying. It helps streamline the execution process since its capabilities lead to better creative workflows and planning tools. It also helps simplify the advertising activation process for advertisers, offering more integrated campaign management that drives consolidation and efficiency.

As an omni-channel DSP with unique first-party identity solutions, Yahoo saw an opportunity to create a unique offering in the marketplace and did just that. The strategy behind Yahoo Creative was shaped by feedback from clients, who stressed the need for creative tools backed by trusted identity solutions. 

Yahoo Creative’s collaboration with Innervate leverages Yahoo’s first-party data and creative services with Innervate’s advanced creative tools, enabling the delivery of personalized, high-quality creative at scale. This not only enhances Yahoo Creative’s own DSP but also provides clients globally with a comprehensive solution to meet the industry’s growing demands, demonstrating Yahoo’s commitment to ecosystem interoperability. 

In this interview, Tony Gemma, VP, Global Head of Yahoo Creative, highlights the inspiration behind Yahoo Creative, its features, and how it is the new game-changer for buyers.

Yakira Young: What inspired the development of Yahoo Creative?

Tony Gemma: As an ad creative service organization, we’ve witnessed the friction advertisers face when activating creative in a growing programmatic ecosystem. As the identity landscape evolves, advertisers face additional challenges in finding ways to deliver high-quality and relevant experiences to users. 

Much of our strategy was driven by feedback from our clients — to expand advanced creative tools and services backed by a future-proofed strategy and deliver personalized ad experiences in a cookie-less future. With our position in the marketplace and our full-service creative team’s support, Yahoo positioned itself to invest in something new and differentiated for the marketplace. Offerings that will be particularly valuable in driving better advertising outcomes for our clients.

YY:  How did the partnership with Innervate come about, and what role does Innervate play?

TG: We previously tested dynamic creative in the Yahoo DSP and quickly found that Yahoo’s first-party data and creative services were strong assets for our clients. However, we didn’t have the expansive toolset that many clients were leveraging outside our walls. Our partnership with Innervate allows us to pair advanced creative tools with our talented full-service creative team and Yahoo’s unique Identity Solutions to scale personalized and high-quality creative to drive better client outcomes.

YY:  How does Yahoo Creative address the challenges of identity changes in online ad-targeting?

TG: Yahoo Creative is backed by Yahoo Identity Solutions, which encompasses Yahoo ConnectID and Next-Gen Solutions. Direct consumer relationships power these solutions, and a robust first-party dataset of over 205 million logged-in users in the U.S. Yahoo Creative ensures that dynamic creative remains relevant and engaging, even in a cookie-less environment. This approach helps maintain personalization and audience engagement, thus overcoming the hurdles posed by evolving identity standards.

YY: How does the first-party dataset of over 205M logged-in users enhance campaign targeting and personalization?

TG: Yahoo’s first-party dataset enhances campaign targeting and personalization by providing rich consumer insights and behavioral data sources. This data allows Yahoo Creative to develop highly personalized and relevant ad content that resonates with target audiences without using legacy cookie solutions. Leveraging such a vast and accurate dataset ensures that campaigns are precisely targeted, improving engagement and overall campaign performance.

YY:  In what ways has the lag in the evolution of creative tools impacted advertising effectiveness?

TG: Overall, our research has shown that creativity is one of the biggest drivers of advertising outcomes compared to media placement. In fact, we recently published research in partnership with IPG/Magna that showed 56% of purchase intent was driven by creative quality. Despite that, Yahoo and Advertiser Perceptions polled advertisers about their experiences in launching ad campaigns, and 95% noted that they face challenges when building and managing creative for ad campaigns. 

This is a huge gap in advertisers’ value chains, and we are uniquely equipped to help bridge the gap between creative and media to drive better outcomes for our advertisers.

YY: How does Yahoo Creative leverage data and technology to bridge the gap in creative capabilities?

TG: Yahoo Creative is built with an expansive toolset of creative authoring and visual planning tools that allow for the intersection of beautiful, interactive creative with the scale and personalization of real-time dynamic creative execution and optimization. This combination allows for eloquent and high-quality interactive creative backed by cookie-less creative targeting parameters leveraging Yahoo’s Identity Solutions. It allows advertisers to create personalized, engaging, and scalable ad content across multiple channels.

YY:  What are the key features of Yahoo Creative that set it apart from other ad creative solutions?

TG: We developed Yahoo Creative with ease of activation in mind, taking into consideration some of the challenges we’ve seen advertisers face when activating creative programmatically:

• Full-Service Creative Expertise – Many creative offerings are built solely for self-serve. At Yahoo Creative, we offer our consultation and omnichannel expertise from ideation to iteration, including insights, planning, design, development, campaign set-up, and optimization to drive better results for our client’s advertising.
• Future-Proof Personalization – Dynamic Creative is a growing opportunity for advertisers to deliver the most relevant creative to users while increasing efficiency with real-time optimization. As cookie deprecation continues to loom, Yahoo’s First Party Identity Solutions will help advertisers maintain addressability and scale intelligently to non-addressable audiences with their creative campaigns.
• Quality Creative Everywhere – Yahoo Creative is an omnichannel solution that supports various ad formats and platforms, including CTV, mobile, display, DOOH, and more. Although Yahoo Creative is connected with the Yahoo DSP, it is also designed to be interoperable with other DSPs and media-buying platforms. It ensures consistent and impactful creative across all platforms, allowing advertisers to reach their audiences effectively wherever they are.
• Inclusive Pricing—Advertisers often face challenges from long-term contracts, variable rate cards, or hidden fees for creative production or design. Yahoo Creative can be activated with no contracts, transparent rates, and no hidden production or design fees. This ensures complete pricing transparency, paying only on a usage-based pricing model, eliminating the need for tedious price negotiations. Moreover, you receive dedicated, full-service support throughout the entire process.

 YY: Can you explain how Yahoo Creative’s AI and data principles work in real-time creative development?

TG: Yahoo Creative leverages AI in several stages of the creative process. It has become a valuable tool in production, offering capabilities like image creation, image editing, image fill, and more that can speed up design or scale asset iteration. Yahoo Creative also leverages robust campaign optimization tools that allow for real-time multivariate testing to automatically pause underperforming creative or elements, ensuring optimization to the highest-performing advertisements.

YY: How has Princess Cruises utilized Yahoo Creative, and what results have they seen?

TG: Princess Cruise leveraged Yahoo Creative’s full-service expertise to build a series of animated advertisements across multiple formats to drive brand awareness. Princess Cruise has seen positive performance and has noted that Yahoo’s demand-side technology combined with integrated creative solutions is a powerful offering for driving successful advertising executions.

YY: How does Yahoo Creative ensure consistency and impact across different advertising channels like CTV, mobile, and DOOH?

TG: Yahoo Creative ensures consistency and impact across different advertising channels by offering an omnichannel solution that works seamlessly across CTV, mobile, display, DOOH, etc. The platform’s advanced technology enables the creation of adaptable ad content that maintains its effectiveness and engagement across various formats and devices. This ensures advertisers can deliver a unified and impactful message to their audience, regardless of the channel.

YY: Can you share some insights on the nearly 10,000 pieces of creative the team developed in 2023?

TG: Yahoo Creative has years of experience building creative, and we compile best practices across verticals, formats, and features. These extensive insights drive our consultative approach to working with clients to meet their unique creative needs and drive more effective creative performance. Whether advertisers are looking to drive brand awareness, drive site traffic, sales lift, or tune-in, our experts combine the science of our data and  insights with the art of our craft to offer holistic solutions that deliver high-quality experiences that move the needle for brands.

YY: How does Yahoo Creative support Interactive Authoring, and what benefits does this bring to advertisers?

TG: Interactive authoring powers beautiful, interactive advertising experiences across channels. The Yahoo Creative team are experts in interactive creative and it is an area where advanced technology and art come together to offer eloquent user-led experiences. It affords us the ability to add unique features like QR codes, touchpoints, gamification, and more. We often see that the addition of animation or interaction can drive tremendous lift in engagement.   

YY: How do you see Yahoo Creative evolving in the next few years?

TG: Yahoo Creative represents a major technological advancement in advertising, bringing robust creative tools closer to media. We are committed to its ongoing development. We will continue to innovate and enhance its capabilities, ensuring that it remains at the forefront of creative solutions for advertisers. 

We aim to empower brands and agencies to achieve greater personalization, engagement, and superior campaign results. Over the next few years, we’ll listen to our partners and expand capabilities that further advance their needs and drive positive outcomes in their marketing campaigns.

The post Yahoo DSP Does it Again: Hits the Bullseye With Yahoo Creative appeared first on AdMonsters.

For better or worse, Publishers are always left bearing the brunt of industry shifts. With addressability shifting into something different, many wonder how we will continue to target and reach our audiences.

The cookie phase-out process is here, and word on the street is that Chrome will be obfuscating the IP address (the cookie of CTV) real soon.

During a panel titled “The Future of Addressability: The Portfolio View,” Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, sat down with Shobha Doshi, SVP of Programmatic Strategy & Operations at Raptive, Ryan McConville EVP of Ad Platforms & Operations at NBCUniversal, and Mike Nuzzo, SVP of Hearst Data Solutions at Hearst Magazines. Each panelist outlined how they are approaching addressability today.

One thing we all know to be true is that there is no one solution; publishers should instead consider the “patchwork quilt” of solutions that are at their fingertips. With a catalog of over 5,000 publishers, Doshi highlighted that Raptive is currently in the test iterative stage. She encourages publishers to continue testing and exploring to see what works and what doesn’t.

At NBCU, they are rebuilding their signaling around first-party identity. With Peacock and their other digital endpoints totaling around 300, they had to find a way to coordinate those varying identities across everything. Having recently launched the NBC Unified identity platform, their strategy is to elevate it to live primarily on first-party identity signals.

When asked how Hearst thinks about the future of addressability, Nuzzo kept it simple. “We’re doing a lot of testing, learning, and just making sure we’re following the law,” he shared. From his perspective, the onus has been on publishers to solve for innovation. Innovation and identity are increasingly challenging because, again, there is no one solution.

Future-Proofing Alongside Hefty Privacy Constraints

Privacy regulations are evolving in Europe, and while a handful of states with state-led privacy regulations are already in place, three more states will be enforcing privacy sanctions next year: Montana, Oregon, and Texas. India also just passed a privacy law. 

What alternative solutions are publishers seeking to maintain an addressable ecosystem while complying with privacy regulations? 

“I think it’s hard, and that’s why I said the legal piece earlier,” Nuzzo explained. “Consent management platforms are in a good place right now, we need them contextually.” At Hearst, the focus is on understanding common taxonomies and how they apply that to their audiences algorithmically. Gen AI is also something they are pushing towards. 

For McConvile and NBCU, the product team is essential to maneuvering the privacy landmine. Media and entertainment companies have privacy product managers who enforce all privacy regulations. Rather than creating nuances for each state’s privacy laws, they look to the states with the most conservative ones and use those as a baseline.

Privacy and big tech are the two big bad wolves of the industry, but which one is scarier? 

It’s no surprise that Nuzzo from Hearst says it’s the legal side. No publisher wants to come out of pocket and pay off the government for not having the right privacy policy. McConnvile went with big tech, considering the different platform policies that publishers must abide by. 

“Operating system policies like Apple’s override our terms and conditions, so if you sign up for Peacock on an Apple device and agree to NBCU’s terms and then opt out of Apple, it overrides our terms and conditions completely. I don’t think users actually understand that they’re making that choice,” McConvile explained. 

The IP Address Is the Cookie of CTV

While CTV doesn’t operate on cookies, it does use IP addresses for audience targeting. This makes IP addresses the cookies of CTV. One or both will put a velvet rope around the web and obfuscate the IP address.

What will happen next as the IP address becomes effectively deprecated by big tech?

Doshi, SVP of Programmatic Strategy & Operations at Raptive, thinks the IP address signal loss would reduce graph strength for everyone. “It makes regulatory compliance hard, especially if there are different state-by-state regulations that may conflict,” she explained. “There are no good solutions right away, and solutions will differ per environment since regulations differ per environment. We may see some advantages on desktop, but the long road ahead is to figure out how to make it work.”

Nuzzo had an opposite opinion, “I think the IP address for us opens up an opportunity that we haven’t explored as publishers,” he said. Also, stating that there are actually a lot of good use cases for the deprecation of the IP address that we haven’t thought of. “I hope the industry allows us to explore that before they cut off at the knees,” he said. 

The IP address powers a lot of how performance TV works since viewers don’t click on their televisions to buy something. The IP address connects the devices in your household. “You have a smart TV that lives on an IP address, and you have a mobile phone that lives on that IP address,” McConville explained. “So if you see an ad on Peacock on your smart TV, you can buy the sneakers from that ad on your mobile phone.”

The industry will have many holes to fill if the IP address is deprecated because, aside from targeting, the IP address is crucial for cross-device measurement. There is also some interesting work on an Internet service provider level to future-proof the ability to tie IP signals to a deterministic household in a privacy-compliant way.

From a fraud vector perspective, the IP address is used for many fraud detection and data security issues as you start to proxy through a single IP address or VPN on the web. This opens up many fraud and data security issues for advertising and health, tech, finance, and national defense implications. 

In short, IP addresses have many uses in the advertising ecosystem beyond targeting. Many publishers will have to think through and plan for the many implications.

Is First-Party Data the New Oil in Our Industry?

When it comes to first-party data, we are somewhat in a world of the haves and have-nots. The walled gardens have had identity for many years, but everyone outside of them had an alternative architecture through cookies they could function on. 

 Publishers and brands have to create a value exchange to get the data. There are tons of data-rich companies, like Amazon, for example. You are unable to use any Amazon entity without logging in. Publishers need to make sure that their consumer product teams are creating a system for authenticating users and communicating the value exchange to garner more logins. 

Now is the time, more than ever, for companies that have not traditionally collected first-party identity signals to figure out smart ways of doing it. “On the cohorting side over at NBCUniversal, they have done some really interesting tests with seed data using AI and content. 

“We fed our content into an AI engine, scanned all the contextual metadata for all the content, and then created lookalike models using that more granular data set. By using this AI deep contextual metadata, which is also our first-party data, we found that the segments performed much better,” said McConville. 

At Hearst, there are tiers of data assets at their disposal, so it doesn’t have to be explicit logins. They collect 4 trillion data points on their users monthly, which is precious data. Recently, they conducted a study and saw a 140% increase in click-through rate when they applied both contextual and behavioral into one segment for the advertiser. 

“We’ve lived on this behavioral journey for so long, where the mentality was just follow the consumer around, and they’ll buy my shoes,” Nuzzo said. “This may be true, but when you serve 5000 impressions to them versus if you serve them the right content, you’ll have to do far less of that, and the interaction rate will improve.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

As an industry, we have a nasty habit of waiting until the last minute before we react to changes. We have built a solid muscle on the third-party cookie, so is there a sense of urgency in Q1 of 2024? Probably not. 

Patrick McCann, SVP of Research at Raptive, also led a main-stage discussion highlighting how more publishers need to start testing the Privacy Sandbox. Raptive hopes that we will discuss how the buy side is ingesting and understanding some of that data next year. 

Clean rooms were also discussed, and McConville predicts that we will see some real commercial action coming out of Clean Room integrations because there was a long time when they weren’t being utilized. With Amazon and Google PAIR, we see real commercial examples of bringing first-party data service into these data clouds.

Nuzzo thinks we will talk about gen AI in the spring of 2024 and finally have some real learnings from it. We will finally have some metrics to see what works, and what doesn’t work. 

The post Addressing the Future: Publisher Perspectives on Data, Privacy, and the Road Ahead appeared first on AdMonsters.

With third-party cookies going away, mobile IDs in a state of flux, and the ecosystem constantly shifting we need innovative solutions to help publishers and advertisers securely collect, compare, and leverage audience data. Without new solutions it is darn near impossible to plan, activate, and measure campaigns. 

Recently, data collaboration platform and clean room solution, Optable closed a $20M Series A financing deal to beef up their global expansion and support a rapidly growing client base. Among the Series investors is Hearst, who has entered into a commercial agreement with Optable to amplify the value of the publisher’s first-party data and enable interoperability with other data clean room solutions.

We tapped in with Hearst and Optable for their perspective on this new deal and to learn what it really means. 

Darcy Frisch, Managing Director and VP, Hearst Ventures

Yakira Young: Can you tell us about your new partnership with Optable and how it aligns with your overall strategy for data collaboration and privacy?

DF: As an investor, Hearst Ventures is broadly interested in how companies are managing data privacy and governance. We invest in companies that are thinking ahead about how consumer and other data can be managed and deployed responsibly. In the case of Optable, we believe that their solution allows advertisers and publishers alike to effectively use data to collaborate and maintain consumer privacy.

YY: In what ways does Optable’s approach to data collaboration align with evolving consumer attitudes toward data privacy, and how do you see this trend impacting the advertising industry more broadly?

DF: We see Optable’s approach as largely driven by these changes in consumer behavior. It’s clear that audiences demand more control over their own data, requiring both media companies and their advertising partners to respect this sentiment. 

Ultimately, this isn’t just about technology, at the core of Hearst’s publisher value proposition is our emphasis on delivering high-quality content to our audiences. Data collaboration technologies simply offer a safer, more controlled way to align consumer demands with advertiser requirements.  

Vlad Stesin, Optable Co-Founder and CPO

YY: How can publishers and advertisers use Optable to better understand their audiences and deliver more effective, targeted advertising campaigns that respect consumer privacy?

VS: Optable’s platform enables publishers to enhance and scale our data-driven collaboration that they offer to advertising partners. This means that they can provide advertisers an “easy button” for leveraging first-party data in a privacy-safe environment, enabling them to build comprehensive media executions, provide seamless activation of targeted audiences across publisher properties and offer enhanced measurement that is rooted in first-party data.

The data clean room approach helps publishers understand exactly which audiences their advertising partners are trying to reach, build better media approaches, deliver better marketing results, and ultimately create better experiences for their audiences.

YY: How does Optable’s approach to data collaboration differ from other solutions in the market, and what benefits does it offer publishers and advertisers?

VS: Optable is laser-focused on the media and advertising industry which creates an emphasis on frictionless collaboration, offering partners a variety of ways to connect customer data. The platform offers an easy-to-use interface ranging from advanced analytics to easy activation of campaigns, at scale, directly from the clean room environment.

We apply industry-leading privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) as well as advanced data security measures to ensure that the usage of data between publishers and their partners is both secure and protected.  Our unique approach to privacy balanced with interoperability-by-design allows publishers to scale this solution while assuring that data is never leaked or misused during the collaboration process – a notion the industry is feverishly trying to understand and implement.

All this results in more “clean room media” being transacted by our customers, offering advertisers performant campaign executions rooted in real data.

The post Hearst’s Commercial Agreement with Optable Transforms the Data Collaboration Process appeared first on AdMonsters.

Recently, President Biden signaled how important privacy legislation is by addressing it at the State of the Union for the first time. We all recognize that state privacy laws are here, with many more to come. At this point, we desperately need universal privacy legislation that supersedes state laws to create a level playing field for credibility, stability, and protection for consumers and businesses. 

At RampUp 2023, “Stay on the Forefront of Privacy Legislation” was a session where Washington D.C.-based ad tech counsel and a VP at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shared their perspectives on what’s happening right now and what the industry can do to streamline the process. One common denominator among the three session participants was that now was the time for one federal privacy law. 

The Time Is Now

Data is highly regarded because it helps to deliver impactful services to consumers and customers. It unlocks the potential of the information economy to communities and helps ensure that consumers have access to important and useful information for free. It makes the open web a lot like the public library. Also, with the right data, consumers can access personalized apps and services that make life easier.

And, for the ad tech ecosystem, it powers the pipeline, bringing the right message to the right consumer at the right time. However, this all goes out the window if we do not establish a reasonable and well-thought-through national policy for data.

In a study conducted by Privacy for America, we learned that consumers enjoy over $30,000 a year in subsidized content and services online. A law restricting that flow of data availability could increase what we consider an online tax by over $30,000. 

We must ensure we continue to provide consumers with this same access. This isn’t just an ad tech issue. With six state data privacy laws already on the books and many different bills under consideration, delivering the impactful information and services consumers expect grows harder and harder.

“Without a preemptive national standard, we risk that the policy, and how we can engage with consumers and build audiences, will be left to just a handful of companies,” explained Michael Signorella, co-chair of the Technology and Innovation Group at Venable law firm. “They will decide how we can address media to consumers online, think of ATT.”

The Tragedy Associated With State-led Privacy Legislations 

According to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, 80% of small businesses stated that tech platforms, ads, and payment apps enabled them to compete with larger corporations. So limiting access to data and the ability to use data will constrict their business operations. 

“There are currently about 20 states that have introduced bills being considered now,” said Jordan Crenshaw, VP at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The problem is that we’re seeing multiple models emerge, and even when we have very similar models, they are still somewhat different. If you’re a food truck with about 270 customers daily, complying across state lines would be nearly impossible.”

The California Consumer Privacy Act was the first comprehensive law in the U.S. to go into effect. It gives consumers the right to delete data, opt out of data sales, and know what data companies hold about them. Nonetheless, the private right of action associated with this act could be problematic when it comes to data breaches. 

Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act, which went into effect in January, gives consumers the right to opt out of data sales and targeted advertising. Like California, Virginia consumers can also delete data, but they also can correct data and opt-in for sensitive data. There is no private right of action in Virginia, which is good because it leaves enforcement up to the state’s attorney general. It also doesn’t allow for broad rulemaking authority to any agencies in the state, keeping the terms and conditions concrete. 

When it comes to federal privacy, the Chamber of Commerce currently sees states embracing the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) and opt-in frameworks where businesses have to get consent to use data outright, like in Oklahoma. All these differences are a huge red flag for compliance for small businesses. 

Where Are We Seeing Specific Privacy Regulations?

Health Data: Since the Roe v Wade decision, there has been a call to create privacy protections around abortion data or data that might lead to that. The problem is that now that issue has worked into massive health bills creating an even larger issue. In Washington, the state has a bill in review that would require consumers to opt-in for data usage, thus harming data flows for things like health research, clinical trials, for example. That bill also has a private right of action.

Children’s Data: States are proposing updates to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Utah even has a social media bill that would shut off social media usage after 10 pm, substituting the role of a parent with a private right of action and age verification.

Biometric Data: An example of this is facial recognition technology. States like Illinois already passed laws related to biometrics, whereas a company could be subject to private lawsuits if it failed to get consent to use biometric data. 

Convos on Capitol Hill

As Principal at Emergent Strategies, a Democratic government affairs firm in Washington, DC, Michael Claunch spends much time on Capitol Hill. While conversing with Congress, he knows they are working to solve many of these privacy issues, whether conflated purposefully or unintentionally. 

On the Hill, they are working on complex issues like privacy, whether online markets are competitive enough, and Section 230 reform. Members of Congress feel extremely passionate about these issues, but if they try to address each silo, they will affect the other; privacy is a great example. 

“When I interact with Congress, I’m very consistent in my message that a federal privacy law will be the competition law for the next decade,” Claunch explained. “There will be winners and losers as some entities will have better access to more rich data and be able to use it. Market impacts need to be taken into consideration.”

Why Not the ADPPA?

While the ADPPA is an admirable attempt, it’s just not it for many reasons. Experts see many weaknesses regarding its impact on competition and the fact that it has an overly broad definition of sensitive data. It can eliminate the ability for brands and third parties to use data to get a complete look at the consumer and target them across the web. 

The ADPPA presents unequal treatment between first and third-party marketers; as we know, if a company has a first-party relationship with a consumer, it’s way easier for them to get opt-in consent on that sensitive data.

Currently, the way the ADPPA is written, third parties are at a significant competitive disadvantage compared to first parties. Thankfully the three legal professionals on this session — Jordan Crenshaw, Vice President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Michael Signorelli, Partner, Venable LLP; and Michael Claunch, Principal, Emergent Strategies — are working to change that. With a new Congress in place, it presents an opportunity to reset and build up the good work regulators have done. It also gives them ideas to ensure that a federal privacy law considers all stakeholders.

The post Privacy Experts Convene on the Need for Federal Legislation at RampUp appeared first on AdMonsters.

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

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

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

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

How Cookies Stole Ad Tech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridging the Gap

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

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

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

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

“But I don’t have First-party Data”

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

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

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

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

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

How Can Publishers Better Connect With Their Readers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When people could not go outside during covid, we began to see massive shifts in commerce towards more consumer shopping, and the shift is still shifting. Such changes increase margin pressures that retailers face, and retail media is emerging as a net new revenue stream that helps to defend what is happening.

On the flip side, first-party data has become equivalent to gold as the advertising ecosystem needs help finding a viable alternative to third-party cookies. The industry is scrambling to find ways to retain addressability without violating privacy concerns. Brands are looking to diversify how they target their audiences. 

Studies show that roughly 80% of consumers are perfectly fine with and expect things like personalization. Retailers are taking advantage of this statistic and are investing significantly in personalization over the past several years. The closed-loop attribution that retail media offers allow retailers to understand the series of events consumers make and how they influence shopper decisions. New data analytics investments for personalization advancement are quite synergistic with what it takes to produce quality media operations.

During Programmatic IO, Jason Cherok, Partner at McKinsey & Company, sat down with Charlene Charles, Head of Operations at Dollar General Media Network, to discuss ways to “Close The Loop Between Impressions and Transactions.” 

Commerce media is bustling. In the last two years, 15 to 20 media networks launched. Nonetheless, everything is not a walk in the park. With such rapid growth, adapting is challenging for retail media networks.

Current Roadblocks in Commerce Media

Charles oversees the P&L growth plan, ad product strategy, internal operations, media planning and buying, reporting and measurement, and procurement. She highlighted three main hurdles in the road that commerce media companies need to jump over.

1. Revenue
   Of course, we are starting with the money part. When preparing to implement a commerce media network, many retailers’ initial question is, is it incremental? According to Charles, it is, but it does take some internal education to convince key stakeholders whether or not this is happening in the merchandising funds. Often this is new territory for a retailer, and your ability to communicate that point to merchants and marketers on how it fits can be a learning curve.
2. The importance of a Dedicated Team
   There’s a balance between tech and talent that commerce media needs to consider while also realizing those gaps within their organizations. The work is more complex than copy and paste, so if/and when establishing a retail media network, think about whether or not you will need to seek outside talent and how you’ll operate effectively.
3. The Creative
   When thinking about personalization, audience segmentation, and the ability to curate messaging for consumers on their personalized journey, retail media networks should strongly consider meta-tagging everything across the board. Pay attention to the analytics behind the scenes, and observe vendor owned, paid, and amplified in a way that you don’t look at your results in silos.

How to Win at Commerce Media

Navigating new monetization territories is never easy, but here are some essential guidelines to motivate and help retailers win in this space.

Having a clear vision is critical. While it may sound easy peasy, many retail media networks need help articulating their value proposition and distilling it in a way that resonates. After this is thought out, a retailer’s next question is, what makes my customers unique?

“At DG Media Network, we pride ourselves in reaching the hard-to-reach and hard-to-measure consumers in rural markets,” Charles explained. “Brands want that unduplicated reach. They want to talk to our over 80 million customers that we can reach 90% of the time through paid media, and measuring their investment return is important.”

It’s crucial for commerce media networks to carve out what they plan to do from a dedicated end-to-end standpoint and what that means to sales ops technology teams.

Work through the ambiguity of business and technology simultaneously. When dealing with innovation, the unknowns can be endless. You have to be able to deliver fast and efficient outcomes and troubleshoot them. There will be problems, but it’s all about maneuvering them.

Lastly, performance is everything. It doesn’t matter if you can deliver outcomes if you do not have something to offer or the right technology and resources. It would help if you had measurable outcomes. Retailers and brands want to ensure they can see the return on ad spend in their investment build.

The Future of Commerce Media Networks

DG’s media network debuted this year, and we expect to see many more in 2023. Retail media networks serve a crucial role within the advertising ecosystem because there is an ability to close the loop. Traditionally, when you think about brands and agencies, they usually only worked with maybe four or five major players. From a media network standpoint, Charles expects that to “explode.” Expect to see more executions, more comparisons across different media networks, and more of a need for a centralized way to understand results across each.”

DG Media network also predicts that services will evolve. It can be beneficial to have the right partners, whether they’re clean room, identity resolution, or even operational day-to-day. Following figure out how they can add value to media networks to provide a service and partner together,” Charles stated.

It’s essential to keep the value proposition in mind. After all, you will need to have a differentiated message as to why your consumer is more valuable because everyone will start looking the same in the eyes of buyers. 

The post Commerce Media Challenges and How to Overcome Them appeared first on AdMonsters.

Their data will give rise to new opportunities for brands, agencies, and publishers to collaborate earlier on in the campaign planning process. Some publishers even argue that they should be included as a brand develops its go-to-market plan for new products.

Is there a case to be made for including them that early?

Publishers Have Unique Data for Campaign Planning and Assessment

When we think of publisher data, we tend to focus on the information they collect at registration. It’s valuable data, as many inquire about household information that would be actionable for brands. For instance, Monique Watford, VP of Operations at Spiceworks Ziff Davis, says her company can supply information related to specific types of software and hardware a company uses, when their licenses will expire and if their hardware is aging.

But even publishers that don’t require registration bring a lot to the table. One such publisher, Love To Know Media, has a trove of contextual data that can offer very interesting options for advertisers.

“Our visitors come to us for an answer to specific questions, which allows us to understand a lot about them. If they land on an article about dog ailments, we know they’re a dog owner, and they are concerned about their dog,” explained Marc Boswell, Love To Know Media’s CRO. “We can understand our readers from multiple angles based on the content and the contextual flags on each one of the pages.”

There’s another often overlooked pool of data: third-party data on engagement such as hover on ad rate and scroll impressions. This type of data goes way beyond CTR or video completion rates. It can help advertisers, and their agencies better understand how well their creatives perform so they can improve their creative strategy. It also sheds insight into which creatives work better on specific publications and why.

Earning That Seat at the Table

While publisher data is undeniably strategic to companies, publishers need to recognize the advertiser’s concerns, beginning with neutrality.

Advertisers, burnt by years of buying pre-packaged audience segments that woefully missed the mark, want assurances of fraud-free, high-quality inventory that a trusted third-party measurement company verifies. They’re wary of publishers grading their own homework. Impartiality, therefore, is key.

That impartiality will benefit the entire ecosystem, enabling buyers and their media agencies to trust a larger portion of the inventory publishers have to offer. And that, in turn, means publisher-defined audiences will be more actionable and will go a long way in easing general fears that digital advertising will lack sufficient data due to privacy regulations. It will also create a scenario where publishers work directly with agencies more efficiently.

A World in Which Publisher Data Is Scalable

What role can publishers (and their data) play in the post-cookie digital advertising world? As Ziff Davis’ Watford points out, publishers have always had a keen interest in seeing their advertisers succeed, as their success leads to repeat business. “The ideal time to engage a publisher is early on when a product is still in development.”

Boswell agrees. “We would love to be involved as early as possible [and to talk] to the agencies to help them understand how all of our data can help them drive value.”

Publishers also see a role for them in helping brands, and their agencies assess campaign performance. As mentioned above, publishers with access to impartial engagement data would like to see it incorporated into the agency’s wrap decks. Scaling will be an issue, of course. The industry will need standards that enable the agency to report on them unified across all publishers.

But let’s assume for a minute that these standards are developed and adopted. That media agencies have the tools they need to compare a deeper level of audience, quality, and engagement metrics across channels. Will agencies welcome the publisher’s earlier involvement in the planning process?

Agencies want the campaigns they launch for their clients to succeed just as much as the brands and publishers do. They have every incentive to incorporate quality and verified data as possible as the third-party cookie deprecates.

Agencies have leaned on cookies rather than engage in these more fruitful relationships with publishers. Brands will likely see sharper alignment between themselves, their agencies, and publishers as we advance.

The post The Rise of Publisher Data and Its Potential for Tighter Collaboration Between Brands, Agencies, and Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

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

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

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

Enriching Audience Data for Future-Proof Insights

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Full View of Audience Insights for the Win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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