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.

Generative AI is rapidly infiltrating and, in many cases, dominating the consumer’s online experience. Is this enhancing the consumer experience? Will publishers benefit from greater engagement with ads on their sites? Or are we simply drinking our own KoolAid, like we did in the data-driven days of Web 2.0? 

Research shows that consumers might not be as keen to see AI-generated ads as many assume.

The Generative AI Ad Funnel

Search is the first place people go when they have a question or are interested in a product, and for many publishers, it can represent up to 40% of the users who arrive on their site. However, Google SGE allows consumers to skip that step and get quick answers without bothering them by visiting the site that produced the content. 

While Google SGE hurts publishers by cutting off a vital source of referral traffic, generative AI can, in theory, help them improve the monetization of users who find their way to their sites. Tools like Scale.ai, Jasper.ai, and others allow for myriad combinations of ad copy and images using a range of data about the individual, prompting higher levels of engagement and, ultimately, CPMs.  

Personalization is Good for Consumers, Right?

Our industry believes the fact that generative AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and generate ad content personalized to individual users is a good thing. But how do consumers feel about all of these AI-powered experiences?

New research shows that consumers have mixed opinions. Last Thursday, Intango released the results of a study designed to measure consumer perceptions of generative AI in advertising. The ad-tech company surveyed over 1,000 consumers in the US and found opinions divided on critical issues that the industry believes are beneficial.

Take using search history for ad personalization. Forty-three percent of respondents viewed this positively or somewhat positively, indicating an appreciation for more tailored advertising experiences. Yet, this enthusiasm is tempered by privacy considerations, with 37% expressing reservations about their search history used to shape ad content.

As tools like Soro and Google Performance Max proliferate, consumers are on the fence about all that personalization. When asked about their receptivity to AI-driven personalized ad content, 45% of participants acknowledged the benefits of such personalization, either finding it beneficial or somewhat beneficial for ensuring ad relevance. However, skepticism remains, as 27% /preferred non-AI personalized ads, highlighting the industry’s challenge in balancing technological advancement with consumer comfort and trust.

And while Google touts Search SGE, the survey revealed that 27% of consumers adjust their search behaviors with a shift toward these new platforms. A majority (51%) reported no change in their use of traditional search engines. According to Intango, this indicates a gradual but noticeable shift in consumer search habits influenced by AI innovations. 

These findings confirm earlier research by Publicis Media and Yahoo!, which served 1,200 consumers about their attitudes towards AI-generated content. According to that poll, 72% of consumers found that AI makes distinguishing between authentic and fake content difficult. 

The Importance of Navigating Carefully

“It is evident that while there’s an appreciation for and curiosity about the enhanced experiences that AI-driven personalization can offer, consumers do have privacy concerns,” Uri Lichter, CEO of Intango, said in a press release. “It’s crucial for us in the ad tech industry to navigate these concerns thoughtfully. We need to take a careful approach when advancing AI in search to ensure we are respecting consumer privacy while delivering the personalized experiences that many users value.”

Navigating those concerns can be tough for our industry because we tend to get excited about the hype. The mid-aughts were all about data-driven advertising and capturing the “data exhaust” consumers generate as they go about their digital lives. We tracked their every move, packaging up signals into audience segments sold at scale, leading to what Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.

It was a heady time within the industry, with ad-tech companies promising highly personalized advertising that makes the whole online experience better for the consumer. However, they didn’t quite agree. Blowback came from the GDPR, CCPA, and an increasingly complex regulatory environment. 

There’s no doubt that personalized advertising increases relevance and efficiency and promotes discovery. But consumers have made it clear that they’re uncomfortable with companies knowing so much about their online behavior and, worse, using it to manipulate their behavior to get them to buy things they don’t need or want.

We learned some valuable lessons in Web 2.0. This research reminds us that we need to apply those lessons as we dive into generative AI.

Besides, we might be getting our hopes up that generative AI will be the panacea for increased ad engagement. In his book Filterworld, Kyle Chayka warns, “With new technology, the miraculous quickly becomes mundane, any glitch in its function is felt as bothersome, and finally it becomes ignorable, the miracle forsaken.” In other words, the video ads created by Soro may seem super cool at first, but if we see them enough, we’ll grow bored.

How Generative AI Can Help AdOps

This is not to say that generative AI won’t have a huge and positive impact on publisher revenues because it will. Last week, NBCUniversal announced at One24 that it is testing generative AI to analyze TV and social content to better understand the emotions and motivations felt by consumers. Advertisers can then use that insight to target audiences for ads, increasing ad revenue for NBCUniversal content. Early tests show that this insight can improve performance by as much as 49%.

The soon-to-be-released AdMonsters Publisher Pulse found that AdOps teams effectively use generative AI to improve monetization in myriad ways, such as implementing infinite feedback loops that collect, analyze, and optimize campaigns automatically and continuously.

The post Generative AI Pushes Deeper into the Consumer’s Online Experience appeared first on AdMonsters.

To Søren H. Dinesen, CEO and Co-Founder of Digiseg, third-party cookies can’t go away fast enough. He never liked the assumptions that third-party cookies forced people in the industry to make to tell stories about their audiences and determine who to target.

“Someone can spend a lot of time reading about solar panels on multiple websites, but if they rent an apartment in an urban area, they’re not a good prospect for panel manufacturers,” he explained. “This is the challenge with third-party cookies. People visit sites for a variety of reasons. But purchasing requires a specific need, like owning a house with a roof can actually accommodate those solar panels.”

Kevin Kowalick, VP of Strategy for Media & Entertainment at TransUnion“ agrees. “Audience building is most effective when it is tied to real individuals and households as opposed to just devices. Demographic and consumer data rooted in the offline world provides a highly predictive basis for targeting. For example, income, home ownership, and presence of children are strong signals as to whether a consumer or viewer of programming or reader of content is a good fit for a brand’s offerings.”

Enter public data offered by a growing number of companies, including Digiseg, TransUnion, and Simpli.fi.

The Value of Public Data

Every country collects data on its citizens, including the number of household members, presence of children, household income and education levels, age, race, marital status, neighborhood characteristics, and so on. This data can be useful to publishers who want to tell better stories about their readers and to marketers who want a cookie-free alternative to targeting.

The benefits to public data proponents are apparent: It’s accurate, verified, and scrubbed of all PII data before it’s released to the market. If you’re a brand and you want to reach dads with ads for radial tires, target ZIP codes that over-index for households with children and multiple cars.

This is the approach the Simpli.fi took when it introduced ZTV last summer. The company built a proprietary platform comprising more than 41,000 ZIP codes. It then mapped census data, including various demographic and economic attributes to each ZIP code. The third piece of the puzzle is automated content recognition (ACR) data. To target an audience, an advertiser can target ZIP codes that over-index for desired attributes, such as home ownership and high-end autos, and content that over-indexes for a specific demographic, such as NFL games and men.

“Our ZTV solution provides competitive pricing while delivering CTV advertising on high-quality inventory with granular reach and frequency measurement at the household level. With the upcoming depreciation of the third-party cookie, this is a future-proof solution that will allow advertisers’ campaigns to be highly effective at a lower CPM,” explained James Moore, Chief Revenue Officer at Simpli.fi. 

Digiseg offers a similar approach. The company provides 39 core audiences (home type, own v. rent, income, education level, presence of children, etc.) and several composite audiences, such as those interested in travel, computer games, or online betting.

Publisher AdOps team can apply an audience tag to their sites to gain insight about their readers. Digiseg can map the user to any of its core or composite audiences based on the user’s IP address. This insight tells the AdOps team which readers like computer games or live-in neighborhoods rental apartment units. Digiseg data reaches 348 million people in the US across 134 million households and 3 billion devices. (ZTV reaches 126 million households.)

Digiseg’s online audience builder lets marketers build an audience and see how many people they can reach by device type.

A Focus on Long-Term Characteristics

According to Dinesen, a key value of public data provided by the Census Bureau and National Statistics offices is that it validates long-term consumer needs. Couples who have children will raise them for 18 years before they go off to college; people who own homes in suburbia will need garden supplies for as long as they live in their houses. AdOps teams of a national publication can use this data to build audience segments of people likely to purchase based on the attributes of their neighborhoods and households. For instance, an EV manufacturer can target neighborhoods where such cars are popular and whose residents are more apt to have the means to buy one.

“Traditional audience segments are based on stereotypes, such as anyone who buys baby products is a woman aged 25 to 35, but there are plenty of gay men who have children, and they’ll buy a range of products for those kids for about two decades,” Dinesen said. 

Long-term characteristics are useful for building an upper funnel but can be a challenge for performance-based campaigns. One can identify households that need auto parts or school supplies, but not when consumers will need a specific item. But Dinesen says performance marketers enjoy great success with Digiseg’s audience segments because the targeted consumers have a validated need for the product category.

Public data may not be the right solution in every use case, but it offers a compelling, and cookie-free solution for audience development and insights. AdOps teams and marketers can use it to understand the long-term characteristics and needs of their readers.

The post Spotlight on Census Data for Audience Development & Insights, a Cookie-Free Approach appeared first on AdMonsters.

As new platforms emerge and the lines between CTV, linear and digital continue to blur, advertisers have no shortage of ways to reach consumers – but are they doing so effectively? With a crowded space and elusive viewers bouncing between screens, marketers need to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters in 2024.

Prioritize Premium Video

It’s all about quality content and brand safety in today’s landscape.

The definition of TV and what qualifies as ‘premium’ video is often in the eye of the beholder. For many consumers, premium video is all about the quality of the viewing experience. In a recent survey, 54% of consumers define TV as channels like NBC, ESPN, and HGTV, while 52% define it as streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Max. Further, 51% define TV as news and sports programming, while 49% define TV as the episodic series they watch on a TV screen. Essentially, there is no one way consumers define “TV” these days other than premium content they can access whenever they want.  

While the modern-day definition of ‘premium’ video has taken on many different meanings, it’s clear that well-produced, long-form episodic “TV” content still carries weight. Before investing in premium video, advertisers should be able to distinguish what inventory is most relevant to their specific audience and ensure that what they’re buying is fully transparent and brand-safe. 

Additional oversight is essential given the increasing incidents of ad fraud and widening fragmentation in the current landscape. Partnering with trusted publishers, avoiding objectionable content, and investing in audience-first targeting models can help advertisers ensure better brand safety. Brands can also layer in data to make each impression more valuable in reaching their core audiences.   

Strike the Right Balance Between Contextual and Audience–Targeted Solutions

As the deprecation of third-party cookies begins, marketers need a strategy that empowers them in a first-party data world. In 2024, it’s all about finding the right balance between contextual and audience-targeted solutions.    

Marketers can maximize audience-targeted solutions by leaning into precision targeting to connect with specific audiences and understand their behaviors. While the transition away from third-party cookies may seem like a major challenge, it presents an opportunity for brands and advertisers to get creative in driving ROI while simultaneously prioritizing compliance and consumer privacy. This year, advertisers must learn how to leverage different identifiers and lean on players with first-party deterministic identities based on real, known audiences to succeed.  

Brands can also leverage contextual opportunities like content metadata to gain deeper insights at a granular level, especially on CTV and streaming. This gives intel into how programming is tagged by the network, genre, series title, or rating, which can help brands position themselves within specific content environments and adhere to brand safety guidelines more effectively. For example, while 67% of US consumers report watching live TV every day, advertisers can use contextual signals to dig deeper and ensure that their brand is aligned with the right content for their message. Investing in rich datasets and leveraging content metadata helps marketers improve targeting, packaging, and transparency reporting over time.  

When it comes to contextual and audience-targeted solutions, there should be no either/or. This year, marketers should focus on finding the right balance between contextual and audience-targeted solutions to maximize their efforts and prepare for life after third-party cookies.  

Leverage Programmatic Technology To Bridge the Gap Between CTV and Linear

As CTV and linear continue to blend, converged TV opportunities are critical in reaching audiences. Advertisers should think about both linear and streaming to ensure they reach viewers wherever they are.  

According to Nielsen data, 81% of adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 65 watch both linear TV and ad-supported streaming TV, while 9% ONLY watch ad-supported streaming. Therefore, brands need to find ways to reach their total audience across many different viewing platforms and find a way to use technology to make this easier across a myriad of different partners. This is where programmatic comes into play. Advertisers can leverage programmatic to target audiences and access video inventory from many publishers all in one place, promoting a more converged approach for today’s buyers.   

As the landscape continues to converge, programmatic holds the key to enabling holistic buying and making linear TV and digital look and feel the same across the board.   

 Lean Into Ad Innovation and Addressability

With audiences splintered across platforms, traditional strategies won’t cut it when breaking through the noise and combatting unprecedented fragmentation. By leveraging opportunities like ad innovation and addressability, advertisers can better engage with audiences and maximize their reach across CTV and linear.   

 In a crowded field, non-disruptive, interactive, and user-initiated ad formats can help drive authentic awareness and engagement for brands. We also know relevancy is important to today’s consumers, with 89% of consumers receptive to ads when they are telling them something relevant that they didn’t already know and 74% appreciative when an ad reminds them about something they need to purchase. Home screen UI opportunities, shoppable formats, and pause ads can be personalized to appeal to viewer ad preferences across digital and linear, creating an immersive, engaging experience for the audience. 

Advertisers can also actively counter viewership fragmentation through addressable advertising, which enables audience reach across traditional and CTV platforms while managing reach and frequency. Using deterministic data, addressability enables 1:1 level targeting (whether at the household, person, or device level, depending on the screen), which can be used as a unifying tool to reach audiences holistically.  

Preparing for the Road Ahead  

Advertisers have a lot to grapple with in today’s complex media ecosystem, and this year’s major tentpole moments guarantee another wild ride in 2024. Marketers can make the most of their efforts by prioritizing brand-safe, premium video inventory, striking the right balance between contextual and audience-targeted solutions, leveraging programmatic to unify linear and CTV, and leaning into ad innovation and addressability. By tuning out the distractions and focusing on worthwhile strategies that translate into ROI, marketers can secure a competitive edge and set themselves up for success in 2024.  

The post Cracking the Code: Strategies to Thrive in a Shifting Media Landscape appeared first on AdMonsters.

Let’s be honest; does anyone read the terms and conditions when they sign up for an app or streaming service? 

On June 15, Black Mirror dropped the episodes to its highly anticipated sixth season, and the first episode, “Joan is Awful,” raised paranoia around what streaming services ask for in their Terms of Service (ToS). 

[Spoiler alert] 

When the episode starts, Joan makes a series of morally questionable decisions, including firing a work friend and meeting up with an ex-boyfriend behind her fiance’s back. After she comes home from work, Joan and her fiance Crish search the fictional streaming service “Streamberry” for a show to watch when they come across Joan is Awful. Joan watches in horror as the events of her day play out on the TV show, which subsequently causes her life to fall into complete chaos — her fiance leaves her, viewers villainize her on social media, and her company fires her.  

After consulting a lawyer, Joan learns that Streamberry has rights to her private information and life events to create content for the show since she signed them over in the Terms and Conditions. 

The ad tech community is well-versed in discussions surrounding privacy ethics, consumer protection, and consumer targeting. Still, this episode caused quite a debate about how platforms collect consumer data. No one will wake up tomorrow with a Netflix series about their life, but what are the real-world implications of this episode? 

@realfandcmfigures always read the terms & conditions #blackmirror #joanisawful #fyp ♬ original sound – Fandcmfigures

The Privacy Reckoning and Consumer Choice

Consumer choice is one of the most critical aspects of privacy ethics. Generally, a privacy policy gives consumers “notice about how their personal information will be collected, used, and shared and then informs the consumer what “choices” they have.” Platforms then ask consumers to agree to the policies to use the service. 

However, the structure is flawed because the notice of choice fails to protect the audience’s privacy. It puts the burden of privacy on the consumer, who is most likely unaware of how these systems and standards work. How is their choice when they don’t have all the facts? 

In the episode, the CEO of Streamberry took advantage of this notion to use their subscriber’s information for content. When Joan signed up for Streamberry, I’m sure she would have thought twice about agreeing to the ToS if she knew the platform would use her personal life for content without proper consent. 

Further in the episode, Streamberry’s CEO explains to a journalist that they decided to create shows centered around their audience to create more content tailored toward them. Joan’s show was only the start. She revealed that they tested out shows for each of their subscribers which meant every consumer’s data was up for grabs.  

Publishers and advertisers have broken consumer trust for years, and the only way to rebuild that trust is to put the consumer’s needs first. It’s about walking the fine line between making content relevant and being transparent with your audience to respect privacy ethics. 

“Privacy consent is at the core of a publisher’s relationship with their visitors,” said Dan Rua, CEO, Admiral. “The strongest relationships are built on mutual trust. As such, privacy consent shouldn’t be a silo run by lawyers, separate from thinking about engagement across the full visitor relationship journey.”

Tailoring Content For the Consumer

In the ad tech industry, ad ops professionals use all types of consumer targeting practices with one goal: getting the correct content to the right consumer. The goal was always to give consumers a great user experience, but over the years, regulators criticized publishers and advertisers for some of their targeting practices. 

For instance, the third-party cookie — on its way out entirely in 2024 — was criticized for collecting and utilizing consumer data without transparency and choice. Before the cookie pop-up notification became standard practice, websites used cookies to collect and share consumer information without their knowledge. Although even after they knew what cookies did, many were unaware of how platforms shared their data. 

Web browsers like Firefox and Safari have stopped using cookies, but Google is still working to weed them out. They are currently testing the privacy sandbox, which aims to undo years of persistent cookie tracking of users on their journeys across the web and mobile.

The ad tech community is working towards reconciling their past mistakes with privacy ethics. Regulators and government officials created laws such as the GDPR and state-level laws such as California’s CCPA to combat some of these exploitative practices. Apple also made privacy measures within its framework to help set standards for transparency and consent — Hide My Email and Apple ATT. 

These laws are coming full circle as brands face a rising number of lawsuits and fines if they don’t comply with the updated privacy regulations. This past week the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) fined Criteo €40M ($44 Million) for breaching the GDPR’s laws. While Criteo asserted that their breach of privacy was not deliberate, the regulation pushed them to improve their data collection practices. 

“Shifting our mindset from notice and choice will not be easy and will require agreement in an ecosystem of competing interests,” wrote Jessica B. Lee, Partner, Co-Chair, Privacy, Security & Data Innovations at Loeb & Loeb LLP. “However, in the long term, both consumers and businesses may benefit from this change.”

The post Black Mirror’s Joan is Awful: The Implications of Privacy Ethics, Consumer Choice and Tailoring Content appeared first on AdMonsters.

The answer to this question is debatable; many don’t even know the true history behind the holiday, but there is an opportunity for publishers and brands to strategize.

“Publishers should use cultural holidays as a starting point to build a long-term commitment to their audience,” Sandy Ramous Zohios, Product Marketing Lead for H Code, explained. “This will inadvertently help brand partnerships maximize their exposure, reach, and impact while providing the consistency needed to develop a deeper relationship with the Hispanic consumer.”

With a population of 62 million, Hispanics represent nearly 19% of the U.S. population, making up for more than half of the population growth over the past decade and skyrocketing in buying power. 

Hispanic buying power is currently at $2.8 trillion, representing a 150% increase in the last decade. Remember, identity doesn’t fit into a single box, as many Hispanics identify as Afro-Latino and Asian-Latino. 

There are more than 3.8 million Afro-Latinos in the U.S., representing 6.3% of all Latinos, and the Asian population increased by 28% since 2010, rising to 1.1 million and representing 1.8% of all Latinos.

According to the 2022 Hispanic Market Guide, diversity within Hispanic communities impacts America’s growing multicultural mainstream. Understanding Cinco De Mayo is a good starting point for unlocking long-term growth between brands and Hispanic media publishers.

What is Cinco de Mayo? 

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish: “Fifth of May”), also known as the Anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, is a holiday celebrated in the state of Puebla and the U.S. in honor of a military win in 1862 against the French army led by Napoleon III. According to critics, the enthusiasm behind the holiday didn’t kick in until it was linked to the promotion of Mexican cocktails. Many U.S. festivities perpetuate negative stereotypes of Mexicans and promote excessive drinking. 

Despite the negative connotation that is sometimes associated with Cinco de Mayo, there are still ways for publishers and brands to collaborate and create culturally respectful campaigns. 

“Considering that Cinco de Mayo is a U.S.-created “holiday” that has evolved, the best way to capitalize on the momentum is by avoiding stereotypes and celebrating Mexican culture and the contributions of Mexican Americans in the U.S.,” explained Isabella Sanchez, VP of Media Integration at Zubi. “Cinco de Mayo has become a platform mostly for snacks, food, beer, and liquor brands to kick off the summer. Many do it well with respectful, celebratory tones and emphasizing the importance of gathering with family and friends. Those brands executing campaigns tied to Cinco de Mayo are typically targeting the entire U.S. market, not just Hispanics, as it provides the opportunity to increase awareness and sales.”

The Key to a Fruitful Future 

Rather than using Cinco de Mayo as a shallow marketing opportunity without realizing its significance, brands must approach the holiday with cultural caution. Gen Z and Millenials prefer the real deal over anything fake, and brands seeking to target younger demographics should take a closer look at the Hispanic community. 

“With a purchasing power of 1.9 trillion and doubling in the years to come, the Hispanic consumer economic power continues to grow much faster than the country as a whole,” said Zohios. “This demographic is not a monolith group. Brands need to take time to recognize the diversity within this population. Brands should tailor their messaging based on different traditions, cultures, and dialects to build a stronger relationship with the Hispanic Consumer.” 

Brands must also put cultural literacy at the forefront, which means solid internal DEI teams are crucial. According to a recent study, over 50% of people ages 13-49 have quit a culturally illiterate brand, saying it “offended them or disrespected their values.” Seventy-two percent of Black female parents ages 25-49 have quit a brand for the same reason. 

By utilizing Hispanic marketing experts, brands can strategize and establish best practices around respecting and celebrating Mexican culture, art, music, and food. They must honor the duality of Hispanic culture by crafting marketing messages that celebrate the diversity of this audience segment.

The post Investing in Hispanic Audiences Beyond Cinco de Mayo and HHM appeared first on AdMonsters.

And it’s a problem when researchers at a prestigious research university offer empirical evidence that behavioral advertising doesn’t have the consumer’s welfare at heart. 

And it’s a very, very big problem with government officials in the US and Europe warning that people can use programmatic advertising for racist purposes, which can lead to the undermining of democracy.

And yet these things happened. 

First, Julia Angwin of the New York Times wrote an article warning consumers not to purchase stuff they see advertised online. Why? Because, she writes, the ads that are highly targeted — i.e., ads that are delivered programmatically — hawk products that are more expensive than they need to be and inferior products that can easily be purchased elsewhere.

She offers up Jeremy’s Razors as a case in point. Its cringe-worthy “woke free” tagline targets hypermasculine men and contributes to the toxic discourse in the country. But divisiveness is all the brand really has to offer. An abundance of bad reviews warns would-be buyers to stay away from the brand. 

Microtargeting based on behavioral data was supposed to be a good thing for all parties involved in the equation: brands, publishers and consumers. But those benefits haven’t panned out. 

It hasn’t been suitable for publishers. As advertisers pivoted away from traditional advertising to microtargeted programmatic campaigns, revenue for global newsletters fell from $107 billion in 2000 to nearly $32 billion in 2022, according to GroupM.

And it’s not good for advertisers, as all brands lose when poor quality ads proliferate, leading journalists to warn consumers. And, all advertisers lose when sleazy brands leverage microtargeting to a dog whistle. 

Writes Angwin, “Microtargeting has also enabled advertisers to discriminate in ways that are hard for regulators to catch. It is illegal, for example, for advertisers to use language in their ads suggesting that jobs, housing, or credit opportunities are being offered to people of a certain race, gender, or age or in other protected categories. But ad targeting means that advertisers can hide their preferences in the algorithm. Facebook has repeatedly been shown to have enabled discriminatory advertising.”

This isn’t a new phenomenon. In 2016, the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence found that Russian operatives targeted African Americans with Facebook ads discouraging them from voting.

And microtargeting is bad for the consumer because it creates conditions that allow brands like Jeremy’s Razors to rip them off. A report from Carnegie Mellon University researchers, Behavioral Advertising and Consumer Welfare: An Empirical Investigation, showed that products offered via targeted advertising are 10% more costly and sold by lower quality brands, as measured by BBB ratings.

According to a European Commission report, this level of messaging and microtargeting is bad for society and proves it’s time to reform the digital advertising ecosystem.

Saving Programmatic

I’ve written before about the industry’s need to pay attention to the bad ads that flood the ecosystem and cause a world of harm to consumers. Granted, the ads I wrote about in that article were outright malvertising, and the ads the New York Times, Carnegie Mellon Researchers, and the EU regulators are warning against are legitimate in that they can lead to transactions in which the consumer receives a product, albeit a crappy one.

Still, the industry needs to better screen for these types of ads that slip through the microtargeting filter. It’s not hard to guess the sentiment behind a brand that promises it is “anti-woke.” 

It’s also not hard to prevent such ads from appearing on a platform or publication if the publisher has the right tools. Tools available on the market can assess the content and images on an ad and its landing page for dog-whistle messaging. These tools give publishers a lot of control over the types of ads that appear on their sites. Of course, there’s a cost involved, but it may be well worth the effort if it means saving digital advertising. Advertising, after all, still largely funds the Internet.

The post Is Microtargeting Giving the Digital Advertising Sector a Bad Rap? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Nearly a decade later, the sports superfan owns a media company, ClutchPoints, that covers various sports verticals and pulls in about 30 million page views monthly. 

He built his business with the consumers’ interest at the top of his priority list. With the mantra, “for fans, by fans,” Patel fosters community through a common denominator — a love for sports. 

As ClutchPoints celebrates a decade, they launched a new initiative centered around HBCU sports coverage. HBCU student journalists and athletes will run the new vertical, allowing them to publish stories and curate content for video, social media, and podcasts. The students participating in the HBCU initiative will receive financial compensation, scholarship opportunities, and the potential to work for the company. 

We spoke with Nish Patel, Founder of ClutchPoints, about why he created the HBCU initiative, why he wants to invest in underrepresented writers and athletes, and his consumer-focused approach. 

It’s Game Time: The Origins of ClutchPoints

Andrew Byrd: Can you tell me about the process of creating ClutchPoints? 

Nish Patel: I started a fan page centered around Derrick Rose on Facebook in 2012. I would create content around him, and it eventually blew up to a viewership of 100,000 fans. Unfortunately, Rose got a torn ACL injury that derailed his career, and that caused me to create a bigger picture outside of one athlete.

From there, I created Facebook pages dedicated to teams such as Bulls Nation or Warriors Nation. That method urged fans to interact with us and create content based on their interests. From the beginning, it was always about being “by fans, for fans.” We built out the community pages because genuine fans were connecting about their favorite teams. The communities grew to 20 million organic fans. 

Eventually, we built pages on other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram, but we encountered a problem. We had so many pages, but no one knew our brand.

From there, we launched the ClutchPoints in 2015. We hired writers, editors, and reporters who started compiling editorial content and intertwining it with our social and video content. We’ve now grown to a place where we get 30 million page views monthly, and we do close to a billion impressions on social media.

For Fans, by Fans: The HBCU Initiative

AB: Can you tell me about the process of creating the HBCU initiative at ClutchPoints? Why was this a significant move for your business? 

NP: As I said, I’ve always followed the mantra “for fans, by fans.” The initiative started because we wanted to hit every single vertical. For example, when I started this, I built a Lakers fan page because I felt the mainstream media was not talking enough about them during their losing seasons. 

So it came from the standpoint of, “what are news outlets not talking about?” The mainstream media coverage for HBCUs is generally lacking, and the same is true for the representation of HBCU sports in the media. HBCUs provide a unique perspective that I wanted to tell. I also wanted to tell the stories through their voices so the viewpoints would be authentic to the space. We plan to hire student writers with that goal in mind, but we also want to provide opportunities for new writers. 

It was also crucial that we didn’t treat them as outliers. We wanted them to feel included like any other beat.  

AB: ClutchPoints HBCU vertical includes video, social media, and podcast content. More media businesses are working to diversify the content they display. Was having a diversified range a part of your initial business goals? Do you plan to implement any new mediums to ClutchPoints? 

NP: Yeah, in-arena reporting is critical to us. There’s something about getting fresh reactions for a big game or notable moments. Social media has also expanded drastically over the past couple of years. Now we have a team for each platform, including Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. 

But it is also essential to diversify content for each platform as well. You should create original content based on what works for each forum. It would help if you also evolved with the times. For example, long-form video used to be the go-to, but with the popularity of TikTok, short-form video is taking over. It’s really about figuring out what works for your brand.  

Supporting Underrepresented Talent

AB: ClutchPoints is a minority-owned business. As a minority business owner with a media focus, do you see more opportunities and support coming to marginalized media spaces? 

NP: That was one of the key reasons we applied for the minority certification. As the majority owner of this company, you see few people like me owning sports media businesses. I wanted to attend those meetings to see what other people were doing. My goal is to find other people in sports or even other media industries, so I can help them grow their vision and they can help mine as well. 

And the HBCU initiative fits right in that vision. The primary owners in sports media are not heavily diverse, but this initiative gives opportunities to students who can change that. It fits the mold of how the company started, how it runs daily, and how I see it evolving in the future. 

AB: Since the HBCU initiative is new, how do you envision it evolving?

NP: I see us hiring a few national writers that cover HBCU sports. We want to hone in on our social strategy and see what’s working so we can connect with the home base. That’s the key to everything, right? How do we get the initial base of people that trust and vibe with the brand and make them feel part of the community? That’s how you build an audience and foster community growth. Then the fans in that community help it grow further. 

As far as content, we want to create a national library for prominent stories. Then we can create more niche content to see what is happening on each campus. 

The post For Fans, by Fans: Nish Patel, Founder of ClutchPoints, Launches HBCU Initiative appeared first on AdMonsters.

CTV is coming to the forefront as a performance channel, and marketers should seize this tremendous opportunity. Here’s why:

CTV Strategies Will Be Used to Target Niche Audiences

White-label streaming technology, provided by companies such as Wurl, is getting more and more available and easier to use. Together with the increasing popularity of AVOD and FAST, this will trigger a boom in niche streaming services with very specific audiences, allowing marketers to run extremely precise ads with tailored campaigns that will lead to great ROI through conversion.

Think: A streaming service for U.S. sitcoms from the 1970s targeting your grandma. 

While these niche streaming services do not have the reach of linear TV and mainstream SVOD (Again, you won’t stream ‘70s sitcoms, but your grandma might), they offer highly nuanced targeting options based on demographics and behavioral patterns, enabling advertisers to develop tailored campaigns that capture consumers’ attention across the entire funnel and even drive them to conversion. 

With measurability across the board, marketers are in a better position than ever to leverage the power of CTV and witness improved performance and effective advertising in this space.

CTV Advertising Is a Fully Measurable Channel

CTV has evolved into a measurable, accountable performance marketing channel — allowing for more precise targeting, and, as a result, higher ROI. We’ve reached the point where the entire user’s journey is measurable, and using upper-funnel data, marketers can see exactly how TV ads tie into the wider marketing goals. Within the right parameters, even the impact of CTV advertising on mobile and desktop purchases has become measurable.

With the ability to pursue incredibly segmented audiences and fully measure the ROI on CTV campaigns, marketers will have more control than ever before over their CTV ads —  if they lay the proper groundwork, that is. 

How Marketers Can Engage the Right Audiences on CTV

Select CTV Inventory Vendors With Care

I’ve two recommendations for marketers looking for a winning CTV vendor such as Vibe, The Trade Desk, and tvScientific. First, make sure the vendor has experience in the CTV space, as partnering with a new vendor may lead to a lack of sophistication in measurement and targeting available. Second, ensure the vendor lets you determine the context in which your ads are displayed. For this, a vendor should be able to provide the data needed to monitor if ads are served properly.

Determine Your Targeting Strategy

As mentioned, as consumers look to tighten their belts, they will turn to AVOD and FAST channels, opening myriad targeting options for advertisers. Marketers can use the following targeting strategies to identify and pursue the right audience for their brand:

• Contextual targeting:  Relevant ads are shown to viewers on the basis of what they most often stream.
• Demographics:  Ads based on age, genre, or the user’s preferred media genre.
• Geolocation: Ads shown to users in specific regions.
• First-party data: Ads based on user-specific data (that can be accessed via a CTV platform). Advertisers can not only leverage first-party data from the CTV platforms and streaming services. Many vendors enable clients to bring in their own first-party data to optimize targeting.
• Second-party data: Ads given to users due to data from databases linked to CTV platforms.
• Channel targeting: Ads based on the app or streaming service a viewer uses.

With a tactical combination of the above targeting methods, advertisers can reach fragmented audiences across different OTT (Over-the-Top) services like Netflix and Hulu to capture specific high-value users for their brand.

Ensure Accurate Measurement and Optimize 

Once you’ve selected your CTV partners and targeting strategy, it’s time to measure. By using a comprehensive CTV measurement solution (like Adjust’s CTV Advision) you can immediately spot how CTV drives direct performance and, even more importantly, manages to drive potential users to down-funnel channels such as Google Ads and Apple Search Ads. These insights are especially valuable for optimizing costs in difficult economic times.

With accurate measurement results in hand, marketers in 2023 will be able to test and perfect their campaigns for optimal reach. Therefore, the time to pursue highly segmented audiences via CTV is now.

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Leverage CTV to Engage Highly Segmented Audiences in 2023 appeared first on AdMonsters.

The Content Taxonomy 3.0 update allowed us all to sigh in relief. The “News” and “Op-Ed” categories were meshed together by default for so long that now separated advertisers can be more specific about how they place and curate ads instead of having to work within the constraints of both categories being one.

The latest update, Ad Product Taxonomy 1.1, is U.K specific and helps the industry get through new regulations on promoting junk food, or food high in fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS). The IAB Tech Lab expects this update to improve publishers’ ability to block unwanted advertiser demand, for example, ads that do not work with a publisher’s targeted audience.

We chatted with Benjamin Dick, Sr. Director of Product – Privacy, Identity & Data at IAB Tech Lab. He helped us understand the significance behind the Content Taxonomy 3.0 update and the relationship between Audience Taxonomies and Seller Defined Audiences.

Yakira Young: Your Content Taxonomy 3.0 update was recently released. How does it help support a sustainable news category? How will the update protect advertisers from entering non-brand-safe environments?

Benjamin Dick: When implemented by publishers, Content Taxonomy 3.0 enables consistent signaling to advertisers about the “aboutness” of the site or app where ad inventory is available. Importantly – in this latest version of the taxonomy – “News” and “Opinion & Op-Ed” are now distinct, differentiated labels instead of being taxonomically related via a parent/child hierarchy.

Given heightened concern around media responsibility and transparency leading up to the midterms in the U.S., this distinction is necessary to give advertisers more visibility into the type of content where their ads might appear. The previous classification of “Opinion & Op-Ed” as a sibling of “News” complicated this important differentiation. This update is intended to help support a sustainable news category for advertisers and publishers and ensure visibility into potentially brand unsafe environments.

Y.Y.: In the cookieless future, advertisers still want scale, and pubs want to be able to maintain their CPMs and increase yield. Some pubs say that above identity solutions, they believe contextual targeting coupled with Seller Defined Audiences is key to cookieless audience targeting and getting close to what they’re used to getting with 3PC. What are your thoughts here?

B.D.: IAB Tech Lab believes there won’t be a single “silver bullet” technology or approach that makes sense for everyone. Instead, advertisers and publishers will need to rally around a portfolio of approaches to addressability that individually meet different functional needs and business use cases. The mixing and matching of things like Seller Defined Audiences, traditional contextual targeting, responsibly sourced 1-1 I.D. graphs, and other emerging technologies like clean rooms will likely play an important role in that future state as cookie I.D.s, mobile I.D.s, and other forms of metadata continue to be deprecated.

Y.Y.: Next, you’re releasing Ad Product Taxonomy 1.1 for public comment. How will this tool help publishers see revenue increases?

B.D.: There is not a direct association with revenue increases. Instead, it intends to help publishers and advertisers better manage and curate the types of ads that show up on sites and apps.

Y.Y.: What is the relationship between Audience Taxonomies and Seller Defined Audiences? 

B.D.: The basic concept of Seller Defined Audiences is relatively straightforward, with the Audience Taxonomy playing an important role. Publishers or their data partners are expected to determine audience attributes based on user interactions on their properties, map similar groups of users to broad, standardized taxonomy attribute descriptions (as defined by the Audience Taxonomy), and document audience characteristics/metadata via a standardized transparency schema (the Data Transparency Standard aka DTS), then relay these taxonomy I.D.s within OpenRTB to inform downstream signaling by buyers. Content Taxonomy also plays a role here and is simply used in the place of the Audience Taxonomy if a publisher would like to monetize via contextual targeting instead of audience targeting.

Y.Y.: Although the Ad Product Taxonomy update is meant to help the industry better navigate new regulations in the U.K., how will the update affect publishers in the U.S.? 

B.D.: This update is largely UK/EU specific, so there’s relatively little effect for those operating outside of these markets.

Y.Y.: Why should demand-side platforms adopt Ad Product Taxonomy right away? 

B.D.: Advertisers using a DSP that has adopted the Ad Product Taxonomy will benefit from a far more granular, bespoke way of ensuring that the advertiser’s ads does not appear next to other undesirable brands or products – for example, a competitor’s ad or an ad for alcohol – that they do not want to share real estate with.

The post The Three Musketeers: Content Taxonomy, Audience Taxonomies & Seller Defined Audiences appeared first on AdMonsters.