Privacy concerns, regulatory changes, and the deprecation of third-party cookies are challenging the ways that businesses track and understand their audiences.
Organizations are pivoting to first-party data strategies to drive monetization, deliver personalization, and improve customer experience in order to control their destiny. While these circumstances present obstacles for most of the industry, publishers have an advantage given their wealth of first-party data.
To maintain their edge, publishers must unify data strewn across a fragmented digital landscape that spans properties, channels, platforms, and devices. With disruption on the horizon, it behooves publishers to act now and prioritize first-party data unification.
Why Unify First-party Data?
First-party data unification enables publishers to connect disparate data points, like interest and behavioral-based data, and tie them to individual users via unique identifiers, like HEMs or alternative IDs, to create a unified audience view.
This comprehensive view enables publishers to monetize audiences, content, and offerings more effectively and efficiently via distinctive audience packages, highly personalized messaging, and improved online and offline experiences.
Furthermore, data is only valuable if it is accurate. By collecting, unifying, and storing data in a centralized platform, publishers can more easily organize, cleanse, and update information, ensuring audience profiles evolve with their audiences. The more accurate the audience data, the more valuable the audience and inventory.
Gain Control of First-party Data With a Unified Audience
By partnering with identity providers that put audiences and their privacy at the center of their solutions, publishers can unify, grow, and activate their first-party data, ultimately securing their futures.
To do so successfully, publishers must ensure that interactions between them and those of all their audiences — known (logged-in) and unknown (non-logged-in) — are captured and resolved against their CRM database. According to the IAB’s State of Data 2022 report, organizations prioritize capturing known first-party audience data over unknown first-party audiences. This is a missed opportunity, as most publishers’ audiences (~80%) are unknown.
Solutions like LiveIntent’s Site Visitor Resolution (SVR) can help publishers easily identify non-logged-in and logged-in site visitors to build and activate a truly robust first-party asset. This, coupled with first-party data unification efforts, enables publishers to take control of their data, how it is enriched, segmented, and activated.
First-party data unification gives publishers the opportunity to grow their business exponentially, with a deep understanding of audience preferences, interests, needs, and behaviors, further solidifying their foothold in the industry regardless of the disruption that may come their way.