Publishers are all looking to level up their revenue and audience engagement, and in-game advertising is the power-up many have been looking for. 

The gaming industry has entertained all demographic types for quite some time and is now filled with opportunities for advertisers, marketers, and publishers. Comscore’s State of Gaming 2024 report reveals that 62% of adults are now actively engaged in video gaming, with a significant portion playing across multiple platforms. 

In-game advertising is gaining traction, with 45% of gamers showing openness to rewarded ads. This shift and the notable success of video game-themed movies at the box office reflect gaming’s deepening cultural impact. Brands that recognize the potential within this space can unlock new avenues for reaching a diverse and highly engaged audience.

Furthermore, the report emphasizes the unique advertising formats available within gaming, such as in-game product placements and livestream sponsorships. Amplified by the strong social connections nurtured through gaming, these options empower brands to forge meaningful connections with consumers.

What are the Demographics? 

The online gaming community continues to expand, encompassing millions of homes and devices across the United States. 40% of U.S. households are active on a gaming console within a month. 

Among adults aged 18 and older, 62% play video games, illustrating the widespread appeal of gaming today. Moreover, a significant portion of gamers — 77% to be exact — are engaging with more than one platform, whether PC, console, or mobile. 

This is a significant audience ripe for the picking. 

Millennials dominate online gaming, representing 49% of gamers, while Gen Z accounts for 13%, Gen X for 28%, and Baby Boomers for 11%. This diverse gaming population spans a wide variety of annual household income ranges, with 16% of gamers earning less than $24,999, 25% earning between $25,000 and $49,999, 20% earning between $50,000 and $74,999, 18% earning between $75,000 and $99,999, and 20% earning $100,000 or more. 

In layman’s terms, this is a significant amount of spending power to direct advertising campaigns.

New Gaming Formats, New Advertising Opportunities

Thanks to its unique formats and diverse ad types, gaming offers numerous opportunities for advertisers and marketers. These include in-game or product placement ads, rewarded advertisements, and livestreams, each providing distinct ways to engage with gamers.

Among gamers who have encountered product placement ads, 34% agree that these placements make the gaming experience feel more authentic. Additionally, 45% of gamers who have seen regular or pop-up ads agree that they don’t mind the ads if they receive rewards for watching them.

Nearly two-thirds of gamers say that advertisements positively or neutrally impact their gaming experience. Specifically, 64% of primarily PC gamers and 75% of both console and mobile gamers agree that ads don’t detract from their gaming experience.

And the reviews from consumers are:

Consumers are paying attention to these ads at a high rate, making attention metrics for a campaign more important than ever as publishers and advertisers work to improve audience engagement.   

For example, Tommy Hilfiger used in-game ads to showcase its latest designs to drive awareness among a new, untapped audience and generate buzz for their Classics Reborn Spring campaign. The results included a 14% lift in ad recall after exposure, a 20% in brand favorability, a 24% in brand recommendation, and a 23% lift in purchase intent.

Unlocking the Potential of In-Game Advertising: Targeting Multiplatform Gamers

If you are thinking, what next steps can I take to make sure you have the right strategy to level up your in-game advertising efforts, here is Comscore’s final advice:

Embrace Multiplatform Targeting: With 77% of gamers engaging across multiple devices and 40% playing on all available platforms, brands must leverage multiplatform strategies to maximize their reach and effectiveness.

Harness In-Game Advertising: The growing importance of in-game advertising offers advertisers a unique opportunity to achieve incremental reach that traditional methods may not deliver.

Optimize Reach and Engagement: By integrating in-game ads, brands can tap into the vast and diverse gaming audience, ensuring their messages are seen by users across various platforms and enhancing overall campaign performance.

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In response to challenges posed by privacy regulations and AI-driven changes in search traffic, 71% of publishers plan to invest in new technologies. To sustain revenue growth, publishers are investing in AI-driven analytics, customer data management, and identity resolution. As one publisher noted, personalizing content and engaging audiences will be key in the coming year.

But, it’s not all smooth sailing. Publishers are grappling with significant challenges, including privacy regulations and changes in consumer behavior. These factors underscore the importance of diversifying revenue streams. With audience data, subscriptions, and licensing emerging as planned new streams, publishers are laying the groundwork for sustainable growth in an evolving digital ecosystem.

While the digital ad landscape faces headwinds, the coming year looks promising for publishers who are agile enough to navigate these challenges. Publishers who invest in direct deals, audience development tools, and diversified revenue streams are well-positioned to thrive in 2024 and beyond.

For more insights and a look at the full study results, visit the Publisher Pulse report page, and enter your information at the bottom to download your copy.

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AI is a crucial growth driver across various aspects of commerce advertising, from content creation to targeting and personalization, according to mrge’s latest State of Commerce Advertising Report.

To learn more about the transformative role of AI in commerce advertising, we chatted with Felix Witte, General Manager and SVP Publishers & Advertisers at mrge. He gave us an in-depth look at the report, showcasing specific examples of revenue increases and operational improvements.

In our conversation, Witte also addressed the challenges posed by Google’s anticipated updates, which are expected to significantly impact content quality and data protection. Transparency is also a crucial concern for the industry, with 94.4% of respondents citing so.

Dig into the Q&A for a comprehensive view of the current and future state of commerce advertising backed by data and insights from the report.

AI as a Revenue Driver

Lynne d Johnson: The report highlights AI as a significant growth driver. Can you provide specific examples or case studies where AI has substantially increased revenue for commerce advertisers?

Felix Witte: AI is extensively being used in managing product listings on search engines. Tools like GPT-4 and Jasper.ai can generate product descriptions, specifications, and listings automatically. By inputting basic product information, AI can produce detailed, SEO-friendly descriptions that save time and maintain consistency for publishers. When looking at the advertiser side, we noticed that AI is being employed across the whole value chain.

For example, a large sports apparel company is using AI and machine learning to analyze customer data and predict future purchasing behaviors. They use these insights to tailor their marketing efforts more effectively.

A large beverage company utilizes AI-driven analytics and machine learning to analyze social media interactions and customer feedback. This allows them to create more targeted and personalized ad campaigns.

A leading online publisher uses AI to create a dynamic content recommendation engine that adapts to user preferences in real time. They also employ AI to optimize their native advertising, ensuring that ads are more relevant to readers.

At mrge, we use AI to optimize partner program selection as well as using automated bidding to ensure the best traffic is directed to our partners.

The AI market is expected to grow from $184.00 billion in 2024 to $826.7 billion in 2030. We believe a large part of this growth will be driven by the commercial and operational upsides that AI offers.

AI’s Expected Impact: AI is viewed as having high potential in advanced targeting and personalization, content creation, and campaign optimization.

Navigating Google Updates

LdJ: The anticipated Google updates are a major concern for the industry. What specific changes are expected, and how should advertisers and publishers prepare to mitigate potential negative impacts?

FW: In the second quarter of 2024, Google severely penalized performance marketing outside its walled gardens. Content white-label solutions have been effectively eliminated. Content sites have lost one of their key growth drivers (commerce content on their sites) and are now struggling to determine new growth strategies. AI regulation has been tightened to favor the classic Google search, which coincidentally started experimenting with the inclusion of coupon and discount codes. Industry experts believe Google will continue to become more restrictive regarding the types of traffic, specifically:

• Content quality: Emphasis on original, high-quality content over thin, low-quality content.
• EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Continued focus on E-A-T criteria, particularly for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites, which include many affiliate marketing websites.
• Page experience: Incorporation of Core Web Vitals into ranking signals, affecting how pages are assessed based on user experience metrics.
• Product review: Enhanced algorithms to evaluate the depth, quality, and authenticity of product reviews, favoring comprehensive, insightful content.

Additionally, past Google changes were focused on English-speaking countries only. We expect that Google will extend its policy to all languages.

Google Updates Impact: Emphasis on high-quality content and strict data protection rules.

Enhancing Transparency​

LdJ: With 94.4% of respondents highlighting the importance of transparency, what measures are being implemented to enhance transparency within the industry, particularly in ad placements and revenue reporting? What steps is mrge taking to improve transparency in Commerce Advertising transactions and reporting?

FW: To improve transparency and efficiency at scale, we have implemented direct integrations with affiliate networks. These integrations allow for seamless data exchange and real-time tracking, ensuring that all parties have immediate access to performance metrics and detailed insights. This level of transparency helps in building trust between advertisers and affiliates, as it provides a clear view of traffic sources, conversion rates, and overall campaign effectiveness.

Our approach also includes maintaining a high level of responsiveness to advertiser requests. We understand that timely and effective communication is crucial for successful campaign management. By prioritizing advertiser needs and swiftly addressing their inquiries, we ensure that their campaigns run smoothly and any issues are resolved promptly. This proactive stance not only improves campaign performance but also fosters long-term partnerships with our clients.

Additionally, we employ proactive click screening through 24metrics, a sophisticated tool designed to detect and prevent fraudulent activities. This tool continuously monitors clicks and conversions, identifying any anomalies or suspicious patterns. By filtering out invalid traffic and ensuring that only genuine clicks are counted, we protect advertisers from fraud and enhance the overall quality of the traffic we deliver. This proactive approach to fraud prevention reinforces our commitment to providing reliable and effective affiliate marketing solutions.

Transparency Importance: 94.4% of respondents consider transparency crucial​.

Investing in Partnerships

LdJ: The report mentions increased investment in partnerships as a key opportunity for revenue growth. Can you elaborate on the types of partnerships that are most effective and provide examples of successful collaborations?

FW: The most relevant partnerships are between advertisers and suitable publishers, including:

• Coupon and deal sites
• Product comparison and review sites
• Buy Now Pay Later sites
• Social media platforms, blogs, forums, and niche content sites

We believe that successful partnerships are based on regular communication, a clear exchange of partnership goals, and a strong alignment between the publisher’s audience and the advertiser’s products.

Partnership Growth: Increased investment in strategic partnerships is seen as a key revenue growth driver.

Capitalizing on Emerging Trends

LdJ: Considering the optimistic outlook for the second half of 2024, what key factors does mrge believe are driving this positive sentiment, and how can advertisers and publishers best capitalize on this anticipated growth? What emerging trends or technologies do you foresee shaping the future of commerce advertising beyond AI and Google updates?

FW: In the second half of the year, several factors drive growth:

Economic stabilization and recovery, characterized by lower inflation and a return to growth, play a significant role. Changing consumer patterns also contribute, with a higher share of spending allocated to essential items like food, electricity, and heating. Additionally, consumers are becoming more cost-conscious, showing a preference for value products, which leads to lower basket values but increased interest in coupons and discounts. The Q4 seasonality, marked by major commercial events such as Black Friday and Christmas, further boosts e-commerce and affiliate marketing.

To capitalize on these trends, businesses should focus on helping consumers mitigate the impact of inflation by providing money-saving opportunities. Planning ahead by forging partnerships with publishers early ensures a strong reach during the crucial Q4 period. Adapting to emerging product trends is essential, as identifying in-demand products based on changing consumer patterns can enhance success.

Moreover, several other trends are shaping the landscape. Video marketing continues to grow in relevance, while AI-driven customer support and interactions are becoming more commonplace, with a shift towards direct messages instead of traditional email or chatbots. There is also a continued trend towards eco-friendly products and conscious travel. Lastly, the upcoming US elections are expected to have a significant impact on e-commerce and overall economic development.

Emerging Trends: Approaches to maximize growth through upper- and mid-funnel activities, such as strategic partnerships, social media engagement, and creating valuable content.

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As the digital media industry looks forward to a cookieless world, attention metrics are becoming paramount for publishers and advertisers. While ensuring ad viewability is crucial, some argue it doesn’t necessarily translate to actual engagement. 

Attention metrics have gained importance due to the decline in identifier usage and the challenge of capturing consumer attention amid online ad saturation. Brands measure attention through viewability, creative elements, interaction, placement, timing, platform, audibility, clutter, device usage, and eye tracking.

A recent study unveiled by GSTV, the network that programs gas station screens, at the 2024 IAB NewFronts conference highlights GSTV’s prowess in capturing viewer attention, surpassing digital, CTV, and linear television platforms. In collaboration with Lumen Research, the study provides compelling evidence of GSTV’s effectiveness in engaging audiences and delivering value to advertisers.

Brands struggle to connect with concentrated audiences. Positioned at a natural break in daily routines, GSTV seizes the scarce opportunity for undivided consumer attention. Teaming up with attention experts, GSTV’s data was analyzed, revealing superior attention metrics compared to other media channels.

GSTV’s Attention Rates Reign Superior

According to the study, GSTV’s attention rates demolish all other mediums, including online video and display, social media, linear media, and CTV. The only medium that comes even close to rivaling GSTV’s attention is online display. 

GSTV achieves a 95% eyes-to-screen rate, surpassing digital, CTV, and linear TV in visual engagement. Compared to TVision norms, ads on GSTV attract 2.7x more attention than CTV and 2.5x more than linear TV.

This statistic sets GSTV apart from other media formats, showcasing its ability to captivate audiences. Unlike some digital or traditional TV ads that struggle to maintain viewer engagement, GSTV’s platform, strategically positioned at key moments during consumers’ daily routines, ensures that nearly every impression captures the audience’s visual focus. 

This level of attention enhances the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and offers brands a unique opportunity to connect with consumers in a meaningful and impactful way. Media experts widely acknowledge the significance of three key signals—visibility, situation, and interaction—in attention scores. While Visibility and Situation are recognized industry-wide, Interaction ensures increased consumer engagement. Interaction is the gift that GSTV offers. 

Is GSTV More Cost Efficient and Does It Produce Better Brand Recall?

GSTV outperforms digital, CTV, and linear platforms, delivering more attentive viewing time per thousand impressions at a significantly lower cost. Elevated attention on GSTV leads to stronger brand recall compared to industry benchmarks. 

With 7702 attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions, GSTV surpasses digital, CTV, and linear platforms, as indicated by Dentsu and Lumen data. Furthermore, at an aCPM rate of $1.95, GSTV proves to be remarkably cost-effective compared to its competitors, with significantly lower costs per 1,000 attentive seconds.

In terms of brand recall, GSTV’s impact is undeniable. Following exposure, brand recall on GSTV, especially surveyed after fuel-up, surpasses Dentsu benchmarks by 1.5 times. Specifically, recall rates for GSTV post-ad exposure stand at 36%, outperforming online video, online display, social media, and CTV platforms, according to GSTV and Lumen/Dentsu norms.

The study demonstrates GSTV’s effectiveness in capturing and retaining viewer attention, offering advertisers a compelling platform to showcase their brands. With its ability to deliver high attention rates and drive brand recall, GSTV makes a strong argument for adding them to your ad spend budgets.

Visit GSTV for more key findings from this study.

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

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

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

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

Where does that leave us? 

The Signal Loss Blues 

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

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

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

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

Will the Cookie Crumble in 2024? 

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

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

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

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

Diminished Data Quality

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

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

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

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

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

What Does the IAB Recommend? 

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

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

More specifically the report details four areas of focus: 

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

Read the full report here. 

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When it comes to protecting consumer’s privacy, dating apps catch a bad rap. But, not all of it is unwarranted. And when it comes to protecting consumer’s privacy, not all dating apps are created equal.

Dating apps are like nosy neighbors asking users for all of their juicy details to set up their profiles. We’re talking really sensitive data here — race or ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, political and religious points of view, as well as alcohol and drug use or abuse. This data is so sensitive, it’s got its own VIP section under GDPR rules.

Now imagine if all of that information gets shared outside of the app. There’s a lot for users to be worried about when it comes to their freedom and safety.

Remember When Grindr Was Found Violating GDPR?

It was only back in 2020 that Grindr, Tinder, and OkCupid were exposed for sharing personal user information with advertisers and potentially violating GDPR by the Norwegian Consumer Council. Unsurprisingly, some of Grindr’s ad tech partners, like AppNexus, OpenX, and MoPub, were also named by NCC in the government agency’s complaint under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The story ended in late 2023 when Grindr was slapped with a $6 million data-sharing fine. Ouch!

Grindr was busted for sharing GPS location, IP address, the device’s advertising ID, age, and gender, as well as other sensitive data, between July 2018 and April 2020. And, according to Cybernews’ recent analysis, where they looked into the data collection and sharing practices of 10 popular dating apps, Grindr looks like the most data-hungry offender.

Grindr is collecting 23 points of data about its users for various reasons, including app functionality, analytics, and advertising. “It links all of the collected data to user identity and tracks two types of data, namely device ID and advertising data, which it can share with other companies,” according to Cybernews.

Swipe Right for Data: Unpacking What Dating Apps Know About Love Seekers

Apple requires developers to disclose 35 types of data or privacy points their app is collecting, including contact information like name or phone number, financial information like payments or credit, and user location.

Developers have to list out the data that’s tied to users, which means any data that can be traced back to who a person is – think account, device, or something as personal as a phone number.

Every app Cybernews checked out came clean about collecting data that’s linked to identity. But there’s a plot twist: some apps play it coy, saying, ‘Yeah, we gather data, but we don’t tie it to a user.’ Four apps from Cybernews’ list are dancing this delicate dance.

Apple lays down the law here: If devs want to claim they’re not tracking users, they have to strip the data of any identifying signals like a user ID, before they even think about collecting it. And Apple’s guidelines are against app publishers trying to reconnect the dots to a user’s identity after the fact.

Six out of the ten apps in Cybernews’ analysis are collecting data that could potentially track users across other apps and websites, and might even be shared with data brokers. All of these apps are peeking into their users’ photos and videos, and they’re also pretty upfront about gathering sensitive info like sexual orientation.

For example, Cybernews reports, “Badoo users could expect their data across seven categories shared with third parties, including precise location, coarse location, email address, device ID, advertising data, other user contact data, and other data types. Meanwhile, Her app is an outlier on the list in that it tracks most of the data it collects about its users and links it to their identity.”

Hinge, Best Hope For Finding a Valentine?

For privacy-minded consumers, Hinge might be the best choice. It only collects user data across 14 types of data, which the company claims is only used to improve the app’s performance and for marketing purposes. It links most of the collected data to user identity, except for crash and performance data. The app does not track user data.

Tinder, Plenty Of Fish, and Raya also don’t track user data, but some of their data collection practices might still appear questionable to some users.

To read the full analysis, visit Cybernews. 

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As privacy ethics continue to take center stage, data compliance is crucial for every ad tech stakeholder to monitor risk and maintain brand integrity. With 71% of North American consumers citing data mishandling as a reason to stop interacting with businesses, publishers, and advertisers must align to meet data compliance standards. This will help to retain consumer trust and ensure ad spending flows toward privacy-enforced segments of the media supply chain. 

Data compliance is a legal necessity for publishers, so they must remain current on measuring compliance practices. The ‘U.S. Publisher Compliance Index – 2023 Report’ utilizes Compliant’s proprietary Publisher Compliance Index (PCI) to reveal insights into data compliance risks within U.S. publisher inventory. 

We are in a year of privacy testing and experimentation in 2024, but we can still try to get on our compliance p’s and q’s while we wait for federal regulations.

While America has a long way to go, we can still learn plenty from the privacy experts over in the E.U. Here, Compliance outlines what to look out for in the U.S. Publishers Compliance Index: 

Publishers Are Responsible for How Third-Parties Collect Consumer Data

Brands now bear responsibility beyond their own data processing, as recent decisions by U.S. and European regulators underscore that advertisers and publishers are answerable for third-party vendors and tools collecting and sharing data from their sites. Failure to demonstrate compliance with data protection requirements for all such data flows poses a legal risk. 

The FTC mandates that advertisers monitor data flows to third parties transmitted through web beacons, pixels, or other tracking technologies. Making privacy promises to consumers without ensuring alignment with third-party data practices is illegal. In essence, brands are warned not to make privacy commitments that their practices do not uphold. 

But how are the U.S. Publishers holding up?

In short, there’s a lot of room for improvement. To measure these standards, Compliance set up a PCI scoring and benchmarking methodology that assesses the regulatory risk profile of publisher websites. 

The Great American Compliance Gap

Developed in collaboration with industry experts, the PCI serves as a global metric for media data compliance, employing risk-calibrated sensitivity scores and comparative ratings to generate a compliance score for each URL on a scale of 0-5. Where the current score stands, a considerable compliance gap exists between the U.S. and the E.U. 

North American publishers have an average PCI score of just 0.7, significantly lower than the European average of 3.7 in 2022. The study cites that European publishers are more proactive in complying with privacy laws than their U.S. counterparts. This is understandable, though, because U.S. privacy law is very fragmented. There is still no federal data privacy law in the U.S. 

While only 20% of U.S. publishers have a Consent Management Platform (CMP), a concerning 91% of them are transmitting data before obtaining consent, leading to legal consequences, as seen with Sephora’s $1.2 million fine under CCPA. In Europe, GDPR mandates advertisers and publishers to secure consent before collecting and sharing personal data, resulting in higher compliance. Currently, only 20% of U.S. publisher websites have a CMP, in contrast to 92% of E.U. publishers. Experts suggest that the U.S. follow Europe’s lead in prioritizing data compliance as consumer concerns rise. 

The Dangers of Data Leakage

Digital advertising, especially real-time bidding, involves rapid data sharing among numerous companies using pixels, tags, and tracking tech.

Concerningly, many cookies and tags are introduced without website owners’ permission, leading to “piggybacking,” where one tag introduces others, causing data leakage and broken consent chains. Some US publisher sites have up to 475 piggybacked tags, with an average of 82.

Compliant’s reasearch shows that data flows through more than seven levels of tags on average within each publisher site, reaching up to 17 levels in extreme cases. The data compliance tech company emphasizes the urgency for all stakeholders in the media supply chain to assess their data compliance.

Publishers require transparency and measurement to ensure vendors and tools comply with data protection, avoiding risks to advertisers’ data and reputations. Just as there are viewability and brand safety standards, the industry should adopt a high-quality standard for data compliance.

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While GroupM and others are forecasting a modest slowdown in advertising spending next year, one channel will see a sizable bump: retail media. 

According to a DoubleVerify survey of 400 US, UK, French, and German marketers, retail media networks are an attractive, privacy-friendly way to reach new customers and engage consumers as they shop.

US marketers have been quick to embrace that channel, with 87% of them saying they already invest in retail media and 83% planning to increase spending over the next 12 months. Not surprisingly, the big retailers Amazon, eBay, and Walmart are the predominant RMNs of choice for survey respondents.

Compelling Benefits of Retail Media

Retail media offers compelling benefits to marketers, especially as the deprecation of third-party cookies looms. Brand marketers like the channel’s ability to put them in front of the right audience, and 37% cited targeting people by demographic and product interest as the biggest benefit of RMN. 32% of agencies say the biggest advantage is raising brand awareness.

Regarding campaign objectives, nearly half (45%) of brand marketers prioritize attracting first-time customers as their primary goal for retail media campaigns, with another 40% aiming to target customers likely to be interested in their products.

Thirty-seven percent said they want to reach consumers at the point of purchase, which is surprising as brands often touted this as a critical benefit of retail media.

When evaluating RMN effectiveness, 50% of brand marketers say a campaign is successful if it leads to more in-store or online sales, whereas 43% of agency respondents prioritize impressions and reach.

Strong Results Justify Premium Costs

Nearly half (48%) say retail media CPMs are higher than other channels, but campaign results justify the expenses. When asked about retail media’s return on ad spend (ROAS), 61% of buyers said that RMNs perform better than other channels. 

Challenges Marketers Face

As much as marketers like the ROAS retail media and appreciate its ability to help them build their new customer base, it’s not without its challenges. Trust and transparency are vital concerns, as marketers want assurance that the right consumers saw their ads at the right time. Unsurprisingly, 91% of retail media buyers report working with an ad verification partner today. Additionally, 89% of those polled in the US said “ensuring ad quality within retail media networks is important.”

While most marketers are spending on retail media currently and plan to invest more over the next 12 months, they’re still concerned with limited targeting options, constrained on-site ad space, high CPMs, and the absence of third-party ad quality verification.

“Retail media offers a substantial opportunity for marketers to connect with customers during their shopping journey. However, like all emerging channels, the importance of trust and transparency cannot be overstated. Third-party verification is crucial for cultivating this trust. We see a rapid expansion of Retail Media Networks in the market, and those that provide independent measurement will have a distinct advantage.” – Andrew Smith, SVP, Product, Publisher.

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CTV advertising will top $30 billion in 2024, a 22% increase over 2023. Clearly, advertisers are leaning into TV advertising, but they’ll face significant implications in terms of privacy. 

To help marketers navigate the privacy landscape, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) and the 4As released a comprehensive report, Privacy and the Future of TV Advertising, to

• Offers a structured approach to understanding partner and technology solutions and their underlying data sets within a complex, ever-changing landscape – a fundamental step to navigating privacy-forward practices.
• Proposes four frameworks that break down the complexity of privacy in the advertising industry by detailing stakeholders, use cases, privacy themes, and established and emerging solutions and technologies.
• Provides a Solutions Heatmap that assesses the privacy risks and relative efficiency and industry adoption across many types of solutions (weighted to provide Overall Viability Scores)

Let’s look at some of the highlights of each framework.

Stakeholder & Use Case Framework

The report identifies multiple stakeholders who are responsible for data-related functions that support advertising, from data access, collection, preparation (aggregating and packaging data for use by other ecosystem players), and deployment. 

Each stakeholder needs to understand their structural position in the ecosystem as this has implications for adhering to privacy regulations and policies. They suggest leveraging this framework and considering:

• Do you have a direct relationship with a user/ consumer?
• Are you dependent on an upstream party to access and deploy user data?
• Are you dependent on an upstream party to communicate with a user and to provide transparency into their data collection, use, and sharing practices?
• Are you reliant on sharing data with multiple parties to power their business needs?

Common themes were shared among all the stakeholders:

The use cases define the critical planning, activation, and measurement use cases where TV advertising may rely on consumer data, and fall into two broad categories: Planning and Activation, and Measurement.

Privacy Framework

The Privacy framework is designed to enable a stakeholder to analyze the durability of a solution for a use case by running each potential solution for each applicable use case by the stakeholder through several vectors.

The Privacy framework helps marketers determine whether, among other things, the data is personal or not, and the requirements and impacts on data collection, usage, and sharing for that specific use case, including user transparency and choice.

Solutions Framework

This framework provides a guide for identifying the solutions the marketer’s business uses for TV planning, activation, and measurement. Core solutions and techniques are defined and classified as existing, emerging, or enabling to reflect the level of industry adoption or enablement.

The Solutions framework is quite in-depth, and can be used to:

• • Map which solutions your business employs for each critical use case
  • Identify which dimensions your business needs to consider when evaluating the impact of platform policies and privacy compliance and any utility tradeoff
  • Explore alternative solutions for implementing critical use cases, if needed.

The report provides a thumbnail of existing and emerging privacy solutions, technologies, and techniques, as well as criteria for evaluating solutions.

Solutions Heatmap

After carefully considering the findings and reviewing the assessments, the report recommends that you can determine your business’s risk tolerance by using the heat maps in the report to guide your business initiatives and investments.

The solutions heatmap is a tool for evaluating solutions across utility, privacy durability, efficiency, and adoption. These dimensions can then be combined to create a unified “Viability Score” metric for weighing the privacy-utility tradeoff and industry considerations for each solution used. 

It’s a rather involved process that’s well worth the time to work through. Here’s an example of a heatmap: 

Final Advice

While this report serves as a valuable starting point, readers also have the option to collaborate with experts who can guide them in crafting a personalized privacy-focused strategy. By placing privacy at the forefront of planning, execution, and evaluation processes, brands can proactively address any potential disruptions with the assurance that they are both benefiting their business and enhancing the experience for customers.

Download the full report here.

The post CIMM and the 4A’s Offer 4 Frameworks for Privacy of CTV Advertising appeared first on AdMonsters.

In early December, the ANA published its Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study.

It is a massive undertaking, as the researchers parsed the log-level data of 21 prominent advertisers to track the entire journey of their investments in the open web. Those campaigns represented $88 billion. 

Two years in the making, the study was conducted with TAG TrustNet. Here are some of the key findings.

The Average Campaign Spans 44,000 Websites

The report hypothesizes that the “long tail” of the web presents risks to advertisers, as those sites add minimal reach, and likely underperform in the quality metrics, including 12% lower viewability rates and 100% more invalid traffic (IVT) and brand safety.

Market Made for Advertising Sites Account for 21% of Impressions Purchased

Additionally, the study found that display ads account for 56% of media spend on MFA websites, and video accounts for 44%. 

What’s more, the study found a huge variation between SSPs in terms of the percentage of media spend from MFA websites on their platforms. For some, it’s as low as 1% while for others it’s as high as 70%. Clearly, some SSPs have strict policies when it comes to accepting MFA websites as clients, while others are far more permissive.

Private Deals are Not Exempt from MFA Spending

For many marketers, private deals and curated marketplaces are a safe haven from MFA sites. According to the report, that’s a false sense of security.

“MFA supply is growing. It represented approximately 5 percent of web auctions in early 2020 and grew to nearly 30 percent of all web auctions by mid-2023.”

PMPs range in the number of domains that participate in them. According to the study, the fewer the sites, the higher the quality.

Direct Supply Chain Contracts Can Increase Transparency and Efficiencies, Reduce Waste

Brands frequently lack an understanding of what data they legally have access to. The report recommends that marketers own their own access to the DSP so that they gain more control over their media investments, greater transparency, easier access to campaign data, and increase their own education and awareness around best campaign setup and configuration.

Advertisers Use Too Many SSPs, Which Makes Accountability Difficult

The average advertiser uses 19 SSPs, while some use as many as 53.

Not all SSPs offer the same level of transparency (e.g. only 19 of the 25 top SSPs offer log-level data). The report recommends that advertisers develop an SSP optimization strategy to hold them more accountable.

Information Asymmetry Puts Marketers at a Disadvantage

Information asymmetry — aka the imbalance in the nature and quality of information possessed by different parties in a transaction — is a serious issue for marketers.  Sellers typically have more or better information than buyers about the quality of media inventory being sold in auctions.

Misaligned Incentives: Advertisers Prioritize Cost Over Value

According to the study, advertisers focus too much on lowering the costs of the campaign, favoring cheaper inventory over more costly but higher-quality impressions. Are we surprised that the focus on costs leads to high ad spending with MFA sites?

Campaign Goals Misaligned with Campaign Metrics

Goals of marketing campaigns are often about driving metrics such as awareness, brand lift and conversion as well as return on ad spend (ROAS), and yet reach and CPM metrics rank higher than those goals.

Focusing on Quality Will Lead to a 20% in Ad Spend Productivity

The study revealed that if advertisers can measure and price inventory based on its quality, they can achieve an approximate 20% increase in ad spend productivity (range of 14 to 25 percent).

That, in turn, provides an opportunity for marketers to allocate +$20bn in programmatic investments more efficiently. 

Download the Report

The report is well worth downloading and reading in full, as most of it is a detailed playbook for advertisers to follow to optimize their programmatic expenditures to drive better results.

The post The $20 Billion Efficiency Opportunity for Marketers appeared first on AdMonsters.