Who said cookieless targeting doesn’t scale?

Dotdash Meredith’s cookieless targeting tool, D/Cipher, has propelled the publisher to a 12% increase in digital ad revenue year-over-year, marking the second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.  

D/Cipher is proving its worth in driving campaigns like the one the media company conducted with Pandora. The campaign resulted in 76% higher foot traffic when compared to other targeting methods. 

But this isn’t just about impressive numbers. It’s about Dotdash Meredith setting a new standard in the industry. With third-party cookies becoming obsolete, their ability to pivot and innovate with tools like D/Cipher is a masterclass in adaptation. 

“The performance is amazing because the industry is always trying to find ways to tie media buys to real results. This proves that Dotdash Meredith can drive national brick-and-mortar sales for a brand without any cookie or identifier,” Lindsay Van Kirk, Senior Vice President and General Manager of D/Cipher told ADWEEK. 

The publisher’s success is part of a broader narrative vividly discussed at the recent AdMonsters Publisher Forum in Boston. Let’s connect the dots between Dotdash Meredith’s achievements and the strategies shared by top publishers.

Connecting the Dots from Publisher Forum

Several sessions highlighted how publishers leverage data to secure ad spend and ensure brand safety, aligning perfectly with Dotdash Meredith’s success story. Conversations weren’t merely about surviving the post-cookie apocalypse — they were about thriving.

Data-Driven Strategies:

Patrick McCarthy, SVP, Programmatic Monetization, Dotdash Meredith, emphasized the importance of big data in ad operations. “We are a very data-driven company. When you go into meetings with our C-suite team, hunches really aren’t acceptable. Our whole programmatic and advertising part of our business is really driven by our CFO and Chief Innovation Officer, who is a former data scientist. Data is absolutely paramount to making your case for new investment, for new products to be rolled out,”  he said.

This reflects D/Cipher’s ability to utilize first-party data and contextual signals to outperform traditional cookie-based methods. He also highlighted the role of predictive analytics and real-time data applications. The publisher is proving that first-party data and advanced analytics are the future.

Echoing the power of data, Jesse Waldele, SVP, Digital Operations and Client Success at Dow Jones, shared how they’ve ditched third-party data in favor of first-party insights, fueling more effective ad solutions. Their “Thematic AI” tool, which predicts the best content placement using AI, has driven noticeable performance lifts for advertisers. Dow Jones’ focus on real-time measurement ensures that advertisers keep rebooking.

While the benefits of big data are clear, reliance on it also comes with obstacles. The high cost of data management and the risk of data privacy issues can be a significant barrier for smaller publishers.

Brand Suitability and First-Party Data:

In her keynote, Jana Meron, Vice President of Revenue Operations & Data, The Washington Post, discussed the power of first-party data in achieving brand suitability and effective ad placements. She noted, “The intersection of deterministic and probabilistic first-party data is where we get our power.”

The Washington Post observed a 3x performance lift when using first-party data compared to third-party data with standard display, and a 5x lift when integrating custom ad units designed for their audience.

While first-party data offers significant benefits in targeting and personalization, the session also highlighted potential downsides, such as difficulties in scaling deterministic data due to the reliance on user logins, which can limit reach. Additionally, there are concerns about balancing privacy with data collection, as overly aggressive data strategies might lead to consumer pushback or regulatory scrutiny.

Still, The Washington Post’s direction is a fundamental shift in how publishers view and leverage their audience data. By focusing on the nuances of their data, publishers can create a more personalized and effective advertising ecosystem, which is essential as consumers become increasingly wary of invasive data practices.

Harnessing Audience Power: Future’s Strategy

Jeff Goldstein, Head of Programmatic at Future, offered a compelling keynote on the importance of understanding and harnessing audience passions. He explained how Future’s approach to audience segmentation — dividing users into “practical intenders” and “passionate intenders” — has allowed the publisher to optimize its content and ad strategies.

Goldstein shared that through their first-party data platform, Aperture, Future has identified high-intent users, leading to a 30% higher purchase likelihood among these users. He emphasized the value of deep audience insights and the role of AI-driven data in refining targeting strategies.

Future’s approach underscores the value of deep audience insights, enabling them to create more personalized and effective media products. By leveraging AI and contextual data, Future exceeds advertiser expectations, driving better outcomes across its 200+ owned and operated properties.

ID Bridging: Navigating the Benefits and Risks

In another session, the topic of ID bridging was explored in depth, highlighting how this technology enables publishers to maintain addressable audiences in a cookieless environment. Ianna Feliciano, Senior Director, Programmatic Advertising, Raptive, and Jasper Liu, Senior Programmatic Yield Analyst, Daily Mail, explained how ID bridging allows for deterministic and probabilistic matching across devices and browsers. While deterministic matching offers precision, it often lacks scale. On the other hand, probabilistic matching provides greater reach but with potential trade-offs in accuracy.

The speakers also explained the risks associated with ID bridging, such as increased complexity in managing multiple ID partners and the potential for data leakage, which can have severe privacy implications. Additionally, the costs associated with ID bridging can be significant, especially when considering the need for continuous vendor management and compliance with evolving privacy regulations.

But when connected with the right partners, ID bridging is becoming essential for maintaining campaign effectiveness in the face of increasing privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies. The session emphasized the importance of choosing the right ID-bridging partners and continually testing and adapting strategies to balance accuracy, scale, and compliance with privacy laws.

Innovative Revenue Strategies:

The “One Big Problem” session, a town hall publisher-only conversation, underscored the challenges and strategies in ramping up revenue. One standout solution was monetizing social media audiences. Publishers are turning their social followers into a goldmine, leveraging these platforms to drive engagement and revenue. This strategy, highlighted by some ad ops leaders shows the innovative ways publishers are navigating the post-cookie landscape.

This strategy doesn’t come without its downsides though. Relying heavily on social platforms means publishers are subject to the algorithms and policies of those platforms, which can change suddenly and impact reach and monetization.

Another exciting approach discussed during the Forum was Deal Curation as a Service (DCaaS). This strategy empowers publishers to showcase and monetize high-quality inventory effectively, leveraging first-party data for improved targeting and higher CPMs. Yet, implementing DCaaS can be resource-intensive, requiring significant investments in technology and data management. It can also lead to increased operational complexity, as publishers must manage and coordinate with multiple partners and ensure the integrity of their curated deals. 

In the long haul, DCaaS enables publishers to regain control over their inventory, creating a more curated and valuable marketplace that benefits publishers and advertisers alike. As Scott Messer of Messer Media explained, DCaaS alleviates costs, aggregates sales efforts, and delivers a good product.

The Existential Crisis and Future-Proofing Revenue

Despite Google’s flip-flop on third-party cookies, savvy publishers are already adapting. Our recent Publisher Pulse report, Ramping Up Your Revenue: Digital Publishers Reveal Key Growth Strategies, shows that 71% of publishers are investing in new tools and technologies to drive revenue growth, with the most invested tools including audience segmentation (65%), identity resolution (50%), and AI-driven/advanced analytics platforms (40%).

But this isn’t just about technology for technology’s sake, it’s about addressing the existential crisis of trust and relevance. Publishers like Dotdash Meredith, The Washington Post, and Future are leading the way, demonstrating that investing in first-party data and contextual targeting is key to thriving in a cookieless world.

As Dotdash Meredith’s McCarthy explained, predictive analytics and real-time data are revolutionizing how we approach ad operations, ensuring we stay ahead of the curve. This aligns seamlessly with the broader industry trends discussed at the Forum, showing a unified move towards data-driven, privacy-safe ad tech solutions.

The landscape is shifting, and those who don’t adapt will be left behind. Since many of these approaches may require significant investment in technology and talent, it’s a survival of the fittest scenario, where only the most innovative and forward-thinking publishers will thrive. Regardless of the size of your operation, your best bet is to start small and keep testing iteratively.

Innovation must be balanced with caution — embrace your data, invest in the right tools, and keep innovating.

Editor’s Update 08/14/2024 An earlier version of this article omitted insights from Jesse Waldele, SVP of Digital Operations and Client Services at Dow Jones, and Jeff Goldstein, Head of Programmatic at Future’s keynote.

The post Dotdash Meredith’s Cookieless Conquest and the Publisher Pulse: Notes from AdMonsters Publisher Forum Boston appeared first on AdMonsters.

In a plot twist straight out of a digital marketing thriller, last week, Google announced it will not deprecate third-party cookies unilaterally after all and instead opt for enhanced user choice. This revelation is leaving buyers and sellers scrambling to reassess their strategies.

We attended a U of Digital Live Learning Event, where industry experts shared insights about what the news means for the advertising ecosystem.

Following are key points from the U of Digital event and what this means for digital media and ad tech, with insights from industry-heavy hitters. U of Digital’s Myles Younger and Shiv Gupta were joined by Alex Cone Product Manager, Privacy Sandbox at Google; Joe Root Co-Founder & CEO at Permutive; Shailley Singh, EVP Product & COO at IAB Tech Lab; and Therran Oliphant former SVP Data & Technology at Essence Mediacom discussed what steps advertisers and publishers should take to navigate this new reality.

The Big Reveal: Google’s Change of Heart

Last Monday, Google unveiled its new approach to privacy, giving users elevated and informed choices for managing third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. Instead of outright deprecation, users will receive a universal prompt allowing them to decide whether to accept cookies, with the option to adjust this choice at any time. This move aims to balance user privacy with the industry’s need for effective advertising tools.

Panel Insights: What the Experts Are Saying

During the U of Digital event, the panel of industry experts dissected the implications of Google’s announcement, and here’s what they had to say:

User Choice and Its Ripple Effects: Google’s decision to elevate user choice, potentially mirroring Apple’s ATT framework, means cookies aren’t entirely gone but are expected to decline as more users opt-out. The design and deployment of the consent prompt will be pivotal. Will it be opt-in or opt-out? How will it be presented to users? These factors will determine the extent of cookie usage going forward.

Privacy Sandbox Continues to Evolve: Despite the shift, Google will continue developing privacy-preserving alternatives like the Topics API, Protected Audiences API, and Measurement API, ensuring the industry has robust tools for the future.

Broadening Privacy Horizons: With plans to introduce IP protection in incognito mode and other privacy measures, Google is pushing the envelope on broader privacy initiatives beyond cookies.

Voices from the Field: Real-Time Reactions

The panel experts shared their perspectives on the announcement’s broader implications:

Publishers and Ad Tech Innovators: Joe Root emphasized the significant shift for publishers who must now consider a future where cookies play a smaller role, focusing on alternative IDs, contextual advertising, and first-party data.

Advertisers and Agencies: Therran Oliphant pointed out the increased complexity for marketers, stressing the importance of investing in first-party data and streamlining tech stacks to future-proof their strategies. This is a wake-up call for marketers to clean their houses. Those clunky, inefficient tech stacks? They’re yesterday’s news.

Portfolio Solutions Approach: Cookies may still have a seat at the table, but they’re no longer the head. Shailley Singh from IAB Tech Lab highlighted the need for a portfolio approach, blending cookies with other addressability solutions to maintain effective advertising strategies in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Alex Cone’s Crucial Insights: Timelines and Testing

While the timeline has shifted, the privacy-first future is still coming. It’s less of a demolition and more of a renovation. Alex Cone from Google provided valuable insights regarding the timelines for cookie deprecation and the privacy sandbox APIs:

Decoupling Timelines: Cone clarified that the timeline for third-party cookie deprecation has always been separate from the availability of the privacy sandbox APIs. The APIs have been generally available since last September, allowing publishers to start testing and integrating these tools well before cookies are phased out.

Testing and Adoption: While a 1% deprecation rate for cookies was meant to facilitate initial testing, the APIs are available for broader industry adoption. Publishers can and should start integrating these technologies to prepare for the eventual decline of third-party cookies.

Informed User Choice: Cone emphasized the importance of ensuring users can make informed choices about their privacy settings. This involves a more detailed and transparent consent mechanism, likely resembling Apple’s ATT prompts but applied universally across browsing experiences.

What Publishers Need to Know: Practical Steps Forward

It’s time for advertisers to find new ways to reach audiences without relying on third-party data. The race to find the perfect balance between personalization and privacy has just begun.

For publishers, the cookie jar might not be empty, it’s certainly not as full as it used to be. Root of Permutive pointed out that many users are already browsing without third-party cookies. The time to develop robust first-party data strategies and explore contextual targeting solutions was yesterday.

While Google’s announcement offers some breathing room for the industry, it raises crucial questions about implementation and future strategies. Here are the key considerations for publishers:

1. Prepare for User Choice: Publishers should anticipate a decline in third-party cookies as more users opt-out. Investing in first-party data collection and management will be critical.
2. Embrace Privacy Sandbox APIs: Start testing and integrating Google’s privacy-preserving alternatives like the Topics API and Protected Audiences API. These tools will be essential in maintaining addressability and ad effectiveness.
3. Develop and adopt privacy-preserving technologies: As cookies continue to decline, the industry must keep developing and adopting privacy-preserving technologies. This includes enhancing first-party data strategies, utilizing privacy sandbox APIs, and exploring new addressability solutions.
4. Engage with Consent Mechanisms: Stay informed about the development of Google’s consent prompts. Understand how these will be implemented and what messaging options will be available to maintain user trust and transparency.
5. Monitor Regulatory Developments: Google’s approach is designed to appease regulators, but ongoing dialogue with bodies like the UK’s CMA will shape the final implementation. Publishers should stay engaged with these discussions to anticipate and adapt to regulatory requirements.

Adapting to a New Era of Digital Advertising

Google’s third-party cookies reversal marks a significant shift for the industry. While it offers a reprieve, the long-term trajectory remains clear: a move towards greater user privacy and the need for innovative solutions. Publishers must stay agile, continuously adapt their strategies, and prepare for a future where privacy and addressability coexist in a delicate balance.

Take a deeper dive into this topic, check out the presentation, view the deck, and download the recap at U of Digital. 

The post Google’s Cookie Curveball: What’s Next for Buyers and Sellers? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Audience targeting and improved ad relevance are critical in today’s highly competitive media environment. With the rapid proliferation of digital content, advertisers and publishers face an unprecedented challenge in reaching and engaging their desired audiences.

That’s why this integration of Yahoo ConnectID with LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) could not have come at a better time, particularly as the industry navigates the challenges of a cookieless environment.

This seamless integration allows publishers who have adopted LiveRamp’s ATS to unlock additional demand from Yahoo DSP, substantially improving the monetization of their addressable supply. “Demand-side interoperability has been a key feature, and now, with our expanded partnership, publishers can achieve greater scale and better monetization through Yahoo ConnectID,” explains Chandra Cirulnick, VP, Global Supply Partnerships at Yahoo DSP.

 By harnessing advanced identity solutions such as Yahoo ConnectID, marketers can accurately identify user preferences and behaviors in a privacy-centric way, ensuring their messages are delivered to the right people at the right time. This approach enhances user experience, drives higher engagement, and improves overall campaign performance.

How Yahoo ConnectID Boosts Audience Engagement and Revenue

The benefits are clear. Publishers leveraging Yahoo ConnectID have seen, on average, a 40% higher eCPM for Yahoo ConnectID impressions than those without it. Additionally, the win rate for advertisers and publishers is, on average, 34.3% higher when Yahoo ConnectID is available. For non-addressable supply, Yahoo Next-Gen Solutions provide on average, an impressive 76% higher eCPM and a 37.5% higher win rate. This dual approach ensures publishers maximize their revenue regardless of user authentication status.

Yahoo’s integration with LiveRamp’s ATS also future-proofs addressable advertising. By expanding Yahoo ConnectID’s footprint and refining its integration, Yahoo is committed to improving addressability for publishers and advertisers. The tech behemoth also plans on incorporating industry solutions like Google Privacy Sandbox, ensuring a robust and resilient identity solution strategy.

Powered by 205 million direct, consent-based consumer relationships in the US, Yahoo ConnectID leverages 200 billion daily cross-screen signals to build comprehensive user and household profiles. This depth of data allows for precise targeting and enhanced audience insights, enabling both publishers and advertisers to thrive despite the deprecation of third-party cookies.

Publisher Praise: Real-World Success Stories 

Publishers are already singing the integration’s praises. For instance, Dish Media has been able to extend advertisers’ reach. “Yahoo ConnectID empowers our advertisers to access new, potentially interested audiences across Yahoo’s extensive network, ensuring enhanced reach and effectiveness for their campaigns,” shares Andrew Tint, General Manager of Programmatic at Dish Media. Jeff Quandt, VP, Revenue Partnerships at Allen Media Group echoes that sentiment, highlighting that Yahoo ConnectID allows for a more tailored ad experience and better measurement of media investments.

Another notable example of publisher success with the Yahoo ConnectID comes from Philo, a programmatic-first television company. “The integration with Yahoo ConnectID aligns perfectly with our strategy and strengthens our connection with advertisers using the Yahoo platform, enhancing their ability to find their most valuable segments on Philo and deliver relevant ads to our audience. This capability to provide precise audience targeting and improved ad relevance is critical,” shares Aulden Kaye, Philo’s Head of Advertising Partnerships, when articulating the advantage.

These success stories underscore the broader trend of industry leaders leveraging advanced identity solutions to remain competitive. As ad tech evolves, the reliance on third-party cookies has become increasingly untenable, necessitating the adoption of innovative strategies to maintain ad efficacy. Yahoo ConnectID offers the agility required to navigate these changes, providing publishers with robust tools to address the impending demise of third-party cookies. By integrating such cutting-edge technology, publishers can maintain and even enhance their advertising capabilities, ensuring they remain at the forefront of the industry.

Setting New Industry Benchmarks for the Future 

The Yahoo DSP is committed to collaboration and interoperability to enable publishers and advertisers to effectively communicate and resonate with their audiences in a highly fragmented landscape. The tech leader’s ongoing enhancements and partnerships are positioning Yahoo ConnectID as a pivotal player in digital advertising, driving not only efficiency but also superior outcomes.

For publishers strategizing to future-proof their advertising operations and optimize monetization in a cookieless world, the integration with Yahoo ConnectID emerges as a strategic choice. The platform offers sophisticated identity resolution capabilities meant to significantly enhance audience understanding, campaign precision, and overall ROI. 

Learn more about this powerful tool here. 

The post Yahoo ConnectID’s New Integration Boosts Publisher Profits Without Cookies appeared first on AdMonsters.

The rise of programmatic advertising quickly led to an increase in middlemen and third parties that served as conduits between advertisers and publishers. What followed was the buy side often found the same inventory being offered over and over again, creating a need for supply path optimization (SPO).

That led to a dance that continues today between demand looking for the most efficient path and/or unique value-generating inventory, while supply attempts to offer its traffic through multiple pipes to help ensure they are reaching the maximum number of buyers.

Tactics like SPO and measuring supply chain directness and true value creation forced some much-needed partner expectations and procedures to market.

The current issue at hand is the demand-side’s current algorithms and manual manipulation of supply paths assumes users are equally addressable from each path. However, with the loss of third-party cookies, the advent of alternative identifiers and bid enrichment supply paths can yield dramatic differences in buyer match rates.

With cookies eventually going away for good, SPO may never be the same. So where does that leave SPO and how will advertisers and suppliers work together again to retain the efficiency to which they’re accustomed?

SPO in a Post-cookie World

Without third-party cookies, there will be no specific and obvious direct route to target users the way we used to. Advertisers whose main interest is in identifying matched users will be adversely affected.

While URLs and domain-based inventory aren’t going anywhere, the ability to recognize the user is getting more difficult. The elimination of cookies means there’s no guarantee that any one path will get the volume of matched users you need for your campaign.

In some ways, it’s similar to driving a car. Many people believe there is an ideal route to any particular destination. But, the rise of online map applications like Waze reinforced that many variables determine what the best route is. Do you want to get there as quickly as possible? Would you prefer saving money on tolls even if it took a little bit of time? Is your biggest concern avoiding the major highways where accidents are more likely?

Third-party cookies depended on a simple map for the best possible route to optimization; however, creating a disjointed addressable landscape has created a Waze-like situation in digital advertising to take into account real-time campaign requirements.

Would you rather take the route of one hop when you cannot match the user, or two hops, which may cost a bit more, but can match? Because, now, limiting access points can suppress potential addressability. As cookies continue to deteriorate, the demand side should monitor their match rates looking at supply path directness. If it’s not sufficient, they know they will need to return to using multiple paths.

By no means is SPO going away. While the variables of SPO are changing it will always have a place in the post-cookie advertising world as we continue to find ways to improve efficiencies in the next generation of programmatic advertising.

But, removing a core element that led to commoditization will require a new approach to achieve the right balance between efficiency and performance. It will take the supply side working hand-in-hand with the demand side to see the value in working with multiple supply paths now.

While the market tests and adopts identity solutions that improve addressability, several unknowns, such as the final rollout of the Google Privacy Sandbox, will need to be taken into account.

Without third-party cookies, SPO will not be as static and directional as it is today. As addressability becomes increasingly fragmented, buyers will need to work closely and understand their partners’ SPO strategies since additional variables will impact scale when employing multiple solutions. If buyers do not take a multipronged approach, they run the risk of.  of driving off a cliff because they were using an old map!

The post Beyond Cookies: Rethinking Supply Chain Optimization in the Face of Advertising Challenges appeared first on AdMonsters.

In the fast-paced world of digital publishing, cookies once played a pivotal role in enabling seamless functionality across the monetization ecosystem.

They facilitated communication between supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad servers, and attribution platforms. With cookies, ad servers could efficiently apply frequency capping, and attribution platforms could report on view-through conversions—all without the need for active participation from the publisher.

Cookies were indeed powerful, but the landscape is shifting. The impending deprecation of third-party cookies is sending ripples across the digital advertising industry, impacting everyone from publishers to advertisers and consumers. However, amidst the disruption, there lies a remarkable opportunity for publishers to reclaim their power.

The Naked Publisher: A Tale of Data Exposure

In the past, publishers were, in a sense, “naked” due to the industry’s heavy reliance on third-party cookies.

Their valuable audience data, from pageviews to session depth, was laid bare for third parties to exploit. This vulnerability stemmed from the way data flowed through the digital advertising pipes — the sell side, buy side, activation, and measurement entities listed above.

The interruption of these data pipelines is bound to impact revenue streams, but it also represents an opportunity that should not be underestimated. Publishers, instead of lamenting the loss of cookies, should seize the moment.

Redefining Data Ownership and Trust

Historically, publishers stored both first-party and third-party IDs as cookies. While this allowed SSPs, header wrappers, ad servers, and others to access these identifiers, it also spurred the problems of data leakage and the lack of exclusive audience ownership associated with third-party cookies.

Audiences were commoditized as a byproduct of third-party cookies. Publishers’ valuable audiences were never really theirs because the audience could be learned via open pipes and found on inventory elsewhere.

With control over their data, publishers can win more direct revenue and positively impact their bottom line by only sharing Deal IDs versus user IDs through the programmatic pipeline.

Publishers, however, can adapt to the changing landscape by reevaluating their data storage strategies. While some functions still require data accessibility, the evolving market dynamics allow publishers to control access to their proprietary audience data.

It is the publisher’s responsibility as to how they make their data accessible and if the subsequent strategy will result in devaluing their audience for direct buys. They can differentiate between data stored locally and data used for offline matching through techniques like data clean rooms and customer data platforms (CDPs) to facilitate direct media buys.

This shift empowers publishers to instill more trust with their readers by collecting opted-in, verified, and usable first-party data. The era of the cookieless future beckons publishers to take ownership of their audience relationships like never before.

The Evolution of Publisher Power

Embracing this evolution will significantly enhance publishers’ ability to generate premium, direct demand.

Whether audience segments are derived from attributes provided by the publisher or the brand, the key is to ensure that the data is stored appropriately. Publishers can then extrapolate their audience data against all of their inventory, unlocking untapped potential.

In this cookieless future, publishers hold the key to retaining control over and monetizing their audiences while plugging data leaks. With control over their data, publishers can win more direct revenue and positively impact their bottom line by only sharing Deal IDs versus user IDs through the programmatic pipeline. By investing in the right infrastructure and processes to independently store their first-party data, publishers can emerge as the true powerhouses of the digital advertising world.

Seizing the Cookieless Opportunity

As the digital advertising landscape evolves, publishers who proactively plan ahead and implement the right systems and solutions will emerge as leaders.

They will harness the true potential of first-party data, ensuring that the future is not just cookieless but also brimming with opportunities for growth and innovation. The power lies in their hands, and it’s time to wield it with confidence.

The post Embracing the Cookieless Future: Publishers’ Opportunity to Take Control appeared first on AdMonsters.

Throughout history, there have been revolutionary changes that have remade industries and created powerhouses of those companies that took a leap to prepare for the future.

IBM,was early to identify the personal computer revolution. Netflix created the modern streaming industry while it was an extremely successful DVD supplier.

And for as many industry champions, there were those who felt it was too soon to embrace the future because their revenue was tied to historic ways of doing things.

The advertising industry isn’t immune to this kind of thinking. For years, we have known a cookieless future awaits. Google is committed to a cookieless future, despite their moving of timelines. Soon — the vaunted cookie will be no more — with a decline starting in Q1 2024. 

And yet! Few seem prepared for this inevitability. Despite the necessity for the advertising industry to adapt, some organizations are not heeding these warnings. Embracing the future without third-party cookies requires experimentation today to understand exactly what awaits. 

Today’s advertising environment is governed by traffic-shaping algorithms that will prioritize cookie-based traffic until they’re specifically instructed not to do so. The short-term benefits dictate this.

Publishers and SSPs are influenced by higher CPMs and fees and DSPs crave the audience targeting and segmentation provided by cookies.

On one hand, this is completely understandable. Most businesses are driven by short-term benefits. On the other hand, we’re not preparing for the storm arriving at our shores. And the storm is this: Google has remained steadfast in its complete phase-out of cookies in the latter half of 2024. 

A charitable look at this current state brings to mind several fairy tales about what happens when you don’t prepare for the future ( Or maybe you remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper.)

Put simply, if we do not encourage the use of cookie alternative traffic in advertising today, the entire industry will take a huge step back when it becomes a reality.

Here’s the important thing: done right, organizations that embrace cookieless traffic today will gain an important competitive advantage today and tomorrow. 

5 Justifications for Bending the Ad-shaping Algorithm

Here are five justifications for bending the ad-shaping algorithm

• • Reduced dependency: You can either begin tapering off third-party cookies now or have a very painful detox later. Reducing your reliance on third-party cookies for ad targeting will make future campaigns more successful. 
  • Create a clean, open environment to succeed: Almost all of today’s traffic shaping and supply path optimization was built for a user-commoditized internet where you could target and measure the same user across multiple paths.  When addressability is at a premium, an unthrottled, mult-hop connection may be required to reach addressable scale.  Yesterday’s tactics were built for a different battle.  
  • Zig where others zag: With fewer bids for this traffic and therefore less competition, advertisers will yield higher win rates. Likewise, suppliers that focus on this will earn revenue on inventory that’s typically ignored
  • Capitalize on underserved Safari users: As Salon CRO Justin Wohl pointed out at a Digiday Summit, Safari users are a very desirable audience that advertisers discount because it doesn’t allow cookies. He called them among the “highest-value opportunities,” but yet the publisher sees half the yield of cookied traffic. This ideal audience is just not seeing as many ads, giving advertisers more opportunities to reach them and lessening the likelihood of ad fatigue.
  • Begin addressing what will work best for your audience: When cookies disappear, organizations will have several options for how they try to replicate what cookies provided (spoiler alert: no one will be able to replicate it exactly). Options include relying on first-party data,clean rooms, universal identifiers, contextual targeting, and other methodologies. Trial and testing each right now will help your organization understand what will be successful for them. That way, you’re ready to lean into one or two strategies that are most effective when your advertising depends on it. 

Focus on Cookieless Traffic, Today

Ignoring cookieless traffic at this stage is a critical error because of the reasons described above. Safari and Firefox took the first step and Google will soon join them. 

Acknowledging a future driven by cookieless traffic and taking decisive action is necessary to stay in line with the competition.

By reducing dependency on third-party cookies, organizations can future-proof their campaigns while standing out in a less crowded market, as few competitors focus on cookieless traffic, leading to higher win rates for advertisers.

Organizations must recognize the evolving landscape, adapt their strategies, and test alternative approaches to secure a competitive advantage against companies that will ride the cookie train until the last moment. 

The post Why Actions, Not Words, Are Needed to Face the Cookieless Future appeared first on AdMonsters.

These days the road to success as a publisher depends on who you ask as every publishers journey is unique, but there are lessons we can all learn from those navigating the twists and turns successfully. At AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO on September 26, our own Lynne Johnson facilitated a panel discussion titled “The New Publisher Playbook” with two industry leaders – Mark Howard, Chief Operating Officer, TIME, and Zack Sullivan, Chief Revenue Officer, Future. They offered insight about a world without cookies, scaling your business and the future of privacy. 

In a Cookieless Environment, Building Relationships is Key

The ops industry is moving into a future where having the right data will be key to profitability. Industry professionals previously used third-party data, but that strategy must be amended with changing privacy laws. Direct relationships with consumers and partners will be crucial as we advance. 

Commerce is a huge part of Future’s business, according to Sullivan. The company’s proprietary tech stack is utilized to track users across their journey to illuminate their intent and path to purchase. Having this data about users and their intent is extremely useful. 

“We’re also audience builders. The audience gives us value – we build the brands, they come, it’s a self-perpetuating relationship. The more they come back, the better understanding we have of what they’re doing. Having that relationship is something that only media owners can do,” explains Sullivan. 

He adds that reliance on third-party data has led to newfound problems with attribution. Future is building relationships with media owners to close the gap between campaign buying decisions and their outcomes, increasing transparency along the data journey. 

Howard says that TIME has multiple business models, including B2B, B2B2C and B2C, which makes data more complicated, says Howard. “What ends up happening is you get a data and analytics loop that allows you to understand the different behaviors, the audiences, and the experiences you’re building within the overall framework. That then helps us inform both the user experiences and some of the editorial experiences that they’re going to help us continue to propel forward,” he shares. 

To help understand all of its data, TIME will soon announce a new attribution measurement platform. This platform will create a more holistic story of the data while separating data into buckets of TIME’s various audiences. This will help highlight the outcomes of both campaign and impact metrics that will quantify a return on investment and put the company in a better position to help its partners. 

To Scale or Not to Scale… And How?

Most publishers are now facing the challenge of whether to scale their business and how. This is an evolving issue but best practices have begun to emerge. 

Sullivan says Future can deliver its partners a large portion of their desired addressable audience using its data solutions. “Internally, we’re increasingly looking at using probabilistic data, then saying, ‘Here’s our first-party data. This is why we’ve got really high confidence in probabilistic matching.’ I think things like cleanrooms don’t scale up at a level that’s good enough right now,” he explains. 

Working alongside other publishers will also be a big piece of the data puzzle, for example, by having agreed upon taxonomies at different data levels since there is currently no standardization with taxonomy. 

This is where partnership comes in. “If you’re an agency planner, you want to avoid having  to publish and plan across 15 different specialist brands. You want to be able to say, ‘I’m targeting these cohorts and these taxonomy segments,’” says Sullivan. 

Whether or not to scale has been a question the industry has gone back and forth on for some time now. Howard notes he believes there’s a way for publishers to unite to tackle this issue, not necessarily by forming a coalition, but to share best practices on big issues and go-to-market strategies. 

Painting a Picture of the Consumer in a Privacy-Centric Era

As we move into an era where privacy is paramount, we must find new ways to understand online consumer behavior. One solution to getting a clear picture of individual consumers is identity graphs. 

A big piece of this puzzle will be the value the consumer gets in exchange for giving you their personal information. Sullivan notes that the detail you collect on users depends on the end goal. For example if you are hoping to drive digital subscriptions, you will need more robust data, but at some point, there are diminishing returns. He advises striving for balance. 

Howard says that TIME recently decided not to put any of its content behind a paywall, which makes collecting first-party data more difficult but is ultimately in line with TIME’s overall goals. 

Sullivan adds, “We need to determine what data we make available through an open auction RTB environment versus what we want to share into trade marketplaces? That’s the future.”

Attention metrics are also gaining traction as the latest way to track behavior, which Howard says will be the jumping off point to even greater metrics. These can be more directly attributable and will help direct sales outcomes. He says, “Attention is just the next step in the progression of data sophistication and what we can provide. And I think it’s the gateway into a whole new ecosystem.”

No one has all the answers, but industry experts will increasingly need to band together and share best practices to ensure continued success and growth.

The post The New Publisher Playbook: Understanding Challenges & How To Overcome Them appeared first on AdMonsters.

Alyson Williams’s career in advertising started long before she became the Senior Vice President, Digital Operations & Strategy at Forbes. Growing up, Williams’s father founded and ran an advertising and marketing company, and she worked there starting in her early teenage years. 

Williams would manage the company’s basic admin functions and, as she got older, write promotional copy. Williams got a front-row seat to watching an ad CEO in his day-to-day, and the lessons she learned have stayed with her throughout her career. 

“My father taught me to lead with compassion and that personal relationships are critical to a successful career,” said Williams. “He taught me that no task is too small, even for the highest-level employee, and that picking up the phone and having a real conversation will almost always be the most effective way to get what you want.”

The industry has changed since Williams’s first job in advertising, but much of her father’s advice about connecting with people still holds. Williams will bring insights about how Forbes connects with 140 million+ people with ForbesOne, Forbes’ first-party data platform, during her keynote, “One Publisher, One Brand: United By First-Party Data,” at the upcoming AdMonsters Publisher Forum. Williams will share how ForbesOne is revolutionizing how the publisher uses AI and machine learning to provide unique, personalized, and community-oriented experiences.

An Ad Ops Career Evolves with the Industry

Williams was drawn to a career in media and publishing because she has always loved language, reading, and writing, which attracted her to magazines at a very young age.  

“I would have piles and piles of magazines in my room growing up. I was in school at a time when the media was romanticizing careers in publishing – think Devil Wears Prada, Thirteen Going on Thirty, Sex and the City – and that drew me even more into the world of media,” reminisced Williams.

Williams’s first few media jobs were in editorial, but she found herself more drawn to the business side. For 16 years, Williams’s tenure with Forbes has played out in various digital advertising positions. Her roles have grown and evolved with the changes in the advertising industry and advertising operations.

“When I started at Forbes, the way the world consumed media was completely different. To put it into context, the first-ever iPhone had just been released. That’s obviously had an enormous impact on the industry as a whole as well as the ad operations function,” said Williams. “Ad ops isn’t just back-end anymore. We’re diving into the data, developing products, recommending targeting, presenting to sales and clients, and more. There is way more strategy in the role now, and I’ve loved growing my team with that in mind.” 

In her current role as Senior Vice President, Digital Operations & Strategy, Williams leads Forbes’ advertising operations, ad product, pricing and inventory management, and sales operations and analytics teams. Her team is working on much more than what the traditional ad ops role encompassed when she first started. 

“We’re data-driven storytellers. I don’t think anyone would have associated storytelling with ad ops back then, but now using data to tell a compelling story is such a crucial piece of our day-to-day,” she explained.

ForbesOne Takes First-party Data to the Next Level

ForbesOne fuels audience insights into every facet of the business, including revenue, editorial, product, marketing, and more, to connect marketing partners with the right segments and help them achieve their business objectives.

During her keynote, Williams will discuss how ForbesOne enables the B2B publisher to leverage first-party to build a stronger, cohesive brand. Williams often hears about the goals of one team being up against the goals of another, such as ad ops versus sales or business versus edit.  

“When you build a product like ForbesOne that is truly cross-functional across an organization, it breaks down the barriers that may seem to exist between teams. Thinking in silos will rarely move the full business forward, and cross-team collaboration and thinking outside of your own roles and responsibilities will drive real results,” she shared. 

Williams says she loves that ForbesOne is built not just as a targeting platform but with a full suite of analytics tied to it as well. The platform allows Forbes to understand how to reach audiences, gain insights about them, and feed those back to its marketing partners, editorial partners, and readers. 

“We can provide a robust, first-party powered story about specific audiences to understand how to better serve our readers with the most engaging and relevant content and to allow our editorial team to understand who’s consuming their content and why,” explained Williams.

Publishers Should Find Their Unique First-party Solution

Forbes started thinking about first-party solutions in 2018, long before the impending cookiepocalypse was even a buzzword, because of the unique audiences and communities it was organically building.

“It was more basic back then and primarily based on simple contextual targets, but it gave us an early idea of what may work and what we needed to rethink,” said Williams. “Part of that rethinking is to look at our business as a whole, not the ad business as a silo.”

Williams says that diversifying Forbes’ revenue has been top-of-mind for years, and the global publisher is prioritizing making its ad business work in tandem with the other platforms or revenue streams being offered. This approach has led to enormous growth for Forbes in other sectors, including events and subscription/membership, while continuing to grow its media business. 

Williams points out that a first-party solution is not going to be one-size-fits-all. Publishers should consider what differentiates them and how they can utilize that differentiation to create a first-party product that stands out from the pack. 

“It’s key to hone in on what makes you as a publisher unique, what makes your audience unique, and how that comes to life on your properties,” said Williams. “Think beyond targeting; is it a specific product or ad unit, is it a complementary event, newsletter, or subscription? Spend your time focused on creating something that truly represents your brand.”

The post PubForum Keynote Alyson Williams: Revolutionizing Forbes’ First-Party Data Platform appeared first on AdMonsters.

Before joining Dotdash Meredith, Roberts was a theoretical physicist focused on making dark matter predictions for the hadron collider at CERN and cosmic ray predictions for the AMS detector on the International Space Station. He also created the first-ever canon maps of Game of Thrones for Random House and George R. R. Martin’s “The Lands of Ice and Fire.”

 Roberts says that maps empower people to make decisions using data by helping them understand a way forward. 

 “Mapmaking is an exercise in data-powered decision making, whether it’s in the front of a fantasy novel where I’m helping the reader make a logical choice, or in business where I hand over information in a way that other people can then make informed decisions off a common understanding and framework,” said Roberts.

Just like maps, publishers face a great deal of data and decision-making as they approach the loss of third-party cookies. During his keynote at the AdMonsters Publisher Forum, “Publishers Take the Wheel: Effective Audience Targeting in a Cookieless World,” Roberts will share how publishers can leverage intent data for ad targeting at scale.

 Solving Problems From Physicist to Publisher

Roberts has been with Dotdash Meredith since 2013. As Chief Innovation Officer, Roberts oversees research, data science, and open market revenue. He was previously the President, Health & Finance, overseeing strategy for Verywell, Health, Parents, Investopedia, and The Balance, and has held various senior leadership roles, including Head of Data Science. 

Before Dotdash Meredith, Roberts spent ten years as a theoretical physicist, bringing that training to his current role.

“As a physicist, you must be confident to take on problems and believe they are fixable. That belief gives me the mindset to tackle publishing challenges with an impatience to solve them,” expressed Roberts. 

And right now, that challenge is solving ad targeting for publishers before the cookie gets deprecated in 2024. Roberts believes ad targeting that will work, and scale isn’t with identity targeting but with intent-based targeting. 

“Trying to rebuild an identity signal across a cookieless environment is going back and fighting the fight that’s already been fought and lost. I think targeting who somebody might have been four weeks ago is much less effective than targeting who they are right now. Non-identity or intent-based targeting unlocks the full scale of a publisher,” said Roberts.

Connecting at Key Moments of Intent

In May, Dotdash Meredith launched D/Cipher, a tool that provides intent-based ad targeting without cookies. D/Cipher is based on billions of Dotdash Meredith’s proprietary consumer interactions and content signals from its 40+ brands that help 30 million people daily, providing the publisher with a unique data set.

 “If we were a news publisher, we would tell the world what to care about. We are much more a service publisher, so the world tells us,” shared Roberts. “Our data gives us a heartbeat of the entire world every day.” 

D/Cipher reaches users on all devices and platforms, including Apple (iOS) audiences previously unreachable by advertising cookies for the past two years, estimated at more than 50% of U.S. digital users. 

So, how does D/Cipher reach the right person, at the right time, without cookies? 

Roberts gives the example of targeting a parent reading articles about family vacations versus looking for a Negroni recipe. The promise of cookie targeting is knowing that the person is a parent, but intent-based targeting is knowing a person is being a parent at that moment. 

“Engaging the parent with the right messaging when they’re in that mindset is powerful and requires no prior knowledge of the person. A drink recipe is when they’re specifically not being a parent, and they don’t want to see your messaging even if you got the targeting right,” explains Roberts. “We’ve removed the guesswork and only reach people when they’re ready to receive your message. It’s not surprising that we see vastly higher performance with intent targeting than with cookie targeting.”

Guaranteeing a Non-Identity-Based Approach

As part of the D/Cipher launch, the publisher announced the Dotdash Meredith Performance Guarantee, which promises performance lift versus cookie-based or other audience-based targeting for marketers using the D/Cipher tool. 

Roberts shared that the guarantee’s goal is not for advertisers to shift their entire buying strategy to only intent-based targeting. Instead, Dotdash Meredith wants advertisers to simultaneously test and then scale both a cookie-based or identity-based approach and a non-cookie and non-identity-based approach in the lead-up to a cookieless environment. 

“We can learn so much with a side-by-side comparison. We as an industry must get comfortable with non-identity-based targeting and measurement in the next year to 18 months so that when the cookie gets fully deprecated, you’re not trying to figure out how to do cookieless targeting in the second half of 2024 because you’re going to be doing it with little data to play with and a lot of disruption,” cautioned Roberts.

Roberts says that as America’s largest publisher, it means Dotdash Meredith is in a position to help the industry and is confident in its guarantee.

“We guarantee you that your intent-based campaign will outperform the cookie-based campaign. We know it works because we’ve been doing this a long time, and that takes the risk off the table,” said Roberts.

The post AdMonsters Publisher Forum Keynote Dr. Jon Roberts: Innovating Audience Targeting for a Cookieless World appeared first on AdMonsters.

Until recently, marketers and adtech have collected data from internet users at the expense of their privacy – but that’s changing. Consumers have felt a shift in the traditional value exchange that powers the internet: Free content is no longer worth being tracked around the web, and consumers are using the tools available to them to opt out of sharing their data for advertising. 

Today, consumers have a range of tools available to them to protect their personal data:  Browsing in hidden environments (such as Safari or Firefox), using Apple devices, and engaging with Apple’s privacy mechanisms (such as ATT and hide my email), disabling tracking cookies in Chrome, using Google’s “reject all cookies” button in Europe. The list goes on.

The result is that 70% of the open web is already unreachable today. Because of this, buyers are – often unknowingly – spending the majority of their budgets on a 30% sliver of the market, consequently driving up CPMs and diluting a budget’s potential reach and performance, not to mention completely missing a large portion of potential customers. This is akin to spending a huge slice of budget on advertising during a major sports event only to reach three out of 10 viewers.

In this new era of declining reachability, we spoke with Danner Close, Senior Director, Strategic Demand Partnerships at Permutive, about why buyers need to focus on maximizing their budgets, why we need a standard for publishers’ first-party data, and why the future of advertising depends on scalable first-party data across publishers.

Focusing on Maximizing Budget

Lynne d Johnson: Why is it important that the advertising ecosystem not wait for the cookie’s complete demise to begin testing and thinking about how to best use alternatives to the third-party cookie?

Danner Close: Programmatic platforms, which inherently rely on data-driven marketing to provide value to buy-side and supply-side clients, also suffer from this dwindling reachability. By limiting reach to only 30% of online users, a platform is not only reducing a client’s ability to deliver against its entire budget (and therefore discouraging greater budgets in the future) but also costing its clients more to do less. This reality of higher costs, lower reach, and inefficient budgets causes an inherent risk to platforms’ value to their clients and therefore their business models. 

Even when we look at identifiers that attempt to replicate the functionality of a cookie, the same problems arise, including privacy concerns, high opt-out rates, reduced scale, and constricting regulations. Without a privacy-first focus, these identifiers fall prey to the same pitfalls as cookies, inevitably returning the market back to its current state. 

As advertising increasingly feels the pains of declining reachability – a trend that will undoubtedly grow alongside continued regulations and increased consumer opt-outs – it becomes clear that waiting for the complete demise of cookies or relying on unsustainable identity solutions is not a winning strategy. 

The Role of Standardized First-party Data

LdJ: One of the issues with making first-party data available for advertisers is that not all first-party data is created equal. What I mean is not all publishers are categorizing or valuing their first-party data the same way, which makes it harder for buyers to scale across the ecosystem. How can the industry solve this?

DC: Ultimately, solutions that don’t harness the depth and breadth of publisher first-party data inventory won’t be positioned for success in this new era of programmatic advertising.

Fortunately, publishers can help solve this addressability crisis and transform advertising using first-party data derived from their high-value and fully consented audiences. Because publishers are responsible for the consumer opt-in process and can collect valuable data on 100% of consented users without relying on a third-party cookie, they are uniquely equipped to provide the market with rich, scalable data. 

Historically, publishers have used publisher-specific criteria to define their audiences, creating fragmented audience definitions for buyers. For example, publisher A may define an auto-intender as someone who visits pages on vehicle reviews and ratings twice in a 60-day period. Meanwhile, publisher B may instead only require users to visit content related to car maintenance and vehicle recalls once over 90 days to be defined as an auto-intender. 

With standard cohorts adoption and publisher first-party data, buyers can take a single audience definition and activate it across multiple publishers.

This lack of consistency creates a meaningful challenge for buyers who seek to activate unified audience definitions across multiple publishers while preserving user privacy and scalability. 

A powerful solution is standard cohorts, which streamline a buyer’s activation of scalable first-party data by providing standardized, consented audiences that are consistently defined across all enabled publishers without the need for third-party cookies.

By mapping standard cohorts to the industry-standard IAB Audience Taxonomy and leveraging transparent behavioral and contextual inputs, audiences can be segmented based on the same definitions from publisher to publisher. 

With standard cohorts adoption and publisher first-party data, buyers can take a single audience definition and activate it across multiple publishers. Further, by not relying on third-party cookies, buyers can activate across hidden environments, unlocking the 70% of the open web that’s unreachable today. These publisher-informed user groups based on unified interests, characteristics, and behaviors reduce buyer complexity and simplify the activation process and provide privacy-first scalability across 100% of the consented web.

As standard cohorts allow publishers to highlight unique features in their data and audience insights that advertisers can’t get elsewhere, marketers are realizing the benefits. For example, a global beverage CPG brand was able to course-correct over-indexing in Chrome and serve 78% of their impressions in Safari and other cookie-blocked environments, as well as achieve 21% lower CPC and 123% higher CTR compared to the benchmark.

A Consented Ecosystem

Lynne d Johnson: In this new era of privacy-first ethical data, it’s coming down to a division between the data-rich and the data-poor. Not all publishers have the treasure trove of data that a New York Times or Bloomberg has. What is the solution there?

Danner Close: Success in this new era of digital advertising will require infrastructure that empowers publishers to unlock and activate their otherwise untapped first-party data, making it available to the wider ecosystem. Access to responsible, scalable first-party data across a variety of publishers will enable adtech to preserve the health of digital advertising by being an enabler and not an intermediary.

As advertisers seek out privacy-centric addressability solutions, platform partners that make rich, first-party publisher data more accessible to advertisers and monetizable for publishers will enable all parties to thrive in a privacy-forward environment.

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