In The Absence of Third-party Cookies, Publishers Wants to Strengthen Relation with Advertisers
With the death of third-party data, publishers are in the prime position as holders of the first-party data on consumers, and they are hoping to have a strong relationship with advertisers. The big revolution in the digital world without third party cookies and the trackers within internet browsers that builds all of the digital advertising – was on top priority for all the attendees at the IAB three – day Annual Leadership Meeting in California.
In a panel discussion, Stephanie Layser, vice-president of advertising technology and operations at News Corp said, “A privacy-first identifier is really important and needed in our industry as a whole.” He further added that without this, the ‘cat-and-mouse’ game will continue, eventually not able to identify the users at all.
No third-party cookies mean there will be an ecosystem of walled gardens. Facebook and Google, publishers will start having their own end-to-end platforms and safeguard consumers’ data within their walled gardens. Publishers may concentrate on the first-party data obtained from their sites to build identifiers and exist within their closed ecosystems. Undoubtedly, publisher first-party data can become the dominant currency of the digital ad market.
Scott Messer, senior vice-president of media at Leaf Group said .“You store your information in [Facebook] and use their identifiers, but you don’t get the user identity back. He further added, “And that’s actually a sustainable model, minus the leaking.”
However, Facebook and Google, especially the latter can take advantage of identifiers that Chrome runs through its browser and so publishers need to give more insights than the basic audience data. Publishers need to present quality and privacy-compliant benefits of consented data to buyers for getting attention. Messer further said that the key to publishers gaining control is bringing people insight than pushing more audience or data.
For rebuilding digital advertising in the absence of third-party cookies, publishers need to act to make sure they have the systems, strategies, and processes in place – like organize their identity graphs, build consistent systems or definitions of audience segment to put insight to use. Also, it is essential for them to successfully integrate their direct customer relationship with advertisers’ data and campaign objectives.
The Vice President of Meredith, Chip Schenck said publishers and advertisers should work together to build products that go beyond financial objectives and advertisers learn more about end-users.
“Partnership is what do you have and what don’t you have, how can I fill the gaps that you have, and what are the things I need that you could help me with, beyond financial remuneration,” said Schenck on redefining partnership,
The absence of third party cookies can tighten the bond between the advertiser and publisher giving way to open exchanges. It acts as a catalyst to publishers who need to ensure that technology tools and business models are in place to be at the top of the ad ecosystem.
BackLite Media Launches Measurement Platform Utilising ‘Big Data’ in the UAE.
BackLite Media, a specialist out-of-home (OOH) outdoor advertising company has partnered with IQ Data to launch BackLite Intelligence, the MENA region’s highly innovative OOH advertising platform to utilize ‘‘big data’ on a local scale.
The finest technology, deployed across BackLite’s whole OOH network, will add exemplary value to advertisers across Dubai and Abu Dhabi with an avant-garde audience measurement data, centered around behavioral data linked to the millions of people who see BackLite’s signs daily.
With the new system ‘BackLite Intelligence’, advertisers will get an advantage to understand who is viewing their content clearly, giving them the insight to find better ways to target the right demographics. It will help in measuring people whereabouts and show the advertisers and brands the right consumer profile to target for their future campaigns.
BackLite Intelligence will leverage over 1.2 billion mobile phone location signals per month within UAE, and map them across their outdoor network, to give advertisers tailored, detailed and inclusive data relating to each campaign. The data includes the viewership of each location by the day and night, key shopping behavior and in-depth demographic information.
Aligned with the smart city vision of the UAE’s leadership, the new technology adopted by BackLite Intelligence will rightly integrate with the outdoor advertising which at present BackLite Media is installing at Sheikh Zayed Road, creating a smooth, fulfilling and enriched advertising experience for all.
The privacy of the audience is safe, while the new system is useful to the advertisers. No personal information like emails or contact number is passed to BackLite Intelligence or its partners. The information collected is GDPR compliant and data collected via a software development kit (SDK) which collects location signals that are installed across many apps.
Bill Fordyce, CEO of BackLite Media, said,
“As the premier OOH media company in the UAE, we are committed to improving accountability and transparency and addressing long-held concerns on audience measurement. The launch of BackLite Intelligence with our partner IQ Data represents a significant milestone for the advertising industry in the region and underscores our commitment to providing the best-in-class technology and solutions to drive the greatest value for our advertisers. By linking this technology with our new digital signs on Sheikh Zayed Road, due to be installed ahead of Expo 2020, we believe the solutions provided by BackLite Intelligence will be a game-changer for our clients, enabling them to gather deeper insights that provide increased clarity for sales and marketing strategies and hard data to fuel better business decision-making.”
Dimitri Metaxas, Co-Founder & CEO of IQ data, said,
“Our partnership with BackLite marks the MENA region’s first-ever Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising measurement platform to utilize Big Data at scale. To ensure its ongoing success, we’ve leveraged over 1.2 billion mobile location signals generated per month within the UAE and mapped them across the entire BackLite OOH network in order to bring new levels of audience measurement and transparency into their products offering. We are excited to be working with an industry leader in BackLite who not only share our enthusiasm for innovation but also a commitment to improve OOH accountability to regional advertisers.”
Google Turning off Third-Party cookies From Chrome
The digital giant is confident to sustain the ad-supported world while turning the cookies archaic.
The company today announced its plans to phase out third parties cookies within two years from its popular Chrome browser. The move comes as digital advertising is seeing drastic changes in how ads are bought and sold. Other popular browsers like Apple’s Safari with 56% market share already have implemented similar measures to safeguard users’ details. This move doesn’t come as a surprise since Google’s announcement around privacy in Chrome, including ‘Privacy Sandbox’.
StatCounter data states that Google Chrome has a 69 percent market share on desktop and 40 percent on mobile. This aggressive timeline put the company on a track that will surely affect all facets of the ad industry.
Justin Schuh, Google’s director for Chrome engineering said, “This is our strategy to re-architect the standards of the web, to make it privacy-preserving by default.” He further adds users are demanding privacy and the web ecosystem needs to evolve with greater demands. Google’s team is also working on preventing fingerprinting among other things.
Cookies were once the base of targeting users through programmatic advertising, but with the use of ad blockers and users clearing the cookies hindered the effectiveness. The ad industry then found a new way ‘fingerprinting’. This involved using the information of the user’s browser coupled with the user’s unique browser settings to build a unique profile of the user without using cookies. The unique settings are the plug-ins, IP address, fonts, and extensions installed by the users. This information is used to create a profile of the user, which is used to target them with ads through programmatic without using cookies.
Impact on the publishers and ad industry
Starting this February, Google will implement techniques to limit cross-site tracking by imposing its new SameSite rules and third party cookies can only be accessed with an HTTPS connection. In the next two years, Google plans to completely remove third party cookies from Chrome which marks a significant change for the advertising industry and publishers who highly depend on marketers to track users across the web. Google’s answer to this is “privacy sandbox” which would allow advertisers to show relevant ads and allows users to share as little information about themselves and their browsing history as possible.
Google in its blog says it is confident that Privacy Sandbox “can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete.” however, industry players suggest this will only enhance Google’s strong plans.
At present, Chrome’s competitors are taking radical steps to block third-party cookies. It remains to be seen how this will turn out in the future as a lot of ideas are still in pipeline. It will be interesting to how the industry will take the change given Google’s own role in advertising. Google needs to get this right to keep the web ecosystem healthy.