Unruly Extends Partnership with Double Verify for a Brand-Safe Environment
Unruly, a video adtech company announced the expansion of its brand protection solution to advertisers through a global partnership with Double Verify, a leading digital software platform for media measurement, data, and analytics.
Earlier this year, Unruly’s partnership with Double Verify was extended to the U.S., is now being rolled out across multiple markets worldwide, including the U.K.
What Is The Deal About:
As a part of the deal, Double Verify’s fraud-filtering solution will be implemented pre-bid across Unruly’s omnichannel marketplace UnrulyX will ensure that all brands and ad agencies’ ads are delivered in a brand-safe environment irrespective of the device or formats. Unruly X has access to more than 2,700 direct publishers globally.
Fraud activity is increasing in Connected TV. Recently, Double Verify provided its fraud-filtering solutions to Connected TV (CTV) and tracked a 120% increase in fraudulent CTV and mobile apps — with over 500,000 fraudulent CTV devices detected per day.
The two-year partnership also covers Unruly’s sister brand Tremor Video, a leading programmatic video, and advanced TV platform. Double Verify is the verification partner for of all Tremor’s international activity. Unruly is also the founding member of WFA’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media which works with the world’s biggest advertisers and agencies to institutionalize cross-industry standards and approaches towards brand safety.
Unruly’s brand safety solution, UnrulyX Shield is industry-recognized and certified by DAA and TAG.
What They Have To Say:
Steven Woolway, EVP of business development, DoubleVerify said,
“Unruly has distinguished itself as one of the true innovators in the advertising technology space. I applaud the measures they have taken to create a high-quality marketplace, and I’m proud of the role that DV plays in ensuring inventory is fraud-free.”
Hilary Goldsmith, Unruly’s chief customer officer said,
“DoubleVerify’s proven reputation among our clients, coupled with its comprehensive CTV fraud filtering solution, gives us confidence that this partnership will provide brands with the safest environment for reaching and engaging consumers.”
Read more: Much Noise About Customer Data Platform, But Why?
Your Ultimate Guide to Understanding the Customer Data Platform
There is a lot of buzz about CDP- Customer Data Platform. It is a type of database software that streamlines customer data across martech stack and create a unified, persistent record of customers accessible from other systems. As per the Research and Markets report, the global Customer Data Platform (CDP) market size is expected to grow from USD 2.4billion in 2020 to USD 10.3billion by 2025 with a startling CAGR of 34.0% during the forecast period.
The major growth factors of CDP markets are being driven by the proliferation of devices and customer touchpoints, customers’ real-time personalization expectations, and navigation of privacy policies and regulations. Let’s comprehend each factor in detail:
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Multiple Devices, Fragmented Touchpoints, and New Soaring Expectations
Gartner estimates an average U.S adult will have more than six devices by 2020 including smart TVs and wearables. Consumer expectations will also rise for recognition and relevance.
The Cisco Annual Report forecasts the number of devices connected to IP networks will be more than three times the global population by 2023. Globally, devices and connections are growing faster at 10 percent CAGR. The average number of devices and connections per capita will grow from 2.4 in 2018 to 3.6 by 2023.
Several of these devices are being used by customers in a day to interact with the companies they are doing business with and expect these brands to recognize them irrespective of the device used by them at the given time.
Salesforce State of the Connected Customer survey conducted in 2019 reveals customer journeys are nonlinear and fragmented across touchpoints.
78% of customers prefer different channels for communication with brands depending on context and 64% of customers expect tailored engagements based on past interactions.
71% of customers expect companies to communicate with them in real-time.
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Privacy Policies
The data security and governance of the consumers is of the utmost importance for the marketer and is a front runner in their concerns. The data regulations body continues to grow to name a few – GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), and CASL (Canada Anti-Spam Legislation).
High expectations along with the escalation of customer touchpoints make cross-device ID’s – the ability to integrate different sets of data collected at various touchpoints into a single profile of a customer that will help the marketers, sales personnel, and service professionals.
As reported in Martech Today, CDP vendors are SOC (Service Organization Control), SSAE (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements), and/or ISO (International Standards Organization) certified. They help marketers to address privacy challenges with robust data governance protocols to ensure compliance with rules and data security standards.
Learn more: Identity Resolution Platforms Helps Marketers Tackle Consumer Data Crisis.
LiveIntent and Rubicon Project Invest on a Non-Cookie Based Identifier
LiveIntent and Rubicon Project have agreed to help publishers and media to do business on a non-cookie-based identifier.
The idea is to bring the Liveintent Authenticated Bridge framework to the header to help marketers and publishers reap the benefits of the ecosystem. The framework will be delivered via the bidstream of the Rubicon Project. The Liveintent Authenticated Bridge – a unique, privacy-safe identifier known as nonID will connect advertisers to publishers using hashed email addresses – to support media buying and selling without dependence on third-party cookies.
The key to Liveintent’s addressability framework, Authenticated Bridge for publishers and marketers is powered by email. Additionally, it allows media traders to understand the primary email associated with the particular browser or device by connecting it to the first-party data signals.
Prior to the pandemic and civil rights protests, ad tech 2020 was looking for options to replace cookies after the largest internet browser Google Chrome announced a gradual phase-out of tech by 2022.
Google is yet to implement the planned updates like other web browsers. The market share of Google Chrome is almost 50% of all installed internet browsers which means it can have a huge impact on the industry and can lead to a closedown of many independent ad tech players.
In the interim, efforts are made to find a way forward for the $130 billion industry where online technologies are being monitored by privacy regulators. Liveintent powers marketing and advertising technology that is cross-device and cross-browser compatible and does not require the use of third-party cookies. CEO Matt Keiser described Authenticated Bridge solution as nonID which means open to all – anyone can adopt it. Liveintent works with around 2000 publishers and 1000 advertisers.
As reported in Adweek, Matt Keiser said,
So, we haven’t made it something you need to sign a contract in order to adopt. Additionally, our ID is 1:1 with an [anonymized] email address.
This means the days of closed solutions are over for publishers and brands as Liveintent does not encrypt its identifier per user, unlike other proprietary solutions. Publishers had to struggle to monetize the web traffic when Apple and Mozilla restricted third-party cookies. This is where the Bridge solution can help to offset such issues. Liveintent’s first-party solution is powered by its Identity Graph whose insights are directly connected with validated and active emails.
CEO Matt Keiser said,
This framework works with established vendors’ proprietary IDs but is also pen to any publisher or brand that has their own email data. LiveIntent and Rubicon Project believe in the power of open source technology and have built solutions designed for easy integration and adoption, all while adhering to data compliance.
Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, at Rubicon Project said,
We continue to work with industry partners to develop community-driven identity solutions that simplify and enhance the advertising experience for publishers, advertisers and consumers, all the while respecting data privacy. LiveIntent’s Authenticated Bridge framework provides an identity solution that is reliable, transparent, and streamlined.
He further added,
In addition to helping publishers make their inventory more accessible and useful to advertisers, people-based identifiers improve the end user’s digital media experience.
Meanwhile, many independent players like AT&T, Live Ramp, and the Trade Desk have built different IDs in the replacement of cookies and are eager to offer their offerings. Google has also built its own ID tech and solutions under Privacy Sandbox but the industry is calling for governance with rising concerns of continued dominance from the duopoly Google and Facebook.
Exit Lockdown. Enter Reality – What Comes Next?
10 weeks. 70 days. 1680 hours. Far too many Netflix binges to mention. Meaningless stats at any other time, but in the context of the coronavirus, it’s a stark reminder of our time in lockdown. It’s strange to think that we’ve spent over two months in self-isolation, practising social distancing and learning how to re-interact with everyone around us.
Businesses have moved online, companies have shifted their models, employees have become tech evangelists quicker than anyone would have anticipated. In essence, we’ve been living a do or die mentality during this pandemic, so now that economies around the globe are beginning to open up, what comes next?
I could put my Nostradamus hat on again and make a load of predictions, but really, what’s the point in that? No-one knows what lies ahead, the situation is changing too quickly, with multiple factors at play and an unpredictable virus that doesn’t want to play by society’s rules. The only thing we can be certain of right now is uncertainty, as annoying as that is to admit. We can’t control the environment in which we operate, but we can look at what’s happening to use as a barometer for the trends currently shaping our industry.
The Golden Ecommerce Opportunity
“While the world falls apart, the stock market – and especially Ad Tech – keeps on pumping”. Considering the ripple effect that has been felt throughout every sector, at first glance, this may seem like a stretch, however, the sentiment on Wall Street surrounding digital media, and by extension, Ad Tech is undeniably positive.
Facebook reported flat revenue year over year in April, not usually a cause for celebration, but amid nationwide lockdowns, investors are confident in the platform’s ability to rebound. Similarly, Google and Snapchat beat analysts’ expectations, however, a tougher Q2 is expected. It’s a realistic snapshot of the peaks and troughs that have become commonplace during the pandemic, and as consumer behavior patterns continue to change, the major walled gardens will find new and more innovative ways to gain market share.
You only need to look at how the duopoly has applied itself during the crisis. Gold stars all around. Announcements from Facebook have come thick and fast over the past few weeks, with everything from their Giphy acquisition to the launch of Messenger Rooms and its sister app, CatchUp for video calls, creating a buzz. And amid the fluff – their Bitmoji-inspired Avatar app is a prime example – came what we were all waiting for: a real and very viable move into online commerce.
Facebook ‘Shops’ will allow small businesses to build online stores on both Facebook and Instagram, and in the future, will extend this feature to its Instagram Direct, WhatsApp, and Messenger platforms. Products can also be tagged during live broadcasts, and if Zuckerberg’s estimations are accurate, with some 800 million people already engaging in live video sessions daily across Facebook and Instagram, the opportunity here is huge.
According to Deutsche Bank’s Lloyd Walmsley, Shops has the potential to drive as much as $30 billion in incremental revenue – the bulk coming through further advertising opportunities. This makes sense when you consider Facebook’s rationale in enabling eCommerce across all of its platforms in this way; the closer the consumers are to checkout, the more willing advertisers are to spend. That’s probably why Bezos is laughing all the way to the bank as Amazon’s ad business continues to skyrocket. Of course, Amazon isn’t immune to the fallout either. Investors were told in no uncertain terms to ‘take a seat’ during the Q1 earnings report, amid challenging trading conditions, a pullback from some advertisers, and pressure on price. Still, with a reported 44% growth in Q1 and continuing strong traffic to the site, Amazon will be a thorn in the duopoly’s side for a long time yet. Google, much like Facebook, is looking to guard against this Amazonian invasion. The platform recently added organic listings to its Shopping site, offering retailers exposure to millions of daily shopping searches, while users will have access to a wider range of purchase options. On the surface, it’s likely to gain Google’s market share and advertising dollars over time and has the added bonus of taking aim at Amazon’s convenience model by competing on variety.
Even ‘smaller’ companies are looking to get into the retail game. Criteo continued its move away from retargeting, launching a self-serve ad platform for its retail media network. It’s particularly shrewd given how valuable retail media is right now. As eCommerce continues to surge in lockdown, traditional media budgets are being funneled this way to capitalize on the opportunity in real-time. The ‘Always On’ Mentality at the outset of the coronavirus, programmatic was one of the first to be hit. Brands paused their online campaigns; the default ‘easy’ option, as opposed to reviewing their other marketing channels. However, programmatic has proved to be adaptable, resilient, and flexible in the wake of continued challenges and pressures. It is already rebounding, and I believe digital and eCommerce will take an even larger share of overall advertising in the long run.
Still, even prior to this, publishers were being cautious with their investments and not capitalizing on the programmatic opportunity quickly enough. Of course, change has now been forced at every level. Digitization is a requirement and businesses no longer have the luxury of waiting things out. The nature of operating in 2020 is that you have to be ‘always on’. Adapt. Review. Adapt. Review. There’s no room for complacency.
For my part, I’d say on balance, I’m a pretty optimistic person. Look for the opportunity, acknowledge the risk, but be ready to take action, and that hasn’t changed in the past three months. What we’ll all need to be careful of as things begin to move again is abandoning the ‘critical change’ mindset we have adopted as standard during the pandemic.
Jeff Bezos “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
It’s probably more morbid than I would have put it, but he has a point. No more stasis. Let’s make every day count.
Ayman Haider
CEO at MMP World Wide – Board Member at IAB MENA
Wassim Mneimneh is a CEO at MMP Worldwide and a board member at IAB MENA. A dedication of a lifetime to career in advertising with a passion for tech, and focus on driving the transformation, implementation, and conversation on the value of programmatic and its ability to rebuild trust and safety for the media industry.
A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020
AdTech or Advertising Technology did around $800 Billion Worth Of Business In the US alone in 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
Are you trying to understand ad tech? Just as advertising is the business of making advertisements, ad tech is the business of using technology to make advertisements faster, quicker, and efficient. The business is driven by powerful algorithms and data points. While it is not rocket science, but for the uninitiated, it can be challenging to understand what is ad tech and how its product and services work.
The ad tech industry fuels the global economy with big investments, employment, and ad spend. Digital advertising has reached new heights of complexity, with the rise of programmatic advertising, AI, and automated interactions between computer systems reducing human intervention. Today’s omnichannel ad campaigns reaching to different platforms all at once from publishers’ websites, mobile apps, social media to search engines. Campaigns using tailor-made and highly targeted ads to reach audiences. This process involves many participants- advertisers, publishers to third-party vendors. The technology used in advertising to store, manage, and deploy data is far more sophisticated.
This guide will give you a sneak-peek into the world of technological advertising and understand the growing ad tech industry. As you read further, you will understand the ever-changing ad tech ecosystem.
What is Ad Tech?
Ad Tech also is known as Advertising Technology covers a range of tools and software that can be helpful for brands and agencies to plan, strategize, and manage all digital advertising activities.
The AdTech ecosystem consists of two major entities – the advertiser (Demand-side) and the publisher(Supply-side).
On one hand, advertisers want to run effective campaigns and optimize their budgets to reach the target audience, gain customer insights, and measure ROI.
Whereas, on the other hand, publishers cater to the need of advertisers and generate revenue through ads by displaying ads on their publications like websites, apps, etc, increase ad impressions, bids for ad slots and visitor insights. These are significant factors that publishers need to consider to maintain the platform User Interface (UI).
Adtech helps advertisers and publishers achieve their goals in harmony by providing solutions that meet the demands of both parties. A few examples of AdTech platforms include Pubmatic, Adroll, MediaMath, SmartyAds, and many more.
Programmatic Advertising Explained
After a brief understanding of ad tech, let’s step into the world of programmatic. You will come across concepts like programmatic advertising, Real-time bidding, and programmatic direct. Let’s discuss it:
- Programmatic Advertising Definition:
It is projected to be the game-changer for digital advertising. Programmatic automates the process of buying and selling online advertising space with the help of technology and data. This means, with the introduction of programmatic publishers, advertisers or agencies don’t have to sit across to discuss ad size, rates, et. Ad buying is done through algorithms and data insights.
- Programmatic Direct:
This a type of Programmatic digital advertising, where a publisher bypasses auction and reserves a portion or entire ad inventory for a particular buyer or advertiser at a fixed cost per mile. (CPM). Put simple, here the buyer and seller are known to each other and the ad placement is done programmatically.
- Real-Time Bidding (RTB):
Another type of programmatic digital advertising and also known as an open auction. RTB is when inventory prices are decided through an auction in real-time and open to both advertisers and publishers. This is the most feasible and preferable method of programmatic ad-buying because of scalability and flexibility.
The AdTech EcoSystem
The process of digital media buying is similar to the traditional media value chain except AdTech has multiple components in the ecosystem to keep the management of advertising campaigns easy for demand and supply-side platforms. Here are the key components of the AdTech supply chain:
1.Media agency: Responsible to allocate the advertiser’s expenditure budget across the channel. It is not involved in the creative aspect of ad campaigns.
2.Agency Trading Desk (ATD): Plans, buys, and manages ads across different platforms and is a set of services provided by the media agency.
3.Demand-side Platform (DSP): An essential platform for advertisers to buy, search, display video mobile ads. It enables advertisers to buy ad placements in real-time on the publisher websites made available by ad exchange and networks. Some of the DSP players are Simplifi, Smarty Ads, App Nexus, Double Click, and more.
4.Data Management Platform (DMP): DMP’s collect data from sources like websites, apps, social networks, campaigns, CRM’s, and more. Using AI and big data analytics to gather first and third-party data, advertisers, and marketers rely on them. DMP players are Lotame, Oracle Blue Kai, SAS data management and more
5.Ad Networks: The unsold inventory will be bought by ad networks from publishers and try to sell to advertisers using their technology. The popular programmatic advertising platforms for the ad networks are Taboola, Google Double Click Ad Exchange, Rocket Fuel, and more.
6.Ad Exchange: A dynamic platform to buy and sell ad impressions between advertisers and publishers without any intermediaries. Open X, App Nexus, Rubicon Project Exchange are examples of programmatic advertising platforms.
7.Supply Side Platform (SSP): The platform allows publishers to sell display, mobile ad impressions to potential buyers in real-time. Some of the key SSP players are MoPub, AerServ, App Nexus Publisher SSP, and more.
8.Ad Server: This platform is used by advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and ad agencies to run their campaigns. It determines which ad will be displayed on a website and also collect ad performances data such as clicks and impressions Double click for publishers, OPen X Ad server, Ad butler, and more are the examples.
Learn more: Programmatic Advertising Platforms in 2020: A Complete Guide
Is Programmatic advertising worth it?
The programmatic advertising statistics say it all. According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019, 69% of digital media will be programmatic in 2020.
- The total amount spent programmatically will exceed US$100bn for the first time in 2019, reaching US$106bn by the end of the year, and will rise to US$127bn in 2020 and US$147bn in 2021.
- 72% of digital media will be programmatic in 2021
- Ad spends growth is slowing down to 22% in 2019 due to industry challenges of privacy and supply-chain.
- Brands need to develop new targeting techniques using first-party data and customer data platforms in response to the ongoing death of the cookie.
Programmatic Display Advertising fastest-growing segment.
- The ascent of programmatic display advertising has been rapid. In 2012, only 10.4 % of global digital display spend was programmatic. However, it ballooned to 65.3% in 2019 and it is estimated that the share of programmatic display advertising will grow 69.2 5 and 72% in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
- How does it translate in dollars? In 2012, total digital ad spend was $37.8 billion and the programmatic display market was $3.9 million. Fast forward to today, digital display ad spend is $162.3 billion, out of which $106 billion is invested in programmatic display advertising. In 2021, global digital display ad spend is estimated to reach $204 billion, with $147.1 billion going to be programmatic share.
Programmatic marketing by country
One of the benefits of programmatic technology is it shows real-time data that helps companies take swift actions to adjust their strategy as per customer requirements. Digital marketers are considering buying programmatic media in-house due to its transparency. Programmatic has undergone massive growth in the following 6 countries out of which the UK and the US are the most advanced programmatic markets in the share of digital media.
As per eMarketer forecast, Programmatic ad spending will reach $59.45 billion in 2019, accounting for 84.9% of the US digital display ad market. It is estimated that 87.5%, or $81 billion, of all US digital display advertisements, will be bought via automated channels in 2021.
The above programmatic advertising statistics prove that the investment has increased Y-o-Y and marketers prefer programmatic advertising to buy digital display ads. Marketers are increasingly allocating their advertising budgets to digital advertising channels as it provides precise data that helps to reach customers effectively.
Learn more: 5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged in AdTech Industry
Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two buzzwords in recent times. And why not, as it brings efficiency in whatever we do.
However, AdTech is a messy market now. Ironically, the good and bad part of AdTech is the abundance of data. True, we certainly have all the information to better understand the customers but most marketers aren’t aware of how to leverage the data and use it forward.
The way you advertise-is going to change extremely right before your eyes- thanks to Artificial Intelligence. Not all in the AdTech world have the analytical skills to evaluate the big data as not many are trained to use it and are misinterpreting them.
Adtech partnering with AI can help lower CPC prices, higher click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and better ROI. Let’s check out how AI can help the Adtech industry find better solutions in the following areas.
- AI in Ads Positioning
Developers don’t need to sit and determine which ad position will drive maximum revenue for the website. With the help of AI, employing machine learning algorithms study historical data to find relevant ads for the targeted user group.
Adtech has not used heatmaps previously but AI algorithms use them to learn where the visitors on the website are going and present them with the relevant ads. AI will help marketers to find the best ad positions by studying the maps in detail.
- AI in Ad Network Selection
There are many Ad Networks that provide different kinds of ads to websites owners and required to sort ads according to the websites. This is called Ad mediation and apt to earn high revenue for the websites.
By employing AI for ad optimization it reduces human effort by using a data-oriented approach that includes data, facts, and intelligence to make sure only relevant ads reach the end-user. Data will be user or website’s past history and facts will be website content, geo, and timing. Machine learning algorithms are employed to enhance the best ad-user match.
- Analytics
In the Adtech world, data analytics is not ‘taken seriously’ and publishers.are not happy about it. The AI-based approach will drive reporting and analytics to new levels.
Analytics will help publishers understand the content that drives the audience, placement of the CTA button to turn one time users into loyal users, and increase traffic. It will be a win-win situation for AdTech and parties- publishers, platforms, and users.
AI is the Future of Advertising
Today, digital advertising cannot exist without AI. Behind most online ads are the sophisticated delivery systems in place powered by AI. These systems place the ads before users, the coordination process happens in real-time and generally is automatic. It’s called programmatic advertising.’
According to eMarketer, 86.2% of all digital display ads will be bought via automated channels and nearly $19 billion in additional spending will enter programmatic display platforms between 2018-2020.
Also, 90% of mobile display ads are bought programmatically. On the other hand, AI also powers advertising products offered by Facebook and Google. In 2017, 90% of the new advertising business was captured by these firms.
In recent times, brands are under more pressure to deliver relevant, personalized, and contextual ads to individual customer preferences.
How AI makes Programmatic Advertising better
More companies are turning to AI for creating advertising relevance at scale.
For instance, if you want to advertise on Facebook,-an AI-powered algorithm determines the relevance of the score of your ad. This means that the score impacts the ad delivery directly and influenced by the experience of the ad delivery to Facebook users. Expect a low score if the ad is not liked or is irrelevant.
This decision is made by machine and is beyond your brand’s control independent of strategic or creative decisions
A marketing company like Phrasee launched an AI tool that writes Facebook and Instagram ads. The AI tool assesses a brand’s voice and copy, then the machine writes the ad that performs better than human-written ads. Recently, it helped reduce one client’s cost per lead by 31%. Another AI-powered tool is Albert that helps automate media buying, testing, and optimization. It enhances ad performance and delivers relevant ads to the right person. This shows that relevance at scale is possible in advertising.
Emerging Programmatic AdTech Trends 2020
1. AI in Programmatic Advertising:
Technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI) and machine learning (ML)have involved programmatic ad buying or bid optimization. Programmatic campaigns are used by companies for more targeted net across platforms. By 2020, it is expected that there will be a shift towards automating technologies like AI and ML to get the most from data.
2. First Part Data Move Made Important by GDPR:
After the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, last year on cookie crumble or removal of third party cookies is gradually turning out to be beneficial. The regulations protecting the privacy of user data initially looked limiting to ad tech experts but is resulting in cleaner and more reliable data over time.
Learn more: Digital Advertising Industry Plans To Replace Cookies With First-Party Data
3. Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) and Mobile Location:
Digital DOOH combined with mobile location data has the potential to help marketers to drive conversions in the offline world. Integrated ‘home-to-out-of-home’ programmatic advertising approach provides a smooth experience to the customers.
4. Voice-activated Ads:
The adoption of voice-based to in-home smart devices has grown rapidly. Gartner predicted by 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done through voice-first browsing. Amazon sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in 2018 compared to 2017. A recent survey by VoiceBot.AI revealed 25% of respondents orders everyday household items through voice assistants followed by apparel and games and entertainment.
Programmatic advertising helps marketers to optimize these ad spaces across in-home smart devices, to on-app audio ad opportunities, and connect to consumers through in-store ads, ads in elevators and taxis, and more.
5. Wearables will enhance programmatic advertising:
Wearables collect data on location, lifestyle, health metrics, and more. The market penetration of smartwatches has grown multifold over the years and programmatic advertising is already making its way into this medium. For instance, it helps advertisers run banner promos to customers on their Samsung or Sony smartwatches. The wearable ecosystem has a huge potential to grow and programmatic adtech can bring greater opportunities.
6. 5G in programmatic advertising:
The high speed and no buffering will encourage the rise of more users to spend time on videos on mobile devices. It will enhance other technologies such as AR-enabled ad displays, VR without headsets, and innovative new digital outdoor mediums.
This will give programmatic advertising new opportunities to run more interactive ads without any lags across mediums. By 2024, the use of 5G in AdTech is predicted to grow to 1.4 billion.
7. Evolution of Personalization:
With Gen Z and Millennials- the biggest demographics -personalization is a priority as they like all things customized. Personalization in advertising is going to be inevitable as the choices of the new generation are different. Therefore, programmatic customization by advertisers is increasing offering personalized, relevant messaging to their target group.
8. Blockchains and Ads.xt:
Ad frauds are increasing over the past few years. A cybersecurity firm Cheq reports that ad fraud damages will touch $26 billion in 2020, $29 billion by 2021, and $32 billion the year after that.
The only way to handle the frauds is by bringing transparency in programmatic advertising. Blockchain and Ads.txt (an Interactive Advertising Bureau initiative – Authorized Digital Sellers) can help to remove unrequired middleman, domain spoofing, and verification of publishers and allow transactions using cryptocurrencies.
Learn More: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying
9. Programmatic TV, podcasts and audio Ads set to grow:
The content on TV has changed drastically. There is a paradigm shift in TV viewing from cable TV to over-the-top(OTT) like Amazon Prime or Netflix via an internet connection.
Programmatic advertising has a larger role to play to ensure marketers get the best of both worlds. Programmatic TV is also going to get more important with its data-driven approach for buying and delivering ads.
Programmatic in podcasts and audio advertising is also growing. Apps like Spotify and Soundcloud are seeing more user acceptance and a new advertising landscape is being created for companies to monetize on.
10. Omnichannel Programmatic:
Forrester defines omnichannel marketing as ‘the practice of digitally sequencing advertising across channels, which is connected, relevant, and consistent with the customer’s stage in their life cycle.’ This is how programmatic advertising is going to be in 2020 and beyond.
A single marketing resource or an ad can be customized programmatically suiting various platforms through programmatic AdTech.
11. Agencies to work on outcome-based pay:
Discussions are making rounds to switch to an outcome-based remuneration model. With increasing ad frauds and agencies promise programmatic tech, advertisers fear how their budgets were used and where their ads placed. There was a lot of wastage in the space. Media buying companies started giving outcome-based remuneration more prominence. Gradually, advertisers would like to see the full cost chain of their programmatic buys, pushing agencies to outcome-based pay.
12. In House programmatic advertising v/s agency.
An IAB report suggests that nearly 40% executing programmatic trading via in house and 50% publishers also have an in-house model. This means advertisers are looking for more transparency, control of their ad strategies, and outcome.
It makes more sense to have an in-house team for strategizing programmatic ads and an agency partner for implementing parts of it instead of having a full-stack programmatic AdTech in house.
Wrapping up
Yes, Adtech is complicated but the best part is that it allows integrating the whole toolset into a single system. According to Zenith Media, the ad spends on digital media will reach $329 billion in 2021. However, there are major concerns and challenges -Ad Fraud, transparency, and privacy issues need immediate action.
There have been big changes and improvements over what advertisers and publishers used to have earlier but it still needs more work and their expertise to handle the challenges and resolve for good.
5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Advertising has come a long way from the early ’70s and with technological shifts, there are incredible options to reach the target customers effectively. We have witnessed the rise of programmatic advertising with the advancement in the digital world.
For the uninitiated, programmatic advertising can be described as automatic buying and optimizing digital campaigns through real-time auctions, where ads are bought at the same time when a visitor loads the website instead of buying directly from the publishers without human interference.
Programmatic advertising is becoming a star strategy and businesses spend almost $60 billion every year. It is forecasted by 2021, 88% of all digital display ad spending will flow via automation.
Explore these five programmatic ad case studies to comprehend how brands are building compelling and successful campaigns.
1. BoxFresh
Challenge:
The men’s footwear brand had lost ground to sports brands like Nike and Adidas over the last couple of years because of its reliance on brick and mortar stores over online sales. The brand aimed to re-establish its brand in the UK and German markets, establish a connection to drive loyalty and repeat business with its target customers.
It concentrated on creating branded casual men’s footwear but reached a point where one in four consumers preferred Boxfresh for their purchase.
Solution:
The brand focused on video-led campaigns advocating their brand ethos- simplicity, value for money, nonconformity and authenticity which are in alignment with target consumers’ own values. Ads on Facebook were segmented based on demographics and interests as well as through first-party based lookalike audiences build. Video campaigns provided tailored messages to the audience’s stage in the buying cycle.
With the newly launched e-commerce website, the brand initially did not retarget cart abandoners and purchasers but model and optimize lookalike audiences prospecting campaigns.
Result:
With a programmatic display campaign, the brand soared above Google benchmarks disrupting the competitive market. The assurance that the brand is connected with the audience own values, display adverts had a click-through rate (CTR) 233%higher than Google’s benchmarks in the UK and 800%higher in Germany. 85% of the users who visited the site through prospecting activities are new users.
The digital agency Europe regional head added,
“The storytelling technique has had incredibly positive effects on the creative performance, which has resulted in great return on spend for Boxfresh. However, it’s important to remember that display is not the final touchpoint in the purchasing journey. Using Cadence, Rakuten Marketing’s data insights and attribution platform, revealed conversion rates for SEO and PPC grew by 169% and 50% in the UK when display campaigns ran alongside other channels. Likewise, the average order value increased by 20%.”
2. ASUS
Challenge:
ASUS has barely 0.3% market share in the Indian Smartphone market. 34% of sales are online and have more than 35+ handsets. With a low market share, it is important to revive the brand and plan a programmatic campaign to attract customers at the buying stage and create brand awareness.
Solution:
The brand integrated real-time data to send feedback on the effectiveness of each audience combination to web ASUS with their OCMPID.
When a user likes something, he adds to the cart. This shows that the user has a higher chance of buying it. On the other hand, there is a chance that he could accept another better deal for a more fitting product. Therefore, the best way was to target the audience through ads based on the cart.
The brand divided the audience into various segments based on – price range, featured buying habits and buying characteristics of the user on Flipkart.
These ads were programmed to reach the consumer on a real-time basis and here it is – when a user adds an ASUS phone in the cart, the brand was informed of the effectiveness of the creative audience combination.
For instance, if a user adds Xiaomi with 3500 mAh battery, ASUS would target them with ads that had 5000 mAh batteries at an even better price.
Results:
Due to a real-time programmatic approach, ASUS met its target to sell more than 1 million units leading to targeting efficiency went up by 3 times. In less than a year, the ASUS market share rose from 0.3 to 3%, a 10x growth.
3. The Economist:
Challenge:
To increase the subscriber base and grab the reader’s attention who are reluctant to try the Economist. Using creative programmatic display, the goal is to reach 650,000 new prospects and stimulate a change in perception.
Solution:
The campaign utilized Economist content and headlines that contained humor, wit, and sparked curiosity. The publication analyzed the extensive audience data which included information on how subscribers responded to the publication’s web and mobile app. Using this data, the Economist determined what content attracted and when. The idea was to link Economist content to the stories ‘the reluctant readers’ were presently reading.
The advertising creative was built in real-time. It matched viewers’ profile and page context to the Economist’s feed before serving an ad to the right people with the right context. For instance, someone could see a featured ad that linked an Economist’s story on US cops using firearms to the story of a police shooting in the Guardian.
Results:
On a £1.2 budget,
- 3.6 million taking actions
- 650,000 new prospects
- ROI of 10.1
The Economists followed up this display campaign with another focus especially on millennials and social networks. It won the 2016 Gold Best use of Programmatic award.
4.Missing People
Challenge:
British charity ‘Missing People’ is an ideal example of how to maximize a small programmatic budget. The charity needs to rescue all the missing children across the UK. With the use of programmatic OOH advertising, it intends to increase reach and impact.
Solution:
Programmatic OOH will help the charity to target those who might miss or disregard print appeal. It also helped to understand that people respond to messages relevant to their area in which they live. And through programmatic it could make a more targeted and location-based appeal.
The move from print to digital was crucial for the charity as it helped to save lives and allowed ads to be adept, creative changing once a child was found.
Result:
Ross Miller, director of fundraising and communication said, “the use of e programmatic use of out-of-home increased the response rate from 50% to 70%.”
5. O2
Challenge:
In 2016, O2 intended to make its “tariff refresh” TV ad more engaging and attractive for a mobile audience. It also wanted to repurpose its TV ads and make them interesting for mobile users.
Solution:
O2 created a system whereby it could take data about mobile usage-device, location, and others to offer personalized messages and video ads based on the user’s profiles.
More than 1000 versions of personalized video ads were made that integrated real-time with the user’s device and location.
Coinciding with the company’s sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup, it launched a website for the users to create rugby-inspired avatars. Using data from the website, O2 launched a campaign targeting those who accessed the website, giving them a personalized video ad and addressed them by their first name and invited to visit the avatar site. It also included a personalized call-to-action button to know whether they have already created the avatar or abandoned the process before finishing.
Result:
Personalized ads had a 128 percent click-through rate and an 11 percent increase in engagement.
Wrapping up
So, are you ready to use programmatic advertising? Well, programmatic adverts have immense potential for all kinds of business in any verticals. Simple but brilliant creative programmatic campaigns can be created to reach the right audience.
Lotame Introduces Cookie Free Data Technology For Publishers and Marketers
Lotame, the world’s leading unstacked data solutions company is looking to help publishers, marketers, media, and agencies to leverage their first-, second-, and third-party data to create and analyze audience segments with a new suite of data enrichment products called ‘Lotame Panorama’.
The suite will help users find customers, increase engagement and growth revenue across the cookie challenged web browsers like Safari, Chrome and Firefox, mobile devices, and OTT environments.
Jason Downie, chief revenue officer, Lotame, said,
“First-party data is a valuable asset, but unfortunately it doesn’t provide the scale marketers need. Bridging together customers’ online and offline lives has been a persistent industry dilemma that was made even more complicated with recent browser changes. To solve for this, we developed Panorama which enables a fuller view of activity that is actionable across a connected ecosystem, even in cookie-challenged or first-party-cookie-only environments.”
Unwrapping data enrichment services
Panorama offers two solutions, one for marketers and agencies, the other for publishers and media companies. Lotame has unveiled three data enrichment services powered by Cartographer, Lotame’s ID graph technology.
- Panorama Insights: It offers a varied set of curated data tools and analysis for better storytelling, prospecting, segmentation, and modeling without cookies needed. It connects users’ first-party data to second and third-party data across the web, mobile, and OTT devices from 250+ online and offline data providers.
- Panorama Buyer: It ensures that media buyers connect customers’ attributes across first-, second- and third-party data to create an addressable audience in the cookie-challenged environment.
- Panorama Seller: This allows publishers to monetize their inventory across the web, mobile, and OTT through direct or programmatic advertising. It also enables publishers to set exact CPM’s in cookie challenged environments.
Also Read: Prebid Server Aims To Ease Header Bidding For Programmatic Advertisers
Panorama launches as publishers and others that rely on extensive data sets may have to struggle to find the scale they need. Lotame has appointed Ruby Brenden as head of data products to drive Panorama Insights forward. Brendan said,
“I have spent the last decade helping innovative marketing companies launch products. I am excited to launch Panorama, a solution that is exactly what the industry needs as third-party cookies start fading out. Insights will give marketers and agencies a single, trusted place to uncover relevant data stories and build smarter, addressable audiences, which means better advertising for consumers.”
Customers Signing for new Lotame Panorama products
Companies like Procter & Gamble and IPG’s Cadreon have already signed up for the new Lotame Panorama products.
Clients agree and testify,
Paras Mehta, Business Head – India, at Cadreon said,
“Understanding customer attributes and behaviors is key to our data-driven strategy when working with advertisers. Data enrichment using high-quality second and third-party data like Lotame’s enables us to draw insights we wouldn’t have access to with first-party data alone. We look forward to leveraging more of Lotame’s data solutions to deliver the exceptional service and results Cadreon is known for.”
Tim Hung, marketing director and lead of media, P&G Hong Kong & Taiwan said,
“Improving the lives of consumers around the world isn’t just our mission, but our daily practice..This requires getting to know those customers through the use of high-quality second and third-party data vetted and verified by Lotame. As cookie blocking becomes more prevalent, data enrichment solutions like Panorama will become even more important for global brands like P&G to understand customers and engage with them in meaningful and respectful ways everywhere they are.”
Partners at launch include Domo amongst others. Jeff Skousen, GM, North American Corp/Ent Sales, at Domo said “We’re excited to partner with Lotame to power Panorama Insights.” He further added,
“By dynamically integrating data and delivering live visualizations, Lotame is providing brands bespoke audience real-time insights in a digestible, actionable format to improve analysis, prospecting, segmentation, and data modeling.”
Prebid Server Aims To Ease Header Bidding For Programmatic Advertisers
Prebid Server is an open-source server-to-server header bidding solution. The prebid server gives publishers access to the largest header bidding marketplace. It’s free to use, transparent, and integrated with more than 150- demand partners and many managed solution partners. Michael Richardson, Senior Director, Product Line Management, AppNexus said,
It is an infrastructure of a streamlined adtech ecosystem that maximizes value for everyone, not just Google.
According to Prebid.org, a prebid server improves your page’s performance by running the header bidding auction on a server. This will improve your page’s load time, which should improve your users’ experience.
In recent years, it has grown alongside the programmatic market and extended support for native, video, apps, and connected TV. Sellers are used to the benefits of the unified auction offered by Prebid by adopting multiple wrappers across multiple formats. Now there are calls for simplicity from buy-side as well as platform-supported, server-side Prebid solutions to reduce the burden on publishers.
Publishers dealing with multiplying wrapper formats
Prebid’s biggest asset ‘open source’ is a limitation for some sellers. The open-source nature of Prebid leads to transparency, which means publishers should take the matter in their own hands or find an expert technology partner.
Publishers lack the expertise to manage Prebid and its open values and eventually, this has led some of them to embrace proprietary wrappers. But proprietary wrappers have their drawbacks – the disparity in counting methodology and payment can result in buyers and sellers struggling to transact. Also, some wrappers exclude certain types of demand from participating – in cases where internal teams haven’t updated or built third-party adapters to integrate proprietary wrappers into the auction.
Many publishers have been running Prebid, Amazon TAM, and Google Open Bidding simultaneously. As a result, DSPs are receiving impressions once from each SSP, multiplied by the wrappers. The growing dissatisfaction in the DSP community over duplication requests and declining to participate in Open Bidding led to initiating mandates that the SSP community and publishers pick a single wrapper format.
In the upcoming period, it will be clear how the industry adapts but many publishers are expected to choose Prebid as a primary wrapper.
Also Read: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying
Prebid server for Mobiles and CTV, Easy-to-use formats
A narrative was out in the early evolution of header bidding that “server-to-server was the future.” By running of an auction on the server-side than the user’s device- logic is- server-side heading creates a unified auction in a new environment, reduces latency, and improves user experience.
This approach has three issues – publishers couldn’t run easily as client-side, low participation of bidders, and required an additional user-match layer, reducing revenue.
Prebid Server is the solution to all these problems. Its 60 bidding partners show demand is no more a concern. Prebid sever will not need an additional user-match layer longer as cookies decommission, Prebid Server’s advantage in user identity only grows. It also allows header bidding in mobile applications and connected TV.
Many leading providers are investing in solutions to combine the Prebid server with their own technology making it easier for sellers to run server-side header bidding across all formats and retaining the benefits of an open-source wrapper.
Future of Prebid Server
It is exciting to witness the years of investment in Prebid paying off and the Prebid.org community growing. Publishers and Adtech partners working on the web inventory have adopted header bidding as an important technology in their monetization stack.
Looking forward to seeing how TV programmers and distributors leverage Prebid to optimize their business. It will be interesting to see how different wrappers start using the bid data, and apply data and machine algorithms to further optimize for higher revenues.
Publishers looking to contribute to Prebid and learn more about it, join Prebid.org as a member company.
DSPs Fobid Bid Duplication: New Fairplay In Programmatic Advertising.
Publishers use the exchange to bid on their behalf for ad impressions. Exchanges try playing smart by trafficking multiple bids for the same ad impression, to increase the probability of getting the bid. Their smartness failed them in this economic downfall and guided them towards extinction.
Due to high traffic, the cost to request bids has increased. The demand-side platforms were already under pressure, and economic situations made things critical. This led to the pounding of the concept of bid-duplication. Now, MediaMath is establishing a new supply chain that won’t include SSPs selling duplicate impressions. To make an example of that, last month, Trade-desk had already given notices to all the SSPs to demolish all the duplicate bids which are there for the same auction. The Trade-desk gave SSPs a two-week time frame which is further extended, but DSPs are expecting the SSPs to fall in line in time.
Joey Livesey, The Trade Desk director of partnerships EMEA said: “By tackling the bid duplication problem we’re hopeful that it will give publishers visibility into an egalitarian measurement of their SSP partnerships as adding another isn’t necessarily going to drive additional revenue for them in a big way.”
This could be a problem for some SSPs. As, Karim Rayes, chief product officer at Tremor International’s stated: “The clampdown does affect our SSP — as it does every other SSP out there — as we cannot send the full breadth of our supply to our buyers using these DSPs.”
Since the emergence of header bidding four years ago, publishers like Trade-desks were rewarded by DSPs for auction duplication. More bids for the same impression meant more revenue generations for a DSP. This crackdown of Trade-desk doesn’t remove the incentives completely, but in a manner reduces the extent of rewarding publishers for the usage of the same exchange several times.
Founder of ad tech consultancy, AdProfs, Ratko Vidakovic said: “I understand the economic rationale for why The Trade Desk is trying to flush outbid duplication but they’re doing so in a crude manner.”
Further, he stated that “The Trade Desk is asking publishers and SSPs to chop off branches to their supply in a way that treats them all equally when they’re not. One SSP might sell specific inventory, for example, so it’s just not about these partnerships being used to serve multiple bids requests for the same impression.”
It might be one of the reasons why MediaMath is applying a different approach for the SSPs it works with to suppress the use of bid-duplication. Now, DSPs will only be allowing those exchanges to place a bid that doesn’t barter various impressions to the identical publisher.
Jeremy Steinberg, from MediaMath, who is the global head of the ecosystem stated: “We’re more focused on precision when it comes to bidding duplication.”
Further, he said, “The aim is to work with SSPs and publishers on a partner basis to understand how we can leverage performance data alongside tools like sellers.json and SupplyChain Object to understand what’s the best impression for our clients.”
However, SSPs gave a positive response to the Trade-desk crackdown. CEO of Engine Group’s SSP EMX Global, Michael Zacharski, welcomed the decision as a positive approach towards a non-duplicative inventory.
“We believe that one impression should be sold one time from an individual exchange, but I don’t think we are yet in a world where publishers sell inventory through just one exchange or source,” stated Zcharski. “Cost reductions up the funnel on the buy-side will shift dollars towards stronger alliances between buyers and sellers creating a need for more custom and flexible marketplaces on top of a simplified supply chain.”
Integrating multiple wrappers to duplicate bids made events doubtful, and unfairly exploited for programmatic auctions. This kind of process will no longer be tolerated and will be screened efficiently. But, the basic proposition of heading bidding — allowing publishers to execute concurrent auctions for analogous impressions — isn’t going off.
Founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media, Chris Kane stated:
“What’s clear is that The Trade Desk is using its market power to change incentives for publishers and ad exchanges.” He further added, “Sellers will do what buyers reward, and we are beginning to see buyers reward more efficient supply paths.”
Publishers Withdraw Ad Inventory From The Market To Protect Ad Prices
Generally, conventional wisdom says a publisher would sell more ad units at a lower price in a weak market. However, publishers are doing the opposite and pulling their inventory to take a short-term revenue hit and protect their inventory price from falling further. This will help their business in the long run by not falling into the trap of price cuts which would be difficult to win back.
Programmatic advertising market operates under an auction system, lower advertiser demand, and higher web traffic to publishers site has pushed programmatic ad CPM’s down by 10%-20%. Since buyers are now more loyal to price than brands, publishers are preventing prices to tank further to a point of devaluing their inventory over the long term. While some publishers are reducing their inventory in the open market to keep the prices from falling further, others are using ad slots to push internal subscriptions or eliminating ad slots from the pages. For instance, Buzzfeed is getting rid of display ads that receive lower viewability scores.
Unfortunately, the publishers are acting independently and not considering the impact on the broader market. They aim to protect their own inventory prices from falling low as they fear it will take a longer time to return to the previous levels especially if advertisers are buying at a bargain now and unwilling to pay more later when things are back to normal.
As quoted by Digiday, Andy Ellenthal, CEO of the ad sales reporting platform STAQ shares a similar opinion and said, When advertisers return to their normal spending amounts, “they’re going to absolutely remember that a publisher was 25 cents [per thousand impressions] in April of 2020.”
As per the above STAQ graph, the average U.S. display ad CPM in the open auction has fallen from a high of $1.34 on March 1 to $0.91 on May 3.
Even though average CPM has bottomed out on April 8 at $0.83, Andy Ellenthal believes CPM’s will not experience a U-shaped recovery but more of an L-shaped recovery, a slow and steady upward trend. This means publishers whose CPM has fallen least will have to cover the shorter route to return to previous prices.
DigiDay interviewed a few publishing executives and one publishing executive said,
“I’ve got to manage my supply to keep it in balance with demand, and demand has fallen so fast that now we’re trying to get ahead of the game. How much supply can we take off the table to control the CPM without actually truly hurting our business more than it’s hurt now?”
A second publisher executive said that the removal of one ad unit across their sites is equivalent to more than 1 billion monthly impressions. It is a generous number but not significant enough to move the market. Media Math’s DSP sees more than 180 billion impressions each day.
On this Ethenall said,
“These publishers always have to strike a balance between fill and yield. Chances are they are not going to fill 100% of their ad slots right now. If you have a billion impressions that go unsold anyway, what’s the value of them if they’re only pulling down pricing for your better impressions?”
Many publishers have adjusted their floor price to a minimum level at which the inventory can be sold. However, the lower ad demand has made the publishers pull inventory and protect prices as inside programmatic advertising, everything revolves around “Price.”
One of the publishers used to increase floor price by 15% every two weeks since the beginning of Q1. However, in the second half of March, a significant number of impressions went unsold. The publisher could have reduced the price to sell his inventory but he didn’t and said, “in no way do I want to drop my floors to 25 cents because I don’t want crappy ads coming in.”
Lower the ad prices, the higher the chances of giving in to undesirable advertisers who can jeopardize the ability to attract genuine advertisers. Publishers use this opportunity of lower demand to seek out prospective advertisers, but they are wary that lower CPM can alleviate advertiser’s interest in doing programmatic direct or private marketplace deals.
Publishers are also looking at this opportunity to experiment repurposing of impressions that can boost their other businesses and become less reliant on advertisers. For instance, if a publisher can see that house ad proclaiming its subscription product can attract more subscribers and yield than those impressions to advertisers, they would monetize on house campaigns and not take revenue from programmatic advertising.