Remember the internet before web browsers? I didn’t think so.
Before the advent of Netscape as the first commercial web browser in 1995, the potential of the internet lay stagnating in technological silos. In his book, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman describes the launch of Netscape in 1995 as one of ten levellers of globalization or “flatteners” that made the world what it is today.
Now, programmatic advertising for mobile finds itself in a similar situation to that of the pre-browser era. There are lots of screens, lots of ways to track users, lots of ways to deliver ads and none of them communicating together to deliver a holistic, customized user-targeted ad experience.
Or as the IAB puts it, “while the potential for mobile advertising is enormous, it is challenged by the lack of tools available to meet advertisers’ needs for targeting their desired audience and tracking the effectiveness of their spend…”
And yet, it’s an exciting time because we can see that potential – while advertising in VR might seem like a futuristic thought, it’s going to happen quicker than you think.
So what’s the solution? At the moment, there isn’t one and in the end it might not be a single “missing link” that creates the final holistic experience. Tech partners will need to work together to find the key that’s going to create the next Netscape. And to some extent we already are. Here are just two innovations being used right now to make technology flatter.
Tracking users: universal logins and device fingerprints.
We’ve all seen the rise of universal logins across the internet. This is when we’re given the option to login to a new online experience using an existing account, whether on Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter. According to the IAB, “This type of tracking is limited to specific vendors, but enables companies with this type of universal login to gather data across applications and devices.”
Another effective way to track users is using device fingerprints. This type of software collects data points on any device in the online environment without the use of cookies. That means that this type of solution can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.
Deploying data to match the ad opportunity: Hadoop and Kafka frameworks.
With so many data points being collected from across devices, it’s important to be able to maximize the value of that data, and it’s open-source frameworks that help us do that. We use what’s called a Hadoop framework to store and aggregate the huge amounts of data ad tech can collect. Kafka frameworks are used to move real-time data feeds, since, in our industry the timing and speed of processing and utilizing data is critical.
What does this mean for publishers and advertisers? There’s a lot we can do with what we have now.
With the tools we have now to track users and deploy data in real-time, a platform like ours can already evaluate tons of strategic data to serve up users a well-targeted experience in real-time. But we’re also pushing towards the next breakthrough. New platforms and new publishers will continue to innovate the communications industry and we must continue to innovate along with. Groups that help standardise technology requirements will help this innovation scale. Organisations such as IAB Europe have helped by simplifying the landscape of mobile ad formats across Europe and reducing the processes and costs related with planning and booking national and Europe-wide brand advertising campaigns with the Mobile Brand Builders ad format recommendation. This helps setup the market for continued growth by getting everyone on the same page. The world of mobile will continue to accelerate and grow. It’s exciting to get up every day and be able to work on new technology that will bring the industry one step closer to a holistic, customized user-targeted ad experience, a tech-flatter world.
I can’t wait to see what that world will look like.
Brussels, 5 July 2016 – The tech and telecom industries call for the e-Privacy Directive to be repealed. We believe that simplifying and streamlining regulation will benefit consumers by ensuring they are provided with a simple, consistent and meaningful set of rules designed to protect their personal data.
At the same time, it will encourage innovation across the digital value chain and drive new growth and social opportunities. This is critical at a time when digital companies are striving to launch new innovative services and working to build a 5G Europe.
In this context, we believe that the review process of the e-Privacy Directive offers a unique opportunity to achieve a simple, clear and horizontal approach to digital regulation. Sector-specific rules on privacy are no longer able to address the challenges of the digital age.
For this reason, we believe that Europe should fully take stock of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which creates a comprehensive set of horizontal rules ensuring high levels of data protection.
During the review of the e-Privacy directive, we believe that the EU should:
Such an approach would also be in line with the Digital Single Market Strategy and would help achieve further concrete steps in the context of the Commission’s REFIT programme.
We believe that the above-mentioned steps would maximise the consistency of the rules, increase clarity for consumers and help Europe unlock new innovation opportunities across the digital value chain.
Get the slides here.
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The following 12 associations have signed this statement:
Application Developers Alliance, Cable Europe, CCIA, COCIR, DIGITALEUROPE, ECTA, EDIMA, ETNO, EuroISPA, IAB Europe, GSMA and EPC.
The AdEx Benchmark 2015 report reveals some of the key milestones of the last ten years culminating in this year’s market value of €36.4bn surpassing the €33.3bn European TV market for the first time. With an increase of 13.0% in 2015, online advertising recorded its sixth consecutive year of double-digit growth. All 27 participating markets recorded positive growth. Twenty of these markets grew double-digit for the second year running (three markets recording 30%+ growth, a further nine showing 20%+ growth and a further eight 10%+ growth).
Top 10 Rankings – year-on-year growth
Digital again drove the overall advertising industry, its 13.0% increase balancing a larger decline of 4.1% registered by other media to arrive at a positive 1.0% growth overall for the total advertising industry against a background of continued low GDP growth.
