In April 2018, IAB Europe and its Education and Training Committee organised a webinar on blockchain, inviting a panel of distinguished speakers to provide more insight into this hot topic, the buzzword de jour in the industry (recording available here). Delving deeper into the discussion surrounding the technology, its application and concerns surrounding its scalability is Hunter Gebron, Director of Strategic Initiatives, MetaX.
Technology empowers institutions and industries to far exceed the limitations of the human mind. No single brain is capable of processing billions of advertising impressions, sorting them categorically, and serving ads to the highest bidder within 100/ms. But bidders and ad servers using the OpenRTB protocol can. The level of scale technology has enabled digital advertising to reach is stupefying.
Scale has fueled an insatiable appetite for more; more data, more analytics, more tools, more jobs and acquisitions, more impressions, more vendors, more money, and lately more congressional hearings.
But scale enabled by technology is a double-edged sword. In one direction it cuts swiftly through the tethers of our human minds limitations. But in the other, it creates problems for the institutions trying to domesticate the tech for their benefit. Scale can be rather hard to tame.
Ad fraud is also exacerbated by technological scale. The digital pipes funnel human and non-human impressions with unbiased expediency, proficiency, and scale. Deciphering what is a bot and what is not? Well, that is somebody else's problem.
According to White Ops, ad fraud happens, “whenever and wherever digital advertising demand outstrips supply.”
Here Blockchain technology has emerged as a foregone conclusion for solving the problems associated with analyzing impressions and data discrepancies. At their core, blockchains are a shared ledger, and so the assumption follows that if everyone is sharing the same ledger, sorting out inconsistencies is no longer problematic. Because if all parties are working from the same shared data set, then there are no inconsistencies. In theory, it sounds great; in practice, it remains unrealized.
The reality is that the sheer number of impressions Ad Tech regularly handles is incompatible with blockchains in their current form. Not to mention blockchains don’t guarantee data provenance, it is entirely possible for data to be compromised before it is added to the shared ledger.
The Ethereum blockchain, for example, is capable of handling somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 transactions per second. To put that in perspective Facebook handles roughly 175k transactions per second.
Anyone standing at the intersection of blockchain technology and digital advertising has undoubtedly observed that the inability for blockchains to scale is a sticking point used by many to negate its viability as a real industry solution.
Yes, the Ethereum community is working tirelessly on scalability solutions like sharding, plasma, and other second layer solutions but that is irrelevant for anyone wanting to utilize blockchain technology right now.
At the time of writing, Ethereum can’t get anywhere near Ad Tech’s voracious impression powered engines of scale. Stopping there and looking no further, however, I would argue is a grave miscalculation about the actual value that blockchains can provide at this very moment.
The Scalability Bargain: Social vs. Transactional
When blockchains take away transactional throughput, they give us back something in return, what Nick Szabo refers to as social scalability.
Social scalability as defined by Szabo “is about the ways and extents to which participants can think about and respond to institutions and fellow participants as the variety and numbers of participants in those institutions or relationships grow. It's about human limitations, not about technological limitations or physical resource constraints.”
As it relates to the digital advertising industry; social scalability comprises the lawyers, accountants, fraud detection analysts, insertion orders, clawbacks, discrepancies, enforcement, arbitration tactics, trade organizations, etc..
It's the cumbersome human element that sorts through the mess left in the wake of ultra-scalable technology and tries to rationalize it all.
Computers can zip an impression halfway around the globe in two-tenths of a second, but at the end of the day, a human still needs to pick up the phone to get paid for it. And oftentimes they don’t, which results in a dispute, commonly involving lawyers and accountants, and that is a social scalability problem born out of a computer science solution.
In many ways, the enhancements provided to us by technology in the form of scalable networks and information flows have placed an inordinate amount of stress on social scalability.
I was reminded of this recently as I sat watching the Facebook congressional hearings. Lawmakers armed with nothing more than a 200-year-old piece of parchment and their human minds, battling against the algorithms used by Cambridge Analytica, and weaponized by massive amounts of Facebook’s user data that are so advanced even their creator Dr. Michael Kosinski admits he doesn't know how they work, was like witnessing social scalability smashing up against technological scalability in a head-on collision at 1,000 mph. The fall out of which will likely result in new regulation.
(Another relevant example of social scalability colliding with technology is the GDPR.)
But the reality is, as Dr. Michael Kosinski points out, the end of privacy is already here. Coming to grips with that revelation is going to become one of the next decades most pressing social and technological concerns.
Public and programmable blockchains like Ethereum provide an iron-clad framework for trust minimization and for reducing heavy social scalability burdens. We need not rely on faulty human institutions to be the arbiters of trust. We can offload trust to the blockchain the same way we offload impressions to bidders, ad servers, and platforms, trading one form of scale for another.
On a blockchain, it’s cryptography that does all of the heavy social scalability lifting, freeing society up from an enormous amount of labor intensive and cost prohibitive human limitations.
“When we can secure the most important functionality of a financial network by computer science rather than by the traditional accountants, regulators, investigators, police, and lawyers, we go from a system that is manual, local, and of inconsistent security to one that is automated, global, and much more secure.” - Nick Szabo
Blockchains have also unlocked the door to cryptoeconomics. A way to align economic incentives, using cryptography, to harness the collective mindshare of individuals spanning the globe towards participating in a shared goal.
The adChain Registry built by MetaX is a Token Curated Registry of publisher domains hosted on the Ethereum blockchain and designed to do just that. It is powered by a utility token called adToken (ADT) that is the economic driver for coordinating a group of unknown participants to come together and curate the contents of said list as judiciously as possible. It is NOT a system that relies on transaction throughput, but it absolutely is one that requires a blockchain.
Many blockchain projects are looking to integrate blockchain technology into the existing Ad Tech stack where they will inevitably run into the transaction throughput brick wall. We at MetaX are focused on reimagining Ad Tech from the ground up, using the blockchain as the technological scaffolding to build new cryptoeconomic structures, all the while keeping the lessons of old top-of-mind and staying grounded in reality regarding what blockchains are truly capable of providing at present.
We are not naive. As novel a concept as token curated registries are, a decentralized white list is not going to solve all of Ad Tech’s problems. The adChain Registry is the first stepping stone on the path to a much larger vision that we plan to roll out in stages over the course of the next several months.
Do I believe public blockchains like Ethereum will be able to scale to millions of transactions per second? Yes, I am confident they will. But until then there are plenty of exciting ways that blockchains, through their inherent trust minimization and increased social scalability, can unlock benefits across a swath of verticals, especially digital advertising. All that it requires are new ways of thinking and a willingness to embark on a new approach.
Programmatic technology is now at the forefront of data-driven advertising, indeed, half of European display ad revenue is now traded programmatically and programmatic in Europe has reached a market value of more than €8bn according to IAB Europe’s 2016 Programmatic Market Sizing study. However, with regulatory challenges drastically questioning how the digital advertising ecosystem operates, programmatic trading needs to show that it can adapt to meet the evolving needs of the industry.
In this blog series, IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and its members assess the impact and the opportunities of the GDPR on Programmatic Trading. In the first blog MediaMath and Sublime Skinz look at the unique opportunity that the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework (the Framework) presents for the publisher community.
You can read the first blog in this series here.
Lisa Kalyuzhny, Director Advertising Solutions - PubMatic
We are now a few days away from GDPR coming into effect and some industry publications are calling GDPR a “reckoning” that is creating fear and panic for many companies. The prevailing sentiment is that the data on which our industry relies are being threatened by increased regulation. While we can appreciate the concern, it is important to remember that GDPR builds upon existing EU privacy laws in which PubMatic has been involved in for years. With a little preparation and additional understanding, we can all be ready for 25 May.
Two key elements to being prepared are understanding the important roles played by ad tech companies under GDPR and understanding how consent requirements are being addressed. PubMatic is typically a controller (not a processor) because of the role we play in data processing. For example, we may choose to pre-filter impressions for RTB auctions with third-party buyers, or to analyse or track data for ad delivery and reporting.
With regard to user consent, PubMatic supports IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, which allows user consents to be passed with bid requests to DSPs and buyers. In addition, PubMatic supports contextual, non-targeted ads for DSPs.
Even when a user does not consent, buyers and publishers still have options. When there is no historical cookie data to rely upon when serving an ad, contextual advertising will still be available. With contextual advertising, brands can serve ads to consumers based on the content they are engaging with at the moment. For this to work well, buyers and publishers will need to work together. Buyers will likely need to work with solutions that serve ads based on semantic or contextual factors. While this provides a viable means of advertising, it could lower fill and monetization rates.
PubMatic is ready for 25 May and we are dedicated to working with our partners to also prepare.
Charlie Simon, Policy and Product Privacy Manager, MediaMath
MediaMath has committed enormous resources to readying itself, and the industry, for the GDPR, which comes into force on Friday 25 May. While anticipated regulatory scrutiny plays a part in these efforts, it does not tell the whole story. Namely, that MediaMath believes in the spirit of the law, that Internet users have rights to better understand, and make informed decisions about, the use of their personal data. To that end, MediaMath’s Data Policy & Governance, Legal, Product, and Engineering teams are working cooperatively with partners and competitors, publishers and advertisers, to assess and address the GDPR’s requirements from administrative and technical standpoints. We have designed, built, and deployed products and services that help our clients comply with European regulations, while achieving successful marketing and business outcomes.
It is certainly true that every company in every industry that handles the personal data of Europeans has had a great deal of work to do. However, the advertising technology ecosystem has had more. MediaMath took on an industry leadership role early on, as chair of the IAB Europe’s Working Group on Consent, to bring together advertisers, publishers and technology providers to develop effective compliance solutions for the entire digital marketing industry, the result of which was the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (‘the Framework’). The Framework has been designed to offer all players in the advertising ecosystem a transparent and auditable chain of communication surrounding the use and processing of consumer data. We encourage both advertisers and publishers to adopt the Framework for the benefit of themselves and Industry.
Many see 25 May as a finish line, but the reality is that the day the GDPR comes into force is just the start. Businesses will need to continue adapting as data protection authorities, courts, and consumer advocates begin weighing in on what the GDPR means to them. And no one should forget about the ePrivacy Regulation just around the corner. I suspect this paradigm shift in the way personal data is regulated is not confined to Europe, that we will see a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape around the globe. Whatever may come, MediaMath will be ready, and will have benefitted tremendously from the technology its partners and IAB Europe have helped develop.
Brussels, 21 May 2018 - The future of the digital advertising industry, and by extension the internet, are up for grabs. New regulations, changing public attitudes and new technologies mean that the business model that powers most of the content and services we enjoy online is challenged as never before.
The only way to predict the future shape of the internet is to bring together all of the different visions and viewpoints about how it should work. IAB Europe Interact 2018, which takes place in Milan this week, is one of a kind. It marks a watershed in the debate on the commercial basis of the internet. And it takes place just a few days before the enactment of GDPR.
IAB Europe has deliberately designed the Interact 2018 programme to bring together competing views about what people want from the internet, and how advertisers, publishers and platforms should provide it. With every major digital platform represented, we’ll hear a range of different visions of the future. Delegates will be able to find out whether the plans of advertisers and platforms really meet the demands of regulators and the public. They’ll also be able to explore the different options for advertisers and content providers seeking a sustainable business model.
During the conference, the European Union’s Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli will answer questions about his vision of GDPR and ePrivacy regulation, while MEP Daniel Dalton provides an alternative perspective. Leaders from Facebook and Google will outline their plans for evolving the digital advertising ecosystem and using data to enhance transparency. High-profile publishers such as The Financial Times, Axel Springer and The Telegraph will outline alternatives for monetising content. We’ll dive into results of the AdEx Benchmark Study, highlighting digital ad spend trends across Europe. We’ll hear about the practicalities of delivering and measuring digital advertising in the new landscape. We’ll explore the significance of artificial intelligence, of blockchain, and of voice-led technologies, and we’ll invite visionaries Amelia Torode and Evgeny Morozov to evoke alternative prospects for the future.
“This is a defining moment for the digital advertising industry, and therefore for the internet as a whole,” explains IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan. “With the GDPR coming into force this week, in combination with hold-over rules on ePrivacy, the commercial basis of a lot of online services that consumers are accustomed to be able to access in the particular way they wish – whether via subscription, or in exchange for being willing to receive advertising, or both – will inevitably be put into question. It is time for an open, open, honest and transparent debate about the risks and the opportunities, so that we can collectively define the best way forward in the post-GDPR era. We are excited to have this year’s Interact contribute to that conversation.”
Media contact:
Colombe Michaud, Communications Director, IAB Europe - michaud@iabeurope.eu - +32 4 95193830
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem. Its mission is to promote the development of this innovative sector and ensure its sustainability by shaping the regulatory environment, demonstrating the value digital advertising brings to Europe’s economy, to consumers and to the market, and developing and facilitating the uptake of harmonised business practices that take account of changing user expectations and enable digital brand advertising to scale in Europe.
In our last blog ‘To be or not be’ we presented the duality of the ‘processor’ and ‘controller’ and how the Global Vendor & CMP List (List) could best serve them. Concluding that the primary value of the List is for companies, irrespective of their controller or processor status, to provide transparency into a legal ground for processing personal data and obtain consent in accordance with their own assessment of when that is needed.
This brings us to a second important state of duality that the Framework is tackling – the declaration of the two allowable legal states, under GDPR, of consent and legitimate interest against a purpose.
Participation in the Framework requires that the consent manager provider (CMP) or publisher acting as a CMP must disclose every vendor they wish to work with alongside the purpose and the legal basis of their data processing – they must not signal that consent has been obtained for a vendor and purpose that has not been disclosed to the user. This is not optional but a hard requirement under the policies as well as the law. Publishers who refuse to make disclosures on behalf of a vendor will not be able to work with that vendor under the Framework.
Currently the Framework also supports the disclosure of legitimate interest as a legal basis by a vendor who processes data toward a specific purpose. The publisher or CMP must not attempt to obtain consent for that vendor and purpose combination or make it appear as though a vendor is operating on the basis of consent for that purpose.
When a vendor declares consent as their legal basis against a purpose the publisher or CMP must provide transparency and obtain consent on behalf of the vendor. Therefore, when consent is the legal basis a publisher must pass information about consent (or the lack thereof) to its vendors.
When a vendor declares legitimate interest as their legal basis, it only needs the publisher to provide transparency. Since legitimate interests are claimed, rather than given, no signal about the existence of the legitimate interest is necessary.
BUT currently it is not possible for a publisher or CMP to pass onto a vendor, information that they have provided transparency to the end user that legitimate interest and vendor and purpose is the claimed state for personal data processing. They can only pass to the vendor that they have requested and obtained consent. The only way for a vendor to know that transparency has been provided is when receiving a positive consent signal. If no consent is ‘signalled’ this means that consent has not been given – in the dual world of legitimate interest and consent this could mean that the publisher or CMP have either disclosed a legitimate interest, attempted but failed to obtain consent, or chosen not to work with a vendor. The vendor has no way of knowing which of these cases is causing this transmission and would therefore be conflicted by the signal. However, since under the ePrivacy Directive consent is generally required for storing and/or accessing information on a device, Vendors can rely on their consent status for ePrivacy Directive purposes to infer the remainder of their disclosure status.
However, in future the recently announced Pubvendors.JSON extension to the Framework, which is currently subject to public consultation will address this information transmission conflict by giving publishers a mechanism by which they can inform vendors of the disclosures they have provided on their behalf. As a result, Pubvendors.JSON will allow vendors to declare consent or legitimate interest against purposes provided that they adhere to the Pubvendors.JSON implementation.
Public comment concludes on June 1, 2018. IAB Tech Lab and IAB Europe participants will evaluate and incorporate feedback received and release a final version of each of these specifications. If the dual challenge of legitimate interest and consent resonates with your company then you can adopt the pubvendors.json technology as a beta implementation now, even before the specifications are finalized.
We welcome your feedback – technical feedback can be sent to transparencyframework@iabtechlab.com and general feedback can be sent to feedback@advertisingconsent.eu.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Held in Milan on 23-24 May, IAB Europe’s Annual 2-day conference Interact 2018 will feature contributions from all stakeholders with a say in the future of the digital ecosystem, from advertisers to publishers, to ad tech businesses, politicians and regulators. Together they’ll examine the forces disrupting digital, how businesses can adapt to thrive, and how we can reinvent the digital ecosystem to provide a firm foundation for business growth in the future.
Ahead of his Keynote speech at Interact 2018, Rob Norman, Senior Advisor, GroupM accepted to answer a few questions from IAB Europe. Read more:
IAB Europe: Having been involved in the digital advertising industry for 31 years, you’re now an advisor to WPP, while joining the boards of start-up and new businesses. What is exciting you about the current phase of your career?
Rob Norman: I have a healthy blend of freedom and anxiety -- freedom to choose and anxiety over delivering real, tangible value to the companies and people who’ve chosen me to collaborate with them.
IAB Europe: Has the digital advertising industry lost the trust of brands leading the charge on change. Most notably calls this year from P&G’s Marc Pritchard to ‘slash digital wastage’ and Unilever’s Keith Weed mission to ‘cut the number of agencies’ it works with.
Rob Norman: I think there’s an unhealthy conflation of moral, social, legal, commercial, operational and creative issues in digital advertising. This leads to sweeping generalizations and the creation of bad incentives. It’s not good.
IAB Europe: Despite digital advertising being a relatively new industry, are you encouraged or disappointed with progress in terms of reassuring brand advertisers about fraud, viewability and brand safety?
Rob Norman: I am encouraged. When media is a business of hundreds or thousands of slow-moving units, it’s low risk. When it’s a business of billions of fast moving units, the risk goes up geometrically. In that context, the controls are pretty good; expecting them to be perfect is a fool’s errand.
IAB Europe: Which brands (or business leaders) worldwide do you admire?
Rob Norman: All the clients of GroupM and WPP. All those people who would like to employ me as a consultant.
IAB Europe: What keeps you awake at night?
Rob Norman: The fear that consumer demand generation stops being the dominant gene in marketing.
IAB Europe: You seem to be busier than ever, but in some interviews, you say you wish to step back to reflect on the bigger issues - what is your ambition for the industry in 2018?
Rob Norman: Simple. Better allocation, optimization and attribution and better creative assets that are fit for the channel or platform concerned.
Join us at INTERACT 2018 in Milan on 23-24 May 2018!
Held in Milan on 23-24 May, IAB Europe’s Annual 2-day conference Interact 2018 will feature contributions from all stakeholders with a say in the future of the digital ecosystem, from advertisers to publishers, to ad tech businesses, politicians and regulators. Together they’ll examine the forces disrupting digital, how businesses can adapt to thrive, and how we can reinvent the digital ecosystem to provide a firm foundation for business growth in the future.
Tradelab is a programmatic platform, an augmented buying structure, allowing brands and agencies to access their audience thanks to individualised and tailor-made algorithm constructions of buying decisions (optimisation) and modelled data (targeting). Tradelab ranks within the top leading EMEA technologies for Deloitte Fast500. Now in its 7th year of operation, co-founder and CEO Yohann Dupasquier talks about his journey ahead of his Keynote speech at Interact 2018. Read more:
IAB Europe: You began your career as an internet entrepreneur at the early age of 15 – what advice do you have for the next generation of entrepreneurs who are starting out?
Yohann Dupasquier: We started this adventure with the strong desire to implement a different approach of digital marketing. Since then, we have been putting a lot of efforts in staying humble, keeping our minds clear on the goal we wanted to achieve. First off, we listen to the client’s needs from the beginning in order to provide them the best possible answer and shape the best tailor-made solution.
Then of course, all of this would not be possible without our team. When we started Tradelab, we could not have imagined that we would sum 200 employees seven years later, and we are keeping the same dynamic as at the early stage of the company. It is a priority for us to keep this spirit and make it grow at the same time as our teams keep on developing themselves. To achieve this, I would say that a key requirement is to have explicit goals and always know where you are heading to.
IAB Europe: There was a recent report from eMarketer that Programmatic digital Display Ad spending in France will rise to 81.5% of digital display ad spend by 2019 – how will this impact the digital media industry?
Yohann Dupasquier: These numbers highlight that programmatic advertising, meaning user-centric advertising in opposition to traditional process, is becoming the media buying norm. Today almost half of display ad spending in Europe is transacted programmatically and the trend is growing faster. Why? Simply because programmatic answers the double promise of increasing brands’ media productivity without harassing users with untargeted ads and over exposition. With more accurate targeting and optimised media buying process, an advertiser may save 30% of its ad buying budget while achieving similar outcomes, whereas unified capping and the ability to spot irritated clients avoids users to be shown house offers when they just bought a flat. As a result, programmatic buying helps advertisers achieve better media performance while fostering respect towards the users’ experience.
IAB Europe: Tradelab was founded in 2011 this is your 7th year in business. Tell us a bit more about your vision for the company.
Yohann Dupasquier: Tradelab is to keep on taking verticalization of programmatic assets for advertisers at a higher level in Europe. In 7 years, we have seen brands becoming considerably more aware of the performances of programmatic, and the constant progression of programmatic on all European markets proves it. Since advertisers have a better comprehension of programmatic as well as of the value of their data assets, they expect media buying to help them conquer new market shares within their industry as part of a global strategy. Our goal is then to keep on providing them with key differentiators assets, tailor-made technologies, dedicated expertise serving their media efficiency as well as their business intelligence.
IAB Europe: Recently you’ve talked about a development in your technologies to allow different businesses to access programmatic technology – rather than a “one size fits all” model. Can you expand on how this helps different vertical industries?
Yohann Dupasquier: Standardised buying algorithms tend to remain the mainstream model nowadays, whereas brands would use dedicated solutions. If a “one size fits all” algorithm may answer 70% of two different brands’ marketing needs, 30% of each brand’s issues will not be addressed, for a simple reason: different industries cannot be treated the exact same way since they have basic different marketing issues. An advertiser within the banking industry may aim to generate 50 contracts a day when an e-merchant is looking for thousands of daily conversions, how could they be addressed the same way? In order to achieve these missing 30%, brands expect dedicated solutions and data set which they will apply to their own industry, from acquisition to visibility or attribution issues. Advertisers who take the step of building tailor-made solutions are able to gain media efficiency, and take the market shares their competitors who rely on standardized solutions do not.
IAB Europe: What is your prediction for the next big thing for the digital advertising industry?
Yohann Dupasquier: First of all, personalisation is and will still be the big thing in the digital advertising industry. Part of it is being explored with the introduction of AI and deep learning processes. It is a path we are also taking with a strong R&D investment, in order to offer brands a better knowledge of their audience and users’ journey.
As a priority in the coming years, our industry also needs to regain its service-based utility, and we like to think that we, thanks to the development of tailor-made programmatic assets, are contributing to this goal. By offering better targeting, by influencing users’ behaviours thanks to proven visibility, by optimising media buying and by showing the users better respect – while others may overexpose them, and thus destroy value for the entire market – Tradelab searches to bring brands and users back together. This is why, speaking about the future of our industry, we consider GDPR as a great opportunity to redefine the contract between brands and users in a way that will foster a better trust.
Held in Milan on 23-24 May, IAB Europe’s Annual 2-day conference Interact 2018 will feature contributions from all stakeholders with a say in the future of the digital ecosystem, from advertisers to publishers, to ad tech businesses, politicians and regulators. Together they’ll examine the forces disrupting digital, how businesses can adapt to thrive, and how we can reinvent the digital ecosystem to provide a firm foundation for business growth in the future.
Ahead of his presentation at Interact 2018, Marco Bertozzi, VP Sales Europe, Spotify highlights in this blog the main benefits of audio streaming. Read more:
The ubiquity of audio streaming has dramatically changed how and where we listen. With the world’s library of music in the palm of our hands -- and connected in our cars and smart TVs -- we can now soundtrack our lives wherever we are, and whatever we do. Video may have killed the radio star, but Spotify and other streaming platforms have revived the role audio plays at the center of our lives. You might even say that we’re currently undergoing an audio renaissance.
Four Major Trends Converge
Audio’s resurgence has to do with the convergence of a number of different trends. The first, of course, being the rise in audio streaming on platforms like Spotify, and the ease in which we can now access and discover music.
The second trend that has helped push the growing consumer adoption of audio is the internet of things and music’s dominance in connected devices. Today, UK adults are listening to Spotify and other streaming services on their smartphone, in their connected car, or via their smart TV. This is no doubt why, on average, UK adults stream an average of 9+ hours a week and 39% of UK listeners said they listened to digital music services more often than in 2016.
The third major contributor to the boom is the podcast explosion. Ever since Serial, the true-crime podcast, became an international sensation in 2014, podcasts officially went mainstream -- and the interest has proved to be more than just a passing fad. Today, 61% of UK adults regularly listen to podcasts and in 2018, 68% of UK adults said that they were more likely to listen to a podcast today than three years ago. For marketers, the podcast explosion present especially big opportunity, given that 60% of surveyed podcast listeners agreed that they didn’t mind ads, as long as the podcast was free.
Finally, the fourth trend fueling the audio renaissance is the growing market for smart speakers and voice control. 40 percent of U.K. households will own an Echo in 2018 according to Getting Vocal, a study from Radiocentre -- and it is important to note that 95% of users of voice assistants in the UK use it primarily to stream music. The smart speaker market has even pushed some brands to begin considering their audio identity as much as their visual one.
The Nostalgia Factor
But beyond just the market pressures, people are also turning more to audio for psychological and emotional reasons as well. We live in a very visual time, where we’re bombarded on social media and elsewhere with message after message. This was especially evident from findings in our recent millennial study with Y-Pulse. Millennials in the UK, Australia, and US told us that they look to music as an escape from everyday pressures. This is in contrast to social media, which 48% of millennials worry brings them negative effects. Given the current climate, people may be gravitating toward media formats they associate with better times, in an effort to reset and enrich their lives. For marketers, audio streaming is an opportunity to reach audiences who are actively using a platform they associate with more positive feelings.
Audio Streaming: All the Benefits of Digital Media and More
For marketers who are fighting for user attention across screens in an ever-fragmented media landscape, the rise in streaming audio usage coupled with podcast growth, the adoption of voice control, and the nostalgic interest in audio is great news.
That’s because, unlike radio, streaming audio has the same ease and flexibility of other types of digital media. For example, marketers can access streaming platforms like Spotify through a number of programmatic partners. Additionally, many marketers may not even realize that they are even able to use six, 10 and 30 second video assets as well as a number of additional video format types to effectively reinforce their messaging on streaming platforms. Additionally, unlike radio, in which you are regulated to messaging to one large audience, streaming audio provides a number of opportunities to personalize and contextualize your message.
You can learn more about how brands are successfully tapping into the audio streaming opportunity in my talk at Milan Interact, as well as view best practices and case studies here.
Join us at INTERACT 2018 in Milan on 23-24 May 2018!
Held in Milan on 23-24 May, IAB Europe’s Annual 2-day conference Interact 2018 will feature contributions from all stakeholders with a say in the future of the digital ecosystem, from advertisers to publishers, to ad tech businesses, politicians and regulators. Together they’ll examine the forces disrupting digital, how businesses can adapt to thrive, and how we can reinvent the digital ecosystem to provide a firm foundation for business growth in the future.
Ahead of her Keynote speech at Interact 2018, Anita Caras, Director, Sales Insights EMEA, Oath answered a few questions from IAB Europe. Read more:
IAB Europe: Why has Oath conducted a research study around Brand Love?
Anita Caras: When Oath launched last year it was accompanied by the mission statement that we at Oath build brands people love. This is a pretty bold statement - but what does it actually mean? We viscerally know that love is important but the data also stacks up. We used Kantars Brand Z database, arguably the most robust and reliable sources of brand health as it covers 100,000 brands, 400 categories across 50 markets, to isolate brand performance according to consumers affinity or love of a brand. We saw that the most highly loved brands in their database, have grown almost 3 times in value (+191%) over the 12 year period they have been tracking compared to a 32% growth for low love brands. This got us thinking - love is what takes a brand from good to great, from awareness to affinity, and from buyers to followers but how do you harness this knowledge to dig deep and comprehensively explore the drivers behind brand love? We embarked on this project to answer exactly that
IAB Europe: You are rolling out your first Brand Love Index, which reveals the key factors that drive consumers to love brands. What are the key insights that global digital brands should take note of, and does that change depending on the sector?
Anita Caras: We comprehensively explored the drivers of brand love, incorporating the views of 150,000 consumers across 13 countries which revealed that there are essentially 6 drivers of brand love. These are:
- Exceed Needs
- Set Trends
- Build Trust
- Share Values
- Respect Consumers
- Elevate Experiences
Although the 6 drivers are constant, the proportions of brand love each driver equates to does vary by demography, geography and industry. It is essential that you understand these nuances so you can align your brand focal points with consumer expectations. While the brands that are in the best shape perform well on all six measures, it’s clear, for example, that in Italy investment in innovation and exceeding consumers expectations pays disproportionately high dividends; equating to 58% of the brand love score. If a brand outperforms and over delivers, using innovation to improve the consumer experience, it can be loved for making life easier and perhaps a little more fun.
The same variances are true at an industry level. What makes travel unique is the importance of respecting people. It is over twice as important here than in other industries. This means that a brand with a strong persona will take a backseat to a travel brand that delivers on personal, consumer-first relationships – this explains why Italian cruise companies rate so highly as cruising orientates around the impeccable service it provides – MSC Cruises ranked the highest in Italy amongst the travel brands we measured.
IAB Europe: The debate continues that you cannot brand online – do you agree?
Anita Caras: The short answer is no, this research reinforces many other studies, in emphasising that brands need to reflect and enhance consumers lives wherever they are spending their time. In Italy, according to ZenithOptimedia, a quarter of all time spent with media is spent online and hence utilising online capabilities should be an integral part of a brands communication strategy for both brand building and direct response activities, ensuring we are evaluating the concepts in the right way to prove/learn from these approaches.
IAB Europe: What is your prediction for the next big thing for the digital advertising industry?
Anita Caras: Inclusion and diversity is in the spotlight, but I believe this light will shine brighter, in short, we should be leading the way for other sectors to follow. It has been a highly debated topic at many industry events this year but the talk needs to turn to action, becoming part of the DNA of every media organisation. Why? Because quite simply we have a commitment to reflect the people we are here to represent. Clients are also demanding it; they are starting to question how marketing and communications can resonate with the consumer if the people working on them are not reflective or representative of the people they are trying to reach. We saw through our Brand Love work that consumers are demanding it too.
We observed that consumers expect media brands to take the highest social stance - 13% higher than all other sectors, wanting us, as an industry, to openly show what true equality and diversity means. It is worth noting that when we talk about diversity we need to look at not only gender, but at class, race, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, neurodiversity, age - to truly make us self aware and as inclusive as possible as an industry
IAB Europe: Can you tell us more about the Oath’s initiatives for inclusion and gender equality?
Anita Caras: Commitment to inclusion is one of our eight core company values. We are still on a journey in our diversity and inclusion ambitions, but we have programmes and brands both internally and externally to drive this value as a company. Externally we have consumer brands such as Makers, Built By Girls and HuffPost (the only major news organisation whose editor-in-chief has always been female) that inspire and provide positive role models. Whilst internally we have launched voluntary Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that compliment our leadership and HR initiatives offering a voice and support at all levels of the organisation. These groups cover neurodiversity, race, sexual orientation, gender, parenting and veterans.
The goal is to provide an environment where each and every one of Oath’s employees feels comfortable being themselves at work, feeling empowered to bring the richness and nuance of their unique experience to everything they do. This encourages us to foster more diverse perspectives both internally and externally.
We at Oath believe that inclusion leads to better communication, more fluid collaboration and stronger relationships–all of which translate into business success.
IAB Europe: We’ve started 2018 with most companies in the industry committing to change in their companies with regards to inclusion and diversity. What is your hope for the agency landscape by this time next year?
Anita Caras: That gender no longer needs to be on the agenda! Obviously diversity and inclusion by definition is far greater than gender as reflected in our various initiatives I have already spoken about, but I am a pragmatic person and believe we need to start somewhere, taking this step by step.
IAB Europe: What are the trends for native advertising for 2018?
Anita Caras: Native advertising continues to grow globally, including in Italy, because it is inherently mobile. Over 80% of the Italian population own a mobile phone (eMarketer, Jan 2018) so finding creative and engaging ways to reach them is obviously very important. Apps and mobile web native formats continue to get better and find new ways to engage users, including integrating new technologies into the formats like Augmented Reality, as Oath has done through its Yahoo Gemini platform. I think we’ll see that trend grow, with more advertisers happy to find new, fun ways to build their creative campaigns. As with your previous question, we see advertisers use native formats successfully for both brand building and direct response campaigns - some with a combination of both. The top priority remains for consumers to see the benefit to them in engaging with the ad, whether it be through its creativity, user experience or a promotional value, in the context of the content they are consuming around it.
Join us at INTERACT 2018 in Milan on 23-24 May 2018!
Held in Milan on 23-24 May, IAB Europe’s Annual 2-day conference Interact 2018 will feature contributions from all stakeholders with a say in the future of the digital ecosystem, from advertisers to publishers, to ad tech businesses, politicians and regulators. Together they’ll examine the forces disrupting digital, how businesses can adapt to thrive, and how we can reinvent the digital ecosystem to provide a firm foundation for business growth in the future.
Ahead of his keynote speech at Interact 2018, Randall Rothenberg, CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau answered questions from IAB Europe Read more:
IAB Europe: You released results from the study “The Rise of the 21st century brand economy” at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting at the beginning of this year. Now that people have had a chance to review this, what has been the response, from brands, IAB members and industry to the findings?
Randall Rothenberg: We had the sense that this was groundbreaking research, but I’ve now had the experience of presenting the study to a dozen or so of the world’s largest consumer brands and, to a woman and to a man, the executives all nod their heads and say it definitely reflects the new competitive dynamics in their industry – whatever their industry happens to be. The “direct brands” themselves – the upstarts that are successfully exploiting open-source supply chains and direct consumer connectivity to sell their goods and services – are excited by it. For most publishers, though, it is new news that the way brands are born, grow, and die is evolving.
IAB Europe: You’ve taken fire at the industry jargon of the terms “sell-side” and “buy-side” – and challenged brands to acknowledge the importance of first-party data to their relationship with their own consumers. You even made the stand, that without trust in the brand, there’s no data and no data means no company. Have you found that brands are taking more control of their data as a result?
Randall Rothenberg: Many of the “direct brands” optimize their messages, their strategies, even their product mixes at a rate that would make a brand manager from 1990’s head spin. This agility is, of course, fueled by first party data. Are all brands utilizing this data? Of course not. But many of the best big brands are – or, at least, they recognize they must. When done correctly, this data can build long-term relationships and trust between brands and consumers. It also builds loyalty, repeat customers, and dedicated brand advocates. Every company has at least one “data” deck. We, at IAB, are teaching and training brands and publishers how to be more responsibly data-centric and compete in this new economic frontier.
IAB Europe: On a simplistic level if IAB is extolling the virtues of brands taking charge of interacting directly with consumers (and disengaging from the capital-intensive supply chain) – what role do publishers, ad-tech companies and the whole digital eco-system have to play in this new “vertical commerce” world?
Randall Rothenberg: While we see a general blurring of lines that were established in the last century, with publishers transacting commerce on their platforms and brands publishing proprietary content, brands will rely upon their first-party data to increase their understanding of their customer. This view is innately limited, though. And that’s where publishers, agencies, researchers and creatives all can help these brands by delivering dimension to the picture. This customer is a person who exists beyond his or her relationship with the brand, and publishers can deliver the total customer, with depth, breadth and context.
Equally important, the new class of “direct brands” are very focused on story-telling, for great stories, well told, centered around their passions and missions are differentiating. And publishers are the world’s experts on story-telling. Their stories, crafted by wonderful writers, photographers, illustrators, investigators, and editors, will continue to introduce brands and their promise to consumers, and provide pathways for consumers to discover brands. The publishing marketplace, while changing, will not go away because of direct relationships, but it will change.
IAB Europe: Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at Procter & Gamble opened the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting last year and called out the greater need for transparency of digital advertising platforms (something the IAB has been championing globally). This year, Pritchard is reported as saying this movement is 80% complete. Has it disappointed or encouraged you that it has taken the likes of advertising leaders (including Keith Weed at Unilever) to get the digital industry to take these issues seriously?
Randall Rothenberg: I don’t think it was the digital publishing or technology industry that was the real audience for those presentations; it was other brand leaders. Because brands had a long history of kicking the mechanics of their advertising creation, procurement, pricing, placement, and optimization to their ad agencies, they remained technologically inadept for a very long time, and unable to work the details of the digital revolution themselves. Having executives of the stature of Pritchard and Weed put visible stakes in the ground around sets of best practices provided permission for other brands to follow suit. And with the brands providing consistent roadmaps, both publishers and tech companies now have clearer paths to follow – paths, by the way, that were carved and illuminated by IAB.
IAB Europe: What is your message to IAB members and indeed the digital advertising community in this new advertising world?
Randall Rothenberg: First, it’s not so new anymore. It’s 25 years since the introduction of the Mosaic browser kicked off the Internet era, so companies ought to be accustomed to the elements of this disruption by now. And the fundamentals are incredibly exciting. Suddenly our economy is not constrained by capital, by proximity, by supply chain accessibility. Brilliant ideas can flourish today in a way that was never ever possible. Risk taking isn’t as risky. Scale can come in stages. Success at a level that took hundreds of people years of work and millions of dollars is available without any of those hurdles. Whether at a publisher, a brand or an agency, if you have an idea, chase it. This is the time. The opportunity has never been better.
IAB Europe: What keeps you awake at night?
Randall Rothenberg: Usually this question refers to worries, concerns, fears. But right now, when I look at my phone and see it’s beyond midnight, it’s because my mind has been racing with the possibilities. Creative kids are making music and movies, and becoming superstars without the intervention of giant cultural gatekeepers. A generation of women CEOs are creating new brands of clothing, shoes, toothpastes, educational tools, health care products, and more with a couple of searches and clicks. I talk to a lot of people, and the feeling I get from almost all of them is optimism and hope. For all the discussion and noise about Fake News and the lack of diversified voices on some platforms, I see the internet delivering empathy and understanding across lines (geographic/economic/religious) like never before. This is such an exciting time to be alive and to be a part of this incredible revolution. There is so much good to be done, so many changes in the way brands and consumers interact, so many things that we haven’t even thought of yet. It’s not worry or fear that has me up at night, it’s view to the horizon that seems to go on forever.
Join us at INTERACT 2018 in Milan on 23-24 May 2018!
Available for 30-Day Public Comment, New Specs Will Enable Seamless Communication Among Publishers, Buyers, and Vendors on Approved Interactions and GDPR Settings & Provide Mobile In-App Support
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM & NEW YORK, NY (May 2, 2018) – On the heels of releasing the final technical specifications for the Transparency and Consent Framework last week to address user choice and other aspects of compliance with the notice, transparency, and choice requirements set forth in the GDPR (European General Data Protection Regulation), IAB Tech Lab and IAB Europe are introducing an additional supporting tech spec—pubvendors.json (a publisher’s list of vendors)—and the much awaited mobile in-app support for the Framework is also being released for public comment. Both tech specs build upon initial adoption of the Framework, with over 120 vendors registered on the Global Vendor List.
The pubvendors.json tech spec is intended to:
- Provide a standard for publishers to publicly declare the vendors that they work with, and their respective data rights/configuration
- Allow vendors to verify publishers’ GDPR settings and verify/audit Consent Management Provider (CMP) consent strings
- Establish a standard way for publishers to white-list vendors
- Enable publishers to limit purposes and features (consistent with the Framework) on a per-vendor basis
Mobile in-app enables app developers to access and honor the Framework’s consent and legitimate interest mechanisms as a supporting standard to assist with GDPR compliance. CMP API endpoints and app developer local storage are specified, which enables the mechanism of collecting and propagating consent, so third-party vendors can operate in respect of users’ and publishers’ choices. App developers continue to have flexibility in defining user experience for exposing purposes and controls, as per the Framework.
“The feedback from publishers since we launched the public consultation on the first version of the specs for the Transparency and Consent Framework included a couple of strong messages,” noted Townsend Feehan, CEO, IAB Europe. “First, publishers wanted even more control with respect to data processing purposes, notably to be able to authorise different partners to leverage different purposes. Second, they wanted more control over which legal bases their partners could adduce. The pubvendors.json solution is a rapid response to accommodate these requirements.”
“These additional tech specs are a direct reflection of our commitment to the flexibility and adaptability of the Transparency and Consent Framework, to ensure that it meets the needs of publishers and other parties in the supply chain,” said Dennis Buchheim, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “The continued dominance of apps in mobile environments made supporting tech specs on that front particularly vital, and we’re pleased that our working group moved quickly to close that gap.”
After public comment concludes on June 1, 2018, IAB Tech Lab and IAB Europe participants will evaluate and incorporate feedback received and release a final version of each of these specifications. Companies with urgent transparency goals are invited to adopt the pubvendors.json technology as a beta implementation, even before the specifications are finalized.
To review the proposed pubvendors.json technology specification and the mobile in-app specification, please visit here.Technical feedback can be sent to transparencyframework@iabtechlab.com and general feedback can be sent to feedback@advertisingconsent.eu.
About IAB Technology Laboratory
The IAB Technology Laboratory (“Tech Lab”) is a non-profit research and development consortium that produces and provides standards, software, and services to drive growth of an effective and sustainable global digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers and ad technology firms, as well as marketers, agencies, and other companies with interests in the interactive marketing arena, IAB Tech Lab aims to enable brand and media growth via a transparent, safe, effective supply chain, simpler and more consistent measurement, and better advertising experiences for consumers, with a focus on mobile and “TV”/digital video channel enablement. The IAB Tech Lab portfolio includes the DigiTrust real-time standardized identity service designed to improve the digital experience for consumers, publishers, advertisers, and third-party platforms. Board members include AppNexus, ExtremeReach, Google, GroupM, Hearst Digital Media, Integral Ad Science, Index Exchange, LinkedIn, MediaMath, Microsoft, Oracle’s Moat, Pandora, PubMatic, Quantcast, Telaria, The Trade Desk, and Yahoo! Japan. Established in 2014, the IAB Tech Lab is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco and representation in Seattle and London.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem. Its mission is to promote the development of this innovative sector and ensure its sustainability by shaping the regulatory environment, demonstrating the value digital advertising brings to Europe’s economy, to consumers and to the market, and developing and facilitating the uptake of harmonised business practices that take account of changing user expectations and enable digital brand advertising to scale in Europe.
IAB Tech Lab Media Contact
Laura Goldberg - Phone: +1.347.683.1859 - Email: laura.goldberg@iab.com
IAB Europe Media Contact
Matthias Matthiesen - Phone: +32.4.96709294 - Email: matthiesen@iabeurope.eu
Townsend Feehan - Phone: +32.4.78.27.50.74 - Email: feehan@iabeurope.eu
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