by Jordan Wisbey, Head of Native, Verizon Media
The future
Trends suggest native advertising will make up a whopping 52% of all display ad spend in Europe by 2020 (Enders research, specially commissioned by Oath). It is growing, and so must our understanding of it. Back in 2014, we ran a comprehensive study looking at the impact of native advertising, but the digital landscape and the way users behave online has changed significantly since then, so we wanted to take another look in a bid to redefine the value native offers.
Redefining
In our recently launched Redefining Native Study 2018, we designed an innovative research methodology to explore the true value of native. The study included behavioural usability tests, implicit association response (particularly interesting as we measured subconscious reactions to understand the emotional connection between brands and people) and the perspectives of a number of industry experts, including a behavioural scientist.
Brand love
A growing number of people are using ad blockers because of disruptive ads, but people are less likely to block if they are served more personalised ads in trusted environments. Brands across Europe risk missing out on huge audiences that use ad blockers - 11m users in the UK, 16m in France and 19m in Germany (Oath - Redefining Native, 2018). 79% of consumers now say they would like to see ads that blend into the page, and 4 in 5 of them accept native ads as a form of content. It's clear then that incorporating native advertising into your digital strategy is increasingly crucial for building trust and brand love online.
Marketers already see some of the performance benefits of native, like increased click through rates, but those performance metrics don't tell the whole story as to the impact quality native advertising can have for brand-building. Propensity to recommend and likelihood to purchase both saw big increases in our study, for example, with greater trust in premium environments enabling native to deliver a 35% uplift in positive subconscious brand associations.
With native ad spend forecast to increase significantly from 2015 - 2020 - 144% in the UK, 240% in Germany and 167% in France (2015 - 2020; Source: Enders Analysis: Native Advertising in Europe to 2020 (2016-17) - it's more important than ever to understand this additional value and how best to leverage native in the digital mix.
In our Redefining Native Study (2018) we've uncovered the true value of native and how it drives brand love when activated across various platforms, environments and formats.
by James Brown, Managing Director EMEA, Rubicon Project
Over half of European display ad spend is now traded programmatically, reaching a market value of more than €12bn. One of the key drivers behind this meteoric growth is undoubtedly header bidding.
Header bidding provides ad servers with the opportunity to optimise inventory delivery by offering the same impression to multiple ad exchanges concurrently. As opposed to the prior “waterfall method,” which gave exchange partners access to inventory one-by-one, header bidding effectively democratises programmatic inventory access while making ad buying and selling more efficient and transparent.
In light of IAB Europe’s new whitepaper on header bidding and auction dynamics, here are some virtues of header bidding and how the practice is lighting up an at times opaque and inefficient programmatic supply chain.
Open Source Technologies
In the header space, open source software is fast becoming the modus operandi for header bidding management. When speaking about header bidding, Prebid’s open source technologies specifically offer efficient, free and fair open-source solutions to publishers in programmatic advertising.
Such open source technology brings more transparency to deal-making because by virtue of it being open source, all participants have a clear understanding of the dynamics of the header bidding wrapper. Open source wrappers are inherently neutral: no one party gets preferential treatment. This levels the playing field and drives publisher monetisation while providing greater access to broad demand.
Fairer Pricing
With the advent of header bidding, some tech companies used the new technology to gain access to inventory and then misused the auction by moving to 1st price without telling their buyer customers. This enabled them to win market share and gain an unfair advantage. The market has now collectively moved to first-price, as this ensures that everyone adheres to the same rule set, where in a second-price world, buyers were disadvantaged if using second-price auction bidding strategies against those operating under a first-price mentality.
While this shift has clarified pricing, it has brought a new challenge for buyers looking to maintain high win rates and capture targeted audiences without exhausting their budget in a first-price auction. First-price (in theory) ensures that buyers pay only what they are prepared to bid, and increases their win rates. The practice of bid shading has developed as a means of buyer protection, wherein the exchange or SSP calculates an average price in between first and second-price, based on bid history. Pricing models such as bid shading will likely continue to evolve and improve in the header space to make pricing fairer for all parties.
Efficiency on the Supply Side
Perhaps the greatest benefit of header bidding on the buy side is the increased transparency into supply-side configurations. Initiatives such as ads.txt help publishers and the whole supply chain crack down on ad fraud — particularly the reselling of unauthorised inventory and domain spoofing — by verifying that a business is authorised to sell a publisher’s inventory.
To further ensure we maximise the value of this initiative, we believe buyers should partner with exchanges that have a comprehensive ad quality and verification process. Ensuring that every partner in the supply chain is taking advantage of initiatives such as ads.txt plays a key role in safeguarding quality inventory and the reputation of our ecosystem as a whole.
Overall, the growth of header bidding has pushed forward the programmatic advertising industry and democratised inventory access, providing buyers with more data to help inform forecasting and bid strategy. As the adoption of header bidding continues to rise, the programmatic ecosystem is poised to become more efficient and well-lit than ever before.
IAB Europe has today launched a white paper to provide an overview of the status, key opportunities and challenges in connected TV advertising in Europe. Unveiled at the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London, the paper touches upon measurement an creativity considerations and was written by members of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and Video Task Force including Adform, Carat, Freewheel, Publicis Media Group and SpotX.
IAB Europe would like to thank the white paper leader that helped to edit and compile the final draft:
And the white paper contributors that provided content for this white paper:
Register and download the white paper below:
Brussels, 6 December - IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem, is today launching a white paper to provide an overview of the status and key opportunities and challenges in connected TV advertising. Unveiled at the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London, the paper touches upon measurement an creativity considerations and was written by members of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and Video Task Force including Adform, Carat, Freewheel, Publicis Media Group and SpotX.
In the paper, connected TV is defined as content that is transported from a provider to a connected television screen over the internet outside the closed networks of telecom and cable providers. This includes smart TVs and televisions that are connected to the internet through devices such as gaming consoles (Xbox, Playstation,etc.), Blu-Ray Players or streaming devices (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, etc. ). Topics such as the challenges and opportunities provided by connected TV, the growth of advertising revenue in the big five TV market and measurement are covered in the paper.
Alison Fennah, Executive Business Advisor at IAB Europe explains, “As connected TV grows in Europe, and more television advertising becomes available to buy programmatically, it became clear that this topic should be addressed by IAB Europe in order to share the learnings of our committee members with a wider audience.”
Simon Halstead, Chair, IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee and Head of Open Demand, International, Oath, adds, “Over the past year the Programmatic Trading Committee has developed white papers and fielded research on a variety of topics including the use of data, attitudes to programmatic and the size of the programmatic market(1) which have helped explain key topics and trends to the industry. This paper forms part of the Committee’s objective to provide insight and guidance on key developments in the industry.”
Joanna Burton, VP European Strategy at SpotX and Leader of the IAB Europe Connected TV White Paper, continues, “Connected Television combines the benefits of targeting techniques, digital delivery and measurement on the TV set. It is an emerging area, expected to generate €825 million Euros in advertising revenue by 2020 in the big five TV markets in Europe alone, and is relevant to both the broadcast and digital advertising industry,”
A preview of the paper was presented by Emmanuel Josserand, Brand, Agency and Industry Relations at Freewheel at the Future TV Advertising Forum in London on 5 December. This was followed by a discussion on the key topics featuring Brandon Keenen, Senior Digital Commercial Director at CNNi, Raquel Melero Velayos, Audience Ads and Programmatic Manager at Atresmedia, Martin O’Boyle Managing Director of Partnerships PMX, Publicis Media and Malin Hager, Sales Director of TV4 moderated by Joanna Burton, VP European Strategy at SpotX.
Notes
(1) All Committee outputs can be accessed here: https://iabeurope.eu/category/research-thought-leadership/programmatic/
For more information, please contact:
Marie-Clare Puffett, Business Programmes Manager, IAB Europe (puffett@iabeurope.eu)
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.
Find out more about becoming and member and taking part in initiatives such as this white paper here or contact Alison Fennah - fennah@iabeurope.eu
On September 25th, we held a 2.5-hour long webinar providing a Complete Overview of the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework. As is usually the case, we had many interested attendees who were keen on learning more. While we usually do our best to make these as interactive as possible, we were simply overwhelmed with questions and had to skip over quite a few to be able to remain on schedule. For this reason, we have decided to answer the questions in a series of blogs. This is the fifth and final blog in the series, covering some final policy questions.
Currently we are not aware of any initiative to standardise these data subject rights, nor has IAB Europe undertaken such an initiative. While it would be helpful, it is difficult to standardise this process across various different company types which use different technologies to offer their services.
Earlier this year, we have drafted a guidance paper together with members of our GDPR Implementation Working Group on the topic, providing guidance about whether to respond and how to respond to these requests. This working paper can be found on IAB Europe’s website here: https://iabeurope.eu/policy/iab-europe-gig-working-paper-on-data-subject-requests/.
The Framework is an ecosystem of parties which have all agreed to the same Terms and Conditions, as well as the same Policies. They make use of the same technical infrastructure to communicate consent (or other legal bases) to each other.
With that said, it is not mandatory to use the Framework; companies are free to make their own decisions on how they implement their requirements under the GDPR, and how they communicate with their tech partners. It is not a requirement for vendors to stop working with any partners who are not using the Transparency & Consent Framework.
However, to protect the integrity of the Transparency & Consent Framework’s Global Vendor List (GVL), it is a requirement that vendors surfaced in a consent interface who aren’t part of the GVL are made clearly distinct from GVL-registered vendors. Consent cannot be communicated to non-registered vendors through the Transparency & Consent Framework as they would not appear as a slot in the consent string.
The revision of the standardized purposes has the goal of simplifying the language for users, while allowing more specificity in specific business models. In answer to the question, this means that the current purposes are being expanded into more specific purposes. The current five purposes were more general and all-encompassing, whereas the new purposes will look to break down into more specific descriptions of processing activities.
The intention is that this will make it clearer to users what is happening to their data, whilst also allowing companies to more specifically elucidate the type of processing they undergo.
Vendors and CMPs who are registered on the Global Vendor List will be notified directly of any technical and policy updates to the Framework but will not need to complete registration again if they are already registered.
The terminology of ‘publishers’ was chosen to reflect that publishers are the user-facing actors in the online advertising ecosystem. Advertisers who are collecting data would either do so on a landing page, in which they would be acting as a publisher, or as a third party on another publisher’s site, in which they would be considered a third-party vendor.
The Transparency & Consent Framework’s policies also provides the following definition:
“Publisher” means an operator of a website, app, or other content where digital ads are displayed or information is collected and/or used for digital advertising, and who is primarily responsible for ensuring the Framework UI is presented to users and that legal bases, including consent, are established with respect to Vendors that may process personal data based on users’ visits to the Publisher’s content.”
According to the World Bank, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. A significant part of economic growth comes from SMEs in emerging markets, and a key part of this growth is closely related to marketing budgets. The internet has democratised advertising by offering the opportunity for SMEs to grow with effective marketing. The measurability and efficiency of online advertising at low costs, compared with traditional advertising, has made it a crucial way for SMEs to increase sales.
In recent years, programmatic advertising has offered advertisers another channel to reach their existing and potential audience. According to eMarketer, advertisers are expected to spend nearly USD$233bn , or 78% of their total digital display ad budgets, on programmatic advertising in 2017. The programmatic share of total US digital video ad spending is expected to rise to 75% by 2018. Currently Almost eight in 10 US mobile digital display ads are purchased programmatically—a portion that will rise to 85.2% by 2019.
The numbers show that programmatic advertising has become the preferred method for buying and selling digital ads and not all this ad spend comes from big brands. All advertisers aim to get the best out of their advertising efforts but especially SMEs, as they are grappling with limited budget and they expect a higher ROI. According to research from Deloitte in 2013, the advertising return on investment for an SME is eight times higher than the advertising ROI of a large advertiser. Digital advertising helps SMEs to scale up both locally and globally.
The different types of online advertising open to SMEs, including organic search, paid search, or premium display advertising, help SMEs to grow sales but they aren’t without challenges. Search engine optimisation is getting more competitive; CPCs in paid search are becoming more expensive, and the premium inventory space is becoming more crowded with big brands and media agencies. Buying inventory programmatically in the open marketplace allows for granular targeting and doesn’t require SMEs to purchase vast volumes of inventory at once. Instead, programmatic advertising helps them target their specific audience and prevents their ads being seen by audiences deemed to be less relevant; the net result being increased engagement and reduced costs.
Although programmatic advertising has a reputation for being expensive, technically complex, and only really suitable for branding campaigns for larger advertisers, simplified programmatic solutions are being developed by ad tech companies specifically to serve the SME market – otherwise known as the long-tail market segment. These solutions offer SMEs simplified tools to plan, buy, and target in real-time.
It’s important for SMEs to know the different transaction methods available in programmatic advertising and understand which method is most suitable for their business models. Private marketplaces and programmatic direct can be costly and involve complicated processes, yet an open exchange method through a public RTB auction allows buyers or sellers to participate with few restrictions. Self-serve platforms allow SME advertisers access to pre-segmented audience data across the full inventory available within a DSP, meaning there are limited barriers to entry if SMEs want granular targeting, but don’t have their own data to bring to the table. However, where an SME is sitting on a large pile of data, it’s not out of reach for them to create their own simple data management platforms through the integration of their first- and third-party data with the self-serve DSPs.
Self-serve DSPs are designed to be as easy as possible to use, requiring limited experience and offering features to make campaign management easy, including budget controls based on a number of different criteria. They also aren’t limiting when it comes to data targeting – geography, interest, or context across desktop, mobile or tablet through display, video, mobile or native ad formats. Pricing needn’t be restrictive either. While DSPs run campaigns based on a CPM pricing model, the option for CPC pricing is available. CPMs can be deemed expensive for SMEs, so the option to convert allows the smaller advertiser to keep control over performance, based on necessary metrics and KPIs.
The adoption rate for programmatic advertising among SMEs and smaller agencies is lower compared with the big brands and media agencies, but it needn’t be. Programmatic shouldn’t just be a luxury afforded by the big guys. The technology exists for programmatic to be a completely viable form of advertising for those with significantly smaller budgets and even those counting on a return from that budget. Training and education is also vitally important and can yield significant improvements in campaign performance – any decent self-serve platform should offer this to its smaller clients. SMEs are eager to learn new methods and are open to new opportunities for growth. Since their decision-making processes are faster and more flexible, once they get the logic behind programmatic, it becomes a core element of their marketing strategy.
James Oyedele, Programmatic Solutions Lead, Adform
The video marketplace remains a tricky environment to navigate. While supply is continually increasing[1], sourcing and measuring quality video placements remain a challenge for programmatic buyers. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that unlike standard display and mobile formats, video is still primarily traded directly or in programmatic guaranteed deals[2].
Supply will always be a concern; the IAB Europe Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising report states that, “publishers are still establishing their supply and strategy; only 16% state that more than 81% of their ad inventory is video”[3]. However, what issues are buyers experiencing within the existing video opportunities?
Firstly, video has become the umbrella term for the growing number of channels now available for programmatic trading. One of the most exciting developments this year has been the availability of TV supply in DSPs. Yet, understanding the true reach and technical capabilities remains a challenge for most buyers, especially considering the nuances between connected and linear content. Measurement and reporting are also issues. As the value of clicks continues to decrease[4], should DSPs instead incorporate support for traditional TV reach metrics like GRP?
Across other channels, there is still a lack of guidance or benchmarks on the optimal way for brands to reach their audiences. Should buyers set up and compare performance between pre, mid, or post-roll? Where does out-stream fit? Should you only target skippable inventory? Facebook and YouTube have experimented with micro video length formats and increased mid-roll ads (potentially the most user-unfriendly placements). YouTube are now adding multiple pre-rolls, a move which is quite unprecedented among premium content[5]. The rise of ad-blockers demands we carefully consider matters of placements and intrusion in any assessment of video best practice.
Then there are the continued technical limitations throughout the video player/publisher landscape. Despite great efforts by the IAB Tech Lab to establish consistent specs, there is still considerable confusion over VPAID availability (45% of the publishers surveyed for the IAB report stated that less than 20% of their inventory was compatible with VPAID[6]).
Further problems arise when trying to incorporate third-party measurement and verification tools, as many of the household names are not compatible with video (especially VPAID) or require custom implementation. This is particularly troubling when you remember that in HyphBot, one of the largest bot networks ever discovered nearly 90% of the fraudulent requests were for video inventory[7].
For the buyer, this all represents continued difficulties to plan and execute video campaigns effectively. Regardless, there is plenty of reason for optimism. We know that premium publishers are committed to creating and improving video availability. We know that TV is fast becoming a new normal in programmatic trading. Video is also the standard format for DOOH. Irrespective of programmatic challenges, video remains the most engaging way for brands to communicate[8].
The onus to solve these problems is now on tech providers, who must justify their fees by connecting supply and demand more efficiently. Both buy and sell side tech should not merely facilitate trading, but also provide clear differentiation between the different video opportunities we now have. DSPs especially should also offer precise tools to pair video with other formats, for richer storytelling and communication. Ad-servers, DMPs and other measurement partners should be able to attribute video views and completions to conversions and sales. A buyer needs a platform that can forecast, plan and execute against all video options. The need for every video impression to be properly measured and verified is equally important. We can’t rely on publishers alone for this, but instead require tech partners to provide buyers with the tools to support data-driven video investment across all available formats and environments.
IAB Europe invites the industry to share their thoughts on digital video advertising in its latest Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising survey to elevate understanding and identify areas for guidance to help with strategy development. Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/PFBXC9X
[1] IAB Europe, Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising, March 2018 - https://iabeurope.eu/research-thought-leadership/programmatic/iab-europe-report-attitudes-to-digital-video-advertising/
[2] Ibid.
[3]Ibid. (page 4)
[4] Ibid. (page 4)
[5] Sloane, G, ‘YouTube beings showing twice as many ‘pre-roll’ ads, AdAge, Nov 2018
[6] Ibid. (page 13)
[7] Adform Fraud Protection Whitepaper, How Adform Discovered Hyphbot, November 2017 - https://site.adform.com/media/85132/hyphbot_whitepaper_.pdf
[8] HubSpot Inc. The State of Video Marketing in 2018,
