Authored by Industry Leaders from Across Europe
Provides Valuable Insights, Key Considerations, and Best Practices for Programmatic CTV in Europe
29th April 2021, Brussels, Belgium: IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, has today released its ‘Guide to the Programmatic Connected TV (CTV) Opportunity in Europe’ to help planners and buyers of media understand and navigate how CTV can operate programmatically.
Following on from IAB Europe’s Guide to Connected TV that was released in June 2020, the new guide takes a deeper dive into this emerging channel, providing a European-level overview of the CTV programmatic supply chain and the programmatic buying options available to advertisers. The guide also addresses the challenges that planners currently face, with some key considerations and best practices to ensure programmatic CTV investment is being optimised and used effectively.
The European Connected TV (CTV) market has skyrocketed in recent years. Where the worlds of TV and digital have been gradually merging over time, more and more consumers have been tuning out of traditional linear TV options and moving into online streaming, paving the way for the CTV phenomenon. In Europe, CTV presents a huge opportunity for advertisers to reach engaged audiences with the right message. Recent findings from Magnite’s ‘CTV: The Future Forward - EU5 consumer research found that 71% of viewers prefer streaming to broadcast. However, the European CTV ecosystem is a diversified collection of markets all at different stages of CTV growth. Each country has its own unique definitions, group of CTV apps, plus differing offerings from broadcasters. For the CTV market to reach its full potential in Europe scale is key, and for that to happen programmatic CTV needs to be adopted.
Commenting on the role that programmatic advertising can play to help scale CTV across Europe, David Goddard, Chair of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee & Senior Business Development Director at DoubleVerify said “Programmatic ad selling has numerous advantages, such as offering a centralised approach to CTV buying, providing scale, and a unified view of data in real-time. However, buyers and publishers need to firstly understand how it operates in order to capitalise on the programmatic opportunities for CTV in Europe. The guide, written by experts from across the programmatic CTV landscape, perfectly describes the market setup, key stakeholders and operations. It focuses on what industry standards should be adopted in order to enable scaled CTV monetisation and advises how to tackle industry challenges such as: fraud, viewability, brand safety and how demanding greater transparency is critical to support future investment and ROI on this emerging channel. We encourage all industry stakeholders to read this guide to help maximise their opportunities”.
Austin Scott, Head of Video Market Development at Xandr echoed these comments saying “CTV has the potential to achieve reach on par with traditional TV but offers efficiencies and relevancy that is associated with programmatic when it comes to planning, audience-based targeting and measurement. As with anything new, there are challenges to be solved alongside the opportunities, so brands and agencies need to understand how to navigate this landscape to capitalise.”
Also commenting on what buyers should consider for their programmatic CTV campaigns, Jaidev Kakar, Director, Advertiser Solutions CTV / OTT (EMEA) at PubMatic said “CTV is an important part of building brand awareness with new audiences and driving performance with target consumers. In many of the European markets, the education and awareness piece still needs to be worked on. The technology really must work seamlessly and provide a TV like experience which is important to the consumer, the publisher and the buyer. Think about the technological solutions that you will need in the future and start building now. Choose partners with a heritage in the programmatic space, as this is where the market is moving.”
This guide has been developed by experts from IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee. Contributors to the guide included Criteo, Didomi, Finecast, Google, IAS, Magnite, Oracle Data Cloud, PubMatic, Rakuten Advertising, SpotX, IAB Tech Lab and Xandr. Commenting on the importance of the guide Glenn Perera, Director, Product Strategy EMEA, Integral Ad Science (IAS) said “With CTV in more homes than ever before, we are witnessing a huge growth opportunity of programmatic advertising within these environments. IAB Europe’s Guide to the Programmatic CTV Opportunity in Europe is a vital resource that identifies the growth of CTV programmatic advertising, best practices and how marketers can tap into these opportunities. We’re excited to have contributed to the guide as there’s a huge appetite for CTV related education and awareness in the market along with honing the standardisation and unified measurements of ad campaigns so that marketers can continue to invest with confidence.”
Steve Wing, Head of EMEA at Magnite also commented on the guide's importance saying, "Europe is undergoing a seismic shift in how its people are consuming content - CTV growth trends have accelerated through 12 unique months, and this presents a rich advertising opportunity. IAB Europe's Guide to CTV is built on the collaborative intelligence across some great companies, and is a fundamental piece to gaining an understanding of this exciting area and how to harness the power of CTV."
2021 is a key moment for the industry to reflect on the past decade of digital advertising and channel lessons learnt into the development of the CTV ecosystem. A call for action within the guide is for transparency, measurement and brand safety to be prioritised and for all players to be accountable and responsible for building on these principles in the future. IAB Europe will continue to work with their members in 2021 to uphold and build on these principles.
Download the Guide here
75% of Europeans surveyed would choose today’s experience of the internet over an internet without targeted ads, where they would need to pay to access most sites and apps
Brussels, Belgium, 23 April 2021 - Amid critical EU policy discussions about the future of Europe’s digital economy, new research commissioned by IAB Europe has revealed Europeans’ strong appreciation of how advertising enables the internet they use every day. And the reality is that the internet they value - the diverse universe of small publishers and other content and services, beyond closed self-sustaining digital ecosystems, that we all consult dozens of times per day - needs targeted ads alongside non-targeted or “contextual” ones.
Study surveyed 2400 adults in six European countries
IAB Europe, the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem, commissioned a survey research of a sample of over 2, 400 adult internet users across six European territories: Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Poland and the UK. The study explored how users would respond to a commercial model for the internet based on paying subscriptions to access sites and apps, rather than those sites and apps being funded by advertising, including targeted ads, which are the most effective and sought-after form of digital advertising.
Europeans appreciate how advertising enables the Internet
The results are a snapshot of user sentiment in some key markets, highlighting user reluctance to pay money for online content and services, even for content they acknowledge is important. A subscription-based commercial model for the internet would translate into most European citizens immediately reducing their internet activity to a significant degree, likely choosing to use only a handful of sites or apps.
A subscription-based model would create a fragmented, multi-tiered internet, with citizens having differentiated access to news, information and services depending on their willingness and ability to pay. It would leave news publishers, app developers and other content and service providers competing for funding from a very narrow pool of subscribers, undermining their capacity to make the R & D investments that lead to innovation.
Close to half of European surveyed (45%) describe news outlets as ‘very important’, but only just over a quarter (28%) would be prepared to pay for them. This puts the sustainability of the media into perspective. The publishing sector has already been challenged for years now, due to a fundamentally altered digital environment. The fragile revenues of the publishing sector, so dear to the European demos, must not be further put to the test.
Given the choice, the overwhelming majority of Europeans surveyed would choose the current commercial model of the internet over an alternative where subscriptions replace advertising. This isn’t just a more effective way to fund the internet. More Europeans find advertising useful than resent it:
“For most Europeans, unrestricted access to information and other valuable online services would simply cease”, noted IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan. “Content and service providers would find themselves competing for a limited pool of paying subscribers, with knock-on effects on competition and innovation”.
The diverse universe of online publishers and service providers, beyond closed self-sustaining digital ecosystems, that Europeans consult every day cannot compete effectively for advertiser spend without being able to offer the ability to target the specific audiences advertisers are trying to reach. Targeting enables generalist news sites and services to compete with the large players and continue to produce valuable content for people instead of content for advertisers. The regulatory framework that emerges from the DSA, DMA and ePrivacy negotiations over the coming months needs to reflect this reality.
“There is a complete disconnect with the policy discourse in Brussels”, noted Feehan. “Paying for content instead of seeing ads is a trade-off that European citizens have no interest in, responding to a problem they don’t recognise, and it would be forced on them against their will.”
To download the full report, What Would an Internet Without Targeted Ads Look Like? visit IAB Europe's Knowledge Hub.
In this week's member guest post, we hear from Edouard Lauwick, Senior Vice President, Southern Europe at Rakuten Advertising,as he shares his views on the importance of context and creating the right 'moment' in advertising strategies.
Imagine that you’re settled on the couch in front of an exciting movie, glass of wine in one hand and popcorn in the other. You’re enjoying a night at home after a long week at work, in a moment of pure escapism. The break arrives and an ad for a sporty new car captures your mood perfectly…the one for the toilet bleach less so, even though you’re only metres from your bathroom. You’re not in the mood to think about cleaning.
For the advertiser, both of these ad placements might cost the same, but one was almost certainly more effective than the other. As a ‘data point’, the individual on the couch is the same, but the context makes all the difference. As such, while demographic is an essential factor in planning an advertising strategy, it shouldn’t always be the sole dictator of it.
Advertisers need to understand where their audience is throughout the day, understand them as a person and consider the context they’re in when they want their message to resonate.
Weaving this into an advertising strategy involves elevating them to a concept – the Moment – which encapsulates the role they play. In understanding Moments, budgets become vastly more effective, and the resonance increases significantly. They’re ignored at peril.
Context makes the Moment
We’re all different people at different times of the day, and our emotional (or rational) state reflects this. This can be kicking back with a coffee, taking a walk, or staring out of the window wondering what to buy your partner for their birthday.
However, each of these can also involve media consumption: watching the rolling news with that coffee; video calling a friend during that walk; and browsing online for that birthday treat. They all, therefore, become Moments, none of which are actually momentary.
A Moment doesn’t have to be fleeting. It’s how long and how deeply we are involved in an act over a period of time.
The opportunity in advertising strategy
Advertisers need to be part of these Moments alongside the audience because brand loyalty is increasingly driven by a shared set of values. Brands must demonstrate how much they align with their audience’s lives – be they professional or personal.
Connecting with the audience in the context of the Moment multiplies the impact of the message. It brings emotional understanding to what would otherwise simply rely on broad demographics – a depersonalised and detached approach to recognising individuals as people.
We’ve created a new report which helps advertisers understand the concept of Moments, and how to use them strategically in campaigns. The report examines the different Moments that occur across Rakuten Advertising’s media properties, and how brands and agencies can utilise them to reduce wasted ad spend. ‘Connecting in the Moment: A guide to key media ‘Moments’ and how advertisers can use them’ can be found here. Never be in the wrong Moment again.
In this week's member-guest post, we hear from Igor Gubin, Region Manager Europe at Admitad Affiliate Network, as he delivers his views on big data and why we need to find more ethical and legal approaches to it.
Why Data is Key - the Past, the Present, the Future
To discover what lies behind the growth, it's key to consider the dynamic. Historical data is quite insightful to see how your brand is evolving over time. The context is essential too, as it provides perspective and allows you to make strategic decisions. Lastly, to complete the story and add depth to your context, you have to consider the current climate.
However, as the amount of data becomes overwhelming, new challenges arise — are the data bearers happy to share what they do, online and offline? How can one make sense of this much information?
Online marketing is unthinkable without “big data” these days — the large data sets are used to discover hidden trends and patterns. Or in behavioural marketing, to analyse the customer journey from exploration to sale. Cookies played an important role too as this journey became “restorable” and trackable thanks to the cookie files dropped by various sites to the user's browser.
The Limitations
The pre-GDPR market was a primordial soup of data where next to anyone could recover a user's route without their consent. It wasn’t just every website you visited that had access to some of the browser history — it could be anyone they shared it with, knowingly or not. It took a few major data leaks to make governments realise the progression of disaster. Hence, privacy laws and browsers blocking third-party trackers.
Tracking, the bread and butter of affiliate marketing, has undergone significant changes in both strategic approach and practice of how to use collected third-party data to run affiliate businesses. As you read this, tracking links stop dropping cookies to the affiliate network via redirect sites used to traverse from publishers to advertisers. Browsers detect attempts to record non consented cookies and prevent them. Best case scenario? Advertisers can’t trace orders back to publishers. Worst case — the users don't even get to the store in the first place.
What Browsers Do
Firefox and Safari already block tracking cookies by default, and not only has Google's Chrome browser joined the third-party-cookie-blocking fray, the search platform keeps announcing that it will not roll out alternative user-level ad identifiers to replace third-party cookies. The big question on all our minds is what marketers and advertisers will do without third-party cookies?
Early March 2021, Google provided the long-awaited answer: the replacement for third-party cookies is first-party data. Google announced that it will not implement alternative user-level identifiers to replace third-party cookies. Surely, Google has a wealth of first-party data, or data it collects from users directly, to target ads on its own publishing platforms. This is great within the walled gardens of Google, but other publishers may feel left out.
What Does This Mean for Advertisers and Publishers?
Today, brands have a plethora of data on each customer — purchase data, email engagement, device information, etc. Not just historical, but also real-time behavioral data regarding interaction with websites, carts, products and categories visited while browsing. Failure to track customer choices could lead to incorrect assumptions about customer behavior, and thereby cause badly targeted marketing campaigns, wasting budgets and frustrating users.
What both brands and consumers really want is a balance between personalisation and privacy. A Harris Poll survey revealed that 63 percent of consumers expect personalisation “as a standard of service.” But they also deserve to have the choice to be tracked or not, to get a personalised experience or not, and to see ads or not.
If marketers focus on making advertising more relevant and less invasive, consumers will likely see the value of it and choose to allow it in their digital lives. No one wants to see frustrated users seeing the most irrelevant ads. But even less people want to be asked every time they search for their grocery supplier next door or read their favourite online media, whether they accept cookies.
Due to numerous requests for extra time, we are happy to announce that the deadline for this year's awards has been extended by one week!
The MIXX & Research Awards will now close on Friday 23rd April!
So have you produced an outstanding campaign or research project over the last year? Then enter IAB Europe's 2021 MIXX & Research Awards!
Winners of the awards are renowned in the industry for delivering some of the best impactful and innovative work that Europe has ever seen!
The MIXX Awards Europe and the IAB Europe Research Awards are accepting entries from talented and hard-working teams that have created some of the best digital campaigns and research projects in Europe. The awards offer a unique opportunity to gain pan-European exposure in front of industry leaders. Your work will be reviewed by a jury of experts from across the digital advertising and research industry who dedicate hours of their time to review and discuss all entries.
This year's jury includes experts from BBC Global News, Bloomberg Media, Bauer Media, Coca-Cola, Havas Media Group, GroupM, Publicis Media, PHD, TikTok, Vodafone, Visa and WarnerMedia. Check out the recording here from IAB Romania who recently held a Clubhouse talk with some of the jury!
The winners will be announced at IAB Europe's flagship event 'Interact' which will be held virtually on 25th -27th May! Last year over 1000 people tuned in to watch the winners being announced.
Categories
Both awards feature categories to showcase the very best creative campaigns and research projects from across Europe.
Entry Checklist
We have created a checklist to help you make sure your entry is on track for the early bird deadline of Friday 12th March. Consider entering your work into multiple categories to get maximum visibility for your project or campaign. There is a discounted rate for entering additional categories!
✔ Select the categories you want to enter
Visit the Awards site to review all the different categories you can enter.
✔ Download the entry notes
Our entry notes contain all the rules and entry info you need for entering the awards, including the judging criteria. Please see below to access the entry notes:
✔ Plan your time
Make sure you have enough time to draft your submissions and get them reviewed before you submit them.
✔ Review the 2020 winning entries
Why not have a look at some of our winners from last year to inspire your entry? Click here to see the 2020 winners.
✔ Ask the organisers
Get in touch with us via email if you have any questions:
Key Dates
Entry Links - Ready to be recognised?
Enter now to inspire others, reward your team and gain pan-European recognition for your digital advertising campaigns or research projects.
ENTER THE MIXX AWARDS EUROPE HERE
ENTER THE MIXX AWARDS EUROPE DIGITAL STRATEGY / CREATIVITY PERSON OF THE YEAR HERE
ENTER THE RESEARCH AWARDS HERE
ENTER THE RESEARCH AWARDS DIGITAL RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR HERE
For the last 25 years, Marketers have relied on third-party cookies to track consumer behaviour online. Nearly all AdTech and MarTech platforms use cookies for targeting, retargeting, display advertising, and behavioral marketing in general.
But now, that’s all changing.
Smart cookie-blocking technology led by Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) now block third-party cookies by default.
2020 then kicked off with Google announcing that it intended to change the way ads are targeted online. Its goal of making third-party cookies "obsolete" by 2022 subsequently brought about one of the most significant shifts for the online advertising industry.
Now one year on, there is still much debate around how the ‘post-cookie era’ will affect future business models in the digital advertising industry and what alternative solutions are being developed.
IAB Europe released a guide back in May 2020 to help brands, agencies, publishers and tech intermediaries navigate the shifting landscape. As solutions have evolved over the last twelve months, the Guide to the Post Third-Party Cookie Era has been updated to provide the most up-to-date guidance.
We caught up with some of the contributors of the guide to find out what the biggest developments are to date, to understand what the market alternatives to third-party cookies are, and what the future holds for a post-third party cookie world.
Q1. Since the first guide was released in May 2020, what changes have you seen, and what have been the biggest developments?
“Some of the most significant changes have come via Prebid.org with the launch of SharedID.org as an open-source, public first-party ID and the assumption of the PubCommon identifier, folded into the SharedID footprint.
Apart from Prebid.org, there continues to be significant movement within the W3C groups debating Google Chrome's Privacy Sandbox proposals. Several AdTech companies have contributed counter-or-complimentary Sandbox proposals, all of which have been discussed at length within the W3C. Among these proposals, the acknowledgment on Google's part of the necessity of a server-side trusted third-party entity within the Sandbox environment is most notable, as this is a meaningful departure from the original tenor of the Sandbox proposals.
The recent announcement of the Fledge testing framework for TURTLEDOVE is being followed with great interest by all stakeholders.” Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, Magnite
“We’ve really seen an acceleration of so many of the topics discussed in the guide, most notably the introduction of authentication-based solutions like Unified ID 2.0. These solutions will be absolutely critical in helping publishers monetise while continuing to drive results for advertisers in a post-cookie world.
Google also made a recent announcement highlighting their response to other industry efforts to replace the third-party cookie. The announcement certainly has a direct effect on every aspect of the advertising ecosystem, but our primary focus remains to ensure that whatever replaces the third-party cookie improves consumers' privacy protections.” Sara Vincent, Senior Director of Strategic Partner Development, Index Exchange
Q2. In the new edition of the guide, the number of solutions to the third-party cookie has quadrupled. What is your take on what the industry has developed over the last six months? Are we any closer to having it all figured out by 2022?
“While it is certainly true that the time is now to be actively building and testing solutions for a third-party cookieless future, I think it is important to note that we don't view January 2022 as a drop-dead moment in time.
That being said, we've certainly seen an explosion in the number of "universal" ID solutions. Many are purpose-built for specific demand, some address authentication, some certain regional attitudes, and many are attempting to simply be a cookie replacement. Overall we believe that identity in the new internet should be a community asset, completely open and transparent, and not run by a for-profit entity.
By 2022 and beyond we'll no doubt have a (hopefully relatively small) variety of solutions that collectively should address authenticated users, non-authenticated/first-party identifiers, and the eventual production inputs from the Privacy Sandbox proposals.” Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, Magnite
While it is certainly going to take a lot of work and industry-wide collaboration, I do think the industry will eventually be prepared for a world without third-party cookies as it continues to prioritise addressability, measurement, and consumer privacy. We know there is not going to be a singular, catch-all solution for successful monetisation in a post-cookie world, but I’m encouraged by the general direction of the industry and the solutions that have emerged to date. Sara Vincent, Senior Director of Strategic Partner Development, Index Exchange
“In recent months we've seen a wave of innovation as the industry has looked to build new Unified ID solutions to make up for the loss of third-party cookies. However, the issue remains that outside of first-party cookies there hasn't been a viable solution for the non-authenticated, "open" web.
I think many in the industry will look to telcos as a solution to this challenge, as telcos' networks provide a rich source of information that publishers can use to verify their users securely and safely. Enabling first-party identifiers that are verified on a per publisher basis in this way will strengthen the case for them to be used as a long-term replacement to third-party cookies.
However, it is important that data is not then distributed down the bidstream and tied to session-based identifiers, as doing so would only lead to exponential data growth or the survival of the fittest. It's therefore important for first-party data holders to agree on a dynamic ID for data activation. This would address the challenge of scale by enabling a standardised taxonomy across publishers that are activated on a per-publisher basis.” Tanya Field, CPO, Novatiq
Q3. There has been an influx of ID solutions coming to the fore, how can stakeholders identify and select partners?
“Identifiers need actual adoption by buy-side platforms; the degree to which this is true today varies greatly. Publishers should focus on how identifiers are generated and what level of control they have over them, with a special note to pay attention to the use of fingerprinting as not acceptable, i.e. the use of browser/device signals to infer linkages between first-party identifiers.” Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, Magnite
“Since thriving in a post-cookie world is going to require a multi-pronged strategy, publishers should be asking themselves who are the buyers that they trust and what are the Identity solutions and partners they’re leveraging.
Publishers have to understand what works for them, what works for their readers and users, and then experiment with different ways to earn their audience’s trust and obtain consent and authentication from there. They must think about the various touchpoints for their audience — newsletter subscriptions, comment pages, etc. — and think about how they can use this information in a way that’s going to resonate with and benefit the end-user.” Sara Vincent, Senior Director of Strategic Partner Development, Index Exchange
“There are a growing number of IDs on the market. My view is that no one solution will offer a panacea to the digital advertising industry's needs. Rather, it is likely that the industry will coalesce around a mix of solutions that will jointly provide the capabilities publishers and brands require ahead of the 2022 deadline.
In my view, it's likely that first-party IDs, owned and maintained by publishers, will emerge as the primary means for achieving audience addressability at scale, with Unified IDs playing a significant role in measurement, attribution and other areas of the value chain. First-party IDs make sense for audience addressability because they give publishers complete control of their data and consent management. This data can then be activated using a transient ID in collaboration with telco partners that ensures no data is distributed in the bidstream.
Stakeholders realise that the writing is on the wall for browser-based or device-based signals, as the expectation is that anti-fingerprinting measures will increase. Verification seems the right path forward as it's highly secure, consent-driven and pseudonymised. As a key part of a broader ID ecosystem it will have an important role to play.” Tanya Field, CPO, Novatiq
Q4. In terms of contextual solutions, what developments and adoptions are we seeing in this space?
“There are a number of interesting developments that can be seen with contextual targeting capabilities. There is now the ability to use data integrated into programmatic buying platforms to not only avoid bidding on fraudulent impressions and target more viewable impressions but also to avoid unsuitable content and target towards brand suitable content. Contextual targeting allows advertisers to reach their desired audience without the use of third-party cookies.
Contextual targeting will achieve scale for advertisers in 2021. We are already seeing a pick-up in the adoption of contextual targeting as it does not require any heavy underlying tech on the DSP or Publisher side.
The technology relies on sentiment and emotion analysis done by ML/AI and is also independent of audience tracking data such as cookies. Hence, it allows a smooth and easy transition while still being effective on ROI of campaigns and aligned to brand safety & suitability priorities.” Nick Welch, Programmatic Director, Northern Europe, Integral Ad Science
"In the last year, there have been many developments when it comes to context, transforming it from its more traditional form based on keyword relationship to more advanced solutions for targeting purposes. For example, we’re quite excited about video content recognition which opens an even broader landscape of targetable inventory. On top of that, there is definitely more maturity when it comes to marrying both contextual and measurement technologies, or what some people call contextual analytics. In many cases, this convergence can lead to new discoveries – such as insights that uncover surprising contextual environments that ultimately deliver performance compared to the more obvious, standard segments. This combination offers a fertile ground for strategies for both prospecting and conversions." Carlotta Zorzi, Enterprise Brand Partnerships, Oracle Data Cloud
Q5. What are your predictions for the future and how do you see solutions developing over the next 12 months?
“While the transition period will no doubt be a little rocky, we should focus on the truly unique opportunity to re-make not only our industry but the entire internet into a more effective, privacy-forward, and most especially user-centric system. These changes should be seen as a very positive opportunity.” Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, Magnite
“I think we’re going to continue to see the rise of a few prominent solutions that buyers and publishers have been willingly testing in recent months. I’m hopeful that we’re also going to see greater collaboration across the board, as well as industry adoption of authentication-based solutions.” Sara Vincent, Senior Director of Strategic Partner Development, Index Exchange
“Looking to the year ahead, the industry needs to focus on the resurgence of publishers - and that means cracking the delivery of first-party data to the ecosystem. I believe this need will drive engagement by telcos to help deliver a verified ID solution. Telcos have the network view to enable cross-device audiences on the open web, and have every reason for wanting to take part, given the significant benefits that would accrue to both the industry and their businesses through offering such services.” Tanya Field, CPO, Novatiq
There’s a learning curve as the industry moves away from cookie-based solutions, which we see as an opportunity for us all to refocus on what matters - trust and transparency. As we move forward, we believe contextual solutions play a crucial role in a diversified portfolio approach to consumer-centric identity. Education and cooperation, like the IAB Whitepaper on Understanding the Post-Third Party Cookie World, are crucial to achieving our key goals:
In general, when it comes to context we want to encourage everyone to be curious and ask questions. The context-focused industry is growing rapidly so it’s the perfect time to have these conversations with platforms partners. There is a rich future for cookieless solutions and we believe that EMEA will lead the way”. Carlotta Zorzi, Enterprise Brand Partnerships, Oracle Data Cloud
The final deadline is Friday 16th April. Have you produced an outstanding campaign or research project over the last year?
Then enter IAB Europe's 2021 MIXX & Research Awards!
Winners of the awards are renowned in the industry for delivering some of the best impactful and innovative work that Europe has ever seen!
The MIXX Awards Europe and the IAB Europe Research Awards are accepting entries from talented and hard-working teams that have created some of the best digital campaigns and research projects in Europe. The awards offer a unique opportunity to gain pan-European exposure in front of industry leaders. Your work will be reviewed by a jury of experts from across the digital advertising and research industry who dedicate hours of their time to review and discuss all entries.
This year's jury includes experts from BBC Global News, Bloomberg Media, Bauer Media, Coca-Cola, Havas Media Group, GroupM, Publicis Media, PHD, TikTok, Vodafone, Visa and WarnerMedia
The winners will be announced at IAB Europe's flagship event 'Interact' which will be held virtually on 25th -27th May! Last year over 1000 people tuned in to watch the winners being announced.
Categories
Both awards feature categories to showcase the very best creative campaigns and research projects from across Europe.
Entry Checklist
We have created a checklist to help you make sure your entry is on track for the early bird deadline of Friday 12th March. Consider entering your work into multiple categories to get maximum visibility for your project or campaign. There is a discounted rate for entering additional categories!
✔ Select the categories you want to enter
Visit the Awards site to review all the different categories you can enter.
✔ Download the entry notes
Our entry notes contain all the rules and entry info you need for entering the awards, including the judging criteria. Please see below to access the entry notes:
✔ Plan your time
Make sure you have enough time to draft your submissions and get them reviewed before you submit them.
✔ Review the 2020 winning entries
Why not have a look at some of our winners from last year to inspire your entry? Click here to see the 2020 winners.
✔ Ask the organisers
Get in touch with us via email if you have any questions:
Key Dates
Entry Links - Ready to be recognised?
Enter now to inspire others, reward your team and gain pan-European recognition for your digital advertising campaigns or research projects.
ENTER THE MIXX AWARDS EUROPE HERE
ENTER THE MIXX AWARDS EUROPE DIGITAL STRATEGY / CREATIVITY PERSON OF THE YEAR HERE
ENTER THE RESEARCH AWARDS HERE
ENTER THE RESEARCH AWARDS DIGITAL RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR HERE
IAB Europe is inviting all stakeholders to participate - advertisers, agencies, publishers and ad tech vendors - in our annual 'Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising Survey' which aims to understand current adoption, drivers and barriers in digital video advertising. Take part here.
Since 2016, the study has provided insight into the growth of digital video advertising across Europe, the ways in which video is being traded on both the buy-side and sell-side, and what the future holds.
The survey should take no more than 10 minutes and asks about:
All participants will receive a copy of the results.
The deadline to participate is Friday 25th June. Take part today to have your say!
Check out last year's report to see why the findings provide so much value and insight!
Buyers.json and DemandChain Object Enable Sellers to Know Their Advertisers, to Prevent Malware and Ensure Brand Safety and Ad Quality
On 30th March, IAB Tech Lab, the digital advertising technical standards-setting body, released buyers.json and DemandChain Object specifications for a 30-day public comment period, which begins today and lasts until April 30, 2021. Over the past several years, Tech Lab has developed technology standards and best practices to provide transparency and brand safety from sellers to buyers, including ads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers, for publishers to declare who sells their inventory) and sellers.json (for supply-side platforms / exchanges to declare their sell-side relationships). Now, buyers.json and DemandChain Object provide similar attributes about buyers, mirroring the structure of sellers.json and SupplyChain Object, which were unveiled in July 2019.
As part of a broader effort to eliminate malvertising and other ad quality issues from the digital advertising ecosystem, these buy-side transparency specifications enable sellers to identify who is buying their inventory. buyers.json enables advertising systems to publicly declare the buyers they represent, and DemandChain Object provides transparency around every entity involved in a specific transaction. Armed with this information, publishers and supply-side platforms (SSPs) can more easily identify the sources of malvertising attacks, identify problematic buyers across multiple demand sources, and take appropriate action to protect themselves and their users. This also aims to help publishers better monitor spend on their inventory and ultimately their audiences.
“Lack of transparency into buyer identity is a critical problem for sellers to ensure that advertising is brand safe and malware-free,” said Amit Shetty, Vice President, Programmatic Standards and Partnerships, IAB Tech Lab. “buyers.json and DemandChain Object will provide the transparency we need for the sell-side to work together with the buy-side to keep consumers safe.”
“buyers.json and DemandChain Object provide publishers and their tech partners with much-needed transparency equivalent to that provided by sellers.json and SupplyChain Object for buyers,” added John Clyman, Vice President, Engineering, Marketplace Quality & Security at Magnite. “Widespread adoption of these standards will enable the industry to better combat malvertising and nefarious behavior, and is a critical factor enabling publishers to more confidently monetize their inventory while preserving positive user experiences, promoting continued growth in programmatic transactions.”
To review the proposed standard and provide feedback, please go to: https://iabtechlab.com/buyers-json-demand-chain
IAB Turkey's 6th General Assembly Meeting was held on March 30, 2021. At the General Assembly meeting, after the annual report and internal audit report presentations, the management, audit and disciplinary boards to work in the new term were elected.
Ayşen Akalın was elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the first Board of Directors meeting held after the General Assembly meeting. Speaking at the General Assembly, IAB 2021-2022, Chairman of the Board, Ayşen Akalın said, “This year, when we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the IAB Turkey, I took over the flag from a strong team. With the same responsibility and excitement, we will see the healthy and sustainable growth of the digital advertising ecosystem as our primary goal in the new period ”.
The Focus Issues in the 10th Year of the IAB will be Brand Security, Ad Fraud, The Effects of Advertising on the Economy and The Direct Brand Economy
Ayşen Akalın, mentioning about the Digital Marketing Communication Platform, which they recently established as four industry associations together with IAB (Interactive Advertising Association), RVD (Advertisers Association), RD (Advertisers Association) and MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), She stated that IAB will have more brand security and brand fraud issues on the agenda, and that they will work for the responsible and safe development of digital advertising.
The distribution of roles in the IAB Board of Directors was as follows:
Principal members of the board
Substitude members of the board
Principal members of the Audit Board
Substitude members of the Audit Board
Principal members of the Discipline Board
Substitude members of the Discipline Board
In this week's member-guest post, we hear from Mia Sari, Manager, Solutions Consulting at Xandr, as she shares her thoughts on the 'free internet' and why she prefers to see highly relevant ads.
Mia is a Solutions Consultant at Xandr, where she advises traders to yield optimal results for their programmatic campaigns. Before joining Xandr, Mia worked at a Berlin-based start-up Retail Media Group where she built the company’s programmatic infrastructure from scratch. In her spare time, she writes about all things programmatic and she works on her passion project where she builds mobile games to inspire girls to reach their full potential.
With no end to the pandemic insight, I turned to bingeing TV shows and films for comfort, like countless other people who found themselves stuck at home. One of my favourites is "This is Us", which I streamed on Amazon Prime.
After I gloriously completed watching three seasons in a row, I got stuck. The only option I had to continue watching season four was to pay. And this was the moment where I thought to myself, "I wish there is an ad-supported option, instead".
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The old adage "nothing is for free" is correct. For every unpaid piece of content we receive on the internet, we give away a bit of our personal information. It could be our age, our holiday destination, or even our favourite sports. Much of this data will be collected from cookies downloaded onto our computers. Cookie data allows web publishers to track our online journeys and observe the actions we take on different websites.
If used for good, the data can improve the quality of the ads we see. We no longer need to see the ad that is not relevant to us. This can be beneficial as we only see products that are aligned with our interests. Long gone are the days when we had to endure watching diaper ads despite not having any babies in the family.
On top of that, advertising can help us discover new products that we would have otherwise never come across. I could share my recent decision to continue my study as an example. After reading a lot of online content about Artificial Intelligence (AI), I received a highly relevant ad of a higher education program on the subject. It was what I needed at the time and I wouldn't have found this program any other way. You could call it luck, or perhaps karma. As a matter of fact, it is only a smart algorithm on the back-end.
Nevertheless, as big companies are collecting data about their customers from nearly everything they do on their platforms, there is concern over ethics of tracking and using consumer data without consent.
As a result, a few policies have been created in order to regulate data protection, like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California. Since the policies came into full effect, the total sanctions for data violations count to date reaches more than $330 million in Europe.
The same concern also triggers the rise of subscription-based models. Netflix, The New York Times, Spotify, and the other content players have shown that users are indeed willing to pay for digital content to remove ads.
Soon enough, we find ourselves overwhelmed by digital media subscriptions. We have multiple TV streaming services, music services, news subscriptions, app subscriptions, and software subscriptions. It's like an infinity buffet, for those who can pay.
But the excessive amount of options has a downside: 47% of consumers are frustrated with the increasing number of streaming services, according to the 13th edition of Deloitte’s annual Digital Media Trends survey. We may be entering an era of ‘subscription fatigue’.
And the more we subscribe to consume media content, the higher the recurring cost we have to pay. Research found that Europeans spend at least €130 per month on subscription services. Every year, 350 billion euros is spent in Europe on these types of purchases.
Appropriately, when Hulu and Spotify provide the option of an ad-supported plan on their platform, a lot of people jump on the bandwagon. Hulu says 70% of its 82 million viewers are on ad-supported plans.
This could be the idyllic middle ground we seek out: We see non-intrusive and relevant ads by default, and we have the option to remove them by paying a subscription. In this way, consumers have a choice between both extremes.
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As I write this, I already have subscription plans on Spotify, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Masterclass, Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+. The latter I just added recently only to see baby Yoda. "How many subscriptions is too many?", I asked myself.
Therefore, when Amazon prompted me to pay more to continue watching season four of "This is Us", all I want is for them to show me a few short but highly relevant ads instead.
