In this week’s member-guest blog post, we hear from Joshua Koran, EVP, Data and Policy at Criteo, as he shares his top addressability misconceptions to help marketers and media owners plan for the future of addressable media.
Everyone involved in the advertising industry - from marketers to media owners, to agency heads and small business owners - understands the need to reach and engage new consumers to effectively scale their business. And they know that programmatic advertising is one of the best methods to do this.
But today we are at a crossroads. One path returns us to an internet that resembles the original walled gardens of the past (e.g., AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy who owned and operated the infrastructure of the internet in The 1980s). The other path leads to marketers and media owners continuing to retain their choice of business partners to operate and grow their business.
This is due to multiple internet gatekeepers preferring to substitute their own solutions to help media owners and marketers conduct advertising. But, from a consumer perspective, given that the identical personal data is being collected and processed to support these business-to-business use cases, we are primarily talking about market competition, not privacy. Thus, if we want to truly protect choice for people, media owners, and marketers, we must balance people’s important privacy rights with the ability for businesses, especially smaller ones, to benefit from working with supply chain partners.
Towards this end, we should be clear about what data poses threats to people’s privacy (such as sensitive categories of information or activity linked to their identity) and what data has undergone privacy-by-design protections, such as relying on random or de-identified identifiers that pose far lower risks.
With over 20 years of experience in product management, innovation, as well as advocacy for consumers’ privacy rights and the ad-funded open internet, I’ve had innumerable conversations around addressability. In these conversations, I continue to see the same misconceptions across the industry that do little to help improve people’s privacy, much less help marketers and media owners plan for the future of addressable media — and I’d like to clear up those misconceptions now.
Misconception 1: Cookies Are Identifiers
The confusion over cookies is one of the most common misunderstandings I hear. Many people confuse a cookie storage mechanism with the identifier it often contains. These identifiers can be used in digital advertising or for remembering what’s in an online shopping basket. Cookies are merely files that contain identifiers, similar to the address on the outside of an envelope. These identifiers help marketers deliver messages to people by helping them understand how to improve their audience engagement, quantify how well it is performing, and improve how they can allocate their budgets going forward.
There’s also a growing perception that first-party cookies are good, while third-party cookies are bad. This is because many people think that cookies alone cause privacy issues, but privacy issues occur from the data collection and processing of personal data — regardless of whether the organisation that collects and processes data is first or third party.
That’s why it’s crucial for organisations of all sizes to ensure they adhere to strict privacy-safe operations for data collection and processing of personal data. If they must receive data associated with people’s identity (such as merchants who ship goods to people’s homes), it is important they implement appropriate technical and operational measures to keep this information separate from the de-identified data required in general to run and grow their business.
Misconception 2: Addressability is Going Away
The truth is walled gardens will continue to offer fine-grained audience targeting, frequency capping, and real-time optimisation. Most will also continue to support CRM onboarding where they link people’s identity or other forms of cross-site data linking to improve their own advertising solutions. Thus, addressability is here to stay. The only question is whether addressability will be available to their smaller rivals, especially those that rely on pseudonymous, random identifiers to conduct these same advertising operations. This is why addressability is a competition issue – not a privacy one.
According to a 2020 study by The Harris Poll, 66% of consumers' time spent online happens on the open internet. However, there’s an asymmetry in marketing spend, as marketers only allocate 37% of their ad spend to the open internet (the other 63% goes towards walled gardens). This is why it is so important for independent media owners and marketers to have access to responsible addressable media identifiers.
Misconception 3: Marketers Value Addressable Targeting Without Measurement
A key aspect of addressability is improving how marketers engage with audiences — current customers and new prospects alike. But delivery (or reach) is just one part of the process. Measurement of what is working, and more importantly, what is not working, helps marketers improve the allocations of their limited spend, change their bid prices, alter their messaging strategy, and in short, optimise their return on ad spend. This is why addressability is crucial to successful advertising campaigns.
Yet addressability is not only about media owners and marketers. Without addressability, consumers would suffer poor experiences due to over-exposure to the same ad as a result of the lack of frequency capping or miss out on opportunities to connect with brands and products they would benefit from knowing but don’t yet have a relationship with.
Moreover, time-delayed reporting and aggregate APIs are not adequate to support digital advertising. Such long delays mean marketers will waste spend proportionally to the delay in this feedback. The greater the delay, the lower the effectiveness, which leads to lower revenues for publishers.
Misconception 4: Contextual signals or Hashed Emails Are a Complete Replacement
Hashed emails can provide superior cross-device user experiences, but they’re not a complete solution for addressable advertising. Only non-logged-in user IDs will be able to provide a complete picture across the wide range of consumer experiences.
For example, even if a marketer were to target only people who logged in on various news sites, this alone wouldn’t provide marketer view-through attribution for people who arrive at their website a few days later. This is because most marketers don’t require people to log in when they first visit their website.
Similarly, contextual targeting enables marketers to engage the right audience while in a mindset associated with the content surrounding the ad. But without the measurement of which contextual targeting is working better — even on the same site, much less targeting the same topic across different sites — marketers cannot improve the return on their ad spend. Moreover, contextual alone cannot provide the frequency capping or attribution marketers rely on to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.
This is why pseudonymous, random identifiers provide marketers even more value to sites that rely on hashed email or contextual solutions.
Misconception 5: Publisher-Supplied Data Can Replace Cross-Organisation Identifiers
The truth is that while publishers’ first-party data is very valuable since publishers know their audiences better than anyone, it isn’t a standalone replacement. This is why publishers should enrich their inventory with the first-party data that makes it more valuable to marketers.
However, like other engagement tactics, it doesn’t support cross-publisher frequency capping or attribution. Marketers still need responsible addressable identifiers to bridge the exposure on the publisher site to the activities that happen on their own site.
In short, engagement is just one of the three important aspects of addressability, along with measurement and optimisation.
How Marketers and Media Owners Can Move Forward
It may feel like there are many details up in the air when it comes to the future of addressability. However, there are steps that marketers can take now to drive success both now — and in the near future. These include improving the management of first-party data, as well as enriching first-party data with information that the marketer or media owner doesn’t already have.
This can be achieved by working with partners who can provide the technology and services needed to grow their business using responsible addressable identifiers. Marketers and media owners can also make their voices heard by joining industry conversations with Prebid.org to collaborate on the best paths forward for addressability.
There are steps in our collective control, and we just need to take them and learn as we go. If you’d like to hear more about the future of addressability, you can watch my IAB Industry Insider Webinar here.
Let's take a look back to 11th November when IAB Europe hosted the second Virtual Programmatic Day of 2021. With over 540 people in attendance, it was a huge success and a truly insightful day.
The Virtual Programmatic Day brought together industry experts and thought-leaders to explore the latest trends, drivers, and barriers impacting programmatic trading in Europe. A brilliant Keynote presentation and five riveting panel discussions and audience Q&As were heard, making it a fully interactive and engaging experience for all who joined.
Topics on the agenda included; what the programmatic advertising landscape in Europe looks like today, the latest developments as we transition into a post-third-party cookie era, how the TCF will work in a post third party cookie world, programmatic creativity, and all the buzzwords and big themes you need to know as we move into 2022.
A big thank you to our event partners OneTrust for helping to make this event possible!
In this post, you will find an overview of each of the sessions covered, as well as video recordings for you to view in your own time. Enjoy!
Watch the full event recording here.
Opening Keynote: The European Programmatic Advertising Landscape
Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist, IAB Europe and David Goddard, Vice President of Business Development, DoubleVerify
In the opening keynote, Daniel Knapp and David Goddard shared the results of the Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising Report and Programmatic Ad Spend Report, revealing the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in programmatic advertising today.
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 1: The European Programmatic Advertising Landscape – Latest findings
The first panel session of the event discussed the results shared in the opening keynote presentation and addressed the opportunities, barriers, and trends within Programmatic advertising.
Lisa Kalyuzhny, RVP, Advertiser Solutions, EMEA, PubMatic moderated this panel and was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 2: Post Third-Party Cookie World – Are We Still on Track?
The second panel of the day explored the status of the different solutions and industry initiatives being worked on to ensure our industry is on track to deliver privacy-first ad experiences.
Moderated by Andrew Hayward-Wright, Partnerships Director, SeenThis and Programmatic Advisor, IAB Europe, this panel also featured:
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 3: The TCF in a Post Third-Party Cookie World
Following on from the previous discussion, this panel continued the conversation by debating how the TCF will work with new privacy addressability solutions and explored what consent will look like in the post-third-party cookie era.
Moderated by Thomas Mendria, VP Publisher, Central Europe, Head of External Relations EMEA who was joined by:
Watch the panel session here.
Panel 4: Programmatic Creativity
In a world where advertisers are fighting for consumers’ attention, how can technology and data be delivered via programmatic help to power creatives that resonate with audiences? What new innovations are helping advertisers to deliver their creatives more effectively? These are just some of the questions that were explored in this session.
Emanuela Recalcati, Director Creative Solutions, and Supply, EMEA, Xaxis moderated this panel and was joined by:
Watch the panel session here.
Panel 5: Tackling 2022 buzzwords – the big themes coming up
In the final session of the day, our panel of experts explored the big industry buzzwords we need to be familiar with and the themes that we should be focusing on as we enter 2022 and beyond.
Our moderator Sara Vincent – Senior Director, Strategic Partner Development, Index Exchange led this discussion and was joined by:
Watch the session recording here.
Guide Provides Definitions and Best Practices for In-Game Advertising
11th November 2021, Brussels, Belgium: IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, has today released its ‘Guide to In-Gaming’ to provide a basic understanding of in-game advertising. It addresses the various formats available and how to buy and measure them, as well as the key considerations and best practices for buyers.
Having quickly transitioned from a quirky hobby to an invaluable source of connection, driven by console and mobile innovations, gaming brings people together and gives brands new opportunities to reach engaged audiences. Particularly post-pandemic, this topic has never been so relevant.
As such, this guide, written by a host of experts from the IAB Europe Channels and Formats Taskforce, is a fantastic resource for those who need an introduction to In-Gaming. Thanks to our knowledgeable contributors, including Anzu, GroupM, IAB France, Index Exchange, Oracle Advertising, SmartClip, Triton Digital, Xaxis, and Yahoo we are able to provide the perfect 101 Guide to this channel.
Commenting on his contribution to the guide, Nick Woodford, Content Manager & Copywriter at Anzu said "As video game advertising continues to become a priority for brands and agencies everywhere, the IAB is doing a great job of bringing experts within this field together to help build a framework to ensure the space remains a safe, attractive, and accessible channel. It was vital for us to be part of this guide as we want to ensure that Anzu's narrative and focus align with the expectations and requirements of those helping to lay the right foundations for this space to continue thriving."
On the importance of brand safety in In-Gaming, as covered in the guide, Stevan Randjelovic, Director, Brand Safety & Digital Risk at GroupM said “Where advertising investment goes, brand safety issues follow. It is no different with gaming. Gaming has a few risk watchouts: fragmentation of supply, lack of measurement standards, presence of violence in games, the propensity of children’s audience, and more. However, that does not mean that the risk cannot be navigated. A smart marketer will approach this great opportunity with open eyes and keen interest, and will use the available tools, while working with the industry on the advancement of the gaming’s brand safety credentials, as we, at GroupM have been doing.’’
Commenting on the value of the guide, Ivone Schramm, Market Operations Manager, Triton Digital said “I was honored to work on the IAB Europe Guide to In-Gaming. The guide details in-gaming advertising formats and best practices. Providing advertisers with the power to understand what options they have on each platform and how the user will interact with their advertisement is essential for creating well-targeted messaging.”
The Guide is the first of IAB Europe’s work in this area and we will be working closely with our members to help further drive this channel forward.
Download the guide here.
On 21st October, IAB Europe hosted its second Virtual CTV Event of 2021, and with over 350 people in attendance, it was a huge success!
Featuring a series of panel discussions and market deep dives from IAB Europe and IAB Europe member companies, the event uncovered key topics such as the CTV landscape in 2021 and beyond, the challenges and opportunities that come with measuring CTV campaigns, brand safety, and brand suitability for CTV, and the latest updates for capturing user consent in this channel.
A big thank you to our event partners Magnite and OneTrust for helping to make this event possible.
In this post, you will find an overview of each of the sessions covered, as well as video recordings for you to view in your own time. Enjoy!
Watch the full event recording here.
Opening Keynote: The CTV Landscape
Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist, IAB Europe
In the opening keynote, our Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp presented an overview of the latest stats and facts from the CTV ecosystem.
Watch the session recording here.
Panel 1: The CTV Landscape in 2021 and Beyond
The first panel session of the event addressed the latest developments helping to shape the CTV landscape. They looked at partnerships, players, and performance in CTV advertising.
Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist, IAB Europe moderated this panel and was joined by:
Watch the session recording here
Panel 2: Challenges and Opportunities for Measuring CTV Campaigns
In this panel, experts discussed the biggest challenges for our industry when it comes to CTV and cross-screen measurement. They discussed what hurdles currently exist and what needs to be done to overcome them. Can the industry come together to tackle this? Who is best placed to lead this initiative?
Anita Caras, Research Director, Yahoo! moderated this session and was joined by:
Watch the session recording here
Panel 3: Brand Safety and Suitability For CTV
Following on from the release of IAB Europe’s Guide to Brand Safety in CTV, the panel discussed the latest technological advancements for ensuring brand-safe placements in CTV. They also discussed how brand suitability can be applied to CTV campaigns, sharing best practices and examples.
Justin Adler-Swanberg, Director, Marketplace Quality, MediaMath moderated this panel and was joined by:
Watch the panel session here
Closing Keynote: How to Collect Consent & Preferences in CTV Applications with OneTrust
In this session, Lukas Rottleb, Solutions Engineering Lead from OneTrust discussed the immense growth, opportunities, and challenges for OTT, and receive a deep dive into OneTrust’s OTT App Compliance solution that enables publishers and advertisers to capture consent and preferences from within OTT applications and CTV environments to support compliance with GDPR, CCPA, IAB TCF 2.0 and more.
Watch the session recording here
