AUTHORED BY INDUSTRY LEADERS FROM ACROSS THE VALUE-CHAIN ENSURES GUIDE IS APPLICABLE FOR ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM
PLANNED REGULAR UPDATES WILL ENSURE GUIDE CONTINUES TO PROVIDE VALUE OVER THE TWO-YEAR TRANSITION PERIOD AND BEYOND
7th May 2020, Brussels: IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, has today released its ‘Guide to the Post Third-Party Cookie Era’, to prepare brands, agencies, publishers and tech intermediaries for the much-anticipated post-third-party cookie advertising ecosystem.
The guide, which has been developed by experts from IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee, provides level-setting background into the current use of digital advertising cookies, the contributing factors to their depletion and an overview of the alternative solutions that are currently available.
Contributors to the Guide, including Adform, BBC Global News, CNN International, DoubleVerify, Foursquare, Omnicom Media Group (OMD), Oracle Data Cloud and Xandr, amongst others, have collaborated to provide a view from across the value-chain on the impact these changes will have in areas including digital advertising execution, measurement, and ad verification, along with tangible examples for how stakeholders can contribute towards the solutions industry will take forward.
Commenting on the industry’s need for an essential guide and the role that IAB Europe will play, Townsend Feehan, CEO, IAB Europe said “The depletion of third-party cookies will bring about fundamental changes to our industry and as the European voice for digital advertising and marketing, our role is to navigate these changes, educate the wider market and help our members contribute to the solutions. The Guide we are releasing today is an initial education piece and we will continue to work with our members to feed into industry initiatives such as IAB Tech Lab’s Project Rearc and W3C.”
Miles Pritchard, Managing Partner Data Management Solutions, OMD EMEA, who contributed to the Guide added “The deprecation of third-party cookies will create fundamental changes for how advertisers manage their campaigns in areas including audience targeting and retargeting, frequency capping and attribution. Ensuring OMD has a voice in these discussions is essential for both our advertising clients and the broader industry.”
These industry changes will also impact the publishing industry and contributor Emily Roberts, Programmatic Trading Manager, BBC Global News, added “The IAB Europe Guide makes clear that first-party data will be key to enable advertisers to understand their audiences, so publishers will need to reorganise their data collection and extension strategies to meet this need. By maintaining value in the open Internet, publishers are able to focus on their core business - creating premium and trusted content that will keep consumer's happy and deliver engaged audiences to advertisers.”
Chair of the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee and DoubleVerify Senior Director of Business Development, David Goddard, concluded “As an industry we should stop attempting to ‘solve’ for the loss of third-party cookies, but instead recognise that these changes are predicated on the direction of privacy laws globally. To realise the full potential of this natural evolution it is essential that all parts of the value-chain work together to provide solutions that work across the whole ecosystem and keeping users at the centre of this conversation to build trust. The IAB Europe Guide creates common understanding of the issues to facilitate this approach and the Programmatic Trading Committee will be updating the Guide on a regular basis to provide the latest information and guidance on market alternatives to third-party cookies.”
The Guide follows IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day which was held last week (28th April). Over 1,500 people attended the event virtually to hear from leaders on the developments and trends within Programmatic Advertising. A dedicated session was held to discuss the depletion of the third-party cookie with digital leaders sharing their thoughts on the impact and alternative solutions. You can watch the panel recording and access the audience Q&A here.
The IAB Europe ‘Guide to the Post Third-Party Cookie Era’ is available here.
In response to the ISBA Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency study released in the UK today, IAB Europe would like to confirm our commitment to maintaining transparency and quality in the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem. To help maintain such transparency, IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee created the Supply Chain Transparency Guide to help all stakeholders - from buy-side through to sell-side - to navigate which questions they should be asking and to whom. We are also extremely supportive of the initiatives and standards developed by national IABs across Europe, such as the IAB UK Gold Standard, IAB France Digital Ad Trust Initiative, and the IAB Tech Lab such as ads.txt and sellers.json which are designed to enhance transparency and best practice.
As noted by IAB UK in their response to the study, programmatic trading comprises a variety of players to ensure the trading between publishers and advertisers works and it is important to note the value each of these players adds to the transaction.
The release calls on the industry to work together to standardise log level data fields and definitions. In February 2020, IAB Europe created a working group within the Programmatic Trading Committee tasked to look at SSP Data best practices. The group includes SSPs, publishers and agencies, to understand the differences across these data fields and to harmonise the reporting fields. If any IAB Europe members would like to join this group, please contact Marie-Clare Puffett - puffett@iabeurope.eu.
IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day took place on 28th April and with 1,500+ attendees it is one of the largest virtual events in our industry. Featuring speakers from IAB Europe member companies and advertisers CNN, Bloomberg Media, BBC Global News, Double Verify, OMG, The Trade Desk, Xandr, HelloFresh Vodafone, the event was split into four panel sessions. In a series of blogs, we have provided a wrap up for each of the panels which include answering some of the audience questions that the panellists did not have time for during their discussions:
Panel 1 - The Post-Cookie Era
Panel 2 - Programmatic Transparency: Where Are We Now?
Panel 3 - The State of Supply Path Optimisation
Panel 4 - In-Housing Programmatic Trading - Lessons Learnt and Best Practices
Watch the full recording of the event here.
Event Feedback
Thanks to everyone who attended and completed the post-event survey. If you would like to leave your feedback, you can access the survey here.
With expert speakers in each topic, it is the go to event for the latest industry insight of the programmatic trading market in Europe. But don’t just take our word for it, see below for is what some of the attendees said about the event...
“IAB Europe's Virtual Programmatic Day is a fantastic resource available to push the level of understanding forward on the latest topics in our industry. I can guarantee you will have new ideas and questions for your partners after attending one an IAB Europe Virtual Programmatic Day.”
“The VPD is becoming a must attend event with regards to the quality of the topics and the high level of speakers in the digital European media landscape.”
“The event was really helpful, covering all the important topics especially SPO and In-Housing Programmatic Trading.”
“Great selection of industry leaders, all collaborating for a great discussion.”
Upcoming IAB Europe events
Find out more about upcoming IAB Europe virtual events including our flagship Interact Online event, here.
IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day took place on 28th April and with 1,500+ attendees it is one of the largest virtual events in our industry. Featuring speakers from IAB Europe member companies CNN, Bloomberg Media, BBC Global News, Double Verify, IAS, OMD, MediaCom, Google and OpenX, the event was split into panel sessions to address and debate the industries hottest topics from post-cookie to programmatic in-housing.
The Post-Cookie Era Panel
The first panel of the event addressed one of the most fundamental technology advances our industry has seen in many years, the announcement that third-party cookies were to be depleted. This session explored how prepared the industry is for the demise of third-party cookies, the opportunities and challenges, whether it will still be possible to deliver targeted advertising, impacts on measurement, attribution and frequency capping and key actions the industry needs to take.
Tanzil Bukhari, Managing Director EMEA, DoubleVerify moderated the panel and was joined by:
Event Recording
Watch the event recording here.
Audience Polls
We ran a couple of audience polls during the panel to ask how stakeholders expect the depletion of the third-party cookie to impact programmatic trading levels and whether consumers will benefit. Two thirds of the audience (69%) expect some or a large decrease in programmatic trading whilst nearly half (47%) are not sure if consumers will notice any difference after the depletion.
Key takeaways of the panel discussion as cited by Tanzil include:
Audience Q&A
The panel garnered great levels of engagement from the audience with more questions than they had time to answer! The panelists have provided their viewpoints on some of those questions here:
Q. Retargeting has been a huge part of marketing tactics for direct response brands for years - without cookies, what’s the alternatives to get similar conversion rates?
Mathieu Roche: Third-party cookies are just a technical solution to store user IDs; there are other ways to make user IDs available to ad tech platforms so that use cases such as retargeting can be executed, mainly using first-party storage such as first-party cookies or local storage.
Richard Sharp: The ability to re engage customers and prospects visiting a brand’s digital properties is an effective strategy for many Oracle clients. The good news is there are several solutions that can enable retargeting and yield similar conversion rates. The first is through authenticated traffic. Several solutions are available today that can reach consumers who are in a logged in state both on a brand’s site and on the publisher’s site. This includes retargeting PII-matched or hashed email audiences on walled gardens and several identity consortium’s that are enabling this for open web programmatic retargeting. Alternatively, retargeting is a viable strategy through device IDs in mobile apps or on connected TVs. Consumers today have more devices than ever, offering a myriad of ways to reach those people. But on different devices, they can be enabled either directly, retargeting the same device ID, or indirectly, linking logged in users to device IDs using cross-device.
Q. Measuring marketing activities has long been based on cookies - without this direct link to who saw your ads, what measurement solutions should we pivot to?
Tanzil Bukhari: DoubleVerify does not rely on cookies to detect fraud, deliver brand safety or measure viewability, therefore quality measurement solutions have not been as impacted. As it relates to targeting and performance measurement, advertisers will turn to new technologies, like contextual, as well as more meaningful performance measures.We are able to gather troves of information on the impact of ad exposure and key dimensions of engagement to predict the likelihood of an ad to convert. It is time to start mining and analyzing this information - which does not include PII - to better understand the environment that is most conducive to achieving specific KPIs, ultimately driving ROI.
Richard Sharp: Marketers should focus on measurement solutions that are based on the ability to identify real people and households, ones that are not bound and dependent on cookies. At Oracle Data Cloud, this is foundational to our measurement solutions, as for our entire history we’ve focused on building multiple linkages using MAIDs, IFAs, and registration-based matches. While most of our identity-based measurement does not rely on cookies at all, we’re future-proofing our solutions to move to person-based matching and panel-based data sources that move beyond cookies to consent, so they’re compliant with an ever-evolving privacy landscape. Lastly, it’s worth asking if your measurement solutions are working with respected industry-wide approaches like IFA.
Q. In a cookie-less world, will contextual win the targeting game?
Mathieu Roche: Contextual and Behavioural targeting are different techniques, which should work together, not against each other (the infamous “right person, right place” goal). What is at stake with the redefinition of identity for digital advertising is the ability to still do user-level targeting (or frequency capping / attribution for that matter) on the open web. If we can’t, I fear contextual targeting won’t be good enough for publishers to “win the game” against the walled gardens.
Tanzil Bukhari: Contextual targeting definitely has a role to play. But it can’t be the contextual targeting of yesteryear that focused on simple interest categories. With the help of ontological machine learning and semantic science, contextual targeting has the potential to be much more. An in-depth, accurate understanding of the content on the page, together with engagement signals, can help uncover what drives performance. Imagine contextual segments that are built around your core messages, and the actions you want people to take. It is this level of sophistication that makes contextual targeting interesting again.
Richard Sharp: In a cookie-less world, advertisers will still need to reach the right audience at the right time with the best message in brand safe environments. Targeting tactics not only have to perform, but they are also only as good as their ability to activate and scale. Given the evolution of IDs, you will have to leverage other data assets for insights and activation. Advertisers will need to deploy an individualised strategy that blends permissioned first-party data, anonymised data, and data that sits somewhere in between. Context is one of many de-identified data sets, and context alone will not be the end-all solution. However, the ability to link context with smarter data, and activate in a more intelligent and scaled fashion is key.
Q. How important is it for brands and publishers to build their own DMPs using first party data?
Ben Hancock: Bear in mind that most publishers and brands are not in the business of building ad tech, and the process is expensive, time consuming and - considering how quickly this market moves - it’s difficult to be certain that they would be able to create something that is better than what is currently out there. But saying that, I think there is opportunity potentially for the largest brands and publishers to build something (perhaps shared similar to what we’re seeing in the consortium space?) that is better suited to the new demands of a privacy first era for specific needs and would be economically viable due to the scale of these businesses
Q. Is it time for marketers and advertisers to rethink their KPIs?
Tanzil Bukhari: Efficient, measurable ROI will continue to be the goal for advertisers. How they achieve that, and the milestones or KPIs they need to get there, may shift. Despite the adjustment around cookies, people still want relevant and suitable content experiences. Marketers should ask themselves, how can we enhance targeting, while complying with evolving regulation and practices?
Q. So, what will be the currency in the future, will we go back to the past regarding contextual?
Mathieu Roche: By building a privacy-compliant infrastructure to identify users and enable “smart advertising” to power publishers’ businesses.
Q. In response to Mathieu’s point, not being able to prospect via first-party data by definition, can be achieved via the likes of Ozone Project?
Mathieu Roche: Any publisher can offer targeting segments across its properties, but buy-side targeting (ie. customer onboarding, third-party audience targeting), cross-site frequency capping, and attribution (ie. linking actions across publishers and advertisers sites) require a cross-domain ID to be performed at scale. Even within the “walls” of the Ozone Project.
Q. How does the loss of the cookie apply when looking at the in-app space with Device ID? Will this be the rise of fusing in-app and browsing identity?
Richard Sharp: Advertising on mobile apps is entirely executed using device identifiers referred to as mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs). The loss of the cookie has no direct impact on in-app advertising. While the ecosystem has struggled to find a scalable and accurate means to “fuse” in-app and browsing identity, the best solution here is via user authentication. That is why Oracle has built the capability to capture and activate consumer authentication across brand’s digital properties within the Oracle DMP.
Q. Comscore has recently illustrated that record numbers of users are migrating away from social platforms back to premium publishers for their news. How important is it for publishers now that don’t have paywalls to capitalise on this uptick in traffic to throw up some type of free wall in order to capture the first-party data they will need beyond the third-party cookie?
Ben Hancock: Firstly it’s great to see consumers are turning to trusted sources of respected news during these challenging times. Assessing the merits of having a paywall is a balancing act – yes there is value in subscriptions and paid for models but we’ve reached a place whereby consumers expect access for free. If a publisher installs a paywall they will lose a big chunk of their audience and need to ensure the subscription model will cover the lost advertising revenue. Publishers will still capture some first-party data without the use of paywalls and should incentivise users to keep coming back through a quality experience and content.
Richard Sharp: The question on whether publishers should implement “free walls” or “reg walls” now or at any time in the future is a difficult one because of the implications of the decision. It is a major business decision that should be made based on a publisher’s unique goals, advertiser client-base, and user-base. We feel any decision should be tested rigorously as the implementation of a “free wall” will undoubtedly have an impact on traffic volumes that will in turn impact advertising revenue. Alternative advertising solutions should also be considered and tested including on-site profiling (which can be done entirely using first party cookies) and contextual targeting.
Q. Are end-users taken into account? Or are we, the industry, thinking of the next best thing in our own interest?
Tanzil Bukhari: This is a fast-moving industry - both in terms of technology, and in terms of how consumers interact with content. Privacy and respect is necessary for sustainability. It’s not about the next best thing - it is about understanding the value exchange, and supporting a free, ad-supported Internet.
Sara Vincent: The first question any player in the industry should be asking themselves is, ‘What would be the best possible experience for the user?’ If your focus is on the user and what they actually want — as ours is — solutions built around deterministic, first-party data will likely become the clearest path forward. Whichever direction or form this ultimately takes, though, the proposition needs to have user trust and privacy at its core.
Q. What is your advice to advertisers in regards to their existing or upcoming decisions regarding adtech / martech systems that have been dependent on the current landscape?
Mathieu Roche: In our experience advertisers and agencies don’t fully understand their dependencies on third-party cookies for “basic” things like frequency capping and attribution. They should lean on their ad tech partners and ask the difficult questions, but also participate because a solution isn’t going to appear by magic, it needs to be built, tested and adopted by enough stakeholders to become a standard.
Tanzil Bukhari: DoubleVerify does not rely on cookies to detect fraud, deliver brand safety or measure viewability, therefore quality measurement solutions will most likely continue as before. There is a lot of interesting innovation happening around how we can use non-PII data to understand where consumers are in the buying process, and better predict performance. Advertisers should work with their ad-tech and mar-tech partners to understand how they are pivoting to address these issues.
Richard Sharp: Multiple strategies will need to be implemented to profile and target known/authenticated users, pseudonymised customers, and anonymous consumers. Adoption of a suite of solutions to address each user segment across the profile-ability spectrum (customers versus prospects across known/pseudonymous/anonymous identity) will be likely required. Advertisers will need to take an inventory of their own user-base and desired prospect targets across the spectrum of “profile-ability” to help shape their approach. We’ve seen customers of Oracle Data Cloud see the benefit of unlocking a suite of advertiser and marketer solutions that help them bridge the gap between Advertising and Marketing to deliver better consumer experiences and measure the impact of those efforts in this dynamic and evolving landscape.
Q. How do you convey the value exchange to users?
Sara Vincent: Publishers have a challenging task on their hands to not only identify what the value exchange is for their users, but how to maintain it. The good news is that users are still dedicated to consuming content that matters (perhaps now more than ever) and we’re confident that users will continue to put trust in the digital publications and brands who bring them value. It’s not about ‘conveying’ the value exchange, per se, it’s about delivering the content users are after in a trusted environment. Our role is to ensure that publishers are able to maintain addressable media and focus not on the technology (that’s our remit), but on the value exchange, enabling them to continue maintaining users’ trust.
Q. Do DSPs have a responsibility to be involved in this conversation, or will they just work with whatever the final solution may be?
Mathieu Roche: DSPs have a major role to play because adoption will help define what the final solution(s) will be. If they don’t join the conversation and test the various options, there will not be a solution.
Richard Sharp: DSPs will be a critical execution channel for programmatic Open Web advertising, which does still have a future in many cookie-less scenarios. Every player in the space has a voice in the conversation. Oracle has had numerous engaging and promising conversations with DSPs to offer advertisers unique solutions across both known and anonymous targeting.
Q. What about accountability in all of this? In terms of as tech: if Publishers have this one-to-one understanding, are SSPs then bound to adapt to every publisher’s data set and pass those signals along to DSPs-Advertisers?
Mathieu Roche: This is exactly what we want to avoid because it doesn’t scale. No publisher has the power to command custom adoption of its own taxonomy by all buyers & ad tech platforms. We need a standard currency for each publisher’s data asset to be available to buyers via ad tech platforms, at scale. This is how we can help publishers monetise these assets to their true value.
Q. The bigger problem is, even if the industry gets together, how is the management, maintenance and validation of IDs going to happen in a transparent manner?
Richard Sharp: This could be addressed by a few solves. One way is for a third-party, agnostic industry body to step in to provide the framework, if not the means to manage, maintain and validate any future ID space. The other way is for all players in the space to adhere to the strictest interpretation of global privacy laws and provide the mechanisms to easily surface and provide controls for consumers to manage their data and identity. Ultimately, it will probably be a bit of both.
IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day took place on 28th April and with 1,500+ attendees it is one of the largest virtual events in our industry. Featuring speakers from IAB Europe member companies and advertisers CNN, Bloomberg Media, BBC Global News, Double Verify, The Trade Desk, Xandr, HelloFresh Vodafone, the event was split into panel sessions to address and debate the industries hottest topics from post-cookie to programmatic in-housing.
The In-Housing - Lessons Learnt and Best Practices Panel
The last panel explored the trend of in-housing programmatic buying, a trend which appears to be
increasingly popular amongst advertisers. The panel explored the realities of in-housing, best practices and how agency and technology partner relationships are evolving.
Ilona Lubojemska, Director of Client Services, The Trade Desk moderated the panel and was joined by:
Event Recording
Watch the event recording here.
Audience Poll
We ran a poll during the panel to ascertain how the attendees representing brands are approaching programmatic buying. The results show that a hybrid approach is taken by most:
Key takeaways of the panel discussion as cited by Ilona:
The main takeaway around in-housing is that there is no ONE approach brands can replicate when bringing programmatic trading into their organisations. With in-housing it is important to understand the roles the technology partners and agencies play and include them in the process. An open dialogue with the partners is especially important when it comes to establishing new ways of working and keeping on top of innovation, ensuring we have got the right talent looking after programmatic trading and we keep data at the centre of it all!
Audience Q&A
The panel received some audience questions that they didn’t have time for. The panelists have provided their viewpoints on some of those questions here:
Q. For the brands, if you had the opportunity to buy as direct as possible on the inventory of trusted publishers, would you divert money from other channels towards these new channels or not?
Carlotta Meneghini: What we're trying to do is to bring as many media activities as possible under programmatic buying to centralise strategies, spending control and frequency. From our programmatic perspective we aren’t interested in buying inventory directly from a single publisher because we wouldn't control the exposure of our communication. We evaluate inventory on specific KPIs that bring together efficiency, and brand safety.
Q. How do you see the future of independent agencies that offer programmatic services to their clients and even to global agencies at some specific cases?
Oliver Gertz: Agencies can provide know-how from their larger teams working across clients and technologies. We also expect that advertisers will see that in-house teams are not more cost-effective nor are they driving higher ROI and then look for hybrid models of in-house and outsourced work, but the ideal setup is much more integrated and agile vs. the old “send a briefing and wait” agency model.
Stefanie Scognamiglio: Independent agencies can play an important role in driving new product adoption or customised solutions for their customers. I would expect some consolidation in the market, but they are very close to their customer’s needs and their ability to innovate and adapt to the industry will determine their continued relevance.
Q. Will the clients still need you, if you as the network agency build up all their knowledge?
Oliver Gertz: Knowledge is not static and especially in such a fast evolving area such as programmatic it is essential that you have continuous learning. That learning, however, is often mainly test and learn rather than formal training, so agencies that learn across technologies, clients and countries will be able to provide outside-in expertise that evey in-house team needs.
Q. How does in-housing provide more transparency to advertisers, in a world where agencies offer full available transparency to their clients?
Carlotta Meneghini: I think agencies and customers, as we know them today, have goals that are aligned for the most part. However there is a part that will never be aligned just because they are different companies with different business models. In-house models allow clients to have transparency not just in terms of programmatic chain's costs but also regarding the choice of inventory, of technologies to test etc.
Stefanie Scognamiglio: Transparency gains span beyond access to information. In-housing can help build knowledge internally on how to evaluate the shared information and take an independent point of view. A confident well-informed understanding of options is the basis for brands to take broader ownership of decisions and results.
IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day took place on 28th April and with 1,500+ attendees it is one of the largest virtual events in our industry. Featuring speakers from IAB Europe member companies CNN, Bloomberg Media, BBC Global News, Double Verify, OMD, MediaCom, Google and OpenX, the event was split into panel sessions to address and debate the industries hottest topics from post-cookie to programmatic in-housing.
The State of Supply Path Optimisation Panel
The third panel of the event addressed the technicalities of supply path optimisation and whether it has delivered on its promise to streamline buying via programmatic platforms. The panel also looked at this from a publisher perspective addressing demand path optimisation (DPO).
Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist, IAB Europe moderated the panel and was joined by:
Event Recording
Watch the event recording here.
Audience Poll
We ran an audience poll during the panel to understand what has driven the demand for SPO and revealed the key driver, according to the attendees, is the demand for more transparency. However, most think it is driven by a number of reasons including change in auction dynamics, demand for transparency and pressure from regulators with half of the audience voting ‘all of the above’.
Audience Q&A
The panel received more audience questions than there was time for. The panellists have provided their viewpoints on some of those questions here:
Q. Advertising is a publisher's core-business. They should have been leading transparency since the very beginning. How do you think all these transparency initiatives will impact on publishers results? Why do you think it took so long to get started?
Tom Fryett: You could say advertising is an agency’s core business too. I think buyers and sellers were always trying to find one another and give each other transparency to foster trust - but also ultimately to do more business together. The tools improve over time. We derived a huge amount of insight from IAB initiatives like Ads.txt which has been enhanced by Sellers.json and the supply chain object. We have the resource and tech on our side to analyse this data at scale and use it to make investment decisions. I think truly premium publishers will benefit and if they have a scarce and desirable audience to advertisers, they will be rewarded by this work on both sides to have transparency.
Simon Baker: Advertising was a publishers core business but subscription and paywall revenue have overtaken ad revenue in multiple examples and that's excluding live events.
Regarding transparency, I don't think either the buy side or sell side set-out intentionally to create a murky world - it's something that's naturally happened with multiple players in the programmatic ecosystem. If the question is should publishers have done more to protect their inventory from the outset then the answer is yes. The awkward truth is bad decisions are sometimes made when focusing on short term revenue pressures.
Daniel Knapp: Transparency by itself does not have value. The ability to look into a system needs to be paired with the ability to make sense of it, and then to take appropriate action. This is hard to do, and most publishers are not set up for this. Algorithmically traded markets, whether in finance or advertising, remove institutional knowledge about how the market operates from the ultimate buyers and sellers, and even from intermediaries.
Q. Can you please elaborate on inconsistent auction dynamics?
Shane Shevlin: This refers to the type of auction that an SSP runs for OX traffic. It can be first, price, second price or it can be something in between. Jounce Media’s “RTB Supply path Benchmarking Report” from last year (2019) reported that the average publisher transacts open auction demand through 17.5 distinct supply paths. Each of these paths will result in different economics, with some paths offering much less value along the way. This both affects the planner/buyer putting their budgets on the line with extra fees for longer paths and the platforms who incur additional cost managing the extra bid listening costs, managing slower response times etc.
Q. Will publishers need SSPs in the future? Isn’t the market working hard to skip at least one -SP, be it the D or the S?
Tom Fryett: We love the “Death of the X” metaphor in this industry. DSPs and SSPs will evolve to meet new challenges. They won’t go away completely but they won’t necessarily look the same in the future. It will be driven by the economics of demand and supply - TV content is very expensive to produce, has long lead times and you tend to have fewer, premium ad placements around it - therefore DSPs and SSPs will evolve to make the process of buying that type of supply more efficient, rather than shoving it into a Display way of working.
Krzysztof Lis: I don’t think that this will be the case. If a DSP wanted to integrate closer with the publisher, it would eventually mean that the DSP created it’s own SSP, right? The only reason to implement this DSP/SSP hybrid would be to get the new, additional, unique demant that comes from this DSP. But from that hybrid’s perspective it would be beneficial to open their inventory to other DSPs as well -- so we’d end up pretty much in the same place, as we are now.
Lisa Kalyuzhny: We covered this question during the session - this was a hot twitter topic 5 years ago - and seems that people are keen to bring it back up. For us to live in a transparent environment with an honest holistic auction - we need both sides of the equation and for those sides to work together not be a single company. Otherwise your auction is no longer a “fair” auction - you are favoring your own demand or supply - and that hurts both the advertiser and the publisher.
Daniel Knapp: Publishers will always need specialist partners that can manage and tap into demand in a programmatic world. The resources and scale required go beyond what a single publisher can provide in-house. But a few years from now, this may not (only) be a classic SSP function as we know it. The beauty of the programmatic marketplace is the democratisation of supply and demand. But the economics may not add up in the long-term. The Walled Gardens partly excel because they compress supply and demand technology into one offering. Outside these gardens, there is a drive to maximise working media and also to differentiate as a tech provider - for instance through exclusive relationships. We already see direct relationships between DSPs and publishers, and also between agencies and SSPs. There is a risk of the programmatic pipes becoming less open and more proprietary. The benefit is a potential world where technology becomes a more utilitarian infrastructure than it is today, akin to a software service layer like in CRM. But for the sake of a fair market, this can only work if monitoring and audience systems are in play - a kind of ‘net neutrality’ or ratings agency like Standard and Poors for programmatic pipes. We will see a lot of changes in the Lumascape over the next few years. Yet far from meaning the demise of the SSP, it means that everyone in the value chain will need to innovate to create a more advantageous market position.
Q. Is demand path optimisation (DPO) not just regressing to the old waterfall world where the publisher makes the decision on which SSP they want to prioritise and creating a more fragmented market for buyers?
Krzysztof Lis: Hopefully not, as the waterfall did not have many advantages over header bidding and other currently popular implementation methods. Also, one can easily add different priorities to specific demand (using deals) in header bidding. I think that would be the preferred method of doing it.
Simon Baker: No, I don’t think DPO is a regression. The old waterfall world basically consisted of plugging in every SSP, ad network, reseller and anything in-between and hoping for the best. DPO is a data led approach so we can understand exactly the value each partner is bringing to the table especially from a unique demand perspective.
Daniel Knapp: I see DPO as a key innovation for publishers to take control over their inventory. It is not a regression to the waterfall because it does not imply putting different SSPs into a fixed, hierarchical order. Different SSPs have different strengths. The type of demand they bring the consistency and diversity of demand all vary by time of day, number of relationships, etc. Real DPO is using data science to be the conductor of an orchestra of SSPs: allowing each to play out their strength. In addition, DPO creates data and insight. This business intelligence is critical for more informed and constructive discussions with publishers and SSPs on how to best evolve their partnerships. It also helps publishers understand their buyers better, arm their sales teams and create better offerings. Of course there is a difference between ‘buzzword DPO’ and ‘deep DPO’ mentioned here. But done smartly, it is a far cry from waterfalls.
Q. How do publishers see bid shading by SSPs?
Simon Baker: Bid shading is something that's been happening on the buy side under various different names for years. You could argue there are transparency issues but it’s a tactic that most buyers are using either publicly or privately to deliver the most effective rates for their clients. I would expect most publishers are seeing higher clearing rates than second price auctions so this would not fall into their top five programmatic issues to resolve currently.
Q. Would transparency of QPS cost help publishers and advertisers understand the impact inefficiency has on the ecosystem? If so, would they be willing to pay for this bandwidth?
Tom Fryett: QPS cost is a technical challenge that has real-world impact on the shared interests of user, advertiser and publisher. If you delve into SPO you learn a lot more about the infrastructure of the ecosystem which enhances the way you plan and buy. It's a good thing for stakeholders to understand the different challenges different parts of the chain might be experiencing to inform working with one another, even if it does mean learning another acronym.
Q. Do you think that in the future there will be just one technology, which will have the functionally of SSP & DSP, a kind of hybrid of DSP & SSP? Which will essentially limit 350 Ad Exchanges and X-number of DSPs?
Tom Fryett: Further consolidation in the space is a likely outcome of the wider economic situation in the world today, but one technology underpinning emerging over time is unlikely as people will continue to invest in innovation in a market the size of ad tech.
Lisa Kalyuzhny: I agree with Tom - further consolidation will continue - it started with companies closing before GDPR and we’ve continued to see ad tech challenged by regulations and policies. The one technology removes the fair auction and long term becomes detrimental to both advertisers and publishers. It prevents the advertiser from holistically identifying the best impression and the publisher from seeing all possible impressions or interests in its inventory.
Daniel Knapp: I concur with Tom and Lisa. I tried to address my thoughts on this in the comment on if publishers need SSPs above.
Q. With a lot of the new SPO initiatives in place (e.g. supply chain object and sellers.json), how does the panel feel about blockchain companies looking to become another part of the supply chain? Will they go away?
Tom Fryett: Decentralised solutions and smart contracts seem like potentially clever solutions to some of the problems discussed by all sides today. The format doesn’t need to be blockchain necessarily and the simplest solutions are often best when it comes to fostering transparency. Just look at Ads.txt - a humble text file has helped buyers find inventory from authentic sellers - it wasn’t perfect but it was a huge leap forward and has a very low barrier for entry for all involved to use it. Sellers.json and the supply chain object enhances OMG’s ability to verify authenticated partners.
Lisa Kalyuzhny: Blockchain companies were a huge trend in the US about 18 months ago - and then the holding companies realised that they didn't need another hand in the ad tech cookie jar. They had the tools necessary to do their own audits - this opened up conversations with SSPs / DSPs and the IAB. Until blockchain can support the QPS necessary for our industry, it's a buzzword without much behind it.
Daniel Knapp: Blockchain lives off the promise of transparency. But there is a problem. A leger creates the potential for insight, but not actual insight. What is recorded still needs to be analysed. If that is really granular, as it needs to be, Blockchain can’t help, it is advanced and costly data science. Blockchain approaches also suffer from an application gap: there is no path to action. In addition, recording transactions in a ledger itself is insufficient data to understand real market dynamics. This requires experimentation: throwing stones in the pond to test reactions. The business case of blockchain approaches for programmatic was unclear as Lisa mentioned: another media model to live off the chain is counterproductive. Yet the thinking behind what became manifest as blockchain approaches is hugely valuable: how to create transparency and a fair ecosystem. Some blockchain companies have pivoted to pursue these core questions with other technologies and business models. This will create more and real value in the long-term.
Q. @Simon Baker: as a publisher, what are you doing to skip this programmatic ecosystem as a whole? Directly talking to brands (or their agencies) and creating great deals based on mutual possibilities and data.
Simon Baker: Firstly I want to clarify we have no intention of skipping the programmatic ecosystem. We are here to facilitate transacting with our clients and agencies from direct IO to programmatic channels - it’s totally their choice. One noticeable trend is most of our direct business is content led where standard display is migrating to an automated world due to the efficiencies involved. Data is not the dividing point between direct and programmatic, a number of our new data led digital products are built with a programmatic first mindset.
IAB Europe’s Virtual Programmatic Day took place on 28th April and with 1,500+ attendees it is one of the largest virtual events in our industry. Featuring speakers from IAB Europe member companies CNN, Bloomberg Media, BBC Global News, Double Verify, Integral Ad Science, OMD, MediaCom, Google and OpenX, the event was split into panel sessions to address and debate the industries hottest topics from post-cookie to programmatic in-housing.
The Programmatic Transparency: Where are we now? Panel
The second panel of the event addressed one of the key topics in our industry - transparency in the programmatic supply chain. The panel explored whether we have made progress in achieving transparency, which industry initiatives have made the most difference and whether COVID-19 is impacting the priorities around transparency.
Clementina Piazza, Programmatic Director EMEA, Integral Ad Science moderated the panel and was joined by:
Event Recording
Watch the event recording here.
Audience Poll
We ran an audience poll during the panel to understand how COVID-19 is impacting the prioritisation of transparency; the majority (92%) of the attendees stated that it is either more of a priority or remains at the same level.
Key takeaways of the panel as cited by Clementina include:
Transparency is a vast concept and its definition has changed quite a lot over the years to become nowadays focused mainly around financial and supply chain transparency, mainly due to the rise of programmatic as a widespread way of transacting digital media.
Dedicating a whole session to it manifests in itself that there is still work to be done. A lot of the transparency and trust issues that we have seen coming up in the past have not necessarily come up deliberately. They have come up because of how intentionally or unintentionally complex we have made this ecosystem to be, which in turn has created a fertile ground for loopholes and ambiguity.
However, it is evident, especially in Western Europe, that we are now at a stage where there is awareness around what the major issues are and we also have a number of initiatives that are working to address those issues. The desire for greater transparency has been equally driven by both sides of the ecosystem and is evident in initiatives such as the IAB Europe Supply Chain Transparency Guide, ads.txt, app-ads.txt, supply chain object, sellers.json, the IAB Gold Standards and the JICWEBS standards. The big worry however is for such initiatives to be properly policed and for breechers to see tangible consequences from their misfits.
With more than a third of buyers still thinking that transparency is a barrier to investment, resources such as the IAB Europe Supply Chain Transparency Guide are proving incredibly valuable. The guide provides in fact a short cut into best practices as it includes questions that any responsible player in this ecosystem should want to answer.
Even if the general consensus is that the current situation related to Coronavirus hasn’t made transparency any less important, it’s fair to say that this unprecedented situation and the unforeseen challenges it has at times lowered transparency’s position in people’s agendas.
Speaking of involuntary consequences, drastic approaches have been seen from a large number of advertisers and marketers around blocking delivery on Coronavirus-related content and the News category as a whole. Doing so puts quality journalism at a high risk of not being able to be properly funded. It also puts brands in a position of not being able to capitalise on delivering against relevant content, at a time when the number of users visiting news sites, and taking their time in doing so, has never been so high.
Audience Q&A
The panel received lots of questions from the audience with more than they had time to answer! The panelists have provided their viewpoints on some of those questions here:
Q. What are your thoughts around recent announcements from certain DSPs requesting SSPs for a Single Supply Path to Publisher Inventory?
Emily Roberts: It’s certainly a very good step in the right direction and many more vendors are looking to follow suit. It is a great step towards greater transparency and to make the ecosystem clearer, and from a publisher perspective it works incredibly well. I would like to see more initiatives like that in the industry.
Gavin Stirrat: A lot of the transparency and trust issues that have come up in the past have not necessarily come up deliberately. They have come up because of the complexity of technology, and initiatives like this certainly help to simplify such complexity. Due to nobody’s fault we ended up having a multitude of ways to connect to publishers' supply and that does not appear completely transparently to Demand Side Platforms. So by asking exchanges to pick a single route complexity is removed and efficiency is created, facilitating transparency into the path from demand to supply.
Q. Does blockchain play any part in programmatic supply chain transparency in the future?
Clementina Piazza: The underlying technology of blockchain has vast potential and applying blockchain to some of the aspects that underlie supply chain transparency is definitely not out of the question. There have actually been recent applications from companies like Mediaocean and Amino Payments that have partnered up to enhance the end-to-end “PO to payment” view of contractual media commitments. Doing so, they have been addressing one of the core demands from the ecosystem which is to deliver programmatic media supply chain transparency from a financial and contractual workflow perspective.
Q. Do you feel that agencies have a lot to answer for in regards to the lack of financial transparency and are using ad tech as an excuse?
Gavin Stirrat: I think that the entire value chain has a role to play in terms of where we are today and the still existing concerns. Every group of companies in the supply chain has done something which has contributed to potentially building mistrust. Every single part of the value chain has felt pressure as market-shares shifted and that sometimes pushed different groups into doing things that are not necessarily completely transparent and so there have been examples over the years that have been heavily publicised where there has undoubtedly been lack of transparency. I do think that we are moving past that world and from advertisers, to agencies, DSPs, SSPs, Exchanges and Publishers, every single group of companies now understands the areas of transparency that impact them and their direct partners.
Andrew Buckman: Everyone has a part of responsibility in this. This whole ecosystem has evolved in trying to catch up with technology and some people have taken advantage of that and some people try and run ahead of the curve to find new ways of doing business. I think that we all have now reached a state of consciousness where we have realised that to instantly take advantage of niches/gaps is no longer acceptable and that we really need to work together to ensure that each aspect is considered fairly.
Emily Roberts: I don’t think that the whole market has mistrusted. The real issue I have found with programmatic is that we have made it so much more complicated than it needs to be and that’s why we have ended up having loopholes. I don’t think that the majority of people go around the market trying to mistrust each other. From our perspective, agencies do an incredibly good job to navigate such a complicated market. And although we are now seeing changes being made that are going to help making it easier to navigate, it still is such a complicated market.
Q. When you talk about transparency, what specifically is it you're talking about that needs to be made more transparent to users that is not currently?
Andrew Buckman: There are specific examples of this in the IAB Europe Supply Chain Transparency Guide which you access here. Transparency is about understanding the business model of the people you deal with, understanding the data they collect, what they do with it and who they share it with, and understanding the ethics and practices or your partners.
Q. Is there a difference in market drive for transparency region by region?
Ross Webster: In my experience, working with global brands, transparency and the enforcement of it goes beyond market nuances. However, I guess every market reacts to it differently.
Emily Roberts: Yes, unquestionable variations from market to market. I can only speak for EMEA but even in this region there are expansive contrasts. The highest focus on transparency can certainly be noticed in Western Europe whilst in other countries is either not so much of a priority yet or it’s ingrained from the beginning, as we can see in some of the emerging markets.
Q. Do you think due to the current pandemic, transparency is more important since advertisers want to know more and more about changing consumer behaviour?
Steve Wing: Our immediate priorities have of course shifted but transparency is as important and even more perhaps. If anything the enhanced level of scrutiny that marketers, brands and publishers are exercising around how to get through this period is making transparency even more important.
Gavin Strirrat: People care deeply about transparency, on both the sell and buy side of our ecosystem, but COVID creates amazing challenges, some more expected than others, and dealing with all of this, on top of the emotional load, has meant that, while still undoubtedly important, transparency has slipped down people’s agenda a little bit.
Ross Webster: It is also interesting to note how conversations around transparency, particularly for companies such as ourselves focused on location intelligence, are now more than ever heavily focused on the privacy side of things. As such, we have started working more and more with governmental organisations and NGOs around how to understand people’s movements. So for us it has really raised questions around what can and can’t be shared with regards to consumer’s privacy.
Q. We found that over 40% of content which references Coronavirus is not negative content, and brand suitable for many advertisers. How do you feel the brand safety approach needs to adapt from marketers during and following COVID-19?
Emily Roberts: I think it is about having that conversation with your main publishers to ask them what they are doing. No publisher wants to cause brand safety issues for an advertiser so it is important that we all come together to discuss what we can do to prevent it. I think there is also a very different conversation to be had on whether you are a platform or a publisher.
Q. As a buyer, how is it possible to ensure that my ads won't run against negative Coronavirus articles without blacklisting Coronavirus as a keyword? Will publishers take responsibility for this?
Emily Roberts: The BBC has a list of brand safety commitments that we reassure advertisers with, so not only can we block negative Coronavirus news on our platform but we give advertisers the assurance that if they are not happy with the content they have run on we will give them their money back. I think it is vital that publishers are prepared to lay down such commitments as it shows great confidence and trust in their content.
Q. Are advertisers missing a trick by not embracing the Coronavirus for positive advertising campaigns as mentioned by Emily?
Emily Roberts: I think it is sometimes easier to avoid all content related to COVID-19 because of the scrutiny around brand safety, which from what we have previously seen in the industry is perfectly understandable. However we have seen great successes in other mediums where advertisers have embraced the positivity around the community spirit that we have all felt, which has worked really effectively.
Andrew Buckman: It is a massive miss, also because now is the time when consumers are appreciating more than ever the great work that is put in by quality media outlets, as they actually have time to read articles and opinion pieces in depth, helping them to form opinions and understanding what the big picture is. In the wake of the realisation of the damage that such drastic measures are provoking we have seen in some countries across Europe industry organisation lobbying and supporting local governments around this topic- an example is the UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden stepping in and speaking to advertisers and brands and saying that there is a need for pragmatism and to do all that is possible to prevent the negative impact that doing so has on news publishers. On top of that, the IAB, AOP, Newsworks and the IPO all issued guidance aimed at advertisers and agencies and it’s great to see that some agency groups like GroupM and Universal McCann have actually taken a stance around advising their clients against block listing all Coronavirus related articles.
Q. Advertising is a publisher's core-business. They should have been leading transparency since the very beginning. How do you think all these transparency initiatives will impact on publishers results? What you believe is the reason behind it took so long to get started?
Steve Wing: The reason why there is still a lot to be done comes also from the fact that transparency is a huge area and it means many different things to different parties - from supply chain transparency all the way to transparency of auction dynamics, to industry standards, fraud mitigation, brand safety and even to open source initiatives like pre-bid.js, which are designed to create open, collaborative and inspectable standards with transparency baked in from the start. So, it’s a really big area and we have been good at defining all those areas that constitute it. We shall also never forget a lot of the work that has already been done, the many years people have been working hard to address issues around transparency, as we all believe that transparency grows the market and, as such, it is an absolute necessity. This is at the basis of initiatives like the IAB FAQs, launched in 2019, the IAB Europe Supply Chain Transparency Guide, ads.txt, app-ads.txt, supply chain object, sellers.json, IAB Gold Standards and the JICWEBS standards. Many of these initiatives have had the aim of creating a neater way for brand investment to reach publishers and as such will continue to have an increasing benefit in enabling publishers to effectively monetise their inventory.
Q. Do you think the younger generation, being more clued up at an earlier age with technology and use of their information by advertisers, are a ticking time bomb to cause an 'ad-pocolypse' ?
Andrew Buckman: No, I think the younger generation has less qualms about sharing personal and sensitive information than people of my generation do. They are certainly more aware but I think they place less stock in the use of their data to target messaging towards them.
PROVIDES CLARITY & ADDRESSES BARRIERS FACED BY DIGITAL MEDIA INVESTORS
16th April 2020, Brussels: IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, today announced the launch of its new Digital Advertising Effectiveness Measurement Framework. The first version of this Framework provides a set of harmonised definitions, measures and metrics which aim to resolve the on-going confusion for investors when buying digital media research.
The rapid pace of digital disruption within marketing and advertising has given rise to a myriad of complex interpretations and explanations when it comes to knowing what to measure, which in turn has resulted in highly fragmented language throughout the industry. Up until now, there has been no common framework of language or definitions in the industry.
Commenting on the need for IAB Europe to address these challenges, Townsend Feehan, CEO, IAB Europe said “As most research companies use different definitions and methodologies, it can be confusing for stakeholders to understand what research they should undertake to measure their advertising effectiveness and be able to compare like with like. We believe a common ‘lingua franca’ and set of standards, as proposed within our Digital Advertising Effectiveness Measurement Framework, will remove this fragmentation and help accelerate more investment and understanding of digital advertising research.”
IAB Europe previously undertook an Effectiveness Measurement survey, which was the largest regional study of its kind, consisting of senior executives from across 14 major companies and boutique agencies that provide measurement solutions across EMEA and globally. The results were a stark indicator that there is little-to-no commonality across solutions. Ultimately, the research brought to light a complex and incoherent ecosystem that is difficult for even the most initiated buyers to navigate.
The new Framework has been developed to address this incoherence and complexity by providing a harmonised set of definitions, measures and metrics in three key areas of digital advertising effectiveness measurement: media, brand and sales effectiveness. Additionally, IAB Europe’s multi-stakeholder Research Committee and Effectiveness Measurement Task Force has worked closely with measurement companies within its membership to provide a map of suppliers operating in these areas in order to enhance industry understanding of the research methodologies and products available.
Following the release of the Framework, Mike Mulholland, Partner Measurement and Reporting, Mindshare commented “Media planning, execution and measurement continues to become more complex, whilst data governance and the ability to establish privacy-safe ways to handle ad impression data across publishers adds to this complexity. We hope the IAB Europe Effectiveness Measurement Framework will help the buy-side and sell-side better navigate some of this complexity.”
Phil Sumner, VP Insights Northern Europe, Teads continued “The evidence we’ve seen reveals that the language and frameworks used by each measurement company differ and in the majority of instances so too does the methodology. 73 percent of respondents to the IAB Europe Effectiveness Measurement Survey stated that clients’ knowledge and understanding of the measurement agenda and practice is critical. Along with the IAB Europe Research Committee, I am proud to bring to the market harmonised definitions, measures and metrics within the IAB Europe Effectiveness Framework to educate and inform clients.”
You can find out more about the findings of the IAB Europe Measurement Survey here. The Digital Advertising Effectiveness Measurement Framework is available to download from the IAB Europe website here.
IAB Europe is hosting a webinar on the 7th of May to provide a deeper dive into the Framework and associated measurement challenges with a multi-stakeholder panel of advertiser, agency, broadcaster and measurement supplier. Find out more and register here.
IAB Europe’s Flagship Event Interact is going virtual...
Given the current circumstances regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, IAB Europe took the decision to postpone its flagship annual event, Interact, until 2021, and is instead hosting a virtual event on 3rd June - Interact Online!
This free-to-attend virtual conference will allow the digital advertising and marketing industry to interact online! It’s never been more important to come together to help support, build and sustain our innovative industry. Expert speakers include senior executives from Coca-Cola, Zalando, Google, ProSieben, RTL, GroupM and OMD.
Confirmed speakers so far include:
Join Brands, Publishers, Tech Companies and More...
The virtual event will kick off with IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Daniel Knapp presenting the AdEx Benchmark study - the definitive guide to advertising expenditure in Europe.
Within the 2.5 hour virtual event, Interact Online will then feature a series of panel discussions and keynote speeches to discuss the accelerated change we are witnessing in our ecosystem, impacting investment, roles and responsibilities across our value chain. The event speakers from brands, agencies, publishers and tech companies will also address the impact that COVID-19 is having on our industry.
All guests will have the opportunity to Interact online through Q&As and polls during the event.
Thanks to our sponsors, registration is open to everyone in the industry and is free to attend. Register to join the virtual audience here.
The digital advertising and marketing industry is by definition ever-evolving. The rise of programmatic, the introduction of the GDPR, we have all had to be agile, adapting quickly to the constantly evolving ecosystem. However, COVID-19 will test our industry more than ever.
IAB Europe has created a short poll to understand how COVID-19 has and will impact the digital advertising and marketing industry.
This short industry poll should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete. It will enable IAB Europe to ascertain your opinion and market insights into how the pandemic is affecting you and your business. The findings will be shared during IAB Europe’s Economic Trends Forum on the 21st April.
During these unprecedented times, IAB Europe remains committed to ensuring the digital advertising industry can continue to collaborate and connect. Your help in completing this survey is therefore gratefully received!
The Programmatic Code of Conduct (CoC) V2.0 is gaining traction across Europe. Originating in Germany and developed by the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW / IAB Germany), it has now been implemented in Austria, Switzerland and Poland. IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee (PTC) has been reviewing the different national Programmatic Codes of Conducts (CoC) to see how they help both local markets and industry stakeholders to enhance programmatic trading standards and practices as well as to consider the need for a pan-European CoC.
IAB Europe and key members of the PTC spoke to BVDW, IAB Poland and a range of signatories to get their perspective. These included:
David Goddard, Chair, IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee and Senior Director, Business Development EMEA, DoubleVerify said: “It is encouraging to see increasing adoption of the national Code of Conduct initiatives. Ensuring transparency and a level playing field is key to IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and we believe the Code is a massive step in the right direction to achieve best practice in programmatic advertising alongside initiatives such as our Supply Chain Transparency Guide.”
What is the Programmatic Code of Conduct?
The Programmatic Advertising Code of Conduct (CoC) was initially developed by BVDW (IAB Germany) and includes a set of rules for all stakeholders in the programmatic supply chain; Advertisers, Agencies, Demand Side Platforms, Sell Side Platforms, Sales Houses/Publishers, Data Management Platforms, Data Providers and Verification Vendors. Now in V2.0 the aim of the CoC is to improve transparency in programmatic advertising by defining a set of criteria and rules for each of the above stakeholders to adhere to. The signatories agree to comply with the relevant set of criteria and rules depending on their company type.
How has the CoC helped your market?
Sascha Dolling, Chair of the Programmatic Code of Conduct Working Group, BVDW / IAB Germany, explained: “The Code of Conduct V 2.0 defines a minimum commitment by each type of market participant. All signing parties comply with the defined practices and hold these standards up to their contractual partners.
The objective is to ensure transparency resulting in sustainable professionalism regarding operations and standards and thus trust. First and foremost, the Code of Conduct has helped to comprehensively depict the programmatic value chain and to disclose the working methods of all market partners. With its numerous signatures in a second step, the Code of Conduct revealed a map of programmatic market partners operating in Germany with the common goal of ensuring greater transparency.
The Code of Conduct ensures that the quality and transparency level is maintained and continuously improved across the market.”
Małgorzata Walendziewska, Special Programs Manager, IAB Poland added: “The Programmatic Code of Conduct V 2.0 was launched in Poland in August 2019. It can be signed by any party who actively participates in the programmatic ecosystem.
It’s still very early days for us but introducing the CoC was very positively received by the market. Considering the current size and pace of growth of programmatic advertising in Poland, we believe that the initiative will enable us to build a healthier, more transparent and fairer marketplace for all stakeholders.”
What are the key strengths of the CoC?
Sascha said: “The key strength of the Code of Conduct is its binding nature. Whilst the companies are subject to a voluntary commitment, if a violation becomes known, there is a board of complaints elected from representatives of all market areas, which jointly discusses the violation and handles the complaint in a regulated process. This ensures that the Code of Conduct does not gather dust in the drawers of the responsible marketing manager and becomes a “toothless tiger”.”
Małgorzata added: “The Code sets out separate standards and practices for all participants in the programmatic chain who undertake to comply with specific criteria and rules in the area for which they are responsible. The CoC V 2.0 was created by the industry experts so both construction and its content corresponds with the current market and addresses real challenges for all stakeholders - we believe this is the key strength of the CoC.”
What is your opinion on Local vs Pan-regional CoC?
Małgorzata explained: “IAB Poland believes both local and pan-regional initiatives are important and necessary. Pan-regional CoC’s might set the directions but it would be impossible to include all local specifics and for examples to be compliant with all countries regulations. Local initiatives might also have little to no impact on the global players. That’s why both local and pan-regional standards can and should complement each other.”
Sascha added: “There are standards and definitions that apply globally, but in addition to these, country-specific circumstances have also been established in various pan-regional countries. In order to take these into account and to continue to pay the necessary attention to local peculiarities, it makes sense to anchor these local conditions at least in a part of a Code of Conduct.”
What challenges have you faced or do you foresee?
Sascha explained that in Germany: “The biggest challenge was to bring together representatives from all market sectors to discuss the commitment rules and find a common denominator for these rules. In addition, it requires the commitment of all market partners to work continuously with the CoC and to ensure that it is adhered to, so that it remains a living practice.”
Małgorzata noted that in Poland: “The challenge that we have encountered but also expected is encouraging more companies to become signatories of the CoC. As the document contains many, specific rules and criterias, each company needs to carefully review, verify, understand and approve them. It's a process that requires time and understanding but we believe more and more companies will decide to take this step - not only because it's a confirmation of their honesty but also because it's a real contribution to creating a better digital advertising environment.”
Perspectives from the signatories
How has the CoC helped your market?
Joerg Vogelsang, Regional Managing Director, DACH and CEE, Index Exchange explained: “Programmatic is a fast-changing industry, one that’s under constant scrutiny. By setting clear quality standards – as well as measures to enforce such standards – the CoC V 2.0 is helping to bring greater transparency and accountability to local markets, thus benefiting buyers, sellers, and tech partners across the region. Ultimately, the higher the standards we set – and the more ardently we adhere to them – the greater the likelihood we will have of reducing bad practices (be they ill intentioned or accidental). As a result, we’ll see greater growth in the long term, in and outside of our markets.”
What does signing the CoC mean for your company?
Ekkehardt Schlottbohm, Regional Director Central Europe at PubMatic explained: “Regulation is needed, not only to create trust in programmatic advertising among publishers and advertisers, but to support the active participants in digital media sales and buying to develop common ground from which to build high-quality and secure solutions – and to accelerate the growth of programmatic trading within the market and to establish a sustainable economy that can compete on a global level.
Signing the BVDW CoC V 2.0 in a time when programmatic is becoming more standardised in the German Market, is a signal to the market that we as an SSP support the requirements that advertisers need.”
Bartosz Malinowski, VP CEE, APAC & MEA at Adform said: “The Programmatic Code of Conduct V 2.0 formalises the approach that we already have as a company. I am happy that IAB made the effort to standardise and promote the Code of Conduct for our industry.”
Elżbieta Kondzioła, Online Sales Director, Lovemedia explained that: “As a company operating in the online advertising industry, it is important to be part of an initiative ensuring constant development of security in the programmatic ecosystem.”
How does it help your company?
Elżbieta believes that: “The signing of the code provides our business partners with the certainty that we run safe and quality campaigns. The whole process of joining the initiative was simple and did not involve the need to introduce additional changes in the organisation. I am also very pleased that as the head of the programmatic group at IAB Poland I was able to actively participate in the introduction of the code on the Polish market.”
Bartosz said: “Being a signatory of the CoC creates more awareness about Adform as a company and a legitimate player of the digital advertising ecosystem.”
Ekkehardt explained that for PubMatic: “Being an active participant of the first CoC is really insightful for us as an international business to really understand the local need and align ourselves with those. We can now see that some of the big buyers are creating their own CoCs, as a business we are well prepared to sign those due to our own high standards already in place.”
Friederike Pries, Marketing Manager, Integral Ad Science believes that: “Signing the CoC V 2.0 helped us as an international technology provider to showcase that we are supporting the German views and standards. It helps us to back up our products and measurements.”
What industry wide benefits have you witnessed the CoC bring?
Joerg said: “Our industry is fast-changing and it’s also incredibly nuanced. With so many players involved and shifts taking place, it can be difficult to understand exactly what measures should be taken to ensure we’re operating as transparently and efficiently as possible. The CoC helps clear up that confusion. Beyond ensuring everyone is adhering to the same standards – and thus levelling the playing field on which we’re operating – the CoC also helps remove uncertainty by stating clear best practices for all parties. It’s educating players on what needs to be done while also holding us all accountable, solidifying the goals we should all be working toward.”
Bartosz believes that: “The CoC puts transparency and user experience in the spotlight and reiterates the importance of relevant and non-intrusive online advertising. I believe this will lead to higher campaign effectiveness, less user irritation and an ad tech ecosystem that is clear of shady and corrupt players.”
Ekkehardt said: “The CoC was a huge step forward in making Programmatic more transparent. Signing the first CoC increased the relevance of Programmatic within digital and allowed marketers to have a better understanding of their media spend. The great achievement is that the entire ecosystem worked collaboratively together and agreed on the chain of custody together. These are tough negotiations, because clear responsibilities had to be created in order to strengthen programmatic as a channel. The CoC has also been adopted by other countries such as Austria and Switzerland and further developed with V 2.0.”
What is your opinion on a Local vs Pan-regional Code of Conduct?
Joerg said: “The larger this initiative, the better – both geographically and in the number of partners involved. That said, it makes sense to start on a smaller, more local scale and grow this accordingly; it’s a more pragmatic approach. Germany has created a solid foundation, from which countries like Austria, Switzerland, and Poland have been able to build and expand these efforts. It’s a huge undertaking to make this a pan-regional, European initiative, but the more markets involved, the clearer and more accountable our entire ecosystem can become.”
Friederike explained: “IAS supports local CoCs because we want to provide the best service for regional clients including specific needs and requests. However a pan-regional CoC can support global campaigns and should be seen as an overall codex for the measurement of key metrics.”
Could the local CoCs be broadened to be a Pan-European code?
David Goddard said: “The Programmatic Trading Committee has discussed and considered developing a pan-European CoC but at this time feels the Codes are more appropriate on a local level to ensure national regulations and practices are taken into account. The Committee is exploring how to further enhance the Code of Conduct initiative on a European level. ”
Please find out more about signing up for the Code of Conduct V2.0 in Germany here.
Please find out more about signing up for the Code of Conduct V2.0 in Poland here.
If the digital advertising industry is to increase investment from the buy-side and to continue to benefit consumers through personal, timely and relevant content, then maintaining transparency is critical.
As Matej Kolarosky, Head of GroupM Operations, comments: “for buy-side organisations in the advertising value chain, transparency has never been more important. Brands, agencies and buyers need to know that their ad spend will deliver results and help build the right relationship with customers. That means having complete visibility of fees and other key elements, such as how advertisers are refunded when cases of ad fraud come to light.”
To help create such an advertising environment, IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee created the Supply Chain Transparency Guide. Now in its third iteration, the guide provides a mechanism by which industry players can gain transparency in the key areas of data, cost and inventory source. Available in an interactive or PDF format, the guide lists the crucial questions stakeholders from each digital advertising category should ask at different stages of the supply chain.
David Goddard, Chair of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and Senior Business Development Director, EMEA at DoubleVerify, explains: “for this latest edition of the guide, we have reviewed our stakeholder questions to ensure they are as granular and exact as possible. Where necessary, we have also introduced wholly new sets of stakeholder questions, such as for Buyers to SSPs in the areas of cost/fees and inventory source, for example. The Committee’s work ensures that the guide reflects the shape of the industry today and is as complete as possible. We believe this best practice guide will help create a transparent industry for all and help companies ensure compliance with relevant privacy and fraud rules.”
Alex Phillips, Product Strategy Lead - Authorized Buyers Programme at Google notes: “in a privacy focused world, it is important that users, publishers, and advertisers have transparency, choice and control in the programmatic supply chain and are confident that their data is secure."
The issues of quality and transparency are absolutely central to the work of IAB Europe in 2020 and beyond. Under the auspices of IAB Europe’s Brand Advertising Committee, which sets out to drive brand investment into digital, the organisation has established a new Quality & Transparency Task Force. The role of the Task Force is to mitigate quality and transparency concerns among the stakeholder community and to work with the industry to boost consumer trust and encourage continued brand investment.
With the advertising sector increasingly complex and competitive, the need for transparency has become more pressing. As Lisa Kalyuzhny, Senior Director Advertising Solutions at PubMatic, explains: “the digital advertising industry requires clarity over the many processes and interactions that underpin digital advertising to ensure, among other things, seamless and effective programmatic delivery. Automation and data-driven advertising thrives when data and processes are open to view, predictable and robust.”
For Ben Geach, Senior Director Global Product Strategy at Oracle Data Cloud, transparency delivers critical insights into audience data: “it’s never been more important for all stakeholders in the ad industry to be able to see clearly whether data has been verified as compliant with key privacy regulations such as GDPR and to be able to demonstrate which the mechanism through which data consent has been sourced. Without this transparency there’s no way for digital advertisers to do business in a compliance-assured manner.”
IAB Europe members can join any of the aforementioned groups - Programmatic Trading Committee, Brand Advertising Committee or Quality & Transparency Task Force. Please contact Marie-Clare (puffett [at] stg-iabeurope-iabeuropeold.kinsta.cloud) to find out more.
Access the Supply Chain Transparency Guide here.
Supply Chain Transparency Webinar
IAB Europe will be hosting a webinar to provide a deep dive into the guide and how it enables industry players to gain transparency in the key areas of data, cost and inventory source. Register here.
