In this week's member-guest post, we hear from Mia Sari, Manager, Solutions Consulting at Xandr, as she shares her thoughts on the 'free internet' and why she prefers to see highly relevant ads.
Mia is a Solutions Consultant at Xandr, where she advises traders to yield optimal results for their programmatic campaigns. Before joining Xandr, Mia worked at a Berlin-based start-up Retail Media Group where she built the company’s programmatic infrastructure from scratch. In her spare time, she writes about all things programmatic and she works on her passion project where she builds mobile games to inspire girls to reach their full potential.
With no end to the pandemic insight, I turned to bingeing TV shows and films for comfort, like countless other people who found themselves stuck at home. One of my favourites is "This is Us", which I streamed on Amazon Prime.
After I gloriously completed watching three seasons in a row, I got stuck. The only option I had to continue watching season four was to pay. And this was the moment where I thought to myself, "I wish there is an ad-supported option, instead".
---
The old adage "nothing is for free" is correct. For every unpaid piece of content we receive on the internet, we give away a bit of our personal information. It could be our age, our holiday destination, or even our favourite sports. Much of this data will be collected from cookies downloaded onto our computers. Cookie data allows web publishers to track our online journeys and observe the actions we take on different websites.
If used for good, the data can improve the quality of the ads we see. We no longer need to see the ad that is not relevant to us. This can be beneficial as we only see products that are aligned with our interests. Long gone are the days when we had to endure watching diaper ads despite not having any babies in the family.
On top of that, advertising can help us discover new products that we would have otherwise never come across. I could share my recent decision to continue my study as an example. After reading a lot of online content about Artificial Intelligence (AI), I received a highly relevant ad of a higher education program on the subject. It was what I needed at the time and I wouldn't have found this program any other way. You could call it luck, or perhaps karma. As a matter of fact, it is only a smart algorithm on the back-end.
Nevertheless, as big companies are collecting data about their customers from nearly everything they do on their platforms, there is concern over ethics of tracking and using consumer data without consent.
As a result, a few policies have been created in order to regulate data protection, like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California. Since the policies came into full effect, the total sanctions for data violations count to date reaches more than $330 million in Europe.
The same concern also triggers the rise of subscription-based models. Netflix, The New York Times, Spotify, and the other content players have shown that users are indeed willing to pay for digital content to remove ads.
Soon enough, we find ourselves overwhelmed by digital media subscriptions. We have multiple TV streaming services, music services, news subscriptions, app subscriptions, and software subscriptions. It's like an infinity buffet, for those who can pay.
But the excessive amount of options has a downside: 47% of consumers are frustrated with the increasing number of streaming services, according to the 13th edition of Deloitte’s annual Digital Media Trends survey. We may be entering an era of ‘subscription fatigue’.
And the more we subscribe to consume media content, the higher the recurring cost we have to pay. Research found that Europeans spend at least €130 per month on subscription services. Every year, 350 billion euros is spent in Europe on these types of purchases.
Appropriately, when Hulu and Spotify provide the option of an ad-supported plan on their platform, a lot of people jump on the bandwagon. Hulu says 70% of its 82 million viewers are on ad-supported plans.
This could be the idyllic middle ground we seek out: We see non-intrusive and relevant ads by default, and we have the option to remove them by paying a subscription. In this way, consumers have a choice between both extremes.
---
As I write this, I already have subscription plans on Spotify, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Masterclass, Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+. The latter I just added recently only to see baby Yoda. "How many subscriptions is too many?", I asked myself.
Therefore, when Amazon prompted me to pay more to continue watching season four of "This is Us", all I want is for them to show me a few short but highly relevant ads instead.
In this week’s member guest blog post, we welcome Alex Hole, VP Samsung Ads Europe, as he shares new exclusive insights into how Samsung TV audiences embraced TV streaming during 2020.
Last year was a disruptive year for every industry. TV was no exception. Despite video on demand (VOD) platforms having been in existence for nearly two decades, the last 12 months have seen an unparalleled rate of growth across all TV consumption but in particular OTT content.
At Samsung Ads, we use ACR (automatic content recognition) on millions of Samsung Smart TVs across Europe to gain insights into how Samsung TVs are being used, and which services are most popular. In our new report, ‘Decoding the on-demand TV landscape’, we reveal just how much those viewing habits changed on those TVs over 2020.
In January 2020, we began the year with an almost even split between linear and streaming viewing time on our Smart TVs across Europe (51% and 49%, respectively). By the end of the year, the balance had tipped in streaming’s favour, with streaming viewership time increasing by 5% to account for 54% of total TV time. Whilst this shift towards streaming on our TVs is not unexpected -- it is a significant increase in just 12 months.
Looking more specifically at streaming, we saw some interesting trends emerge. There was strong growth for subscription video on demand (SVOD) services, with viewing time across SVOD showing significant increase, particularly in Italy and the UK, growing 47% and 43% respectively. It’s likely this increased demand was fuelled by the continued growth of services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and also the launch of Disney+ in Europe last year. The latter is on a rapid growth trajectory, with some estimating it might surpass Netflix in subscription numbers in just three years!
While SVOD services accounted for half of the total viewing time of VOD services on our TVs across Europe in 2020, ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) services also grew their share from 25% of viewing time in January to 31% by December. Spain was a particular standout, with AVOD viewing time growing an incredible 95%. Italy and Germany also saw strong demand here, with a 78% and 73% increase in AVOD viewing time respectively.
This is an emerging trend for advertisers to watch. AVOD, while still relatively new, is showing promising growth numbers. Advertisers who have watched the rise of SVOD with some concern around how to reach ‘streamers’ can now see the potential opportunity to reach these audiences in ad-supported OTT environments. Audiences today increasingly split their viewing time between linear, SVOD, AVOD, BVOD (and more!) giving advertisers plenty of opportunity to connect with them, if only they can follow the data.
Indeed, the evolution of TV viewership is incredibly complex, and audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented as their choices multiply. As viewers have grown used to choosing what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, advertisers have an opportunity to evolve and shape strategies around these choices. There are promising new opportunities opening up within curated streaming environments, enabling advertisers to reach highly engaged viewers once thought of as ‘lost’ to streaming.
The audience habits that emerged over 2020 reinforces that TV is undergoing continual change and is evolving quickly. Viewers are being provided with new services and ways to interact with content they want on the biggest screen in the home. This, in turn, provides new opportunities for advertisers to reach new audiences and complement their existing Linear TV Schedules. As content options grow and technology improves, the industry will evolve alongside viewership trends. This is an exciting time for advertisers looking to connect with viewers on the biggest screen in the home.
This week, we caught up with Emmanuel Josserand, Senior Director Agency, Brand and Industry Relations at Freewheel and Lead for the Freewheel Council for Premium Video, Europe on the programmatic paradox of premium video.
Like so many journeys of innovation, the programmatic evolution has been a complex progression of developments on both the buy-side and the sell-side. In an ideal world, this evolution would eventually lead to a solution that works for everyone, but in the case of premium video, the promises of programmatic have not yet delivered their full value. This is the programmatic paradox.
Overview of the paradox
It would be easy to explain the disconnect between sell side and buy side by saying the sell side wants a high value for its inventory, while the buy side wants to drive prices down. But this – of course – would be too simplistic.
When media agencies first emerged and began buying TV inventory, we saw the emergence of a ‘winner takes all’ approach, using the upfronts to buy as much volume as they could at the best possible price to resell to advertisers. The advent of programmatic theoretically enables a similar approach, just with easier trading mechanisms, better access to inventory at large, and more data. This saw the rise of a number of tech platforms that intended to concentrate demand. However, with so much competition and inventories it proved very complex for traders and DSPs to consolidate demand, innovate and deliver for their buyers, while guaranteeing the best prices for publishers.
Programmers, on the other hand, need to find a balance between the advertising their audience is willing to accept, and the value they need to create from impressions. There are only so many viewers, and time to consume video, so programmers need to make the most of every impression. They cannot simply add more units to a page or move audiences to additional pages as often happens with display – where inventory is plentiful and easier to target. This situation is complicated by the disparity between players where, in many European markets, some programmers will have masses of inventory, enabling them to accept lower prices than smaller premium video suppliers. The latter may offer better value, with audience targeting and niche inventory, but delivery can be an issue in addition to the inability to push prices beyond the psychological threshold set by the market leader. These obstacles, along with concerns around the impact on customer experience of opening up inventory to unknown buyers, mean premium video suppliers are being cautious and methodical about moving into programmatic.
Working around the programmatic paradox
As the TV and premium video industry tries to work around the programmatic paradox, there has been a significant increase in adoption of programmatic guaranteed. This model enables programmers to reserve specific inventory for buyers with value added through efficient delivery via a DSP, and to charge a pre-agreed price. It allows premium video providers to maintain control and almost replicate the direct sold model by prioritising programmatic guaranteed and pushing inventory through that business channel first before moving on to others, should inventory remain unsold. For smaller broadcasters this helps to deliver volume, while market-leading programmers can seek guaranteed value.
While programmatic guaranteed has some important upsides, it is a step on TV and video’s programmatic journey, not an end goal. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so the industry should aim for a comfortable mix of channels including direct sold, programmatic guaranteed, Private Market Places (PMPs), open market and inevitably other options that have not yet emerged. To keep moving forward it is critical that both sides of the industry expand their knowledge of the other, as well as increase their understanding of the programmatic processes in premium environments.
Considerations for the sell-side
Programmers understandably want to sell their high-end inventory, but it is necessary to recognise that not every buyer has the budget to buy these high-value placements and will be looking for cheaper alternatives. By driving impressions in a way that works for advertisers, DSPs are simply fulfilling their mission.
In addition, it is important to understand that the TV and video business is very cyclical – much like many other businesses – so offers must be regularly revised. Impressions that are considered premium one month may not be the next, as new shows are launched and audiences fluctuate. TV and video buyers are incredibly sensitive to the latest trends and even minor shifts can cause significant price erosion in a way that is not often seen in digital display.
Reflections for the buy-side
From the buy-side perspective, the idea that programmatic is only used for unsold and low value inventory is long gone. This may have been true in display some years ago, but it is no longer the case, and never has been for premium video. Any inventory can be made available through programmatic pipes, so ideally buyers need to structure the way they do their buys and decide early on what to deliver through direct, and what to deliver through programmatic, finding the right balance to meet their/advertisers’ goals.
The media industry is complex, and more needs to be done to bring clarity to the world of programmatic, particularly for premium video. For instance, there is a lot of discussion around supply path optimisation (SPO) which attempts to minimise intermediaries and ensure the most direct path to publisher inventory. While this might make a lot of sense in the world of display, it is different and hardly applies to premium video. Indeed, with many broadcasters and premium video suppliers operating private exchange models to avoid diluting value by spreading their inventory around, buyers are already enjoying an almost direct relationship. When a private exchange is set up, a dedicated agency seat via a DSP is created, drawing a direct line between the buyer and the seller. This can then be used to effectively operate models such as programmatic guaranteed or private marketplace and set up one-to-one arrangements.
The idustry is currently at a crossroads where the knowledge and skills of TV and digital, on both the buy and sell sides, need to be shared as a matter of urgency to avoid greater confusion. There is an opportunity for buy-side partners like DSPs to achieve higher performance against their client’s advertising goals by further investing to include premium video audiences. To respond to advertiser’s needs DSPs should adhere to specific broadcasters’ standards that articulate particular processes and unlock access to these desirable and highly engaged audiences. The uncertainties created by programmatic which led to the paradox itself has been temporarily answered by programmatic guaranteed, but to use this channel in a more permanent way, and further move forward with the programmatic journey, all parties need to be more open to learning, sharing and understanding. The industry can choose a path that takes the premium video ecosystem beyond the programmatic paradox, but it will require patience, transparency and collaboration to reach the final destination.
In this week's member guest blog post, we welcome Tamara Nordberg, Product Marketing Manager at Didomi as she explores the growth of Connected-TV (CTV) and explains why privacy is so important in this channel.
The digital advertising industry is widely considering “connected TV” advertising as the next big growth driver. In North America alone, the OTT market is expected to double over the next 5 years, growing by over $94 billion, according to analyst firm Digital TV Research.
Various players, from streaming platforms to telco providers and publishers, are all racing to build the best possible data and technology stacks to attract advertising dollars. The money will indeed flow for those who can offer the best audience solutions across devices and platforms. Dexter Goei, the CEO of Altice USA has recently declared that “everything is going to the OTT world over broadband.”
But what do consumers think about it? Do they share the industry’s enthusiasm? It seems so.
A European-level survey conducted by Magnite (which has recently completed a strategic acquisition in the CTV and OTT ad market) indeed concluded that consumers are eager to see targeted advertising on TV, seeing it as an improvement over the current model of linear TV advertising.
When asked about what type of ads are acceptable to them, it revealed that 71% of Europeans would accept targeted ads that are relevant to their interests, with country-level variations between 65% for Germans and 80% for Italians.
The survey even showed that, on average, 57% of Europeans would likely consent to ads that would be tailored to their online browsing behavior. Again, the lowest approval rate was among German consumers (46%) and the highest among Italians (67%) and Spaniards (65%).
Based on these findings, after briefly stating that “consumer privacy remains top of mind for advertisers and consumers,” the survey concludes that “there is a disconnect between the concern for privacy and the acceptance of [CTV] advertising” and that “consumers are willing to sacrifice some level of privacy in order to watch ads.”
I think we should approach targeted advertising on CTV in a different way.
Privacy should be at the core of this new model, otherwise, consumers will not trust it. This is why Didomi has launched its CMP on connected TV this week.
Consumers should have the right to accept or refuse this paradigm, and decide for themselves whether or not they want TV ad personalisation. You should collect consent before serving personalised ads, and allow them to update or revoke permission easily, at any time. Because let’s not forget that the model is based on personal data, collected through identifiers specific to each OS and platform.
In Europe and under the GDPR or ePrivacy frameworks, this requires consent.
Not providing a clear, transparent choice to CTV consumers before serving personalised ads would give the impression that advertising technology forcefully enters living rooms and pockets, which will not be accepted and could, in the worst case, lead to consumer backlash and lawsuits across the globe.
It’s a matter of both trust and compliance, which are two sine qua non conditions to make this new model sustainable.
Eric Schmitt, a research director and analyst at Gartner (not the former CEO of Google), agrees with that point-of-view. He told Adexchanger that “it seems likely that we will see a privacy reckoning in streaming TV as CTV and OTT scale and intersect with privacy regulations.”
Let’s be clear: we will all benefit from a growing, innovative global connected TV ad market. The opportunities are massive for advertisers, vendors and consumers alike. Magnite’s survey showed that 71% of consumers already prefer streaming over traditional broadcast, and up to 74% consume ad-supported video-on-demand services on a weekly basis.
But the adtech industry should place consumer permission at the core of the new OTT model. That’s the only way to have long-term, sustainable growth that respects consumers’ ability to choose their CTV experience.
In this week's member guest blog post, we welcome Igor Gubin, Region Manager, Europe for Admitad, as he shares key insights into shopping habits during lockdown in Europe.
The advertising industry has become increasingly dependent on data to make informed decisions on consumer choices and market predictions.
Retailers and brands have considered data analytics for a long time but only a few truly understood the full impact of it. Prominent examples such as Amazon and Farfetch have introduced personalised search options to adapt offerings for each customer, indicating that data-driven fashion is not a trend, but a significant industry shift toward data mining and a more customer-centric approach.
Data is now available not only from consumers' search histories but from websites, social media, and apps. The amount of data available from non-sales-related sources has increased dramatically in the last couple of years. Retailers have been using cognitive computing to discover more about what customers might want in order to deliver desired experiences. So what is next?
When lockdown became the new normal, consumer’s shopping habits shifted, and we observed tendencies where basket value and shopping activities, in general, decreased for some brands. But context is key to having a true understanding of the bigger picture.
For example, even with more restricted rules in many EU countries, e-commerce turned out to be a large opportunity for many booksellers. When the lockdown was imposed for the second time in Europe, Admitad Affiliate Network recorded double the number of online orders for books, especially in Germany, Italy, and the UK. This included new formats such as audiobooks, films, and online games - everything that helps to make everyday life a little different and allows leisure time to be used for entertainment and education. Given the pandemic's restrictions, this is a noteworthy outcome.
In several categories, the increase in orders placed was quite impressive: work and education-related purchases increased massively, followed by computer and software ( 285% YoY increase in the European region), furniture and household goods (108% increase), tools and garden equipment (by 78%.), and beauty ( by 47%). At the same time, there was a decrease in online orders for tickets and travel, medical supplies and groceries, and clothing and footwear.
What is the lesson here? Data analysis is a strategic and at times challenging field, but there are always some insightful learnings that can be used. It's important, however, to try and not navigate a million data points at once, but instead, direct your attention toward the KPIs that will allow you to extract valuable insights and conclusions more easily. You could also sort the data sets by ranking the importance of users’ attention or the number of orders per season— but even so, this only tells part of the story. As data grows in volume, more challenges appear.
As consumers spend more time online and engage with more brands, there is a large amount of data available — the question is how to make sense of it. It is time to uncover the mystery and examine the practical implications of technology-driven solutions. Data is not something we should be afraid of; strategic decision-making in navigating your brand through uncertain times depends on it. In the rest of our blog series, we will look into big data, consumers’ concerns and changing behaviour, as well as privacy issues and solutions on how best to keep the balancing between the willingness of brands to sell and users’ ability to agree on how transparent their searching history should be. To be continued.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for more data-driven shopping insights, you can read more about Black Friday, Single’s Day, and Valentine's Day shopping statistics on the Admitad blog.
It’s impossible to think of the programmatic supply chain without thinking of transparency. No matter which stakeholder group you are in, supply chain transparency is one of the biggest impediments to programmatic investment and one of the main issues that the digital advertising industry has to resolve.
If the 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 essential.
To help establish such an advertising environment, IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee created the Supply Chain Transparency Guide. Now in its fourth 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 introduced a whole new set of questions in the area of audience data, for stakeholders to ask Identity Providers. As we transition into a post third-party cookie era, identifying ID solutions to test and work effectively with, as well as considering the case for contextual targeting, will become ever more important for all stakeholders, and ensuring transparency in this area is critical. The Committee’s work ensures that the guide reflects the state of the industry today, that it is as complete as possible, and that it paves the way for future programmatic investment. We believe this best practice guide will help create a transparent industry for all and will help drive the future of programmatic forward.”
Commenting on the additional questions for Identity Providers that have been added to the guide, Jamie Penkethman, Senior Director, Product Marketing, MediaMath said "A brand’s choice of first-party ID(s) generally sits at the intersection of regional availability, type of first-party data activated, and complementary data services related to the ID. The questions in this guide should lead brands toward the right partner(s).”
Combating stakeholder concerns around quality and transparency is vital to the work of IAB Europe in 2021 and beyond. This is why, under the guidance of the Brand Advertising Committee, we established a dedicated Quality and Transparency Task Force last year. The aim of the Task Force is to mitigate these apprehensions and address the challenges that the industry is facing in order to fuel consumer trust and brand investment in the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem.
With the advertising sector increasingly complex and competitive, the need for transparency is now more pressing than ever before, and the collaborative work of these groups is essential to driving transparency across the digital advertising supply chain.
IAB Europe members can join any of the aforementioned groups – Programmatic Trading Committee, Brand Advertising Committee, or Quality & Transparency Task Force. Please contact Lauren Wakefield (wakefield [at] stg-iabeurope-iabeuropeold.kinsta.cloud) to find out more.
Access the Supply Chain Transparency Guide here.
Ryan Martin was elected as the Chair of the Brand Advertising Committee on 17th February at the first quarterly meeting of 2021. Replacing Clementina Piazza (Automation Lead, Spotify), Ryan was elected to lead the committee’s work to drive brand investment into digital by providing Brand Advertisers with a reliable and trusted Brand Advertising Framework for converging digital and traditional media environment. The Framework is composed of a set of initiatives designed to be compatible with global programmes.
Commenting on his newly appointed role and vision for the committee, Ryan said “Having worked in media since graduating, I believe we are entering a really exciting and pivotal moment for the digital advertising and marketing industry. This means that our role, as the IAB Europe Brand Advertising Committee members, will become more important than ever before. In my role at TikTok, we are all about learning and developing our practices to build our credibility and relationships. Not just with consumers and advertisers but the ecosystem too. We want to understand how we can develop brand advertising for the better. We don’t want to do things just because it’s how they've always been done, we want to help make them better and we can only do that with the support of the ecosystem. As a committee, I believe we can collaborate to drive the industry forward.”
The Brand Advertising Committee is a multi-stakeholder group, which aims to provide valuable education and guidance to the wider community.
For any IAB Europe Members who would like to get involved in the committee, please contact Lauren Wakefield - wakefield@iabeurope.eu or Helen Mussard - mussard@iabeurope.eu
About Ryan Martin, Global Business Marketing - Program Manager, TikTok
Ryan joined the industry on the agency side as a press planner and buyer and fell in love with the traditional way of working, with big media brands and titles and essentially delivering reach for brands. As the industry developed his path took him into more and more digital roles. He’s always felt his best work included multiple players from across the media landscape, working in harmony to deliver results for clients.
He joined TikTok two years ago and has helped build it into the business it is today. To work at a business with creativity at the heart makes coming to work every day for him is a joy and to showcase unparalleled opportunities to brands is a pleasure. TikTok is a platform where businesses can feel safe and confident with their brand and he has worked on multiple initiatives to prove this, such as its recent IAB UK Gold Standard 2.0 accreditation. As a leader in product, partnerships, and creative innovation he’s excited about the impact he and TikTok can have on the IAB Brand Advertising Committee.
The demise of third-party cookies has changed the outlook for programmatic advertising. Bringing both challenges and opportunities with it. In our member guest post, we caught up with Paul Farrow, Manager, Solutions Consulting at Xandr to get his thoughts on the evolving landscape of programmatic advertising and to see where he sees it going from here.
As Manager, Solutions Consulting at Xandr, Dr Paul Farrow supports major buyers and sellers in Central Europe to foster their programmatic partnerships and grow their businesses. Since 2018 one of his main goals has been to ensure that Publishers understand and correctly implement the TCF framework, thereby maintaining privacy standards whilst strengthening the advertising ecosystem.
As a biologist, I am accustomed to the concept of evolution. But even I have been astonished by the level of disruption and development in the world of programmatic advertising since joining the industry just over two years ago.
The third-party cookie is likely to disappear in the next couple of years, as browsers continue to introduce and expand controls around how and in what form information about their users can be made available. This will have, and is already having, a profound effect.
Privacy frameworks, too, are beginning to appear across the globe. The Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) has already been successfully implemented across Europe, and we are now beginning to see similar solutions in Canada, Thailand, and Brazil on the horizon (among others). These frameworks all work to enable and facilitate interoperability and accountability across the world-wide-web.
These tools and changes will help publishers and advertisers in their mission to ensure the privacy of their customers at every stage of their web journey, and we are all excited about the developments browsers are now making to their logic, as well as the frameworks which many of our clients at Xandr have worked incredibly hard to implement, as we enter this new age.
At Xandr, we are working hard to ensure that our processes - and the processes of our partners - react and adapt to meet the challenges of the new environment and to make sure the privacy demands of our clients are always front and center.
Simple Ads
We know that the removal of the third-party cookie and an increase in privacy frameworks will change the way clients interact with their audiences. That's why we are building out a suite of products to enhance our capabilities around the following use-cases:
This suite of products will be known collectively as Simple Ads and will address some of the challenges faced in a privacy-first ecosystem.
ID-less audiences
For example, Xandr will continue to process and market impressions that do not contain cookies or device IDs. We recognise that every impression has value, and as we move into the new privacy-first era, publishers should not be penalised for putting the privacy of their users first, but rewarded for doing so.
We also know that, from a buy-side perspective, this new landscape offers opportunities to adopt other methods of reaching the same, or similar, audiences. Contextual and viewability addressing remain perfectly good options for advertisers to address their customers, and the careful curation of marketplaces is on the rise.
Privacy
On the other hand, publishers are aware that they must pay closer attention to what is happening on their properties. They know that they are the gatekeepers between their users and their partners, and they have a responsibility to control the privacy of every pixel. It is not enough to simply implement a Consent Management Platform (CMP); publishers want to know which of their partners are setting third-party cookies and - in the best case - help those partners act in accordance with legislation. With this in mind, Xandr is building out controls (as part of Simple Ads) that will allow publishers to choose exactly how restrictive to be and at what level to enforce the privacy laws of their land.
Universal Identifiers
In the past five years, we have seen an explosion of Identity solutions hit the market. At first, these identifiers were based primarily on third-party cookies and the creation of cross-party user graphs. However, reliance upon cookies is looking increasingly ill-advised, and as we edge closer to the loss of third-party cookies, the emergence of identifiers based on user logins (NetID, LiveRamp) as well as the creation of identity consortiums and initiatives (Unified ID 2.0, Project Rearc) are becoming increasingly important.
Privacy Sandbox
Also in development is the Privacy Sandbox, whose mission is to “Create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default.” At present, the Privacy Sandbox is a collection of ideas (some easier to imagine than others) revolving around the removal of access to personal data for ad tech and other companies. It is unclear which of these ideas will be implemented, less so the timeline of their implementation. But over the next couple of years, browsers will develop in a direction that places them as the gatekeepers to our information.
What now?
Juggling these complementary and contradictory considerations is the principal challenge for ad tech companies moving into the privacy-first generation. And given the finite resources each company has at its disposal, as well as the fierce market competition, the stakes could not be higher.
But as the industry focuses on individual solutions, we must realise that the creation of a private internet cannot obstruct the requirements of an open internet and that cross-collaboration and communication are more important than they have ever been if we are to protect the user and the publisher within the same system.
Finding the right balance is key. But having watched the successful adoption and implementation of the TCF across Europe, and as I listen to the results coming from, for example, W3C and Project Rearc, I am optimistic about our ability to work together, and I am sure this industry will evolve into something far more fit for purpose in the coming months and years.
As we enter 2021, there are many key Digital Advertising trends and opportunities expected for this year. Connected-TV (CTV) is one of them. In our member guest blog post, we caught up with Nick Morely, EMEA Managing Director at Integral Ad Science (IAS) about their recently released UK Streaming Wars report that looked into UK consumer use and preferences for CTV devices and ad-supported streaming services.
Nick Morley joined Integral Ad Science (IAS) in January 2017 to lead the strategic development of the EMEA business. Nick has a proven track record in launching and scaling high-growth businesses across Europe, with a decade’s worth of digital advertising industry experience.
CTV adoption has skyrocketed in recent years. Consumers are drawn in by the ability to watch their favourite content on devices and subscribe to streaming services that meet their preferences and budget.
But when subscriptions start to add up, how does this impact consumer choice? What are the most preferred devices and platforms? IAS asked UK consumers about their CTV usage and preferences when it comes to paying for subscription services.
CTV and streaming on the rise
With major changes to consumer habits last year, viewer patterns have rapidly evolved.
The overwhelming majority (90%) of UK consumers have access to a CTV device, with integrated smart TVs preferred for almost two-thirds (64%) over external box or stick options.
Among consumers that have paid-for subscriptions, Netflix is the streaming service of choice, with almost two-thirds (78%) of UK consumers having access to the platform, followed by Amazon Prime Video (53%), Disney+ (39%), NowTV (19%) and YouTube Premium (15%).
Consumers willing to shift to ad-supported streaming content
The UK Streaming Wars report shows that viewers are now increasingly open to ad-supported video options, so the onus is on the digital advertising industry to help marketers meet consumer needs with an enjoyable experience.
Eight in ten UK consumers (83%) are willing to watch ads to gain access to free streaming content. While over half (56%) plan to start watching free ad-supported streaming services over the next 12 months.
Contextual targeting helps to drive ad completion with over half (54%) of consumers willing to view an ad to completion if it’s relevant to the content that they are watching.
Digital video and CTV can provide enhanced targeting and richer data insights compared to standard linear TV. As a result, almost one-fifth of UK consumers (17%) are more likely to remember ads or likely to look up products and services of ads when viewed while streaming video or watching CTV.
The driving factors behind digital video consumption
Cost is the driving factor for UK consumers that switch to free ad-supported streaming content. Almost two-thirds (61%) of consumers want to save money and three in ten (30%) say that they already pay too much for subscription-based streaming services.
Almost half (44%) of consumers find the ability to skip certain ads as the top reason they prefer free streaming services to linear TV.
Free ad-supported streaming services can differentiate themselves with both price and content, offering a clear opportunity for brands to connect with consumers if relevancy and frequency are prioritised.
You can download the latest IAS UK Streaming Wars UK research here.
You can also join IAB Europe and IAS in a webinar on 16th February 2021 at 11:00 CET to explore how consumer behaviours have changed in the UK and what the future holds - register to secure your space here.
On 15th August 2020, The Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) upgraded from v1.1 to v2.0. Now with over 650 vendors and 115 CMPs registered, it is well on its way to assisting all companies in the digital advertising supply chain to meet transparency and user choice requirements related to data processing, with great success.
With many of the largest Vendors and CMPs in programmatic advertising, including Adobe, Axel Springer, Criteo, Google, GroupM, Integral Ad Science, MediaMath, Oracle Data Cloud, OneTrust Preference Choices, The Trade Desk, Quantcast, Xandr, and more registered to implement TCF v2.0, now is as good a time as any to make it your resolution to join.
So, what is the TCF v2.0, who is it designed for, and what benefits can it bring?
To help vendors, publishers, and CMPs implementing TCF v2.0, we have created a host of materials, from workshop webinars and FAQs to Vendor Fact sheets and more. All of which you can find here. But if you want to get up to speed on what the TCF v2.0 is quickly, then why not take it from those involved in shaping and creating the new version of the framework?
Featuring members of the TCF Steering Committee, the snackable videos below will provide you with all the information you need to know.
Video 2 - Who is the TCF designed for?
Video 4 - What’s new in the TCF 2.0?
Video 5 - User & industry benefits of the TCF 2.0
Next steps
Ready to register? You can find all the information you need on how to join the TCF here.
As we say so long to 2020 and get ready to welcome 2021, we take a look back on some of IAB Europe’s highlights from what has been a great (albeit very different) year.
From navigating the post-third-party cookie era to creating definitions and best practices for new emerging channels, right through to learning how to adapt in exceptional times, no topic was left unexplored. We’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all of our members that came together and helped drive the industry forward, despite the increased workloads and lockdowns we faced. 2020 has further cemented what we already knew, that our members are the foundation of our organisation and we very much look forward to working with you all in 2021.
With that, and to wrap everything up, we’ve put together our top 5 focus areas for 2020, so you can catch up on what was discussed, debated and delivered throughout the year.
1. Digital Advertising Research, Definitions, and Best Practices
Measuring the value and growth of our industry across Europe has been of huge importance to us this year. Which is why, in collaboration with members of our Research Committee, we have undertaken benchmarking projects and shared a number of pan-European studies and surveys to help gain a deeper understanding of key topics such as Digital Video Advertising, Programmatic Advertising, and more.
Discover some of our top 2020 research projects below:
IAB Europe’s Channels and Formats Taskforce (a part of our Brand Advertising Committee) has also been on a mission this year. Looking to increase awareness and drive investment by providing best practices and guidance in emerging and established digital advertising channels and formats. Helping brands and buyers to navigate the opportunities new platforms bring, it has been a collaborative effort to create harmonised definitions and provide best practices across Europe for some of the most exciting new channels: Connected TV, Programmatic Out Of Home (OOH) and Digital Audio. Check out our 101 guides below, and keep an eye out as we look to take a deeper dive into these channels next year.
2. Post Third-Party Cookie Education and Guidance
Back in January, IAB Europe sought to unearth what we can expect from the post third-party cookie era, and what we can do to work together as an industry to navigate it. Working in close collaboration with our Programmatic Trading Committee, we covered a series of webinars and panel discussions and even released a Guide to Navigating the Post Third-Party Cookie Era, to ensure everyone was up to speed. An update to this guide is due to be released in January, with key work continuing through 2021, so be sure to keep an eye out for this.
In 2020 we also launched a new joint Post Third-Party-Cookie taskforce with IAB France, open to all National IABs and their members. Its mission is to enlist a broad network of European stakeholders to support the emergence of a technical outcome or outcomes, in which comprehensive individual privacy control and responsible addressable internet advertising coexist safely and comfortably, to support a rich and diverse universe of online content and services available, at low or no cost to users. Meeting bi-weekly, it’s been a great forum for everyone to keep up to date and provide input to this new digital era, with this work set to continue well into 2021.
If you’re interested in joining the taskforce, please use this form.
3. Digital Advertising Trust and Transparency
Trust and transparency is fundamental to a sustainable future for digital advertising. As such, in collaboration with our Quality and Transparency Taskforce and Programmatic Trading Committee, IAB Europe took the time to assess quality and transparency concerns and address the challenges that the industry faced across 2020. Taking a deep dive into everything from Supply Chain Transparency to Brand Safety and Suitability, we looked at how to overcome some of the industry’s biggest hurdles and to see how we can fuel consumer trust and brand investment in the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem.
Take a look at some of our top 2020 trust and transparency outputs below:
4. Policy Advocacy and Legal
As always, IAB Europe represents the interests of Europe’s digital marketing & advertising industry to ensure that future EU policy and regulation enables continuing innovation and sustainable media, while maximising the industry’s potential to contribute to Europe’s digital economy.
5. Creating a Platform for Continued Collaboration
As many of us were in lockdown and forced to practice social distancing, it was more important than ever to enable people to connect and benefit from the digital infrastructure. IAB Europe is known for hosting virtual events and webinars to bring people from across Europe and beyond together. In 2020 we increased our number of virtual events by 150%, reaching over 10,000 people! All of the events were recorded and can be accessed from our knowledge hub. Key highlights included:
Once again a big thank you to each and everyone of you who got involved in our initiatives this year, and made all of our outputs such a huge success. We hope you have a wonderful break and look forward to collaborating and continuing to drive the industry forward with you in the new year.
Authored by Industry Leaders from Across Europe
Provides Valuable Insights and Preventative Measures to Ad Fraud in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
8th December 2020, Brussels, Belgium: IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, has today released its ‘Guide to Ad Fraud’, to help drive media quality and effectiveness in the digital advertising industry.
This guide has been developed by experts from IAB Europe’s Quality and Transparency Taskforce (a part of the Brand Advertising Committee). It defines specific types of fraud in digital advertising and outlines how verification companies work to combat new and emerging types of ad fraud across all channels. It also provides top tips for buyers and planners to prevent Ad Fraud in their next campaigns and serves as a call for action to the industry to follow best practices to tackle ad fraud.
Brands in Europe are now spending around €4.7 billion on digital advertising, and they want to know that this significant investment isn’t squandered. But with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) estimating that by 2025 over $50 billion will be wasted annually on Ad Fraud, it is vital for all stakeholders to ensure they have the right preventive measures in place. A key part of the guide therefore focuses on the importance of rapid detection, which includes the stages of ad fraud detection that companies should follow. Commenting on the importance of Ad Fraud detection, Diana Romero, Manager, Digital Standards and Partnerships, at Publicis Media Exchange said "Publicis Media agrees with and supports the industry's best practices to prevent Ad Fraud, which mandate that marketers should work with at least one verification provider and TAG-accredited partners; take advantage of tools like ads.txt and app-ads.txt; and stay up-to-date on potential threats in new channels that may not be addressed yet by verification providers."
It has been a collaborative effort to produce this European-level guide for Ad Fraud, with contributors including Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify, Oracle Data Cloud, Group M, Pubmatic, and Publicis Media. Agora S.A also contributed their knowledge on behalf of IAB Poland.
Commenting on the importance of the guide to help tackle Ad Fraud, Nick Morley, Managing Director EMEA at Integral Ad Science said “The fight against ad fraud is ongoing and ever-changing. As fraudsters become more sophisticated, it is imperative that advertisers and publishers ramp up their fraud prevention technologies to stay one step ahead. Integral Ad Science welcomes collaborative, industry-wide efforts to combat ad fraud and is proud to be a part of this IAB industry guide, alongside key partners. The guide serves as a vital resource to understand the numerous forms of ad fraud, its challenges, and provides actionable solutions to the digital advertising community.”
Mark Kopera, Head of Product for Moat by Oracle Data Cloud echoed this point, commenting that “Oracle Data Cloud is committed to both educating the industry through initiatives like this collaborative paper, and providing sophisticated ad fraud solutions to arm marketers against known and future threats. We’re proud to work with IAB Europe on this piece, and hope it serves to jumpstart conversations around the various types of ad fraud, the solutions available today, and the importance of choosing the right partner to fight this battle.”
In order to build a sustainable future for digital advertising, it is essential that the industry collaborates to build solutions that limit the influence of fraud across all channels, formats, and devices. Commenting on IAB Europe’s focus to raise quality and transparency in digital advertising, Helen Mussard, Marketing & Industry Strategy Director at IAB Europe said, “When we set out with the work of this Taskforce in January, our main focus for the year was to build confidence and trust in digital advertising and marketing. With the threat of Ad Fraud ever-present and ever-evolving, we have seen just how fundamental this type of work is to the future of our industry - building trust through sharing best practices. Wide advances in verification tools and machine-learning technology capabilities are enabling us to tackle this threat, and being able to provide a space for members to collaborate on this work is vital if we want to beat the bots. The Ad Fraud Guide is proof that industry initiatives work to create collaborative success.”
IAB Europe continues to work with its members to shed light on key topics around quality and transparency, ensuring our industry is built on trust.
IAB Europe’s Guide to Ad Fraud can be downloaded from IAB Europe’s website here.
