As we progress into this new decade, advertising enters a new era. In our last blog post, we discussed the impact that the coronavirus pandemic is having on the media industry. In this post, we consider the biggest issue for advertisers in 2020 – and how that, and any opportunity, is amplified.
How data is changing everything
Increasing volumes of data, produced at speed, feeding detailed targeting and personalisation: this summarises the last few years in media.
But just as advertising has become more dependent on data, consumers have become more educated about their privacy. They are also more concerned about retaining it.
This general trend has been amplified by high-profile data scandals. For example, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s data breach, or the news that Amazon contractors listen to recordings from Alexa.
Ad buyers have become warier about algorithmically-driven ad placement, amidst examples of inappropriate placement and fraudulent impressions.
Meanwhile, the sector as a whole increases its reliance on data every day. Squaring this circle is the defining issue advertisers and publishers face in the coming years.
So what does this new paradigm look like? And how should publishers approach it?
Consumers are concerned about privacy
Consumers have become far more educated about online privacy in recent years. There have been a number of headline events highlighting the issue.
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has made many consumers more aware of how they receive content online. Alleged Russian interference in the US election and persistent cries of “fake news” globally have made consumers more wary of online content itself.
It is within this context that 3rd party cookies are beginning their slow swansong. Mozilla’s Firefox already blocks them, as does Apple’s Safari. Google announced at the start of 2020 that Chrome would no longer accept third-party cookies as of 2022.
Until recently the cornerstone of the digital advertising industry, the demise of 3rd party cookies makes 1st party data the most valuable commodity in the market. Not least because companies can gain 1st party data more transparently.
In a survey of 1,000 consumers featured on Social Media Today, 80% of respondents felt that personalised ads for recently discussed items invaded their privacy. More than half felt the same way about ads based on search history – and even, that personalised ads were unethical.
However, the majority of respondents found retargeting actions helpful, in particular:
- Product recommendations based on purchase history (67.9%)
- Birthday emails from the company (67.7%)
- Reminder emails about items left in shopping carts (61.6%)
- Ads for recently visited websites (52.4%)
This suggests there is room for personalisation, it just has to be handled correctly.
Advertisers are concerned about ad fraud and brand-safe spaces
Trust and transparency permeate the buy-side as well. In the broadest sense, advertisers favour publishers that have the trust of their audiences. Advertising has always been about renting the relationship between publisher and audience. The strength of that connection has never been more important than now.
This coincides with concerns from ad buyers around programmatic buying, which occupies a growing portion of advertising spend. Algorithmically-driven programmatic direct advertising has dominated the last few years. This has yielded two major issues: ad fraud and inappropriate placement
Ad buyers are increasingly concerned that programmatic placements do not reach the eyeballs they’re paying for. Instead, impressions from bots eat into their budgets. A parallel concern is ads finding their way to brand-inappropriate spaces.
Source: Digiday
As such, as we enter this new decade, we see a shift from programmatic direct to programmatic guaranteed. The process grants advertisers greater control over where their ads are shown and whom they are shown to. It also affords more robust transparency concerning who has viewed the advert.
Programmatic guaranteed also cuts down on manual processes. It provides the potential for greater efficiency of spend, by virtue of greater audience control.
Trust in the duopoly is eroding
Google and Facebook become even stronger by the phasing out of 3rd party cookies. Each company possesses enormous tracts of 1st party data, coupled with far-reaching networks. But trust in both organisations is eroding.
As such, there is a widening space in the market for alternative publishers that can provide similar levels of targeting, but are more trusted by their audiences. They can, in theory, offer a more transparent ad buying process.
An example of this in the UK is The Ozone Project – a collaboration between News UK, The Guardian and The Telegraph which aims to offer precisely this. If The Ozone Project is a success, it will likely set a template for other alternative providers.
Another is Immediate Media – one of our customers. Browsers like Safari and Firefox, which already block 3rd party cookies by default, hid almost half their audience from the advertising ecosystem.
In early 2019, Immediate made their 1st party data available via Permutive, a neutral Data Management Platform. The result was a 135% increase in revenue, as they went from being able to identify 20% of their audience to 80%, and that information could be used to target ads.
This underlines the importance of 1st party data. Successful publishers are those that know their audience inside out and can plug their clients into that knowledge. As such, it will be increasingly important for publishers to find their own, direct sources of customer data.
The advantage is that consumers give this information willingly and transparently, contributing to the consumer’s trust in the content they see. A 2019 Accenture survey found that 73% of respondents were willing to share personal information if brands were transparent about its usage, up from 66% in 2018.
Trust is the biggest issue for advertisers in 2020
The bottom line is that trust is now the most valuable commodity in advertising.
If publishers can cultivate trust in their brand, their audience will be more willing to part with their personal information, more willing to receive advertising, and more likely to respond to it. That kind of connection is invaluable to advertisers.
It’s just as important for the ad buying process itself to be transparent. So advertisers can trust their ads are being seen by the right people, in the right contexts.
If you, as a publisher, can deliver that? There’s a space for you in the cracks of the Facebook/Google duopoly. The better you wield your 1st party data, the bigger the crack.
Follow this blog series over the next month to find out more about how the world of advertising is changing for media companies. In the meantime, download our report, The New Rules of Advertising: Surviving – and Thriving as a Publisher in the 2020s.