Identity: Cookie deprecation driven losses; can Google save FLoC2; and non-AMP ad throttling

A lotame study released last week suggested 57% of marketers expect 10-25% revenue decrease from cookie deprecation.  In a bid to avoid these losses – and maintain privacy compliant audience targeting – email-based identity solutions (66%) were the most popular choice of ID solution being tested in the next 6-12 months; followed by contextual (51%), cohorts (33%) and probabilistic (28%). 4-in-5 marketers and publishers were open to using multiple ID solutions, suggesting there won’t be one winner.

FLoC is one of those potential ID solutions, and it’s been suggested that Google could save FLoC2 by working with the IAB – FLoC2 being the second iteration of Google’s cohort targeting solution.  Pubmatic CTO, John Sabella, believes that by working with the IAB Tech Lab – whose board Google already sits on – Google can prove its working to level the playing field.  Specifically Sabella points to the potential for a single taxonomy, as well as promoting transparency of FLoC2’s algorithm to show how the taxonomy is applied.

Google’s second iteration of its FLoC proposal includes the semantics behind an audience segmentation taxonomy, which could be combined with the IAB’s efforts to create a unified approach.

John Sabella, CTO at Pubmatic

However, it’s not all positive news for Google – just this week there were reports that Google throttled non-AMP ads to artificially boost AMP’s performance.  As well as slowing non-AMP ads on AMP pages, the reports suggest it led to publishers seeing 40% less revenue on AMP pages.

Data & Trust: IAB under fire as trust in data privacy wanes further

According to reports late last week, a verdict in a case against the IAB Europe is expected to find that TCF breaches GDPR whilst also finding the IAB Europe also in breach.  Though a verdict (plus any appeals) seems likely to drag well into 2022, the early reports come at a time when European Parliament are pushing for less behavioural targeting – in favour of more contextual ads.

This kind of news is further compounded by reports this week reaffirming the importance of trust in the digital sphere including Acquia finding that 39% consumers don’t trust brands  with personal data whilst Adobe found that 7-in-10 will cut ties if trust is broken.  The Adobe report found that the breaking of trust revolved around tracking without permission (49% of users), too many comms (39%) and ignoring opt-outs (39%).

Google’s second iteration of its FLoC proposal includes the semantics behind an audience segmentation taxonomy, which could be combined with the IAB’s efforts to create a unified approach.

John Sabella, CTO at Pubmatic

As well as using more first & zero party data the report shows that permission-based data use that is more open and transparent with more user controls on their data would promote more trust.  Control over data is exactly what zero party data can offer, and there’s a Techcrunch+ exclusive zero-party explainer, plus we’ll be discussing it in our upcoming webinar.  Why not sign up below.

Direct revenue & subscriptions Q3 2021 brightspot

This week’s media briefing from Digiday highlights media business’ Q3 looking at the earnings reports of Dow Jones, Gannett, Meredith and the New York Times, with direct revenue and subscriptions being the dominant areas.  Key highlights include:

• Digital counted for 75% of Dow Jones revenue in Q3; 61% of its ad revenues come from digital.  66% of Q3 revenue growth came from subscriptions.
• For Q3, Gannet’s digital ad revenue increased 83% year-over-year to $222m whilst subscription revenue rose 27% to $25.7m.
• Meredith’s digital revenue grew 24% year-over-year with digital ad revenue up 24% and subscriptions up 10%.
• The New York Times ended Q3 with over 7.6m digital subs after adding 455,000 within the period leading to $198.6m in revenue, up 28% year over year; whilst its digital ads business grew faster at 40% to reach $67m.

Other interesting reads

CPRA compliance begins news year’s day 2022

An informative AdExchanger article from SafeGuard Privacy CEO Richy Glassberg reminds everyone that CPRA compliance essentially begins new year’s day 2022.  As well as providing a reminder of what CPRA is he makes the point that whilst it doesn’t actually go into effect until 1st January 2023, those that don’t start complying at the beginning of 2022 risk having to lose all of that data due to the law’s lookback provision.

🎧Brand safety wake-up call

On the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, Q.Digital’s CEO Scott Gatz talks about the persisting issues of blocklists in brand safety.  Specifically, how some advertisers are using poorly/not throughout blocklists that end up limiting their scale & reach, whilst impacting publishers’ ability to monetise.  The giants in this space are still consistently getting it wrong – such as this example flagged (below) by leader in the space, Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles on Twitter).

Opportunities in Southeast Asia

The Southeast Asian digital economy will hit $1tn by 2030 driven by a fast growing base of digital consumers, which makes up 80% of the 440m internet users in the region driving its ecommerce.

Upcoming events

• Proving the value of publisher’s data offerings in a post-cookies world, November 15th at 1pm EDT. Join an open forum with Digiday and others to discuss tips and challenges around audience data from the marketer’s perspective.
• Digiday Publishing Strategies London, December 1st 2021.  Hear from the likes of New UK, Bloomberg, OneTrust and others discuss what lies ahead including making the most of first party data, the affiliate opportunities, and revenue diversification.

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