Latest first party platforms: BestBuy and NBC

Retail media growth is a common theme among 2022 predictions, and just one week into 2022 it has been announced that Best Buy Ads will launch this year as the electronics retailer looks to leverage its own first party data to sell ads on and off network.  eMarketer predicts that digital US retail media advertising will grow to $41.37 billion in 2022 and break the $50 billion mark in 2023.

Staying with the theme of leveraging owned first party data; NBCUnified will launch in Q2 incorporating NBC Universal’s network of consumer touchpoints, enabling buyers to scale their audiences matched to NBC’s network.  NBCUnified is made up of NBCU ID (currently has 150m unique individual IDs growing to 200m by end of 2022); a data marketplace that combines third-party data providers with thousands of consumer behavior attributes; and partner integrations with industry consortiums.

Our strategy is not to be a walled garden, but to be a first-party data platform that is privacy first, but also facilitates the cross-platform optimization that advertisers seek

John Lee, chief data officer, NBCUniversal advertising and partnerships

2022 predictions: First party driven revenue growth, consolidation, and TV innovation

First party data key to revenue growth

According to Digiday, nearly 85% of publishers expect revenue growth in 2022 with nearly half of publishers expecting double digit growth.  This represents continued growth for many with 80% reporting year-over-year growth in 2021.  There are many key drivers for such growth; but ultimately those with dedicated opted-in audiences will be well positioned to monetise their first-party data sets in 2022 and beyond.

…in the near term, I think buyers will start to increase their reliance on publisher first party data and publishers will lean into first party data as a key point of differentiation to drive revenue from the open marketplace into private marketplaces.

Ashley Wheeler, VP seller accounts at Magnite (taken from Magnite’s 2022 predictions)

To achieve this growth, solving addressability challenges for the open web will be critical, which is why Carbon joined a host of industry leaders to launch a new initiative to support the development of addressable media in Europe.

ExchangeWire’s piece on “publishers & first party data” also gives a comprehensive perspective including the use of clean rooms to maximise value, the growth of second party data partnerships, as well as some interesting points on using server-side calls to avoid latency.  There are also similar prediction pieces from ExchangeWire for measurement & attribution as well as contextual.

More consolidation

Already this year we’ve seen that the New York Times plans to acquire The Athletic for $550m as it looks to boost subscriptions further.  It follows a continued trend for the past few years – e.g. BuzzFeed acquiring Complex & Huffpost – to scale up audiences and first party data.  It won’t all be media though.  For instance; SSP giant Magnite acquired Nth Party – a startup developing cryptographic software for secure audience data sharing and analysis.

TV innovation

TV innovation is another certain development in 2022 with addressability and measurement solutions at the top of the agenda to enable improved optimisation.  For instance; Nielsen unveiled ‘Streaming Signals’ this week, aimed at helping media buyers/sellers understand which member of a household is consuming a CTV program in real-time in order to optimise ad relevance.  Meanwhile; the planned launch of Comscore Everywhere will have Nielsen worried with ComScore’s latest offering promising to combine TV, CTV, video, digital and social media measurement into one deduplicated offering.

AdExchanger’s “The future of TV” dives into what experts expect from CTV in 2022.  “In short, expect a focus on identity, more interactivity, the continued rise of ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) and the ongoing convergence of TV and online video.”

The regulators: New ICO chief takes charge; Germany target big tech; and more fines

John Edwards has officially begun his term as new UK information commissioner at the start of a crucial year as the UK potentially diverges from EU’s GDPR whilst ensuring the continued free flow of data across international borders.  Meanwhile; Germany regulators has Google in its sights – as well as other big tech – with their processing of personal data and ‘Google News Showcase’ key concerns.

Meanwhile; France has fined Google and Facebook over cookie consent concerns as both were found to not offer an option for users to reject non-essential cookies as easily as the option they offer for them to accept all tracking.

Other interesting reads & listens

🎧 Trends for 2022: Retail media, apps shift away from ad dependency, and more

Emarketer’s ‘Behind the numbers’ podcast kicked off the year with several episodes covering key trends, digital trends, and mobile trends for 2022.  Highlights included:

• Retail media and how a combination of online & offline attribution could be a competitive advantage.
• Continued growth of adspend with US digital ad spend growing 50% in the next 4 years to top $300bn with CTV & retail media key accelerants.
• The move away from ad dependency – but not ads completely – in mobile is growing as mobile ads become trickier to target & measure, with subscriptions & in-app purchases the main alternatives.

CES 2022

There are copious amounts of CES highlight video/guides, but this CNET CES 2022 summary article & podcast gives an overview of the “trends we’ll be talking about all year”.  Highlights include TV innovation that will further fuel CTV and related advertising, as well as the impending “EV tsunami” as cars become more electric and more like devices and data platforms.

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