Identity: PXI aims to bring clarity to audience addressability; LiveRamp & Lotame expand partnership; and more

According to Digiday research publishers post-third party cookie plans remain unchanged with first party data, publisher/adtech built solutions, and non-ad revenue streams where appropriate being key focuses.  However, the level of publishers still worried has remained similar with 55% worried about their ability to measure and target ads, and 49% believing the end of third party cookies will hurt their business.

With the launch of PXI this week – a brand new think tank and strategic advisory collective, – they’re aiming to cover challenges & opportunities across media, advertising, entertainment, technology and sport.  Hot on the heels of its launch, they announced the European Addressable Media Initiative, backed by leading industry participants Amobee, Carbon, Comscore, Finecast, LiveRamp, Lotame, Neustar and PubMatic, focused on supporting the development of addressable media in Europe:

In other identity-related news LiveRamp & Lotame expanded their identity partnership to keep improving interoperability between the two, specifically enabling each other’s clients to utilise Lotame’s Panorama ID and LiveRamp’s RampID.

Meanwhile there’s also some insightful interviews from Future CRO Jason Webby in AdExchanger talking about video ads, ecommerce growth and first party data; and Reach’s group digital director Terry Hornsby in Digiday on growing their registrations.  Both allude to the importance of understanding audience journeys – the pages people visit, articles they read, content that drives them to register, etc – to enable users to engage in ways they want to.

M&A: Criteo & Iponweb, Vox Media & Group Nine, BuzzFeed

News of  Criteo’s proposed acquisition of Iponweb continued this week with the key focus being on serving a growing base of retail media and ecommerce businesses in a post-cookie world using more first party data and contextual solutions.  There’s an interview with Megan Clarken (Criteo CEO) and Todd Parsons (Criteo CPO) in AdExchanger discussing their future plans that in summary revolve around their mission to “protect the open web”.

In other M&A news; Vox Media & Group Nine Media are to merge as further media consolidation continues.  The combined entity will enter the top 10 media firms in the US for audience reach at approx 115m monthly visitors, plus 350m social followers and 6bn monthly video views.  Digiday’s breakdown of the acquisition discussed the “breadth & depth” this merger brings including new demographics, new verticals and more first party data.

In addition, there’s also reports that Mediamath is exploring a sale with Magnite and private equity investors touted as potential acquirers; Reddit filing for IPO after ad revenue jumped almost 3x YoY in Q2; and BuzzFeed’s poor SPAC deal receiving only $16m of a initial $288m.

Predictions 2022: MadTech and CTV

ExchangeWire’s MadTech predictions for 2022 alludes to current uncertainty on the industry’s ID solutions – cohorts, ID graphs, data pools, single logins – and how this will impact measurement, targeting and infrastructure across various media such as CTV, retail, web and app.  Testing will be key in 2022 with a new version of FLoC likely based around the term “topics” rather than “cohorts” (an ode to contextual?), whilst finding the right partners – like Carbon – to better collect, activate, model and scale first party data will be critical.

Other key mentions include the need for more collaboration, 50% of ad requests on the web will be enriched with alternative IDs in Europe and the US, and the rise of “attention-based” solutions.

attention-based technologies allow advertisers to identify the environments and contexts where an ad is best resonating with consumers, as opposed to identifying the individual consumers themselves, brands are able to make better connections without the need for cookies or identifiers of any kind.

Ben Dimond, head of EMEA, Playground xyz

Further growth of CTV & OTT is another common theme among predictions for 2022; just this week Samsung unveiled a program that will allow advertisers to target specific, curated TV audiences using their first party data in combination with Samsung Ads’ to improve campaigns.  Another area of potential CTV innovation for 2022 could be the $137bn local OTT opportunity with many local advertisers likely to “move to growing, ad-supported OTT platforms to avoid advertising alongside political outrage, conspiracy theories and how-to humdrum” according to Progress Partners MD, Bret Brase:

if streamers can sell inventory in a scalable, targeted way, local advertising will finally take off. The space is just waiting on ad tech platforms to make local OTT advertising programmatic.

Bret Brase, MD at Progress Partners

Research from Criteo also suggests that subscription saturation could drive more ad supported CTV with Seven in ten UK video streamers would now opt for an ad-based service over a premium subscription in a bid to save money.

Other interesting reads & listens

🎧 Triopoly’s breathtaking dominance

In eMarketer’s ‘Behind the numbers’ podcast this week they discuss the continuing growth of the the triopoly’s – Google, Facebook and Amazon – ad revenue dominance.  The 3 account for 64% of digital ad spend, though at varying levels with Google losing share but gaining in real terms, Facebook growing slightly in both, and Amazon skyrocketing in both driven primarily by the retail media trend – which they ultimately created.

Concessions from Google

Google made a host of commitments to France’s antitrust watchdog this week in a bid to avoid costly fines, and appease news publishers.  The “remedies” relate to Google negotiating deals with press publishers & news agencies for use of content snippets, as well as transparency around negotiations.

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