Weekly Roundup: Holiday Trends For Publishers, The Risk With Universal IDs, And More

Summary

• This holiday season, almost one in every three consumers is willing to spend more than the last year. It’ll encourage the media buyers to spend more too.
• Travel is this year’s one of the most-wished holiday treats. Travel publishers can expect more traffic along with increased revenue.
• Technical issues are possible with universal IDs. When there’s a glitch, your ID solution can stop passing consent signals. Operating without consent info can cause revenue loss as well as privacy violations.
• As the universal ID tech is in its infancy, minor changes to your site’s code can cause errors. You’ll need maintenance work to keep it up and running.
• Politico has reduced its campaign turnaround time from months to weeks by adopting templates for branded content. This strategy will help the publisher in closing more deals.
• The Atlantic wants to grow its newsletter subscribers by hiring writers who are already running their newsletters.
• The FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter expresses her views towards current targeting and data collection practices.

Holiday Trends For Publishers

Multiple business solutions provider firm Sitecore has recently released its research on consumer behavior during the holiday season. While the 2021 Holiday Trends Report covers every aspect of the market, from consumers’ moods to demographics, we’re highlighting some of the most important findings for publishers.

• Almost one in every three consumers is willing to spend more than the last year. It’ll encourage the media buyers to spend more too.
  

• Travel is one of the most-wished holiday treats for consumers. It means travel publishers can expect more traffic along with increased revenue.
  

• Most of the holiday shopping will take place online. It gives you a better opportunity to earn affiliate revenue. Also, you can attract offline buyers too if your content helps them in making buying decisions.
  

• Most of the consumers will be hunting for discounts. So, discount-related content can bring more traffic to your sites. But, stay aware of other priorities of the buyers for more content ideas.

You can read the complete report for other stats, including the pandemic’s impact on the market.

The Risk With Universal IDs

A recent Digiday Media Briefing has discussed the maintenance issue with universal IDs. As we move towards a cookieless future, publishers should be aware of this issue before adopting these identity solutions. Here’s what you should know:

Technical issues are possible with universal IDs. When there’s a glitch, your ID solution can stop passing consent signals. Operating without consent info can cause revenue loss as well as privacy violations. In worse cases, you may not notice that the solution is not functioning. Your losses will keep increasing until you spot the problem. Also, the number of privacy policy violations will keep rising.

As the technology is in its infancy, minor changes to your site’s code can cause errors. You’ll need maintenance work to keep the tech up and running. Fortunately, some ad tech companies have monitoring tools to keep an eye on the ID solutions, but you’ll only know their effectiveness after using them. After spotting a problem, the next challenge would be to fix it. The sustainability of universal IDs would be questionable if resolving issues will be difficult and time-consuming.

“In order for any of this to work, having that maintenance be at the forefront is really crucial. There is no ‘set it and forget it’ mentality,”

– Kate Calabrese, SVP of media solutions at SHE Media.

Strategies From Top Publishers

How Politico Is Speeding Up Its Branded Content Production

The regular readers of our Becoming Series know that Politico is very different from most other news publishers. Its business model demands a special focus on sponsorship deals. Rapidly fulfilling its client needs can give it an edge over its competitors. So, it has introduced new content formats with a quick turnaround.

The publisher has reduced its campaign turnaround time from months to weeks by adopting templates for branded content. It has four products that help in content creation:

• Focus Canvass: A platform to showcase national or state-by-state data.
• Focus Index: A format for listicles.
• Focus Bulletin: A platform for infographics.
• Focus Brief: A product for creating digital one-pagers.

You can have a look at Politico’s new approach in its sample works. Think about delivering similar efficiency to your clients too.

How The Atlantic Plans To Acquire New Subscribers

The newsletter business shot up for many publishers during the pandemic. But, as normalcy started approaching again, the struggle was about maintaining the growth rate while retaining the old subscribers. The Atlantic has found a new approach to do the same.

The publisher will hire newsletter writers who are already well-established in the market. They’ll receive a base payment and additional money if they hit specific subscriber goals. It can be an attractive offer to writers who are running their own newsletter businesses alone on platforms like Substack because it can give them a reliable source of income. In exchange, The Atlantic will get the audience of the writers. Paying subscribers of the writers will start receiving additional newsletters from the Atlantic as well. So, it’s a better value proposition for the audience too. The writers have the freedom to exit from the publisher’s program and take their subscribers back.

In other words, The Atlantic is trying to build a program where the publisher, writers, and subscribers, get better value when they join each other. If implemented correctly, such programs can have huge growth potential.

The FTC Commissioner Calls For Data Minimization In Ad Tech

The views of the FTC’s top heads matter a lot in the formation of upcoming privacy policies. FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter expressed her opinions in a recent keynote, and they look fairly aggressive. She says most internet users don’t read and understand privacy terms. They also don’t have any bargaining powers in the consent transaction. Even meaningful opt-ins lead the consumer data in the hands of unknown companies. Therefore, the current consent process has no market impact.

Apps are collecting phonebook and location data with no legitimate purposes and sharing them with intermediaries. Other apps and ad units drain batteries and use mobile network data. Top companies like Google strengthen themselves further with their solutions like Privacy Sandbox. The market should think about data abuses and try to prevent them. She suggests that a data minimization approach should replace the current tick-box standards.

“If companies cannot indiscriminately collect data, advertising networks could not build microtargeting profiles. Without the monetization aspect of microtargeting, the incentive to indiscriminately collect data falls away.”

– Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, FTC Commissioner

She wants people to share their attention and not their data to access content online. She’s in favor of contextual targeting. Current targeting methods are “surveillance advertising” for her. Let’s hope that her views do not have much negative impact on the ad tech industry.

Moments That Matter

Criteo’s FLoC Tests Confirm There’s Way More Work Before It’s Ready For Prime Time – AdExchanger

Go your own way: why publishers are leaving advertising networks – The Drum

Google Switches AdSense To A First-Price Auction – AdExchanger

Ad trackers continue to collect Europeans’ data without consent – Digiday

Soaring prices, weaker targeting push companies to rethink digital ads – Axios

EU Under Pressure to Curb Google’s Default Spot on Web Browsers – Business Insider