How The Stylist doubled its programmatic yields
How publishers strategize their programmatic ad offerings can have a substantial impact on the bottom line. From Forbes to The New York Times, every publisher continually optimizes to increase programmatic CPMs.
While you, obviously are working to improve the value of the ad impressions with header bidding, it has become difficult to just rely on third-party cookies. Safari (via ITP), Brave and Mozilla Firefox are all blocking the third-party trackers and cookies by default now.
Now, there are a few things you could do to offset the impact and continue hitting the revenue goals.
– Products
Try to experiment and run advanced programmatic products to complement your header bidding setup. For instance, we offer AXT, an ad refresh technology that tracks multiple user activities on-page and reloads viewable ad units.
– Invest in first-party data
And, that’s what ‘The Stylist Group’ did it with its properties. According to Digiday, the publisher doubled its programmatic yields and increased its header bidding revenue by 30 percent.
Wondering how?
The publisher had huge traffic from mobile, where tracking users isn’t easy as in desktop. Besides, The Stylist needed a way to increase its targetable ad impressions.
So, it invested in a first-party DMP which enabled the publisher to track and target users with first-party cookies. As a result, the volume of impressions went up to 6 million to 9 million and the publisher can now target 100% of the audience. Programmatic CPM (including Open Marketplaces, PMPs, and Programmatic Guaranteed deals) has doubled from $2.80 to $5.64.
Takeaway:
You could argue that subscription bundles (like Apple News+) can help publishers. But they take control away from the publishers and aren’t suitable for most. On the other hand, first-party data can yield better revenue while allowing you to learn more about the audience. In fact, Immediate Media did the same and increased its digital ad revenue by 135 percent last year.
Privacy and Personalization – Can they coexist?
Adtech has never been free from privacy debates. In recent times, debates shaped themselves into privacy laws and we believe, it’ll do good in the long run.
In case you’re wondering who’s going to follow California, we got the answer – Nevada.
Nevada is coming up with its own privacy law, which is expected to go into effect on October 1. The law isn’t as detailed as GDPR or even CCPA. However, the law tries to empower consumers with the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information, similar to CCPA.
Apparently, publishers or any online service collecting any sort of personally identifiable information should come under the law. The consumer is defined as “a person who seeks or acquires, by purchase or lease, any good, service, money or credit for personal, family or household purposes from the Internet website or online service of an operator.”
The law, probably won’t cause any material change in your revenue as it doesn’t require you to use CMP. So, when you become compliant with GDPR, you naturally have the infrastructure to pass the other laws and policies. As we said, you can’t dodge the privacy laws expecting it to go away.
While we’re at it, let’s discuss another privacy update from a browser that you need to be aware of.
FireFox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection
Firefox released its expected tracking prevention tech last week. Dubbed as “Enhanced Tracking Protection” is a bit different from Safari’s ITP.
Noticeably, it will let ads through but block any tracking attempts made by third-parties. Previously, the feature wasn’t active by default and the latest update changes it.
And, unlike Google and Safari, it won’t turn on fingerprinting blockers by default. On top of these, Mozilla will have a free Facebook extension to prevent Facebook from tracking you on the open web.
Takeaway:
We know the ecosystem is already expecting more laws, scrutiny, and blockers. But do the users of tomorrow prefer to avoid personalized ads?
A recent study by Cognizant says ‘maybe/maybe not’. The study revealed that Gen Z wants the information to be personalized. Specifically, 38% prefer to see online ads related to their history or entertainment preferences. Is there a middle ground b/w contextual and personalized?
Apple’s privacy update
Apple announced a ton of features at WWDC, touting to make itself a ‘privacy-centric’ company. So, what are they?
The most important one is ‘Sign In With Apple’. As you’ve already used Sign in with Google/Facebook, you can pretty much sum up that’s how Sign in with Apple will work. But there’s an exception.
Apple’s sign-in service will allow users to create temporary proxy email addresses and use them to sign into apps/services. Developers won’t have access to a person’s real email address. Any email sent to the proxy will be forwarded to the real email id. If you think that will hamper adoption, think again. Apple made it mandatory to provide its sign-on to apps that use other sign-on features.
Both advertisers and publishers will have trouble matching their databases to find new customers/prospects to target without email addresses. It will also limit how advertisers are using email addresses to create lookalike audiences.
Apple will enable people to know what apps are tracking their location and give them the ability to limit it. Companies can’t use wifi and Bluetooth connection to triangulate people’s location anymore.
Moments that matter
Insights from Digiday Programmatic Summit – Digiday.
eMarketer says the US will move towards mobile and digital media – eMarketer.
Facebook is at it again – New tools for publishers to get subscribers – Digiday.
U.S. probe of Google’s online ad dominance would appease long-suffering rivals, publishers – Reuters.
At Automatad, we help publishers to monetize better without hampering the user experience. Our products are live across hundreds of publishers, earning them incremental ad revenue with every passing second. You can request a free audit to get an estimated revenue uplift today.
