Mediaboss Marketing

The third-party cookie is going away (eventually, probably), but cookieless identifiers remain somewhat half-baked. First-party data has become increasingly important, but privacy concerns and privacy regulations have also increased. Personalization is a priority for many advertisers, but it comes with added costs. Ad tech firms are becoming much more capable, but this is making the programmatic supply chain a bit more complicated.

These were among the top topics discussed by brand and agency executives during a pair of closed-door sessions at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, which kicked off on May 22 in Palm Springs, California. The conversations were held under the Chatham House Rule, so Digiday could share was said while maintaining the executives anonymity. Here is a sampling of the conversations.

I need one scalable, proven method thats not Google. I need it 100% scalable, ubiquitous.

When youre working with different DSPs, can they work with this [cookieless identifer]? Theres this yes and no and then I can work with this, but I cant work with that. So youve got to find a workaround, and the workaround is this pain in the ass.

We work a lot with LiveRamp. Its a big headache in terms of standardizing how were pushing our data and getting it back. Theres always a lot of friction in terms of match rate, how many cookies were putting in and getting back.

All these different solutions and some of them could work but because theres so many competing interests right now, one or two of them could work but theyre trying to do the same thing or competing so we have to test them and they dont go anywhere.

Theyre just too new.

To use an analogy, who here has been to The Cheesecake Factory? Who here hasnt been able to decide what to order? Thats the problem.

It has to be ubiquitous. Everybody has to adopt the same thing and then everybodys testing off of this menu and you get like a little piece here and you get a little piece there. And then competing interests means that someone might try to close off. So if Im integrated with this supply, Im baked into that specific site list. It needs to be something where its very clear that the data companies and the supply side are on the same page. Its not fully scalable to the place where it can actually replace anything.

Advertisers are now really protective of their first-party data. So if theyve already chosen a place that theyre gonna house their data, theyre real picky about letting it flow somewhere else. Its difficult to find the right place. And LiveRamp has a really nice place in the industry to begin with because they were already trusted.

I think that we tend to actually want a monolithic solution and yet were terrified of a monolithic solution. And I think that that is something thats really getting in the way of it because we say, OK, well is it LiveRamp? Is it The Trade Desk? Is it UID 2.0? Is it whatever Googles trying to do with grouping people together? The problem is that we would all prefer to choose one so that we dont have interoperability issues.

Being able to take what Fortune 500s have already figured out, they all have their own platforms, theyre not waiting for a unified solution. Theyve already built it; it exists on their servers. Were hoping for a solution cuz our brands may or may not have that budget depending on who they are. So were kind of sitting in the middle like whats next?

No one can actually control [the programmatic advertising supply chain] to create this new ubiquitous experience. Its likely gonna become an intermediary that we have to work with between multiple data platforms. Itll complicate all of our work. My question would be: What clients will pay for it?

I mean theres definitely urgency [to move away from the third-party cookie]. I just think that Google is stretching it out and theres not a lot of trust that theyre actually gonna complete the migration this year.

Ive been laughing a lot. Every time we hear something its definite. And now not so much.

O.G. ad networks introduced ad exchanges to unite them all. We need an ad exchange for identity, thats a neutral third party. The problem with The Trade Desk is theyre not neutral. They represent the demand side, and who actually holds most of the first-party [data] keys? The publishers.

In [The Trade Desks] defense, they tried to stay neutral. But then other people, like Google, owns part of the supply. Whenever you try to trade value, like youre trying to make a JVP with The Trade Desk, they dont have as many tokens to trade with.

Everythings too divided again. Who has the relationships The Trade Desk has? Yahoos probably divesting their supply but also probably doing the same thing. What do you go to Magnite for? Magnite calls me and say, Were the CTV shop. But The Trade Desk has already kind of established that.

Theyre all [claiming theyre] the CTV shops.

Everythings creating more complexity as a way to get closer to supply.

How can we work with both the SSPs and DSPs to get what we want? I think part of it starts with figuring out what that want actually is.

I think everyone in this room is OK with regulation. The problem is that we dont have the right parties in the room for the regulation side.

Its almost like there just needs to be a better consortium of the conversation as to what needs to be decided what becomes regulation.

There has to be some standardization.

Theres all these breakouts within IAB to different groups, but there needs to be a newer wave that goes up to the Fed. You watch those [congressional hearings], and you see the questions theyre asking, and its like, Ah crap.

All of the conversations that were hearing, its because the consumer has lost trust. Not just in terms of where their data is going or how its being used. But its also how its being collected.

If were going to develop regulation, its tough because its coordinating the sell side, the data teams, the buy side. Its a lot of monkeys in that circus to get everybody in the same direction.

The trend were seeing is the larger brands are ready to go with personalization, as opposed to the medium and small brands that its more dragging them across the finish line.

Our CPG client is actually pushing personalization. We are going from these bigger strategic audiences to, I want to know the ones that are interested in sports, in traveling, and theyre each going to get a different ad thats more tailored to their interest. So our clients are pushing that personalization, but were also testing, Is that actually necessary? Do we really need to dig into these peoples data like that? Do we need to also pay more for it because its doubled our CPMs?

Content is personalized. Period. We just happen to be advertising. Like, people expect personalization. Theres not a publisher I know thats any decent size that doesnt personalize the shit out of your landing experience. Theres not a retailer I know that doesnt personalize the shit out of your landing experience.

I work on the upper funnel a lot, and Im like, Why are we personalizing this much?

I would argue, if you dont personalize, you could also run the risk of pushing people away.

Not to break it down to the most obvious thing, but its how much money you have to put into personalization. Is it even worth it for a campaign?

What if we consider the consumer instead of trying to solve the data needs on the backend? [What if] we basically just say, Yeah, were going to pay you for your information.

[Wheres that money coming from?]

In my mind, it would be whoever is housing the ads, so the publishers.

In order to make a reward very meaningful, it has to be a big number. But when we talk about [the prices advertisers pay per ad], its not going to be convincing enough for someone to share that data to the advertisers.

Is the new normal you go to a website and youve got to give an email address to even view the content? And its like, Oh, you didnt want to opt in to our CDP? Well, then you dont get to see anything. Is that the replacement we all have to go to and brands want to go to because theyre not willing to survive without data?

If you look at England, you basically cant see content until you opt in. So its just as bad, in my opinion. At the end of the day, users are either being forced into something. So I think theres a happier middle ground where users can control what they want to see and brands have to adapt.

Nothing is user-focused at all, actually. Like in the U.K., its like, OK, accept, and now I can read what I was going to read.

There needs to be a conversation with consumers where we dont talk down to them. Its kind of like what they did on Twitch where streamers have to choose if they wanted to have sponsored ads. Its like, if you want this content, this is how you support it. I feel like we need to educate the general public.

People have just gotten so used to getting everything for free. As a consumer, I get so angry when I really want to read this article and theres a paywall. Im totally willing, in that instance, just to get to that place of, Yes, Im going to log in, youre going to know everything about me, and then I can find that article. It is about educating people the value exchange that the internet has been free and, if something is free, then youre the product.

I got a cool paywall the other day. I was reading a local newspaper and hit the point where youve got to log in. But then it said, You can sign in or you could answer questions. It was some sort of study. Im like, Wait, thats cool. And then I got to read the article after that. So they got what they needed, and I got to read the content without having to do the login process, and it was a smooth experience.

Part of the problem with all this is that we try to sell this story of, We want you to have this experience and this value exchange, but I think to the average person while we think they dont think its bullshit sorry, they do.

I work in pharma. We want to manage frequency, the cadence of messages, the sequence. We want to make sure were not pressing too much or too hard. You dont want to remind somebody that they have cancer 17 times. However, it is important that you get in front of the person with something that can actually help them, but not to the point where its upsetting.

We have to take ourselves out of the advertising mindset for a moment and into the mindset of the person consuming the data. In a lot of the programmatic conversation, its more about appeasing the client.

See the article here:
'We need an ad exchange for identity': Overheard at the Digiday ... - Digiday