What Do We Actually Mean by “Cookieless”?

There’s a perception that first-party data is just login demographic data, but it’s so much more than that.

First-party data is all sorts of things, such as contextual and behavioral data. It also includes site navigation patterns and single session page views, time spent on the page, frequency and recency, not to mention multi-session interest topics, and ad placement analytics.

It’s rich data publishers can use because it’s more privacy-forward than third-party cookies. It’s more than contextual, as mentioned before, but it can also scale across all channels (i.e., tablet, CTV, mobile app, desktop) and browsers.

Lastly, first-party data can offer much more accuracy in terms of targeting than third-party cookies. And with them deprecating, now is the time to shift the focus to first-party data. 

Some issues with third-party cookies regarding targeting tactics include:

• Fragmented media buying based on various solutions available across browsers and platforms.
• Campaign reach may be impacted given the likelihood of overlap in targeting strategy due to competition solutions.

The solution would be to consider first-party data, including the publisher’s proprietary IDs, analytical data, and audience segmentation, to run a more successful campaign. Tools powering first-party data matching will become valuable assets to campaign buyers. And lastly, publishers can define audiences based on first-party data to help shape first-party execution.

How Will Third-Party Cookie Deprecation Impact the Market?

Google Chrome has a ⅔ market share, so the impact will be monumental once they deprecate third-party cookies in 2024. The four most significant effects it’ll have are:

– Identity and Ad Targeting: One of the main reasons privacy regulations have come to the forefront is the way third-party cookies collect user data and transfer it to third parties. A proposed alternative is the Privacy Sandbox based on cohort analysis rather than individual user data. There are also universal IDs that can significantly expand the reach of advertising campaigns. This multi-channel and cross-platform offers more advanced and secure identifying and targeting features than third-party cookies. By using first-party data solutions, consumers can have better control over their privacy preferences. Not to mention contextual targeting, which emphasizes content and keywords over-relying on personal information.

– Ad Fraud: Many believe doing away with third-party cookies will increase ad fraud, which is simply not the case. Ad fraud is already rampant and underreported. For instance, bots can dump and get new cookies like users can when they clear cookies from their browsers. Bots can also pretend to be any audience segment an advertiser wants, hurting advertisers by paying for higher CPMs. They can also trick search and cart abandonment retargeting algorithms and way more. So with these practices and more being lost with third-party cookies, less money will be lost to fraud.

– Cost Savings and Better Outcomes: Advertisers can personalize their customer experience better, use CRM retargeting, make the most of first-party data, and use contextual advertising. 

3 Must-Haves in Your Cookieless Arsenal:

Among other considerations, exploring and using tools from companies that have established a presence for the target audience is a great way to fill in the gaps while considering first-party data. It’s also worth taking the time to consider building partnerships to match data and stay privacy-forward. 

As a result, consider these three must-haves for when third-party cookies finally deprecate: 

Data collection optimization — Publishers define a data strategy and decide what data is valuable for targeting purposes.

Industry or first-party identity solutions — Publishers with a significant amount of login information and the right to use it should focus on adopting an industry identity solution or developing a first-party identity solution, enhancing user privacy controls. 

Platform participation preparation — All publishers should prepare to participate in platform solutions, like Google’s Privacy Sandbox. They should work with their partners to understand and prepare for the changes. 

If you want to learn more about addressability and how to unleash your first-party data, check out our Privacy and Identity Prepper Playbook for Publishers.

The post Armed and Cookieless: 3 Must-Haves for Publishers in a First-Party Data World appeared first on TripleLift.

Preparing for Privacy Regulation

Over the years, we’ve seen numerous regional and country-specific data privacy laws and regulations come into play. From the GDPR to the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) and everything in between, publishers have continually had to shift strategies and optimize to stay compliant. And just when you think you’ve got your data processing activities fully compliant, along comes more potential legislation to flip everyone over their head, such as American Data Privacy and Protection Act. With the turn of the calendar year and increasing regulatory pressure, now is the perfect time for publishers to audit how they collect and use first-party data. They’ll need privacy-forward first-party data strategies and identity solutions to help with the changing considerations around addressability.  Match rates with ID solutions will likely be low and largely replicate third-party cookie dynamics. Some solutions will enable advertisers to use an ID from one publisher to buy from a different publisher. In contrast, others will be truly first-party and used solely to sell the inventory of the publisher with whom the user shared their data. Publishers should look to new and innovative first-party data solutions to protect their data while offering scale to advertisers in both direct and programmatic channels.

First-Party Data Strategies

Forget about Google and whether they will deprecate third-party cookies. Today, over 50% of all web ad requests come from browser environments that already don’t support third-party cookies, including Safari, Firefox, Webview, and Chrome (when consumers use Incognito mode with third-party cookies disabled or other advanced privacy settings).

There are increasing choices publishers can make to improve the addressability of their inventory using their own first-party data.  However, choosing a path can be daunting, with many options that aren’t exactly clear. As the trend toward first-party data becomes the norm, publishers must focus on protecting their data while maximizing near-term value and investing in innovative new solutions that don’t rely on identifiers or fingerprinting.

However, when it comes to first-party data, simply staying on trend isn’t a long-term solution. Many first-party data solutions will work now but have degraded performance as the large platforms increasingly limit user agents, IP addresses, and email addresses to create identifiers.

Any solution that relies on these data points will face increasingly degraded performance over the coming years. Further, many of these solutions re-create the dynamics of third-party cookies by enabling one publisher’s data to buy audiences on another publisher.  

To fully take advantage of the first-party trend, publishers must invest in the right solutions quickly. As an alternative to identifiers, innovative first-party data solutions will be released in 2023 that increase addressability and enable scale for advertisers but don’t leak data and don’t rely on user identification. This could mean stable revenue growth in the coming years despite platform changes and new regulations for publishers who invest in these solutions now. 

Curated Deals Services

According to data from eMarketer, programmatic digital display spend on deals (a.k.a. PMPs) has surpassed open exchange spend. That trend will continue as publishers seek to protect their data and maximize the value of their inventory.

To jump on this bandwagon, publishers can work with partners to help them curate their inventory into deals and sell those deals to advertisers. While curating deals has long been a valuable strategy for publishers that sell direct to advertisers, there is also significant value in working with partners who include publisher inventory in highly curated multi-publisher deals. Partners can then help sell those deals to advertisers.

While not a new concept, curated deals are gaining momentum in the market. Advertisers can target the exact inventory and audiences they want to reach, and publishers can participate, with little additional overhead, to drive more revenue.

2023 will be the year publishers embrace curated deals. Publishers will opt to partner with curation services that can work with first-party publisher data in all browser environments and survive significant platform and regulatory changes.  When executed correctly, this process will ensure publisher data remains protected and increase revenue, especially in browser environments that don’t support third-party cookies.

Measurability

Getting a user’s attention is stiff competition. From push notifications to auto-play videos and plenty of algorithms in play to give users what they want, publishers are doing all they can to keep the focus on their page while balancing the quality of the experience.

Publishers need the metrics to back up all the investments spent on new strategies to drive results. We see impression counts slowly fade into irrelevance and be replaced by attention metrics.

Currently, there’s no one standard for attention metrics. Namely because it depends on how and what content is being consumed. For instance, you could consider active time in view to see the amount of time a piece of content or an ad is viewable or how the user interacts with an ad by scroll rate or depth.

Advertisers and publishers who leverage attention metrics to create better content and user experiences will remain a continuing trend in 2023. Check out more AdTech trends for advertisers.

The post Trends for Publishers to Look for in 2023 appeared first on TripleLift.

Centralized Privacy UX

Transparency expectations will continue to drive the need for privacy-centric user experiences. This is an opportunity for companies to create a dialogue with their customers and better engage them about the kinds of advertising they want.

By turning the conversation about ads and privacy into valuable features for consumers (instead of simply solving for privacy legislation), companies can create closer relationships with their customers, better earn their trust and increase overall brand engagement.

This involves companies reviewing all aspects of the privacy UX — notices, cookie policies, consent management, and data subject rights requests handling — to ensure high levels of transparency, easy to use controls and to highlight the value exchange of ads that are tailored to users’ interests funding free to access digital services. At the same time, they can capture consumer preferences related to product preferences, product discovery, and ads from the company.

This year, Gartner predicts that 30% of consumer-facing organizations will offer a self-service transparency portal to provide preference and consent management. Creating this kind of consumer-centric experience will provide opportunities for consumers to better understand the value of the relationship they create with a company by providing their data. 

AI on the Rise

Specifically, machine learning and AI will be necessary to extend campaign reach on the open web when third-party cookies are gone for good. This will likely impact more than half of all ad requests today, including those from Safari, Firefox, and web view, even before Google removes third-party cookies from Chrome.

While consumers provide significant amounts of information to brands they love, consumers usually give less information to publishers. As a result, ID solutions and 1:1 ID matches with publishers will have limited scale. Machine learning will enable advertisers to expand their reach to the audiences they want to connect with, even when an ID match is unavailable.

Ad Personalization

Simply put, ads are more effective when relevant to the consumer. In a digital ecosystem reliant on first-party data, new solutions to create effective ads that reach the right audience at the right time will be a primary focus next year and in years to come.

Google delayed the end of third-party cookies again. Initially planned for Q2 2022, then deferred to 2023, and shelved until 2024, it will push the industry into the first-party data era. First-party data from publishers and advertisers will replace data from third-party cookies and vendors.  

As such, the digital marketing ecosystem must agree on and implement a portfolio of solutions based on first-party infrastructure and transparent consent mechanisms for capturing and sharing data. 

SSPs and DSPs must innovate with new technology to preserve first-party data privacy while leveraging digital advertising. It’s increasingly clear that there are new ways of targeting digital ads that better protect individuals’ privacy rights. The future will focus on private matching, cohorts, and aggregations to enable targeted digital advertising and measurement while protecting advertisers, publishers, and consumers’ data. SSPs and DSPs capable of securely processing bid requests with first-party data will emerge triumphant and command a more significant market share. 

Convergence of SSP and DSP

New ways to execute ad campaigns without third-party cookies or mobile identifiers will emerge through the convergence of the SSP and DSP roles.  However, it’s likely to be more of a shift in how publishers and advertisers engage with the AdTech ecosystem than disintermediation. SSPs and DSPs can play to their strengths to continue delivering value to the market, and publishers and advertisers should be open to working with new partners to achieve their goals.

Notably, SSPs maintain the most vital relationships with publishers and provide the most significant scaled footprint for advertisers to show ads across multiple publishers. DSPs maintain the most robust relationships with advertisers and support their advertising goals with tooling and process support. This isn’t likely to change, but data system changes will require advertisers to work more closely with SSPs and publishers to work more closely with DSPs to execute digital advertising.

Ultimately, use cases once fulfilled by a DSP will also be fulfilled by SSPs and vice versa. Very soon, to target first-party data-enabled inventory, advertisers will need to work directly with SSPs who have the most access to publisher first-party data and are best positioned to facilitate the match between advertiser and publisher data sets when IDs are not available. Publishers will find value in working directly with DSPs to create unique targeting solutions based on ID matches between advertiser and publisher data sets. Advertisers need to recognize the strengths of SSPs and DSPs and prepare to work with them in new ways to facilitate digital ad delivery based on a shifting data landscape.  Advertisers should be focused on getting to know the SSPs in the space and evaluating the solutions they offer to achieve their advertising goals.

The Explosion of OTT and CTVs

In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion in OTT and CTV. With more and more streaming services hitting the market, it’s no surprise that CTV has reached almost 200 million users, diverting consumer attention from linear television. Streaming is garnering the attention of content-hungry viewers. It’s becoming an attractive place for brands to allocate their marketing dollars, specifically programmatic budgets. According to PwC, programmatic TV advertising will make up one-third of all TV ad revenue worldwide by the close of 2022.

Of course, while all these are exciting, we still have to remember the context we’re going into in 2023. 

Ending Thoughts — Don’t Spend Less, Spend Smart

A potential recession looms, various macroeconomics are at play, and plenty of cost-cutting will likely be implemented in marketing budgets. However, by prioritizing and knowing what trends to look out for, you can make the most of your marketing efforts in 2023.

Check out 2023 trends for publishers.

The post AdTech Trends for 2023 — What Advertisers Need to Know appeared first on TripleLift.

AI-Powered Data Clean Rooms Do More Than Just Match Data

While data clean rooms may not be new, they have evolved with the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) to play a role in the entire value chain: from creating value through activating data to more precise targeting without third-party cookies.

Many data clean room set-ups support data onboarding, identity analytics, and insights reporting based on queries. For example, an AI-powered data clean room uses advanced data modeling to expand the scale of the data matches with audience lookalikes. In addition, it lets advertisers use their first-party data for privacy-forward audience activation based on the complete set of publisher first-party data.

AI-powered data clean rooms’ retargeting and prospecting capabilities let advertisers decide how far they want to go and who and where they target. In addition, relying on first-party data removes the restrictions of third-party cookies and allows advertisers to reach 100% of impressions. 

Attributes of AI-powered Data Clean Rooms 

• Creates a privacy-forward and secure environment
• Uses first-party data for collaborations
• Works with AI to create advanced data models unique to first-party data sets 
• Outputs a highly relevant, lookalike audiences
• Handles audience activation without third-party cookies

How AI-Powered Data Clean Rooms Work for Advertisers

A safe and secure AI-powered data clean room lets publishers and advertisers collaborate on their first-party data without explicitly sharing it. This model allows publishers to safely use their complete data sets for better analysis and matching results. Likewise, advertisers use their highly targeted first-party seed data for privacy-forward audience activation at scale.

Advanced machine learning delivers extremely accurate lookalike audiences for prospecting opportunities. This is high-performance audience expansion and segmentation at speed and scale. With the actionable audiences created by the AI-powered data clean room, advertisers can overcome ID matching issues with publishers that best fit their brand and campaign needs. High-quality audience reach and performance follow when activated on the most relevant and trusted websites. 

The Details of Data Clean Room Collaboration

1. Goals and terms established – Every data clean room second-party data collaboration first agrees on the partnership terms, such as accepted ways to automatically activate audiences and whether retargeting and/or prospecting is allowed. This is towards redefining a zero-touch way for both parties to target and reach audiences.
   
2. Second-party data used for matches – Advertiser’s hashed emails, or other universal IDs enable exclusive second-party data partnerships that don’t require other integrations. This works without any explicit data sharing between the collaborating parties.
   
3. Advanced data model created – Advanced machine learning builds a dedicated data model for each request. Matches are expanded to find high-quality lookalike target audiences.
   
4. Actionable audience created – The data model creates an attribute-rich audience that can be activated based on mutually agreed terms.
   
5. Audience activated – Based on the mutually agreed terms, the expanded audience is activated on an AdServer or SSP. Because of the publisher’s first-party data set-up, impressions that form part of this audience don’t require third-party cookies or other consortium IDs to see the advertiser’s ad.

Why Advertisers Are Using Data Clean Rooms

An AI-powered data clean room is an excellent way for first-party data collaboration that improves targeting and reach in a privacy-forward way. Advertisers have direct control over who they’re targeting, unlike other data collaborations. It starts with their first-party data and addresses fragmented user bases without relying on third-party cookies. In addition, advertisers can use AI-powered data clean rooms to match their first-party data audiences (retargeting) or expand them with lookalikes (prospecting). This gives advertisers even more ways to balance their audience reach objectives.

8 Key Benefits for Advertisers 

1. Scale target audiences – From a small amount of first-party data, AI can be used to identify high-quality lookalikes at scale. Regardless of the quantity of first-party data, advertisers can multiply that audience. This overcomes the issue of having a fragmented ID landscape.
   
2. Eliminates targeting guesswork – Advertisers are in control of the actionable audience that the data clean room creates. This eliminates the black box of purchased segments and gives advertisers confidence in what they are bidding on. 
   
3. Reach 100% of impressions – While first-party data might be fragmented, it can be consolidated to create a bigger audience and address up to 50% of impressions that are currently not identifiable without third-party cookies.
   
4. High quality from “fresh” data – AI-powered data clean rooms use “fresh” first-party data from all publisher sources, making the outcomes for advertisers much higher quality—and directly actionable—compared with traditional data clean rooms lacking activation capabilities.  
   
5. Ensures safe collaboration – Gives advertisers the right tools to collaborate effectively in privacy-forward ways on their first-party data.
   
6. Work with multiple publishers – The ideal data clean room can bridge across publishers so that an advertiser can use the same seed data with many publishers to create an overall campaign across publishers.
   
7. Work outside of walled gardens – AI-powered data clean rooms provide an easy way to work effectively with publishers beyond the walled gardens.
   
8. Eliminates manual data analysis – Traditional data clean rooms involve a lot of complex, manually-intensive data-sharing processes. These are removed with an AI-powered data clean room.

Fundamentally, AI-powered data clean rooms enable advertisers to maximize their first-party data, collaborate at scale, address fragmented user bases, and achieve high-quality reach and targeting.

How Advertisers Can Get Started with AI-Powered Data Clean Rooms

AI-powered data clean rooms are the answer to improving advertising outcomes and reaching audiences that are no longer identifiable with third-party cookies. It’s time for advertisers to use their first-party data to drive incredible value.

Wondering what AI-powered data clean rooms do for publishers? Then check into our Privacy & Identity Hub next week to read about publisher benefits.

The post How Advertisers Can Reap the Benefits of Data Clean Rooms appeared first on TripleLift.

How will online ad auctions function and preserve privacy after the third-party cookie is phased out? No one knows yet, but many in the industry are thinking hard about the possibilities. 

One approach is to add an optional extension to Chrome’s FLEDGE (First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment), a proposal that is part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox basket of initiatives.

Publishers have indicated that they are interested in the idea of being able to create audiences and decide how those audiences are used within the FLEDGE ecosystem rather than outside of it. This proposal remixes how much processing lives on a user’s device and how much is off-device in a trusted server. 

A trusted intermediary called a Trusted Audience Server positioned between a device, and ad tech buyers could benefit publishers, users, and even Chrome itself. 

New Opportunities for FLEDGE

The tweaks pertain to two facets of FLEDGE. For starters, consider that FLEDGE’s privacy model centers the creative as the grain of privacy control. The model assumes that information about the creative is the most crucial privacy consideration, rather than information about the user or the user’s attributes. 

The grain of privacy metering shouldn’t be the creative but rather the segment information about a user. For example:

• Did the user see a creative? 
• Why did a user see the creative?
• Who thinks the user is, say, a dad of two?
• Who learns that the user saw the creative?

There’s a way to do this where the element controlled in an auction is the segment unit. 

Secondly, FLEDGE prohibits the creator of an audience segment from allowing other entities to make use of its segment. For instance, with FLEDGE, a home goods retailer publisher couldn’t let a smaller retailer advertise to the publisher’s visitors who have looked at rugs recently. This aspect should be modified as well.

The Roles a Trusted Server Can Play

A trusted server is a computer partner that holds information about a user’s domain or site-scoped identity but can be trusted to maintain that data in a way that restricts outside parties from reconstituting it and gaining a picture of a user.

These trusted servers could be owned by publishers through data management platforms (DMPs) or supply-side platforms (SSPs) and maintain all the privacy guarantees of an ad being self-contained and malware-free.

In addition, segments could live on the trusted server rather than in the browser. Publishers would control these segments. For example, with a trusted server, that home goods publisher could allow the smaller retailer to purchase a segment of rug shoppers.

How an Extension of a Trusted Audience Server Would Work 

Although the current version of FLEDGE has notions of trusted signals on the seller side and bidding signals for the buy side, it ultimately relies very little on an external trusted server.

Here’s how a Trusted Audience Server could work in FLEDGE:

1. First, publishers would create segments in the trusted server with a publisher-scoped ID and segment IDs of their choice.

2. They would later get segments from the server, which decides which segments it is allowed to reveal in an auction.
   
   It can consider whether an ID is used on other sites and is therefore not allowed, for example. It can offer k-Anonymity for minimum group size. It can also ensure differential privacy so potential attackers can’t discern whether or not an individual is a group member.

3. Publishers could choose to run an auction off-device on the trusted server instead of on the browser.
   
   So, rather than asking Chrome to run an auction and put the winning ad in the slot, as FLEDGE would currently, an ad tech company could follow an optional route: “For this given ad slot, here’s the ad bundle that has won an auction. Please insert it.” This could happen if the FLEDGE API is extended with something like navigator.renderWinningad instead of runAdAuction.

A Beneficial Tweak That Preserves Core Guarantees

The proposal permits—but doesn’t require—auction mechanics outside of the browser. However, most benefits, including for Chrome, derive from running the auction off-device. 

What advantages would Chrome gain by not being the auctioneer?

• It wouldn’t have to manage millions of segments.
• It wouldn’t need to worry that segments stored on the user’s browser could slow it down. 
• It wouldn’t need to provide auction mechanics debugging support or build debugging tools that could be abused.
• It could focus on privacy, improving speed, and the user’s web experience.

Meanwhile, even if the browser doesn’t run the auction, it still receives a self-contained ad WebBundle and remains wholly responsible for rendering and attributing the ad. In addition, the ad continues to render in a FencedFrame that prohibits communication between the ad and the publisher and prevents publisher and advertiser collusion. 

A Trusted Server Can Do the Heavy Lifting While Safeguarding Privacy

There are substantial advantages in running auctions on a trusted server and storing segments on the server rather than in the browser. 

To sum up, a Trusted Audience Server would have these responsibilities: 

• Logging publisher-scoped segments
• Permitting and metering access to those segments from publishers that created them or publishers’ agents
• Ensuring no cross-site identifiers or identities are being used or produced
• Running a privacy-preserving auction
• Providing basic reporting on auction results

A version of FLEDGE with a trusted server could be the alternative publishers seek for the post-cookie world.

The post Extending FLEDGE’s Wings to Embrace a Trusted Server for Audiences appeared first on TripleLift.

ID Solutions, Not Without Limitations

Identity Solutions are gaining new life in marketers’ eyes as third-party cookies, and other ad identifiers are phased out. They come with taglines like “Future-proofed identification for digital advertising” and “Proactively protect your investments against ID loss.”

However, it’s important for companies to evaluate these solutions with an eye toward the changes driven across the internet ecosystem. The information below should help companies create a framework for evaluating various ID Solutions.

Browser and Platform Changes to Prevent Cross-Domain Identification

Web browsers and platforms are focusing on preventing cross-domain and cross-app consumer identification. Effectively, a company shouldn’t be able to know that a consumer visited websiteA.com (or AppA). Then, subsequently, have visited websiteB.com (or AppB).

Thus, web browsers and platforms are making technical and policy changes to add difficulty to achieving cross-domain identification. These changes include (to name a few):

• Deprecating third-party cookies
• Masking IP addresses (e.g., “Gnatcatcher,” iCloud Private Relay, Mozilla VPN) and User Agent information (e.g., “User Agent Client Hints”) so individual devices may not be probabilistically identified or “fingerprinted”
• Updating mobile device identifiers, so they require opt-in consent on an app-by-app basis (Apple iOS14.5+)
• Enabling consumers to generate temporary email addresses for one-time use (Apple Hide My Email)

These changes don’t prevent website or app owners from convincing consumers to provide their information in exchange for something of value (ex: goods, services, content, etc.). But, they will make it more difficult for those consumers to be recognized on other websites or apps on the internet. As such, the utility of Identity Solutions that rely on some of the impacted capabilities will be limited.

Consumer Permission, Awareness, and Choice

ID Solutions are often, but not always, based on consumer-provided information. This includes email addresses, phone numbers, or other uniquely identifying data. Consumers should know they’re contributing their data to an ID solution. And that they’re giving certain permissions for how companies might use their information. As well as that they have choices and control over their information in the future. However, not all Identity Solutions treat these consumer interactions the same way.

First, different legal frameworks apply depending on the consumers’ location, citizenship, and company location. While the advertising industry is global, laws that apply to consumer data are largely regional and have unique requirements.

For example, Identity Solutions that capture identity information about European Union (EU) citizens should comply with the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR. To comply with the ePrivacy Directive, they need to provide certain consent controls for consumers to provide, change, and revoke consent. To comply with the GDPR, they need to provide appropriate notice and transparency as to why they process data. This includes having a legal basis for obtaining consent and providing consumers with the right to object if needed. As part of the Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs), they need to include the ability to view, edit, and delete their captured data. They must also comply with other requirements that may not be obvious but are a requirement of companies capturing, using, and sharing user data.

Second, there isn’t a global framework for consumer interactions that Identity Solutions must follow. Most of them have created separate and proprietary systems to enable consumers to make choices related to their information. Some ID Solutions make consumer controls readily available to consumers. In contrast, others make consumer controls difficult to discover and navigate. And they provide consumers with very limited options to make changes.

A few ID Solutions market directly to consumers to help them manage their identity online. This includes logins and privacy preferences. To effectively meet consumer needs, these solutions must focus on solving consumer pain points. They should make it easy to update their permissions, consent, and control access to their data. Other ID Solutions aren’t as consumer-focused. They may make it more difficult for consumers to update their permissions, consent, or control access to their data.

Finally, some internet users believe that all consumer identification will require clear and unambiguous consumer consent. Or, at least, full opt-out rights in the future due to increasing regulation. If true, it may force ID Solutions to push the reset button on any identities already in the system. It’s difficult to predict whether future regulations require clear and active consumer consent. Still, it’ll likely present companies with a challenge that bases their advertising or business entirely on a cross-domain identifier’s presence.

Companies considering using identity Solutions should consider how they treat consumer touchpoints. Does the ID Solution enable easy integration with existing privacy or permissions frameworks already in use? Does it make it easy for consumers to exercise choice or make changes? Will there be an impact on brand image and how consumers trust that brand by the provided controls? If using more than one, how will the company respond to opt-out of one ID Solution but not the other? How will it be impacted if consumers’ clear and unambiguous consent is required in the future?

Consumers Rarely Sign Up Online

As illustrated by the Addressability Spectrum, few websites can capture consumer-provided information to create valuable identifiers at a scale for advertisers. Most websites will be unable to convince significant amounts of their consumers to create an account. Let alone buy a subscription, or sign up for a newsletter to capture an email address.

Many websites and apps have made valiant efforts to increase consumer-provided information, but most haven’t significantly moved the needle. Most websites can earn identifiers based on consumer information less than 2% of the time. This statistic applies to some of the largest websites and apps in the world. To be clear, this isn’t pointing a finger at poor performance by website and app owners. Rather, it highlights convincing a consumer to sign up for a product or service is difficult. The fact that some of the largest global websites, with high repeat viewership, fall into this bucket indicates that difficulty.

Expanding on that difficulty, a transaction occurs when a consumer provides information. Consumers expect something of significant value in return when they provide their information. Suppose a consumer must provide information to access something they value on the internet. In that case, chances are high that there’s a competitive product, service, or content that won’t have as much friction for the consumer to access similar value. Further, capturing consumer information is even more challenging if the consumer is browsing the internet for entertainment and not completing a specific task.

If many websites or apps require consumer login or subscriptions, consumers are more likely to find alternative ways to spend their time. Or find alternative paths to obtain the value they’re seeking. As such, consumer signup rates may increase by a few percentage points. But, it’s unlikely that consumer behavior will undergo a wholesale change overnight.

Website and app owners must balance their desire to capture consumer information with maintaining viewership. Companies considering Identity Solutions should understand the sources of consumer identity and the number of unique identities available.

Website and App Participation in ID Solutions is Low

For consumers to voluntarily trade their information to access those products, services, or content, this will require significant effort to create valuable products, services, or content. After websites and apps go through the effort to earn consumer trust and consumer information, they likely aren’t going to give that information to other entities willingly. Especially if there’s a risk they lose control of that data, and their competitors can profit as a result.

This impact is playing out with Identity Solutions. There are over 100 million websites on the internet. But the leading ID Solution implemented using Prebid.JS has just over 25,000 installs measured by an independent third party.

25,000 installs are significant and difficult to achieve. The implication is that there are few websites, relative to the whole web, that will have the capability to achieve any ID match at all.

The more work websites and apps do to earn consumer information, the more likely they will protect that information. If that’s true, the origin of shared consumer identities is less likely to come from premium websites and apps that offer goods, services, or content capable of earning consumer trust and consumer information on a large scale.

Companies considering Identity Solutions should understand the install footprint of the solution. When installing an ID Solution into websites and apps, they should be confident that they will achieve their business objectives.

ID Match Rates Will Be Low

A significant impact of low consumer sign-up rates and website participation is match rates with advertiser data are also low. Specifically, advertisers will often attempt to serve ads to prior customers by using information about those prior customers to find them on other websites or apps. Third-party cookies and Ad IDs made this process fairly straightforward. However, this won’t be as easy with Identity Solutions.

Once browsers and platforms fully implement their planned technical changes, IDs may only be matched based on an exact data match between the data captured by different websites or apps. In other words, if an email address is the same on different websites or apps, then there can be an ID match. Companies can evaluate this impact in two ways.

In the first method, imagine regulatory or technical changes by browsers and platforms will prevent IDs captured on one website/app from automatically being used to identify the same consumers on another unrelated website/app. The total potential match rate for any given website will equal the total visitor percentage the website or app can identify. Using this method, less than 2% of identities will likely be matched on any website or app. Especially as most websites haven’t captured identities for more than 2% of their audience. Some websites/apps will achieve higher match rates, but they will be few and far between.

In the second method, assume IDs captured on one website/app may be automatically used to identify the same consumers on another unrelated website/app. Specifically, the ID match rate on any given website will be equivalent to the overlap between the individual website visitors with the set of all known ID Solution identifiers compared to the overlap of IDs known by the advertiser. Suppose the average website contributes less than 2% of all identifiers, and the largest websites contribute most of the identifiers. In that case, the smaller websites will gain far more than the largest ones. Under this scenario, the largest websites should understand they’re limiting their revenue by enabling ad targeting of their consumers on other websites.

Companies considering Identity Solutions should be aware that ID match rates on a website-by-website or app-by-app basis are likely to be low. Additionally, regulatory and/or browser and platform decisions will influence ID match rates.

Cross-ID Syncing Without Clear Policy Frameworks Or Consumer Protections (Or Universal Consumer Opt-in Without Universal Opt-out)

Currently, multiple Identity Solutions in the market are linked due to contractual agreements. This has significant consumer impacts most consumers aren’t aware of. When a consumer agrees to participate in one ID Solution, the identifier is replicated in several other ID Solutions. If the consumer later chooses to opt-out of the original Identity Solution or delete the identifier, the linked ID Solutions are under no obligation. In this situation, the consumer is likely unaware of the linked Identity Solutions or that an equivalent identifier exists in other systems.

Not all Identity Solutions offer the same control access to consumers, and there isn’t a global standard for ID Solutions to provide common consumer control functions. Thus, consumers are unlikely to make their desired changes effectively. The consumer identity, based on consumer-provided information, is irrevocable by the consumer.

This scenario can create company risk. Suppose a company integrates with more than one of the linked Identity Solutions. In that case, the company will likely receive an opt-out signal for the ID Solution the consumer opted out of. But the other Identity Solutions will show the ID as still valid. If the consumer’s identity is used in this scenario, the company may risk using consumer information that shouldn’t be used.

To avoid undue risk, companies considering Identity Solutions should carefully examine the relationships and agreements with other ID Solutions. As well as ensure consumer choices are evenly represented across all linked relationships. Until a trusted and verifiable global Identity Solution framework is in place to enable consumers to control their data in all settings, companies must ensure they complete proper diligence.

Probabilistic IDs Are Under Threat

Several Identity Solutions use “probabilistic” methods to link data collected on one website or app to data collected on another website or app. These methods often use connection or device data. Such as IP Address and User Agent to link different data points, as the connection and device data aren’t likely to change. The combination of the IP Address + User Agent is often enough to re-identify a specific device on websites or apps.

All major web browsers have already (or are planning to) mask IP address information to prevent probabilistic identification. Further, Google Chrome is changing the amount of User Agent information available in certain circumstances. The combined effect of these changes will make it incredibly challenging to create probabilistic identifiers.

Companies considering Identity Solutions should evaluate the amount of probabilistic matching used to develop identifiers. Browsers and platforms are likely to continue working to prevent probabilistic matching. So choosing an ID Solution primarily based on this data may provide short-term value but risk long-term value.

Alternatives to Cross-Domain ID Solutions

We dig into emerging solutions, like Data Clean Rooms, that offer an alternative to Identity Solutions. They enable websites, apps, and advertisers to leverage their first-party data without sharing it or risk having it unexpectedly provide an advantage to competitors.

The post The Limitations of ID Solutions appeared first on TripleLift.

While this may seem like an enormous task, many solutions are still in mid-development as the industry coalesces to test out and understand what will be viable from a technical and regulatory perspective. With the mystery and confusion out there, buyers need actionable guidelines that help clear a path forward. 

We developed the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers to provide such guidelines to advertisers and agencies. Below are some highlights from our Prepper Playbook. It starts with buyer challenges regarding media execution and campaign management and ends with some forward-looking guidance.

Excerpts from the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers:

What Challenges Are Buyers Facing Right Now?

With the end of third-party cookies, media planning will become fragmented and browser-focused. This means a massive shift from how buyers might typically plan campaigns.

Not to mention…

• Campaign reach may be impacted given that there’s a likely chance of overlap in targeting strategies due to competing solutions.
• Retargeting will look more like lookalike targeting without third-party cookies or broad ID adoption. And it won’t be at the device level.
• Retargeting may not be as successful as shifting the budget to prospecting campaigns or other upper/mid-funnel tactics.

What Should Buyers Do to Prepare for Changes in Measurement?

We know measurement will be impacted in a post-third-party cookies world. Likely with cross-domain measurement becoming limited to what browsers provide. Measurement will likely be limited in scope compared to what third-party cookies allow, resulting in more siloed measurement. Think: site-by-site, id-by-id, contextual segment-by-contextual segment, etc. During this time, buyers must investigate their current metrics and measurement strategy. This will help them understand the likely limitations the future holds.

Questions buyers should ask themselves:

• What are my current KPIs?
• What does my frequency capping look like? 
• Do I use a DMP that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies? 
• Do I have a way to leverage my first-party data?
• Should I start looking at cohort data (i.e., Privacy Sandbox)?

What Else Can Buyers Do to Prepare for 2024?

Test & Learn

Buyers can use Safari and Firefox, which have already deprecated third-party cookies, as testing grounds to find solutions. You can also use this time to evaluate creatives, formats, and performance metrics that meet your brand’s needs.

• Do some creative assets work better for campaigns that run on non-third-party cookie browsers? 
• For those browsers, are some ad formats more helpful than others? 
• Which performance metrics are still available with those browsers? 
• Of those available performance metrics, which have the most impact on future campaign decision-making?

Develop a Portfolio Approach to Privacy and Identity

While identity solutions are essential for marketers looking to onboard their first-party data, buyers may still need to diversify their approach to solving for privacy and identity to de-risk their future. This might run the gamut from leveraging first-party data to solving for Privacy Sandbox. It’ll also dig into what would modernize contextual buys to be successful. Supply and other AdTech partners who develop multimodal approaches will be able to support a greater range of buyers’ use cases. And buyers who also develop a portfolio approach to solving for privacy and identity will find themselves avoiding a major pitfall: too many eggs in one basket. Like what you read? Dig deeper with more actionable battle cards in the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers.

The post The Prepper Playbook for Advertising in a World without Third-Party Cookies appeared first on TripleLift.

Identity (ID) Solutions Have a New Job

Identity Solutions aim to maximize addressability for advertising use cases, including developing “cross-device graphs” or “household graphs.” These “graphs” help marketers understand online consumer behavior as they move from device (laptop) to device (smartphone). Or to understand better which devices people living in a single household may be using.

The new cookieless world will reduce device identifiers like IDFA on Apple iOS, causing challenges for cross-domain addressability. As the definition of addressability for advertising is changing, ID Solutions are now marketed as the solution.

Identity Solutions Are Everywhere, But What Are They

The digital advertising ecosystem offers over 100 Identity Solutions, including Liveramp RampID, ID5, Prebid SharedID (formerly PubCommonID), and many more. However, many advertisers aren’t clear on what they are, how they work, or how they can drive advertising outcomes.

This guide should help remove some mystery (hopefully not add more). 

The goal is to help develop a shared understanding of how they work. Each organization in the advertising ecosystem should carefully evaluate available Identity Solutions. Then, select the vendors that best fit their desired use cases.

How Identity Solutions May Help with the Changing Definition of Addressability

Third-party cookies and device identifiers, like IDFA on Apple iOS, enable companies in the advertising ecosystem to collect highly accessible and consistent internet behavior data. Companies can collect unique data sets about online consumer behavior as they browse from site to site or app to app.

Companies can then compare and match those data sets to facilitate advertising use cases. This is possible because third-party cookies and device identifiers are effective technical standards that enable each company in the value chain to collect unique data sets and speak the same language when comparing those data sets. As a result, companies can work together to deliver ads to consumers when a data match is found in these data sets.

However, third-party cookies will be deprecated in all major web browsers to protect consumer privacy when Google removes them from Google Chrome in 2023. Device identifiers are also becoming less prevalent due to platform changes that require consumer opt-in for companies to gain access to device identifiers. Ultimately, companies will have far less capability to capture online consumer data as consumers move from site to site and app to app. It’ll also be difficult for companies to compare their data sets to facilitate advertising transactions.

This is where Identity Solutions come in. Specifically, ID Solutions are designed to create a stable and reliable consumer identifier that advertisers may use to measure online consumer behavior and serve targeted advertising.

Cross-Domain ID Solutions Explained

Cross-domain ID Solutions attempt to create an identifier for consumers. It measures consumer behavior as they move from website to website and app to app. Cross-domain ID Solutions require consumer-provided information like email addresses to do so. ID Solutions will also need permission to use consumer information following various data security and privacy legislation worldwide. These include the ePrivacy Directive (EU), GDPR (EU), CCPA (the USA – California), and many more.

How Cross-Domain ID Solutions Work

The concept behind them is simple: consumers usually use a single email address on different websites and apps. As the consumer uses that email address to log in to websites and apps, make purchases, or sign up for email newsletters, the ID solution will recognize the email address is the same. The logical conclusion is that the same person uses the email address on multiple websites and apps.

Where Does The Data Come From

Cross-domain Identity Solutions rely on consumer information, like an email address. However, the consumer information doesn’t have to be an email address but should be unique to the consumer, such as a phone number. For the ID Solution to obtain this data, it must integrate with a website, app, or data provider.

The Identity Solution is then integrated with the website or app to create a consumer identifier when the consumer enters an email address and has provided the permissions necessary per various privacy legislation requirements.

How Identity Solutions Enable Ad Targeting and Measurement

Generally, marketers want to reach as many qualified consumers as possible. So successful cross-domain ID Solutions will be integrated into as many websites and apps as possible. Conversely, cross-domain ID Solutions not installed on many websites and apps will be less successful in helping marketers reach their target consumers.

Websites or apps integrated with the cross-domain identifier will need to add the identifier to the ad request generated when a web page or app loads. Then, the ad request (including the identifier) will be sent to ad-buying platforms, where marketers may choose to show ads to consumers based on the presence of the identifier. This process can be technically complex and usually happens in milliseconds.

When the consumer sees an ad targeted to them based on the identifier, the Identity Solution will have data that enables the marketer to understand the ad’s performance, including any ad clicks, screen time of the shown ad, etc. In addition, suppose the marketer is also integrated with the ID solution. In that case, the Identity Solution may also provide data showing a consumer purchased a product after being shown an ad for it.

Effectively, cross-domain ID Solutions can enable the same use cases provided by third-party cookies and device identifiers.

First-Party ID Solutions Explained

First-party ID Solutions are similar to cross-domain ID Solutions, but there are a few key differences. First, they only identify a consumer on a single website or app rather than identifying a consumer across multiple websites or apps. Second, they can use but don’t require consumer-provided information.

How First-Party ID Solutions Work

When a consumer visits a website or app, an identifier may still be created for that consumer on that individual website or app after the web browser and platform changes are fully implemented. For example, if a consumer provides an email address or other unique information, the identifier may be based on that information.

A first-party cookie ID, app user ID, or other first-party measurement solution may also act as a first-party identifier. In this case, the identifier is the ID of the first-party cookie or app user ID. It would enable the website or app to measure consumer behavior on that one website or app without needing the consumer to provide any information.

How They Work for Targeting and Measurement

First-party ID Solutions enable marketers to target consumer ads based on their online behavior on individual websites and apps. Once third-party cookies are deprecated and the availability of device identifiers is reduced, first-party identifiers will be the most prevalent identifier available for advertising use cases.

Marketers should prepare to take advantage of first-party identifiers for targeting and measuring ad performance. In addition, publishers should ensure they can create and facilitate using first-party identifiers for advertising.

How Identity Solutions Address Consumer Privacy

The deprecation of third-party cookies and the reduced availability of device identifiers result from increased consumer data and privacy protection. Therefore, any Identity Solution should also protect consumer data and privacy.

Identity Solutions generally operate with the idea that consumers can decide whether to opt-in or out of the solution. However, to make an informed choice, a consumer must know how the Identity Solution works. They must be aware that they have a choice, how to make it, and be able to modify it whenever. In other words, consumers should know they’re signing up for an Identity Solution.

The consumer should know they have specific controls over how their assigned identifier may be used or treated by the Identity Solution and companies who integrate it. Finally, they should know they have the right to request access to, edit, or delete their associated ID Solution data. This ensures the solution follows multiple privacy regulations, including GDPR, CCPA, etc.

Consumer Awareness and Choice

ID Solutions must address consumer privacy in three essential experiences to facilitate consumer awareness and choice. These are initial signup, changing permissions or settings, and data subject access requests (DSARs) defined by various privacy legislation globally.

ID Solution Sign Up

“ID Solution Sign Up” occurs when a consumer provides personal information, like an email address, used to generate an identifier. Companies should consider how they’re enabling the consumer to be aware that they’re signing up for an ID Solution. This includes detailing their choices on how the ID Solution is used and exercising their rights under applicable privacy legislation.

Some Identity Solutions place this information in a privacy policy behind a standard “I agree to the privacy policy” statement. Others make the information more available on the page at the time of signup. In the European Union (EU), the ePrivacy Directive generally requires consumers to consent to capture device information. The GDPR further requires companies to establish legal validity for using that information to complete business processes, including advertising. Several data protection authorities suggest consent is the only valid legal basis for most intrusive activities related to cross-site advertising. Consumers need appropriate awareness and opportunities to provide permission as legislation requires.

Generally, consumers relate increasing transparency and awareness with greater levels of trust. Harvard Business Review found that 90% of consumers believe how their data is treated reflects how they’re treated as customers. As such, each company should decide the best approach for helping consumers be aware of their choices. They should enable consumers to make choices to build trust. Further, each company should decide how best to comply with applicable legislation that may impact their ability to capture and use data or work with an Identity Solution.

Changing Permissions or Settings

Consumers who opted into an Identity Solution should be able to change permissions or settings they previously applied. In addition, each ID Solution often has a unique feature set for what permissions are available. This also includes how consumers interact with them and how easy they are to find and use.

Similar to awareness, permissions and settings that are easier to use will engender greater trust. However, permissions and settings that are harder to find or use will feel “shady” to a consumer, hurting trust. As part of the Identity Solutions evaluation, companies should ensure that chosen vendors enable consumer choices aligned with their desired or created brand image.

Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs)

Various privacy legislation has been passed, giving consumers the right to understand better and control how their data is used. Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) are written into many of these laws. They usually give consumers the right to access, request edits, or delete the data a company has about them.

Identity Solutions should ensure they can facilitate DSAR requests from consumers and act on them appropriately. In addition, companies choosing ID Solution vendors should ensure the Identity Solution provides consumer-facing mechanisms for DSARs for any legislation that applies to their business.

Other Identity Solutions

There are two other types of Identity Solutions currently in the market. Both are cross-domain ID Solutions but risk not working when browsers fully implement their privacy-protecting proposals. Therefore, companies should complete appropriate due diligence to select solutions that will work after browser changes are fully implemented.

Pseudonymous Cross-Domain ID Solutions

There are a few proposals for Cross-Domain ID Solutions that would create a pseudonymous identifier for a consumer that would be synced either to a central server or through a network of servers by web or click redirects. Effectively, when a consumer visits a website participating in the pseudonymous ID Solution, the consumer would quickly be redirected to a different website that would set an identifier, like a first-party cookie, before quickly sending the consumer back to the original website. On the other hand, suppose many websites were to participate, and consumers were all redirected to the same website or a network of websites where the pseudonymous ID is set. In that case, online consumer behavior could still be measured across websites.

Pseudonymous cross-domain ID Solutions would effectively re-create the capabilities of third-party cookies. Web browsers like Google Chrome have stated they’re working to prevent this cross-domain consumer tracking.

Probabilistic Cross-Domain ID Solutions

Some Cross-Domain ID Solutions use combinations of data points about internet connections and/or device information to generate an identifier for different devices. This capability is sometimes called “fingerprinting” because it combines data points highly likely to identify individual devices. Like a fingerprint does for a human.

The primary data points used to create these probabilistic identifiers are IP address and User-Agent. The IP address is a string of numbers that identifies a specific device’s connection to the internet. The User-Agent provides information about the operating system, device type, web browser, app, etc., used to access the internet.

All major web browsers are beginning to implement changes to prevent this information collection. The stated goal of these changes is to “prevent fingerprinting” to avoid tracking consumer behavior across websites. Companies should complete proper due diligence to ensure that Identity Solution vendors are using technologies that will be viable after browser changes are fully implemented.

Limitations of ID Solutions

Explore the limits of ID Solutions and why they aren’t a one-stop shop, or even a perfect solution, for solving the changing addressability landscape.

The post Identity Solutions: What They Are and How to Use Them appeared first on TripleLift.