While standard digital ad units typically lead to something approaching standard pricing, the ground can easily shift when custom ad units come into play.

I recently asked Penske Media Corporation senior director of programmatic sales Vinh Chung for his perspective on custom ad units.

Paul Talbot: In terms of a share of overall digital ad revenue, how significant are custom ad units to Penske?

Vinh Chung: Custom ad units are an essential part of what we offer in terms of premium ad products. Custom ad units make approximately 30% of our direct revenue with a surge in demand with programmatic buyers as well.

Talbot: Is this importance declining, growing or stable?

Chung: We believe it’s growing, but there has been a shift in automating these custom ad units via programmatic-guaranteed or through platforms like Adslot.  Buyers are looking for more options to help drive efficiency with these types of executions.

However, there are limitations in running these executions via programmatic pipes.  Many SSP (supply-side platform used by publishers to manage, sell and optimize available inventory) partners are trying to address those challenges by providing workarounds in GAM (Google Ad Manager).

So, while the demand is growing, the solutions aren’t quite there yet.

Talbot: Why?

Chung:  Any reason a buyer could have for optimizing the workflow in producing these units and executing them on a publisher’s domain would be a valid one. Just about every RFP we’ve received in the last year has callouts for any executions that can run via programmatic channels or slated for direct only.

The trend isn’t unique but it’s obvious that leveraging automation is helping to save costs at the end of the day. We’ve even seen the rise of specific publishers offering their own custom units to clients to run on other publishers outside of their O&O (owned and operated).

Talbot: We know that the absence of standards, uniform sizing, positioning and other factors makes an apples-to-apples comparison of custom ad units virtually impossible. Has this been the primary barrier to their inclusion on programmatic platforms, or are there other considerations?

Chung: The current creative blocks in place which every SSP adheres to prevents nefarious and fraudulent buyers from running in programmatic pipes.  Unfortunately, these limitations can impact the way legit buyers intend to run high impact or custom executions by misidentifying their creatives as one of these bad players.

Talbot: When you set out to create value for a marketer with a custom ad unit, what benefits are you hoping to deliver and what benchmarks are you using to try and quantify these benefits?

Chung: We’re hoping to deliver a meaningful execution in front of the right audience for the advertiser. Again, our offering is unique in which they can only buy this experience via Penske Media Corporation sites. There are KPIs that need to be met, but a good portion of our continued business revolves around client relationship management and adopting automation when it’s necessary.

Talbot: Does the absence of an apples-to-apples comparison inherent with one custom ad unit to another give a publisher a meaningful point of differentiation, a way to decommoditize inventory?

Chung: Yes, we seem to think so, although I’m sure it’s frustrating on the buy side to spec every piece of creative asset for each publisher. There are a few networks out there, who are trying to standardize these formats (Celtra, etc.) but they still pose challenges given that every publisher follows different set up rules when executing these formats.

We believe differentiating our inventory with custom ad experiences ensures our ad products can stand out from the crowd — both from other publishers and from the standard ad units users are so used to seeing.

Talbot: Any other thoughts on custom ad units?

Chung: We’re always working on ways to update our custom ad products which includes the ability to automate these executions either through programmatic pipes or automated platforms.

To meet the growing demand, we’ve dedicated our own resources to working closely with rich media vendors on templatizing our offerings, while also ensuring we’re Better Ads compliant.

Article originally published by Forbes.  Please click here to read the original article.

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As part of the update, Chrome will stop labeling third party cookies as “SameSite=None” to “SameSite=Lax” as the default. According to Google the change is an attempt to better protect consumer data, which can be accessed by fraudsters and others through weak third-party security, for example, when a consumers clicks onto an email link they believe is from their bank but is actually from a phisher.

“[These] moves are great for consumers and ultimately good for the industry. 3rd-party cookies have never been completely accurate and it’s time for a better tracking option for both consumers and advertisers. But let’s be honest — the cookie changes, which seem to be occurring in a vacuum, will have a dramatic impact on the ad ecosystem. Advertisers will soon need new solutions to targeting as personalization is only getting more important. This is a huge opportunity for a new industry heavyweight to be created,” said Charmagne Jacobs, Vice President, Adslot. “This change could potentially spark an increase in the reliance on publisher 1st-party data — at least that’s the hope for some of the larger publishers who are putting huge resources into more sophisticated data offerings with the goal of it become the new media currency.”

First party data, according to Jacobs, may begin getting more attention from marketers and brands as they try to better protect – and still target – consumer bases. The IAB has proposed an new identifier for consumer tracking that would build out a consumers’ email address or phone number as part of an identifying marker as they surf the web. But that iteration hasn’t been launched yet. In the meantime, there are some concerns about how marketers can activate first-party data without third-party cookies.

“Advertiser 1st-party data segments is being heralded by some as a solution to the loss of 3rd-party cookies. But this is wrong for one simple reason — 1st-party data has historically been activated using 3rd-party cookies. 3rd-party cookies have been that ID bridge. Without them, how will marketers activate 1st-party data? Or frequency cap? If there are no 3rd-party cookies and no new ID solution, then the only type of data that for certain can be used is publisher 1st-party data or publisher contextual data,” said Jacobs. “This is where an identity solutions player like LiveRamp could bring tremendous value. We’re also likely to see a new interest in media-buying platforms that can integrate directly with a publisher’s ad server. A one-to-one connection would allow buyers to push 1st-party data right to preferred publishers, without 3rd-party cookies, making it possible to see the forward availability of their data across publisher inventory.”

Jacobs also notes that publishers are unsure what to expect from a cookie-less infrastructure and haven’t gotten on-board with cookie-less alternatives to consumer tracking. For this reason, Jacobs believes Google’s update could bring a resurgence in the use of contextual targeting in the digital space.

“Publishers are typically still not monetizing much of their inventory. If we want to keep great content that brings great audiences, we need to make sure we’re helping the premium content creators keep generating revenue,” said Jacobs. “One of the solutions discussed at ALM was a return to contextual targeting — ads independent of cookie-tracking that run alongside relevant content. In a breakout session about ‘Making Content King again’, the big question was if contextual data can be used as a proxy for audience data in a cookie-less world. I don’t think we’re going to see a complete shift but rather that we’ll see a mix of audience and context – either through targeting those segments, or simply moving more dollars into more premium executions that allow buyers to work with publishers directly.”

By advertisers and publishers working together directly, rather than through a middle-man, Jacobs believes each entity can improve the quality of advertising at scale.

“When wanting to simply reach a certain audience, as opposed to retargeting them based on behavior, we’ve previously thought of scale as going broad. However, a better way to get quality and quantity is to work directly with the publishers to see if they have a high affinity with your desired 1st-party audience, then go deeper into their inventory. Buyers can do this with tech partners who are connected directly into the publisher’s ad server and access inventory that is not available in other platforms,” said Jacobs.

Article originally published by BizReport.  Please click here to read the original article.

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A private marketplace can offer only premium publishers in clear-cut deals, but it’s difficult to get enough impressions for a major campaign because many of the processes are manual.

Enter programmatic guaranteed (PG) advertising.

Introduced several years ago, programmatic guaranteed allows an ad buyer to buy a pre-agreed number of impressions on specific sites at a previously-agreed price, directly from the publisher. In some scenarios, the advertiser can target the ads at a device ID or via cookie at an audience segment.

From the publisher’s point of view, programmatic guaranteed eliminates the need to reach premium advertisers through multiple private marketplaces. By filling this need, programmatic guaranteed advertising has quickly boomed.

A tipping point for programmatic guarantees

In 2018, market researcher eMarketer said that programmatic guaranteed deals would account for more than half—58%—of spending for U.S. programmatic display ads in that year. The reason was the same as for the growth in private marketplaces: there’s more control for both advertiser and publisher, and advertisers can maintain an ongoing relationship with the seller.

Online video ad platform SpotX explains some of PG’s advantages:

Buyers and sellers negotiate custom parameters—such as flight dates, audience targeting, and frequency capping—which are then coded into a Deal ID that is passed between the DSP [demand-side platform] and SSP [supply-side platform]. These campaigns marry the efficiency of automation with the personal assurances of traditional direct sales, eliminating the laborious emails and tags and invoices that have always plagued manual direct buys. The unique differences in PG campaigns are that:

1. Buyers agree to a fixed price in return for guaranteed access to desired inventory
2. The SSP (rather than the DSP) handles the activation of deal parameters

Single-source reporting; DSP fees

Jay Friedman, President of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania-based digital agency Goodway Group, told RampUp that PG also offers some other advantages, such as all reporting in one place—compared to an advertiser receiving reporting from various parties through real-time bidding (RTB).

But one drawback, Friedman noted, is the DSP cost, which can be up to 10% of the overall ad buy. Because the impressions, inventory, and price are all preset, the dynamic decisioning of a DSP is not fully employed, but the fee is still significant.

Many big ad agency holding companies are fine with the charge, he said, because they often receive discounts, and PG lets them readily meet their clients’ needs—at scale—with full transparency and fewer concerns about brand-unsafe surroundings.

Adslot’s custom solution

One of the providers that has removed a separate DSP charge from the equation is the ad platform Adslot. The Australia-based international firm is entirely focused on programmatic guaranteed, which it calls automated guaranteed.

Although some practitioners describe programmatic guaranteed as “automated guaranteed,” since “programmatic” usually refers to on-the-spot real-time bidding, other observers contend that automated guaranteed is different, and merely refers to an automation of the usually manual insertion orders.

GM North America’s Cary Dunst told RampUp that his company’s custom-built platform provides the equivalent of the DSP and the inventory-providing SSP, without a separate DSP fee. Using a separate DSP to accomplish automated guaranteed, he said, is a bit of tech overkill.

He added that, while early versions of automated guaranteed didn’t offer targeting by audience data, his company’s platform can employ first- , second- , or third-party data targeting.

A cookieless future

Third-party cookies appear to be fading away, as Google’ Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers have increasingly shunned that type of user tracking.

In this new climate, working directly with premium publishers at scale has several built-in advances over other avenues.

Tim McCormack, VP of ad agency Big Eye Agency in Orlando, told RampUp that the continued growth of programmatic guaranteed is likely, because it’s “a great way” for ads to be placed against premium content in ways that are contextual.

In other words, as third-party cookies become less available, advertisers that employ PG can find soccer fans on the West Coast by advertising on the pages about soccer in ESPN’s West Coast edition and similar sites. Additionally, PG provides the volume of impressions advertisers need and still offers audience targeting options.

But, even as programmatic guaranteed continues its meteoric rise, it doesn’t mean that open auctions will fade away.

Adslot’s Dunst said that, while a futures market like programmatic guaranteed will continue to make deals in advance for known high-end placements, there will always be a market driven by the huge supply of nonpremium inventory, and that means there will always be auctions.

Article originally published by the RampUp blog by LIvLiveRamp.  Please click here to read the original article.

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Chris Maher brings over 20 years of experience leading venture-backed, growth companies in the digital media space. Prior to joining Adslot, Maher was CEO of influencer marketing pioneer Ripple Street (formerly known as House Party, Inc). Additionally, he served as CEO of eBureau, a company specializing in predictive analytics and online ad targeting. Before that Maher served as global president of Hitwise and was a key member of the executive team that led a $260M sale to Experian.

Maher will oversee North American operations and will build upon the tremendous success seen over the last year including working with the majority of the agency holding companies and comScore top 50 news and lifestyle publishers, and solidifying partnerships with the largest data marketplaces as an extension of their 1^st-party data solution.

Adslot CEO Ben Dixon said, “We are delighted to announce the appointment of Chris Maher to this critical role within the US team. His vast experience and track record of success will help take Adslot to the next level in the US market. With Chris leading our already strong US team, I have every confidence in our ability to deliver on our enormous potential in the US.”

Chris Maher said, “I am excited to join Adslot at this pivotal point in the growth of the US market. The company has an excellent and much-needed product with a strong value proposition for both buyers and publishers alike. We’ve seen a notable shift in media over the last few years in response to industry demand for a safer, more efficient, and more transparent way to transact on premium, upper-funnel media. I look forward to being part of its success going forward.”

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Article originally published by BizReport.  Please click here to read original article.

The post Top trends that will impact SPO in 2020 appeared first on Adslot..

As we usher in a new year and new decade, Publishers Daily asked leaders from across media, advertising and tech to tell us what they see on the horizon for 2020 and beyond. Here’s their predictions: David Cohn, senior director, The Alpha Group:

The post The Year Ahead: The Rise Of Voice-Enabled News, Media Consolidation And More appeared first on Adslot..

Less data, different attribution models Until 2016, the main trend regarding data display and data visualization was more data – more report types, visualization types and complicated displays. Over the last three years, however, there has been an opposing trend. Being data-driven is now a must, and as analytics becomes a part of every marketer’s stack, people are tired of endless reports they’re not sure what to do with. Google Analytics, for example, offers Data Studio. It’s become the face of Google Analytics. While it’s a fine solution, it requires highly technical skills to use it and lots of ongoing maintenance. Focused reporting, with actionable data, is now key. In 2020, we’ll see a push for simplified products and easier-to-understand data displays that make insights truly actionable. Apple, through Safari, is now heavily restricting consumer tracking options. For brands and marketers, this will fundamentally change attribution as we’ve known it. Keep in mind, over 193 million people in the US currently have an iPhone. Add in other privacy-focused browser changes from companies like Mozilla and Google, and the problem is even more complicated. While attribution is the key to understanding user flow and how to allocate budgets, the current methodology is broken. In 2020, we should expect to see and build different models and technologies for attribution.

ADVERTISING

 — Iris Shoor, CEO, Oribi

Open door data trail Privacy regulations and a drive toward transparency and consumer choice in data will force data modeling companies to expose not just what we know, but why and how we know it. This will require proscribing certain types of models (like neural networks) which make the reasoning behind declarations opaque. Models will need to move from these black boxes to an auditable trail that any consumer can track, opt out of in part or in whole.

 — Omar Abdala, chief data scientist, Lotame

A privacy new deal With CCPA going into effect in January and other new privacy regulations being implemented across the globe, publishers and advertisers must navigate how to both build and interpret consumer identity by providing them value exchanges for data access. In 2020, we can expect to see publishers fine tuning their tactics to actively engage consumers to incentivize user authentication so they can build profiles to build/collect first-party data audiences, as well as an increase in M&As by publishers, adtech/martech companies to reclaim data ownership.

 — Justin Silberman, VP, product, Dailymotion

Data portability Growing clamor for consumer data privacy will lead to the rise of data portability. We’re at a crossroads on consumer data and its ownership. Right now, brands such as Google, Facebook and Amazon are still on the winning end of customer data ownership, but I predict this will begin to change in 2020. Governments are now intervening to provide consumers with more rights, including the “right to delete” their data. Retail brands really need to pay attention to new legislation, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, or they could suffer the consequences. I believe the push for data privacy will give rise to new third-party applications that allow consumers to port their personal data into environments they can control. This swap in data ownership will shift the power dynamic in the brand/shopper relationship which will trigger a whole other set of changes, including the ways brands pitch and sell their products to consumers.

 — Graham Cooke, CEO and co-founder, Qubit

Identity resolutions The end of the cookie is driving interest toward true identity resolutions for brands to activate consumer data to enrich the customer experience with personalized ads in 2020.

— Jay Friedman, President, Goodway Group

Organizational change As marketers better understand the role of CDPs and how to apply them to their marketing programs and channels, they will quickly turn their attention to change management.  Centralization of customer data and audiences with a CDP will force them to think about how to take advantage of this capability by adjusting their organization.

 — Craig Howard, solutions lead ‑ technology architect, Merkle

M&A 2.0: data and identity As 2019 saw the most M&A activity by strategics with content acquisitions, 2020 will see a bigger uptick with data and identity solutions being acquired to leverage and monetize the investment companies already made the year prior.

— Andre Swanston, CEO and founder, Tru Optik

A global effort A major component of 2020 will be privacy and data regulation as CCPA comes into effect in the New Year. The U.S. is not alone in evaluating its approaches to regulations, and we’ll continue to see inputs from governments around the world. In tandem, the industry itself is evolving to support privacy initiatives and provide consumers with greater transparency and choice when it comes to their data. Implementation, of course, will not come without challenges, but the greater focus will create new opportunities and allow for innovation. It’s important for everyone in the ecosystem to act in a principled way and seek to build trust with consumers. In short, what’s good for consumers is good for us all.

— Iván Markman, chief business officer, Verizon Media

Privacy on browsers Browsers are also getting more actively involved in the privacy conversation – Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection have already been implemented to limit third-party cookie tracking, and there are more privacy related features on the roadmap for both browsers.

 — Harry Thakkar, partner, Avatria

Trust Earning the trust of our prospects is a top challenge. With recent regulations like GDPR and CCPA, plus the increasingly frequent use of ad-blocking technologies, it’s no longer the case that marketers can spray and pray their way to success. Now more than ever, brands need to earn trust and give people a reason to opt-in and listen.

— Amanda Bohne, Chief Marketing Officer, AppNeta

(More) RPA Automation technology is being ushered into all departments within organizations and marketing is no exception; for years now, marketers have used specific automation tools to personalize customer communications, launch campaigns across multiple channels, and more. However, in 2020 we’ll increasingly see marketers leverage software robots, or Robotic Process Automation (RPA), as a fundamental part of their marketing stacks. We’ll see more marketers use RPA to eliminate the tedious task of cross referencing data between different sources (like Salesforce and spreadsheets), pull together actionable insights by tracking campaign performance over time while applying to quarterly reports and power faster third-party data integration across various touchpoints and channels, vs. the lengthy conventional API-to-API engineering – improving the accuracy of targeted efforts and the relevance of the content used.

 — Bobby Patrick, CMO, UiPath

Compliant, actionable surveys Data will be better governed than it is today. Running surveys is very easy because buying and using survey software is very easy. A credit card and a little imagination is all that’s required. But nearly every survey contains personally identifiable information (PII). And if IT isn’t involved in the purchase, setup, and management of the survey software, it’s unlikely that the data is governed, creating a potential compliance risk for the company. In 2020, more companies will look to provide survey-building freedom while simultaneously delivering data governance by standardizing on single feedback platforms. Feedback data will be integrated directly into existing systems to drive action. Most survey data ends up in dashboards and pie charts to be presented at meetings for discussion and debate. But the people who provide feedback expect action. In 2020, more companies will integrate feedback directly into existing CRM, customer-support ticketing, and other customer-management systems to take immediate action on the feedback provided. This will allow companies to close the loop with their individual customers instead of viewing them as an aggregated number in a pie chart.

 — David Roberts, CEO, SurveyGizmo

First-party data will reign supreme In this new privacy-focused age, only brands with marketing strategies anchored in a steady stream of timely first-party customer data are positioned to be the real winners. Without customers who opt in to engagements across channels, it is virtually impossible to deliver the sorts of personalized experiences, demonstrating that your brand “gets” them.

 — Myles Kleeger, President and CCO, Braze

Adtech and marketing tech working together, finally Analysts have for years predicted that adtech and martech teams would work together, and 2020 will finally be the year that happens. The death of the third-party cookie means that the teams tasked with launching a wide net to find new customers (advertising) will have to turn to those teams with expertise in handling channels where the user is known and a relationship has been established (marketing) in order to forge a path forward. Expect more advertisers to leverage technologies that “resolve” unknown audiences to known audiences (via identity graphs and better first-party data in the bidstream for programmatic efforts), and expect more Publishers to adopt technology that resolves previously anonymous site visitors into known people, thus driving up the value of their inventory.

 — Kerel Cooper, SVP global marketing, LiveIntent

Zero-party data has arrived With more power shifting to consumers and ever-growing concerns about privacy, marketers are creating opportunities across the ecosystem by turning their attention not just to first-party data, but zero-party data. Whereas first-party data is “passively” collected consumer data from websites, apps, social platforms, etc., zero-party data is proactively and willingly shared by the consumer. Examples include purchase desires and preferences through interactive experiences like subscriptions, surveys and loyalty programs, etc. It’s completely opt-in, so we can, therefore, presume a high level of quality, transparency and accuracy. And, as regulators and browser companies continue to tighten up on privacy, zero-party data will be more important for programmatic and automated buys. It has the potential to unlock deeper consumer profiling and targeting. Per Forrester, zero-party data would help marketers “build direct relationships with consumers and improve their product recommendations, services and offers.” The challenge, however, for zero-party data is actually getting it. The bar is awfully high to entice consumers to proactively participate in a survey, loyalty program, contest, or subscription service. This means that zero-party data, while rich in quality, will always be difficult to scale. It’s also why first-party data will remain the go-to option for advertisers, with zero-party data supplementing it.

 — Charmagne Jacobs, VP/head of global marketing and partnerships, Adslot

Push for federal privacy law As CTV viewing continues to grow both for ad supported apps and ad free subscriptions, the economic harm from not being able to provide cross device targeting and attribution for CTV on a large scale and accurately will lead to the dedication of more time and resources to address this challenge. The state-led approach to U.S. privacy regulation created a difficult situation where adtech/martech firms are required to make their solutions compatible with different laws of different states. On top of it, the state legislation technical implementation wasn’t thought through and as a result companies need to devote exorbitant resources to comply. This has turned a difficult situation to begin with, into an unsustainable situation over the long term. In 2020, we therefore expect a way stronger push for a federal privacy law.

 — Roy Shkedi, chairman, IntentIQ

Article originally posted by Media Post.  Please click here to read the original article.

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In this series, Charmagne answered our questions — talking about everything from third-party cookies to premium programmatic inventory to first-party data.

The Rise of SPO Will Force SSPs to Incorporate More Services to Stay Relevant

MarTech Series: What will happen to header bidding? What is the future of SSPs?

Charmagne: In 2019, header-bidding created bid density and therefore higher prices. And that, coupled with the shift to first-price auctions, has left buyers feeling like they’re paying too much for inventory via SSPs. Publishers, however, believe that SSPs have increasingly catered to DSPs to ensure the demand (allowing optimizations that have resulted in bid-shading), which has created downward pricing pressure on all. This, plus the need to reduce the number of middlemen (which triggered safety and tech fee concerns) has led to the rise of SPO.

Now, smaller SSPs will get squeezed out and need to find other ways to stay relevant and provide value beyond yield management – possibly even serving as the data hub for buyers.

Swing Back to Context

MarTech Series:  Can we still trust third-party data? 

Charmagne: The reduction of third-party cookies has further diminished the accuracy of third-party data, which has been a core use-case for media campaigns that aren’t long tail. Coupled with concerns around high-tech tolls, transparency, fraud issues and brand safety concerns, media budgets are shifting to more secure executions where buyers can work directly with the premium publishers who own the hearts and minds of their audiences.

Premium publishers curate trusted audiences that are meaningful for advertisers, especially when they want to purchase programmatic inventory in a safe, well-lit and relevant environment.

Shift Toward More Premium Programmatic Executions

MarTech Series: Which ad tech trends are pushing the demand for Premium Programmatic Advertising inventory?

Charmagne: Faced with pressure from clients demanding more transparency and better inventory, agencies are moving more deals out of the open auction and into the premium and direct buy types of PMPs and PG. This shift allows them to apply the programmatic fees, while also allowing for safe, efficient and transparent programmatic media buying. Of course, this doesn’t mean that open exchanges are going away. Rather, we’re seeing segmentation in the way that advertisers do their buying.

Open exchanges are going back into the rightful position of monetizing lower value, remnant and long-tail inventory. Meanwhile, upper-funnel activity is moving back to more premium executions and strategies now that the technology has caught up with the market.

First-Party Data Will Be King

MarTech Series: With the CCPA coming into force from Jan 1′ 2020, would it be safe to say that first-party data is more reliable to manage premium programmatic advertising inventory?

Charmagne: Given current concerns, first-party data will become more important to programmatic buyers, for several reasons.

First, marketers are increasingly concerned about consumer privacy as regulations like GDPR and CCPA install stringent rules over what can and cannot be collected without consumer consent. This also ties into the demand for transparency from marketers, who want to know that the data they’re using isn’t just privacy-compliant, but of high quality.

Last year, a Lotame study confirmed this, finding that data accuracy is the most important factor among brands when considering audience data.

Second, browsers like Google, Apple and Mozilla are cracking down on third-party cookies, creating new barriers to data collection and consumer targeting. As a result, first-party data, which isn’t always as scaled but which offers quality and visibility into its origin, will be critical for use in programmatic and automated-buying environments.

Zero-Party Data Has Arrived

MarTech Series: What data privacy-related impact do you foresee in your industry?

Charmagne: With more power shifting to consumers and ever-growing concerns about privacy, marketers are creating opportunities across the ecosystem by turning their attention not just to first-party data, but zero-party data. Whereas first-party data is “passively” collected consumer data from websites, apps, social platforms, etc., zero-party data is proactively and willingly shared by the consumer.

Examples include purchase desires and preferences through interactive experiences like subscriptions, surveys and loyalty programs, etc. It’s completely opt-in, so we can, therefore, presume a high level of quality, transparency, and accuracy.

And, as regulators and browser companies continue to tighten up on privacy, zero-party data will be more important for programmatic and automated buys. It has the potential to unlock deeper consumer profiling and targeting. Per Forrester, zero-party data would help marketers “build direct relationships with consumers and improve their product recommendations, services and offers.”

The challenge, however, for zero-party data is actually getting it. The bar is awfully high to entice consumers to proactively participate in a survey, loyalty program, contest, or subscription service. This means that zero-party data, while rich in quality, will always be difficult to scale. It’s also why first-party data will remain the go-to option for advertisers, with zero-party data supplementing it.

Thank you, Charmagne, for chatting with us!

Article originally posted by the MarTech Series.  Please click here to read the original article.

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Peter Reinhardt, CEO and co-founder of Segment believes, “Though the GDPR roll-out should have given American companies a good taste of what was to come, it’s still likely that most will do the bare minimum to comply with the CCPA until the US government starts enforcing it in 2020.

“When it does, and companies begin to see that the bill has real teeth, we’ll see a mad dash for companies to become compliant. In the rush, many companies will trip over their shoelaces and make inevitable mistakes, just as we saw with the GDPR.”

Blake Hall, CEO and founder of ID.me thinks the California legislation will pave the way for the rest of the US, “Passed in June 2018 and set to go live in 2020, the landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will likely expand across the country as the federal government will work to pass legislation for the country to have one, unified set of rules. The CCPA will heavily inform this national privacy framework ensuring that all states have the same data security compliance requirements for organizations. Additionally, many companies will proactively choose to implement CCPA nationally, which is already starting to happen with companies like Microsoft, for example.

“Comparable to Europe’s GDPR, these laws could have major repercussions on US companies that don’t adhere to new data privacy standards. This January, the new data law will go into effect, severely impacting tech giants and major US businesses through changes of privacy regulations. However, these laws will empower Americans to protect their identity data and have more control over what information companies can have.”

Sanjay Gupta, VP and GM of corporate development at Mitek echoes this view, “Other states, including New York and Washington, made attempts to pass similar laws in 2019, and while their efforts weren’t ultimately successful, support for similar laws continues to grow. We can expect these states and others to try again with more success in 2020, as voters express greater interest in controlling the privacy of their data.”

Rich Chetwynd, product manager at OneLogin thinks that, “In 2020, there will be a scramble to get in line with privacy regulation. In the last few years, many US companies sat back and watched as GDPR and other regulations were implemented but now they are seeing their friends get fined and privacy is raising eyebrows at the board level. OneLogin predicts board members will be held more responsible for breaches and other issues and it will scare the rest of the enterprise into making privacy a top-level priority.”

Patrick O’Keefe, Vice President of Development Engineering at Quest Software, thinks further legislation could be on the way. “The development of new technologies has put organizations in a position where they are now more vulnerable to large scale data breaches. The smallest mistake can leave data vulnerable, and people are beginning to demand that companies take more responsibility to keep their data safe. I anticipate more conversation next year around how organizations are using customer data and what can be done to keep customer data private and secure. For example, while Facebook currently has privacy settings, nobody understands how Facebook actually uses their data. This will be one of the next things to be addressed by legislation.”

Gary Barnett, CEO of Semafone says, “The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will have a ripple effect and consumers in other countries will expect their government to update existing and antiquated privacy laws. As such, there will be an increase in legislation and potentially new senate bills implemented that can jail CEOs for violations.”

But more regulation could be bad for business according to the team at ARM Insight, “Public perception of data breaches and use of personal data will cause reactionary legislation to pass. These overly restrictive covenants will stall business growth, and will cause companies in those markets to be disadvantaged to global competitors who have access to less restricted data.”

The way consumers share data could be changing too according to Charmagne Jacobs, VP and head of global marketing and partnerships at Adslot, “With more power shifting to consumers and ever-growing concerns about privacy, marketers are creating opportunities across the ecosystem by turning their attention not just to first-party data, but zero-party data. Whereas first-party data is ‘passively’ collected consumer data from websites, apps, social platforms, etc, zero-party data is proactively and willingly shared by the consumer. Examples include purchase desires and preferences through interactive experiences like subscriptions, surveys and loyalty programs, etc. It’s completely opt-in, so we can, therefore, presume a high level of quality, transparency and accuracy. And, as regulators and browser companies continue to tighten up on privacy, zero-party data will be more important for automated ad buys. It has the potential to unlock deeper consumer profiling and targeting. Per Forrester, zero-party data would help marketers “build direct relationships with consumers and improve their product recommendations, services and offers.”

Adam Kujawa, director of Malwarebytes Labs thinks the use of biometrics will raise additional privacy issues, “What will happen to this private healthcare information? Consumers are unaware that their health tracking devices could fall into the hands of someone who could use the data for unauthorized purposes. What’s more, the increased use of biometric data for authentication also calls for stronger regulations for data privacy, as consumers could be subject to bias. Additionally, there are also fears about how biometric data could be used and who will have access to data such as law enforcement, immigration enforcement, or repressive foreign governments.”

Article originally posted in Beta News.  Click here to read the original article.

The post Compliance struggles and more legislation — privacy and data predictions for 2020 appeared first on Adslot..

For a closer look at this trend, and how the growth of the PMPs will most likely impact the role of the open exchange, I asked Adslot GM Cary Dunst to share his insights on the shifting landscape.

Paul Talbot: When we talk about programmatic, there are typically more than a few transparency elephants in the room. Of all the different problems plaguing programmatic right now, which one should be the most solvable, but somehow continues to play havoc with campaigns?

Cary Dunst: Brand safety has been one of the biggest issues impacting programmatic and giving advertisers pause.  No one wants their campaigns to appear alongside brand-damaging or threatening content.  However, this problem has mostly plagued open exchanges, where inventory is aggregated from a variety of publishers and sources, many of which are long tail.

Fortunately, brands can largely avoid content that is explicitly objectionable or offensive by migrating out of open exchanges.  We’re seeing that occur across the industry as programmatic is increasingly being used to transact more premium and trusted media.

Talbot: What’s happening that’s significant on the open exchanges right now?

Dunst: In terms of investment, while programmatic spend is only increasing, open market programmatic exchanges will continue to tighten.  A recent study by MediaRadar showed that one-third of large advertisers cut their open exchange spend. This is being driven by concerns over transparency, with programmatic exchanges not always operating in a ‘well-lit’ way.

Marketers cite continued opacity around media sources and fees, as well as ongoing brand safety challenges.  As a result, rather than spend on open exchanges, more marketers are shifting to private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals.

That’s not to say that open exchanges are going away, of course.  Rather, we are seeing segmentation in the way that advertisers do their buying.  Open exchanges are going back into the rightful position of monetizing lower value, remnant and long tail inventory.

Meanwhile, upper-funnel activity is moving back to more premium executions and strategies now that the technology has caught up with the market.

Talbot: How well are programmatic guaranteed deals working?

Dunst: Several years ago, when PG as an approach and a technology was still nascent, adoption was obviously slower.  But now, especially with transparency concerns top-of-mind, premium publishers are flocking to PG deals and embracing the technology because that’s where advertiser spend is going and growing.

Beyond that, though, there are a wide range of benefits for publishers.

For example, programmatic guaranteed helps publishers access more revenue by selling their brand-safe, guaranteed media through a direct connection, eliminating unnecessary and opaque DSP and exchange fees.

They can also keep more inventory premium by allowing trusted buyers to target 1st and 3rd party audiences across their guaranteed, premium inventory – at prices they negotiate.

Talbot: What significant changes loom ahead for programmatic that aren’t attracting much attention right now?

Dunst: Given current concerns, first-party data will become more important than ever to programmatic buyers, for several reasons.

First, marketers are increasingly concerned about consumer privacy as regulations like GDPR and CCPA install stringent rules over what can and cannot be collected without consumer consent.  This also ties into the demand for transparency from marketers, who want to know that the data they’re using isn’t just privacy-compliant, but of a high quality.

Second, browsers like Google, Apple and Mozilla are cracking down on third-party cookies, creating new barriers to data collection and consumer targeting.  As a result, first-party data, which isn’t always as scaled but which offers quality and visibility into its origin, will be critical for use in programmatic and automated-buying environments.

Talbot: Any other observations you’d like to share?

Dunst: PG platforms that help buyers scale publisher-direct IOs with their own 1st-party data are going to win in the marketplace, period.

Article originally posted on Forbes.com.  Click here to read the original article.

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