A few weeks ago, Experian and OpenX hosted a supply-side think tank at our New York City office. Over 70 industry leaders met to talk about targeting in a cookieless future and how we can reach consumers in intentional ways.
Publishers and supply-side partners shared what challenges they face, what solutions they’re considering, and what the future holds once the third-party cookie begins to deprecate in 2024. In this blog post, we’ll cover the top challenges, cookieless solutions, and actionable strategies we discussed at the event that can help publishers, their partners, and agencies make informed decisions about how to navigate tomorrow’s digital ecosystem.
Four main challenges
Four main challenges were discussed at the event:
First-party data monetization
Publishers possess a wealth of first-party data, but collecting and centralizing this information can be difficult for actionable insights. Streamlining data centralization and organizing first-party data is crucial for effective decision-making. Even with a wealth of first-party data, it’s important to be aware of any blind spots in your data and enrich those gaps with data partners rooted in offline connections.
“We appreciate the opportunity to participate in the supply-side think tank led by OpenX and Experian, two industry leaders in navigating a cookieless future. We’re excited to collaborate with them on testing privacy sandbox APIs, identity resolution products, and audience development tools to enhance creator monetization and support an open internet amidst rapid technological and regulatory shifts.”
Patrick McCann, SVP, Research, Raptive
Lack of authenticated data and persistent IDs
The deprecation of third-party cookies means there will be a shortage of authenticated user data and persistent identifiers. Without this information, targeting and personalization become more challenging. Participants discussed the need to find alternative ways to gather and use personal data responsibly. It’s time to start evaluating data partners who have accurate, multi-source compiled, privacy-compliant data with the dedication to reach and recency.
Fragmentation and scale with alternative IDs currently in the market
The multitude of alternative identifiers in the market poses a challenge for publishers. Each of these identifiers comes with its own set of rules and integration processes, leading to fragmentation and complexity. Publishers must find ways to navigate this landscape. Look to ID agnostic partners who provide a way to access multiple IDs at scale.
“The industry needs a more streamlined standard to integrate alternative IDs, given the ongoing challenges of third-party cookie deprecation, measurement, and clean rooms. This burden falls heavily on product and engineering teams, who must prioritize and address these issues one at a time.”
Ryan Boh, Head of Identity, Lockr
Time
Cookie deprecation is almost here. It is crucial to organize your legal, engineering, and product resources, and align internal go-to-market strategies. Establish partnerships that work with your team to follow these timelines and help build phased or cohesive strategies to prepare for a path to monetization. It is imperative to establish a sense of urgency and not wait for others to take the lead. Start testing now to determine if your infrastructure is ready and capable. Many partners who attended the think tank offered insights on how they’ve been tackling challenges to help their industry peers.
Solutions and action plans for a cookieless future
Participants discussed ways they are starting to prepare for a cookieless future and other approaches on their roadmaps:
Work with data partners heavily rooted in offline data across the ecosystem
Enriching your first-party data with partners who rely on offline IDs can help bridge gaps in your audience knowledge. This approach allows you to build a more complete audience profile while third-party cookies are still operational.
Experian is rooted in deterministic offline data and has decades of experience managing it safely. We have insights on over 250 million U.S. consumers and 126 million U.S. households. With our digital technology assets, we bring in 4 billion devices and 1 trillion device signals to definitively connect offline records to online identifiers. With Experian identity widespread adoption throughout the industry, we’re able to provide a common language for us all to collaborate. Experian identity organizes people into households, links their digital devices and IDs to them, enriches their identity with behavioral attributes, and then makes this data actionable in any environment, all while maintaining consumer privacy and data regulations.
“Experian’s supply-side think tank provided a platform for publishers and AdTech companies to discuss the challenges posed by cookie deprecation, privacy regulation updates, and identity restrictions. It highlighted the need for AdTech companies to assist publishers in addressing anonymous users without requiring a value exchange — fostering a mutually beneficial and privacy-compliant open web solution.”
Anthony Caccioppoli, Head of AdTech & Solutions, Insider
Develop your own persistent ID
Creating and maintaining a proprietary persistent ID can be a valuable cookieless solution. It provides control and independence in the new environment post cookie, giving publishers the ability to maintain a consistent user profile.
Use your data to expand contextual targeting opportunities
Contextual targeting involves placing ads based on the content of the web page rather than user data. In the absence of cookies, this strategy can prove effective in reaching relevant audiences.
“The masking or deprecation of IP addresses will eventually impact the availability of addressable IDs in non-authenticated web environments. In addition to ensuring maximum resiliency of our Graph and increasing support for authentication-based IDs, we are also investing in research and development around the use of other signals, such as contextual data, to maintain behavioral targeting inside non-authenticated environments. We will be sharing our findings and future plans in this space in the coming months.”
Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, Experian
Facilitate a knowledge exchange
Reach out to your network to find out what others are testing and what’s working. Start collaborating with agencies and brands across the buy-side to meet their needs.
“The collaborative spirit displayed by our partners constantly inspires me. Listening to the obstacles our industry faces allows this community to build strong relationships, create action plans, and deliver true value.”
Carly Allcorn, Account Executive, Publisher & Supply-Side Partnerships, Experian
Invest in an identity graph
Invest in an identity graph provider to sync first-party cookies and addressable IDs. This ensures that your data remains accessible and actionable in a cookieless world.
“Many participants at our think tank with Experian expressed the need to find an identity solution while also exploring other ways they can start to address cookie deprecation while maintaining business as usual.”
Callie Askenas, Director of Publisher Development, OpenX
How Experian and OpenX can help
Graph from Experian captures all available digital identifiers in real-time and resolves them back to individuals and households. We’re signal agnostic, continuously expand the IDs we support, and futureproof identity resolution through a combination of deterministic, probabilistic, and cookieless identifiers.
Experian is a key player in OpenX’s OpenAudience solution and helps to power many of their data segments as well as their identity graph. While OpenX collaborates with a variety of providers and operates a fully interoperable platform, Experian remains valuable to the core technology within OpenX’s supply-side platform (SSP).
Experian can help you prepare for the cookieless future
It’s clear that the cookieless future poses some unique challenges for publishers, but there are solutions. Publishers and their supply-side partners can come up with strategies to target consumers in intentional ways by continually testing multiple identifiers and cookieless solutions, developing their own persistent ID, creating velvet rope content, and returning to contextual targeting. Collectively, these actionable strategies can help ensure that publishers have a more successful transition into a cookieless future.
Experian has been preparing for signal loss for quite some time and we continue to make substantial investments to ensure our resiliency and the resiliency of our customers. We continue to diversify our signal creating profiles with more persistent identifiers which allows us to pair authentication-based universal identifiers such as UID2 into our Graph seamlessly.
Experian is ready and we are here to navigate the future of privacy together.
To find out more about how Experian can help you prepare for the cookieless future, get in touch with a member of our team today.
Latest posts
Marketing by mobile device is now as popular as ever as retailers send shoppers text messages with special offers and sales. More and more companies are also offering their own phone apps so customers can search for product information and deals on the go. With more than 80 million mobile internet users in the United States, retailers can really benefit from this communication channel. One perk for shoppers is that they no longer have to save and print out coupons from emails! Through their mobile phones, shoppers can receive texts about sales and coupons as they enter stores. They can keep track of their favorite stores and make a purchase anywhere/anytime. One perk for shoppers is that they no longer have to save and print out coupons from emails! All they have to do is show the coupon on their phone at the point of purchase to redeem their coupon. With “QR” bar codes or quick response codes directly on coupons on your phone, savings can be redeemed on the spot. While many people don’t know yet that they can use QR codes on a mobile device, retailers have only begun to take advantage of this technology and more customers are now able to scan items in a store and pay for it using their mobile phones. While it’s just the beginning of a new era, mobile marketing is taking us by storm and now is the perfect time to put this trend into effect.
With all the debate and speculation regarding Groupon and its planned IPO, I thought it would be a great time to check back in with our previous analysis of traffic to Groupon and its nearest competitor Living Social. First, to be clear, the above chart measures web-based traffic to both domains and does not include mobile or app specific traffic. Regardless of these exclusions, the drop-off in Groupon traffic this summer has been significant nearly 50% since its peak in the second week of June 2011 compared to last week. During the same time, Living Social has achieved 27% growth in visits to its site. Overall visits to a custom category of Daily Deal & Aggregator sites were down 25% for the same time. So why is there a narrowing of the gap between the two market leaders in group coupons? Perhaps it is simply a case of increased number of competitors and deal fatigue among consumers or simply not enough of the right deals. PriceGrabber® released results from its Local Deals Survey in June, stating that 44% of respondents said they use or search daily deal Websites. However, 52% expressed feeling overwhelmed by the number of bargain-boasting emails they receive on a daily basis. While consumer fatigue may be one factor another key consideration for these sites is to focus on the attracting new and preferred audience segments via the inbox. Currently the audience segments for both Groupon and Living Social are very similar so it will be interesting to see how both sites and category perform heading into the holiday season.
Newton was only half right: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, but objects at rest are increasingly becoming mobile. That’s the case, at least, when it comes to the world of today’s mobile consumer. According to exclusive research from Experian Simmons, fully 29% of cell phone owners today believe that their cell phone will be the primary device for their entertainment needs, in the future. Furthermore, a recent report by J.P. Morgan estimates that U.S. mobile ad spending will nearly double in 2011 to $1.2 billion. Screen size and limitations on creative, the report says, present obstacles to mobile advertisers. These obstacles and opportunities make it more important than ever for marketers to understand the behaviors and mindset of the mobile consumer. In this first in a series of blog posts, we will explore some key findings presented in the 2011 Mobile Consumer Report recently published recently by Experian Simmons. Media outlets have started to take note, citing the report in articles here and here. Come back to this blog frequently for further updates, or download the full report today. Mobile Market Overview Cell phone ownership among American adults stands at 91%, up from 72% in 2006. The vast majority of teens, too, have joined the mobile revolution, with 74% of those ages 12 to 17 porting a portable phone, up from 59% in 2006. Even tots are getting into the act, with a reported 22% of kids ages 6 to 11 owning a cell phone today. Among adults ages 22 to 24, the idea of not owning a cell is virtually unheard of, with an astounding 98% of consumers in this bracket reporting personally owning a cell phone. While cell ownership among adults age 65+ is the lowest of any adult segment, it is the fastest growing, having increased a relative 52% between 2006 and 2010. Despite the rise in youth owning cell phones, 90% of all mobile phone owners in the U.S. are adults, a rate unchanged since 2008. Percent of Americans that own a cell phone, by age Mobile Service Providers Verizon maintains its position as America’s number one cell phone service provider, with 32% of all adult mobile phone owners saying they are Verizon subscribers as of May 23, 2011. AT&T also has a sizable share of the market, with 28% of mobile phone owners subscribing to AT&T for cell service. Battling for third place are Sprint and T-Mobile, which respectively claim just 11% and 10% of the mobile market. Smaller, often regional, providers may individually have fewer subscribers, but combined, claim an impressive 22% of the total cellular market. Verizon and AT&T will almost certainly continue to dominate the market, especially given the fact that cell phone subscribers are increasingly staying with their provider for an extended period of time. As of May 23, 2011, the average cell phone subscriber had been with their provider for 3 years and 2 months, up from 2 years and 11 months observed at the beginning of 2008. Furthermore, 59% of cell phone subscribers say they’ve been with their current provider for at least 4 years, up from 46% who reported the same in early 2008. 59% of cell phone subscribers say they’ve been with their current provider for at least 4 years Service Providers’ Share of Cell Phone Subscribers Click here to learn more about obtaining vivid consumer research from Experian Simmons and don’t forget to check back here for new blog posts on mobile consumers.