We’re excited to introduce the next segment in our Q&A series, Ask the Expert! Ask the Expert features a series of conversations with product experts where we dive into the areas you care most about like identity resolution, targeting, attribution, and more. Our next segment features a conversation about sell-side targeting.
Mike Chowla, SVP of Product at OpenX joins us to chat with Experian’s SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris Feo. OpenX is the world’s leading sell-side platform for audience, data, and identity targeting. In their conversation, Mike and Chris review:
- The shift to targeting on the sell-side
- How first- and third-party data are being used on the sell-side
- How OpenX is thinking about alternative IDs
What is sell-side targeting?
Sell-side targeting optimizes the way buyers and supply-side platforms (SSPs) work together. This approach moves the responsibility of inventory and audience targeting from the demand-side platform (DSP) into the SSP, providing advertisers with increased reach and better performance.
With sell-side targeting, locating your target audience becomes easier as you have a more direct connection with publishers. This increases your ability to scale against a target audience. Specifically, the SSP directly matches the buyer’s audience or data segment to the publisher inventory and audience and automatically sends the impression to the buyer’s DSP of choice via a deal ID, providing advertisers with improved reach and performance metrics as well as control over their inventory. With more direct access, your budget can likely go further, and you can decrease your effective cost per mille (eCPM) and get more working media.
“Supply-side targeting is the next phase of how supply path optimization (SPO) and buyers will need to work more closely with SSPs.” – Mike Chowla, SVP, Product, OpenX
Buying on the sell-side vs. open exchange
When buying on the open exchange, you have access to a vast number of impressions. With sell-side targeting, you can apply your campaign targeting directly on the supply-side and activate those impressions through a deal ID. Sell-side targeting works across various formats including web display, mobile, in-app, and connected TV (CTV) for a seamless advertising experience.
OpenX offers the unique capability to match users using their device graph within their SSP. This means you can target users from traditional data sources such as cookies or mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) and reach them in CTV or app environments. This gives you even more reach and precision in your advertising efforts.
The role of first- and third-party data on the sell-side
Buyers are showing a keen interest in bringing their own first-party data into the process of sell-side targeting. Meanwhile, certain agencies have been actively involved in working with identity and data. OpenX is currently collaborating with several agency ID solutions such as Choreograph, Merkel, and Horizon.
Buyers are also purchasing third-party data and data segments from various providers through OpenX’s platform for sell-side targeting purposes. By utilizing this data on the supply side, buyers are able to increase the match rate against their first- and third-party data segments in all environments. This ultimately maximizes scale against these audiences and drives a more efficient CPM due to eliminating waste.
Measurement and attribution on the sell-side
In the current state of SSP advertising, there is more of an emphasis on targeting capabilities than measurement and attribution. That said, SSPs can provide granular log level reports that can be utilized for multi-touch attribution (MTA) or mixed media models (MMM). These granular insights not only inform measurement and attribution models, but they also provide valuable optimization insights such as clearing price.
Additionally, advertisers have all of the same reporting options that they’re used to getting through their DSP because their buys are activated via deal ID in the DSP of their choice.
What to consider when transitioning to sell-side targeting
There are two primary items you should consider when transitioning to sell-side targeting:
- Supply
- Reach
Reach
Collaborating with partners who have the right capabilities can greatly improve reach and audience extension across different devices. For instance, if you bring your first-party audience or a third-party audience and are identifying that consumer via a cookie or MAID, being able to extend that targeting segment to other devices and platforms can be highly beneficial.
Supply
It’s crucial to collaborate with partners who have the right access to supply and direct connections with publishers. While targeting is essential, it’s equally important to have high-quality supply to drive performance.
Reaching consumers in a cookieless future
Whether you’re targeting on the demand or sell-side, it always starts with the consumer and who you’re trying to reach.
Significant changes in the consumer privacy landscape are impacting advertisers’ ability to access various signals emitted by consumers through their devices and browsers. Recent developments from Apple and Google have further amplified this situation.
Alternative IDs as a solution to signal loss
In response, we’re seeing the emergence of alternative IDs like UID2, Ramp ID, and ID5. OpenX supports these types of IDs and considers them crucial for audience buying in a privacy-centric cookie-less future.
We are still in the early stages of this evolution. While some of the IDs have good coverage, cookies will continue to be the primary targeting method as long as they remain available.
Nevertheless, we see alternative IDs as one of several solutions that will become increasingly important as third-party cookies disappear. Contextual buying will also emerge, and a set of solutions will come together to enable advertisers to keep finding their audience in a cookie-less world.
Overcoming signal loss with identity resolution
Looking ahead, as we continue to lose signals due to the evolving consumer privacy landscape, we will witness two things:
- Continued fragmentation
- A wide variety of identifiers
Content will continue to be available on various devices. We’re currently experiencing the emergence of connected TV, but who knows what other devices will surface over the next five to ten years. As cookies disappear, which have been the primary identifier, and alternative IDs are introduced, the wide variety of identifiers will create further fragmentation. This highlights the need for identity in the future.
Identity resolution at Experian matches fragmented identifiers to a single profile to create a unified, cross-channel view of your consumers. Our identity resolution solutions can help future-proof your marketing strategies.
How Experian and OpenX work together
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 SSP.
“Experian powers a lot of the data segments and identity graph that OpenX has in our OpenAudience capabilities as part of our SSP.” – Mike Chowla, SVP, Product, OpenX
Watch the full Q&A
Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch Mike and Chris’s full conversation on sell-side targeting. In the Q&A, Mike and Chris also share their thoughts on the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the AdTech industry and their go-to sources for staying up to date on all things AdTech.
About our experts
Mike Chowla, SVP, Product, OpenX
Mike Chowla is the SVP of Product at OpenX where he leads product development and innovation, from customer discovery and user research to the development, delivery, and support of a market-leading product suite. Chowla holds a BS in Engineering from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from The University of Pennsylvania.
Chris Feo, Chief Business Officer, Experian
As SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris has over a decade of experience across identity, data, and programmatic. Chris joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. He joined Tapad with less than 10 employees and has been part of the executive team through both the Telenor and Experian acquisitions. He’s an active advisor, board member, and investor within the AdTech ecosystem. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard golfer, frequent traveler, and husband to his wife, two dogs, and two goats!
Latest posts
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To say that Amazon Prime Day was a raging success is a considerable understatement Prime Day, the manufactured holiday by Amazon.com to mark the site’s 20th anniversary on July 15, 2015, was the biggest day of the past year for Amazon.com…by far. Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise® online intelligence tool reports that Amazon.com garnered over 83.3 million visits from mobile and desktop browsers on Prime Day. By comparison, Prime Day topped Cyber Monday — the previous record holder — by a staggering 51.5 percent and Black Friday by 77.2 percent. It’s actually a bit ironic that Amazon promoted Prime Day as having more deals that Black Friday. That’s because visits to Amazon.com have actually been growing so steadily that last year’s Black Friday isn’t even among the site’s 10 biggest traffic days of the last 12 months. Nearly half of the days in July this year, in fact, have had visit counts that surpassed Black Friday. Compared to the previous Wednesday (July 8), the number of visits to Amazon.com on Prime Day rose 68 percent. But Amazon wasn’t the only retailer celebrating. Prime Day was definitely more of a “a rising tide lifts all boats” kind of event. For instance, 57 of the top 100 retail sites in the Hitwise 500 also saw increased visits on July 15 compared to the Wednesday prior. Walmart and Best Buy, which offered competing deals, had a an especially strong showing on Prime Day with visits to their sites up 97 percent and 44 percent, respectively, over the previous Wednesday. Search on Amazon Prime Day So what deals were consumers flocking to Amazon.com to take advantage of? To find out, I used Hitwise to compare the search terms leading to Amazon on Prime Day compared to the previous Wednesday. No surprise, many of the products that had the greatest increase in search click share week-over-week were Amazon’s own, including the “Amazon Fire Stick” (+417 percent) and “echo” (+357 percent). But also on the list were other products that were part of Amazon’s celebratory deals, such as “Nexus 6” (+352 percent), “Instant Pot” (+271 percent) and “PS4” (+250 percent). Overall, searches for Amazon Prime Day and variations thereof were common on July 15 and Amazon.com received 59.8 percent of search clicks from “Amazon Prime Day” searches, 61.2 percent of which were paid, meaning Amazon invested heavily in making sure that it successfully captured the traffic of interested consumers. But obviously not all Prime Day searches lead to the retail giant. Media sites Wired, CNNMoney.com and NBC News each captured at least three percent of traffic following a Prime Day search. In fact, seven of the top 10 winners of “Amazon Prime Day” searches were news and media outlets, which largely did not invest in paid search for that term. Walmart, which captured 1.5 percent of “Amazon Prime Day” searches, however, did pay. Among the “Amazon Prime Day” search clicks that lead to Walmart.com, 63.6 percent were paid. Of course two can play at that game. Amazon was also busy buying search terms of competitors on Prime Day. For instance, 23.9 percent of the clicks to Amazon from searches for “Target” were paid as were 15.9 percent of “Newegg” search clicks, eight percent of search clicks from “Best Buy” searches and 2.5 percent of search clicks for “Walmart.” Sources of traffic In terms of sources of traffic to Amazon.com, News and Media sites accounted for a 56 percent greater share of upstream traffic on Prime Day (6.7 percent) than the previous Wednesday (4.3 percent). But media weren’t the only ones talking about Prime Day, consumers, too, were taking to social media to chat up the event. And while not all online chatter was positive, Social Media sites delivered 15.2 percent of all referred traffic to Amazon.com on Prime Day, up from 11.3 percent of traffic the Wednesday prior, a relative increase of 35 percent. Despite the fact that Prime Day was meant to celebrate a milestone anniversary for Amazon, the overwhelming success for Amazon and other retailers will likely make it an annual event. If that is indeed the case, consumers will come to anticipate the day much like they do Black Friday. Marketers shouldn’t discount the potential for an annual Prime Day event to disrupt normal consumer spending patterns as well as drive even more dollars to be spent through online channels. For more information on how you can leverage Hitwise, the world’s largest sample of online consumer behavior, to improve the effectiveness of your search, display, affiliate, mobile, email and social media marketing campaigns, click here.
Pat Pellegrini is General Manager for Experian Marketing Services’ Consumer Insights group in North America. He also serves as Chief Research Officer and strongly supports the important role that high quality measurement science plays in driving deeper, more actionable consumer understanding. Every year, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) holds its annual conference where research professionals gather to discuss the latest trends, innovations and research. As a leading provider of consumer insights, Experian Marketing Services has an important role to play within AAPOR, the top professional organization of public opinion and survey research professionals. Since joining Experian as Chief Research Officer, and now as General Manager of Consumer Insights, I have driven our organization — already known for our trusted consumer insights — to move even more aggressively on innovations in measurement science, whether that is through self-reported consumer surveys like our Simmons National Consumer Study or passive data collection like our Hitwise online intelligence data. Consumers are being profoundly affected by rapid changes in technology and we are committed to being at the forefront in developing new research approaches to ensure that our data accurately and reliably reflects consumer decisions, behaviors, attitudes, lifestyles and media preferences. Experian Marketing Services was well represented at this year’s AAPOR conference both among attendees and presenters. In fact, six exciting topics from Experian were presented at the conference based on the work we do here every single day. Having this level of recognition from our research peers and the AAPOR organization is an outstanding accomplishment that speaks to our commitment toward research quality and innovation. It’s these types of insights that will help propel the industry forward. At the conference, I was delighted to present, along with my colleague Gerry Dirksz, findings from a successful initiative that Experian Marketing Services recently undertook to produce higher response rates to our Simmons National Consumer Study. Declining response rates are an obstacle facing nearly every player in our field and one that has real implications on data quality. Because certain key segments of the population (e.g., Millennials, Hispanics, etc.) are disproportionately less likely to respond to or participate in research studies, marketers and others who rely on such research may be handicapped by potential blind spots in the resulting data which prevent them from fully understanding important consumer audiences. 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In this regard, I look forward to blazing new trails based on well-thought hypotheses from our expert team. This will ensure that our data continues to be the gold-standard for helping our clients better understand consumers so that they can create more relevant and engaging interactions. Other topics presented by Experian at AAPOR include: The effects of total navigational burden, length of instrument and page complexity on item non-response This paper examined item non-response for long surveys which is a major topic of concern for survey researchers, particularly those looking to collect a large number of measurements from a single source. Specifically, binary (yes/no) questions were studied and potential factors that might contribute to item non-response were identified for further exploration. Patterns of response and non-response to sexual orientation measures In this presentation, relationships and patterns of item non-response among non-Hispanics to a measure of sexual orientation contained within the Simmons National Consumer Survey were explored. Since 2009, item non-response to the sexual orientation question has declined by a rate of 26 percent with a decline among 18-34 year-old respondents of 43 percent. U.S. Hispanic receptivity to self-reported measure of sexual orientation This paper examined the effects of adding a question on sexual orientation with respect to mail survey instrument return rates and item non-response rates among the U.S. Hispanic population. A key finding from this research was the pronounced, significant difference in item non-response rates which were disproportionately higher for Hispanics compared to non-Hispanics and significantly higher for Spanish-language Hispanics versus English-language Hispanics. Does providing an email address in an initial contact study indicate respondents will be cooperators in a subsequent online panel study? This study examines how the cooperation rate for a future study differs between individuals who are willing to provide an email address in the initial phase and those who are not. Results indicate that respondents who provide an email address in the initial contact study are more cooperative in joining a subsequent online panel than those who do not provide an email address. Patterns of non-response to health, diet, nutrition and apparel measures conditioned on body mass index This study examines the relative response of overweight or obese individuals to questions concerning diet, nutrition, health and even apparel in comparison to those individuals classified in the normal range for BMI. Based on our findings, a BMI measurement, outside of the normal range, would not negatively impact a study’s non-response rate to other survey questions related to one’s self-image. For more information about these presentations, please contact us at consumerinsight@experian.com.