With the challenges the digital advertising sector has faced over the last 2 years, publishers are understandably concerned about how the upcoming identity changes might impact their advertising revenues.
At LiveRamp we’ve been working with our clients to develop a new ecosystem built on privacy-first, people-based addressability. ATS (our Authenticated Traffic Solution) enables individuals to authenticate themselves in a cookieless environment whilst maintaining control over the use of their data. In turn, publishers are able to connect and deliver premium content experiences to these individuals to drive greater engagement and revenue.
As a result of this move towards people-based solutions, the addressability team at LiveRamp predict three outcomes in 2022 for digital advertising:
Democratisation
ATS helps to democratise digital media investment as it levels out the playing field between open web publishers and the walled gardens; therefore providing access to people-based marketing budgets that were previously out of reach for publishers. Currently, 69% of digital ad-spend goes to walled gardens, leaving 31% for all other digital publishers. Indeed this is because historically walled gardens have had rich first party datasets as they demonstrate a clear value exchange to their users, delivering functionality and content that users need to be logged in to access.
Through ATS publishers are also able to establish a good user experience in order to create a clear value exchange. Once a user participates in the exchange of content and personal data, publishers can help marketers find their audience more accurately through addressable solutions. In this way, publishers can begin to regain some of the revenue currently siloed into the walled garden to democratise the ad-spend across the internet.
Diversification
The cookieless future gives publishers a big opportunity to reconsider their offering, if they’re willing to engage with diverse strategies. People-based marketing budgets are hard won, and successful publishers are those who diversify their revenue streams and monetisation strategies, giving them higher yields on their inventory.
In Q4, a lot of publishers will be working with retailers in the busy run up to Christmas. On the open internet, publishers can work with brands on awareness marketing, however through ATS they’d be able to directly target existing customers as well – perhaps through subscribers to the retailer’s loyalty programme. As a result, they’ll unlock new revenue streams with identity-enriched data sets.
In 2021, we published a report looking at “Marketing in the First Party Future” which found that marketers were willing to pay more to find their customers. The budget is there for publishers who’re willing to invest in their identity solutions and diversify their offerings.
Differentiation
Publishers must differentiate themselves through a first party data strategy that makes them stand out.
A key part of this first party data strategy is testing. It’s crucial that publishers continue to test as many different privacy first solutions as possible, because they need to find the solutions that work best for them to communicate their point of difference to brands.
Secondly, publishers can differentiate themselves through their partnerships. Through ATS and by leveraging Ramp ID, the relationship between brands and publishers is rebuilt, as brands become a key part of the adtech conversation. In this way, publishers and brands can discuss directly how they can execute customer-focused, personalised campaigns.
The digital advertising industry is changing, and through ATS publishers have the opportunity to rebuild it in their favour. Democratisation, Diversification and Differentiation are key outcomes for the people-based future that will drive greater success and help re-establish publishers’ footing in the digital ad landscape in the year ahead.
A version of this article was originally published in State of Digital Publishing.