The industry has had a few months now to wrap their heads around Google’s announcement, but it really shouldn’t have been a surprise in the first place. Over the years, the erosion of trust with the consumer because of privacy and the lack of an equitable exchange of value is not new. The hard truth is that cookies are less effective than a long term solution. That is something that publishers, advertisers, and the entire ecosystem now need to come together to solve.
The industry is also trying to adjust and prepare for a period of economic uncertainty. During a recent LiveRamp webinar, our own Travis Clinger sat down with Amanda Martin from Goodway Group, and Jay Glogovsky from The New York Times, to discuss how publishers and advertisers can work together to build trust, the roadmap that will take us there, and how the current socioeconomic climate is affecting short term and long term strategies.
Now more than ever, consumers are concerned about their data and who they share it with. In an authenticated ecosystem, everyone can decide for themselves who they want to maintain a relationship with and which information they share. This is the foundation for a trusted ecosystem:
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- For people, it offers transparency, control, and dynamic preferences
- For publishers, it creates trusted first-party relationships, high-quality experiences, superior monetization, and enhanced data assets
- For brands, it powers customer journeys, access to trusted environments, a better understanding of investment effectiveness, and a compounding data asset
In the webinar, Travis answered the questions we need to ask ourselves: “How do we make it clear to consumers what we’re doing, and what is the value exchange they’re getting out of it?” The truth is, as an industry, we haven’t done a great job at explaining to the consumer the value exchange of the internet. We’re giving free content in exchange for personalized ads, and in return, we have been getting access to consumer identity and data. We need to have this dialog with the consumer. It’s on the publishers, and it’s on the marketers.
We’re in the midst of a golden opportunity to rebuild the advertising ecosystem—one that’s rooted in transparency and trust. Our Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) is one way to do this, and this new engagement with consumers is privacy-conscious, and gives them the option to understand how their data is being used and to opt out. From a marketer perspective, you’ll also get better results.
Travis, Amanda, and Jay all agreed that despite the unprecedented health crisis around the world, it should not hinder anyone’s strategy, development, and adoption of authenticated solutions. The word’s still out on Google’s timeline, and we all need to have a unified shared goal. Not to mention that with the recession, every dollar spent will be counted and will need to be quantified.
Jay offered advice to publishers both large and small, “Most publishers need to do a lot of exploration right now. There’s still a lot of evolution that’s happening every single day. I would encourage working and leaning into both agency partners, brand partners, and then also ad tech partners to really understand which direction this is ultimately going to go. And how do we adopt it faster? What I would say is, you can’t sleep on this. This needs to be a priority for you to start researching and ultimately crafting a strategy around.”
To learn more, watch a replay of the webinar on demand.