Publishers remain concerned about the impact of cookie deprecation and other privacy-related changes to their overall business, though their level of concern has somewhat abated since last year, a survey [download page] from DoubleVerify has found. As the advertising industry prepares for cookie deprecation, advertisers are also expressing their worries, with this issue holding the top spot among those surveyed.
In a cookieless future, advertisers are most concerned with their ability to effectively target audiences and the most effective way to leverage their first-party data. The authors note that “first-party data stands to help publishers increase revenue while addressing advertiser targeting concerns,” although advertisers will need to trust those sources. Half of publishers surveyed feel that one of their biggest challenges in scaling first-party and contextual data will be making data accessible in open-market environments, and almost 4 in 10 believe that securing advertiser buy-in and adoption will be a challenge.
Nonetheless, both groups believe that direct relationships will become more important once cookies are deprecated, with 81% of publishers seeing this as the case. Likewise 84% of advertisers will only partner with publishers that have robust first-party data, which could rely on direct relationships.
While there’s agreement regarding the role that first-party data will play in replacing cookie-dependent solutions, publishers and advertisers diverge on whose data will be best suited. Not surprisingly, publishers cite publisher first-party data activation as the solution with the greatest promise, while advertisers see advertiser first-party data activation as the top solution. Neither group cites the other’s solution as holding as much weight, instead pointing to solutions such as social media advertising/targeting and attention-based metrics.
As regards attention metrics, about three-quarters of publishers rate the quality of their attention-based advertising capabilities as “very good” (28.9%) or “good” (47.5%), and advertisers are generally in agreement, with 79% rating the typical quality of the attention-based advertising capabilities they’ve seen from publishers within direct and premium programmatic deals as “very good” (27.8%) or “good” (51.2%). Virtually all advertisers surveyed say that attention metrics will be part of most of (36.5%) or at least some of (59.4%) of their buys this year.
Finally, almost all publishers believe that their contextual advertising capabilities (with contextual advertising popular with consumers) will be either “very important” (50.7%) or “moderately important” (45.3%) for their business this year.
For more, download the study here.
About the Data: The results are based on a February survey of 810 advertiser (406) and publisher (404) respondents in the US, APAC, EMEA and LATAM regions.
