The Adapex team had a great time in Vail at the Digiday Publishing Summit. It was great to connect with so many industry leaders and partners. We are pleased to be a sponsor of the Digiday Publishing Summits and appreciate their putting together such a robust and worthwhile event. Here are some key takeaways from the three-day conference.
Though the conference covered a bit of everything, including some great insights from the Meredith/Dotdash acquisition and staying relevant in a changing industry, the biggest topic of conversation was around data and the future of identity. This, of course, is on all of our minds as we plan for the elimination of the third-party cookie. And while these are challenging times for publishers, they are also exciting times for our whole industry and Adapex believes there are big opportunities ahead for all of us.
Data and the Cookieless Road Ahead
The lowdown:
- Publishers don’t want cookie-replacing identifiers replicating the third-party cookie’s ills.
- Publishers want more control of their data than email-based IDs, like Prebid’s Unified ID 2.0, provide
The good news is that there is general agreement that we should not be looking to replicate the current system. And publishers are hyper-aware of the value of their first-party data and want to protect it while figuring out how to control it better and to their revenue benefit.
Digiday shared this quote from a publisher in attendance, which sums it up.
“If we go down this path of publishers putting their identity into the auction and it gets shared and duplicated the same way that third-party cookies drove [demand-side platforms’] growth, you’ll never get it back and you will lose the last thing to answer the question, ‘why shouldn’t I just buy you in the open auction?’” said a third publishing executive in attendance.
Key Takeaways
While there is a lot of alignment in thinking within the ecosystem, there is still a lot of work to be done in identifying a solution to replace the third-party cookie. And no shortage of options to explore, test, and analyze. (Akamai shared its marketer-centric solution which holds some promise.)
But this is where Adapex finds the excitement in the hunt. We spent time with a lot of publishers, talking about the possibilities and ways we can work together to not just survive but thrive in the post-cookie ecosystem. Our partnership with the Datrix group and the AI-enhanced targeting options we have in beta feels like a good path and we are excited with some of our initial results.
- Publishers should continue to evaluate their data monetization strategies
- Keep testing multiple alternative identifiers and see what’s working for your site
- Build trust with your audience, convey the value proposition of your content in return for data
- Implement effective systems for data tracking and trading
- Build addressable inventory
- Explore contextual solutions
We look forward to sponsoring the Fall Digiday Summit and seeing what progress we can make in the next few months. In the meantime, if we missed you or you have any questions about some of the solutions we are working on, we’d love to connect with you.
