Governmental regulations are leading the conversation. In 2023, we’ll see five new state privacy laws go into effect across the United States. The confusion building around the pressing topic of privacy and the adjacent incoming changes has been increasingly tangible for both consumers and the ad tech industry. Now, with these changes finally on the horizon, it’s time to ponder an important question, how does privacy really affect user experience? 

Putting Users First

Imagine you are scrolling through social media and the ad that pops up is for the new shampoo brand you have been dying to try. Are you happy because now you can click the link and finally buy it? Are you maybe a little bit creeped out? Now, imagine you are on your friend’s phone doing the same thing. Are their ads interesting to you? Are they relevant?

Third-party data has the potential to deliver users effective, targeted ads most of the time. By using this information, companies build better relationships with customers and users see ads that are relevant to them; this includes products, services, news updates, trend information, and anything else they could potentially have an interest in and that could add value to their lives. The increasing number of privacy walls could look like a step backward in user experience. According to Statista, 90% of consumers prefer a personalized experience while Epsilon’s latest report claims that 80% are more likely to do business with a company delivering the same. Without data, users won’t receive a personalized experience through seeing relevant ads. This is a vantage point not receiving enough attention from lawmakers and organizations bidding to dismantle cookies. 

The increasing regulations force companies to consider how to use data in a way that users will be comfortable with, especially in regard to sensitive information. In a recent report by Cisco, over 80% of respondents said that the way a company treats their personal data is indicative of the way it views them as a customer. For publishers, first-party cookies are mainly provided by the user and allow their sites to run smoothly. But, when it comes to third-party cookies, a lack of transparency can make users feel that they are not in control of their data and cause them to distrust advertisers. 

The IAB Tech Lab has been making strides to ensure that there is data use transparency for users in the digital advertising supply chain for years now, setting standards for our industry. Increasing transparency increases trust, improving the overall relationship between a company and its users. For consumers, the main issue is being left in the dark about who has access to their data and what it is being used for. 

The Privacy Narrative

One of the most important aspects of a story is the narrator. As an industry, we have to consider who is telling the story of privacy. Erin Egan, VP and Chief Privacy Officer, Public Policy, at Meta gave an insightful talk at IAB’s ALM conference earlier this year. She dove into the concept of fear surrounding the conversation of the standards and how the state of tech failed to gain control of the narrative. “In my experience the only antidote to fear is understanding,” said Egan. Ad tech needs to explain the importance of digital advertising to lawmakers and other organizations in order to eradicate the fear behind these privacy rulings. 

There are agencies using data for the wrong reasons, but there are also agencies using data to better cater to their audiences. The picture being painted of money-hungry agencies hunting down user data for their own benefit is not an accurate depiction of our industry, and if we want to change it, we need to be more transparent. 

The Cookies Left in the Jar… 

Organizations will need to adapt quickly to adhere to the new mandates and maintain relevancy. For ad tech organizations and advertisers, third-party data may become a thing of the past sooner than we think. Not having access to this information in a cookie-less world will change the industry’s processes dramatically and have a real economic impact. 

Finally, companies wishing to make a difference before it is too late must get in touch with lawmakers. Government agencies need to understand that more privacy does not equal improved user experience. The bottom line is, we need ads on the open web. It’s the honest truth. Our industry needs to find a way to make sure ads survive while maintaining the delicate balance between not compromising user experience and keeping data safe. The quality of the consumer journey will be caught in the cross-fires of the privacy battle sooner or later, and the sooner ad tech can speak up, the better.

The post Will Users Miss Cookies When They Are Gone? appeared first on Primis.

With an overwhelmingly saturated market, how can advertisers prevent consumers from succumbing to banner blindness and being immune to even their most creative efforts?

Trends Show Consumers Are Consuming, A Lot.

A Deloitte study revealed that consumers spent $33.9 billion in the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday in 2021. 

Once upon a time, the holiday shopping season was not a season at all: it was just a day. Black Friday, though the pinnacle of holiday spending and busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, is not the end all be all of festive purchasing. The truth is that the season for buying just keeps getting longer, with reports claiming that this year 56% of US consumers already started shopping in October.

Since the holiday season has expanded, advertisers need to consider following the trends and using this information to plan their budgets. If consumers are spreading out their shopping habits, marketers need to spread out their marketing tactics as well. Maybe your audience did their holiday shopping before Halloween, maybe they are holding out for the best possible deal; know what they want, know when they want it.

Advertisers Need Data 

Advertisers that want to succeed in capturing their audience’s attention need to plan ahead in order to have their strategy in place for reaching their audience and driving purchase decisions. 

When consumers see an advertisement that interests them, it will influence them to take action with greater intent than one that doesn’t. A single male shopper between the ages of 20-30 may be interested in the upcoming sale at his favorite shoe store, but he probably won’t bat an eye for Baby Gap.

Know Where to Find Your Shoppers

According to Statista, male consumers are the majority of in-store shoppers for the holidays, while Cyber Monday consumers are on average more likely to be female. Additionally, it seems like millennials are likely to take the cake this year when it comes to the age group spending the most.

Knowing where to find your shoppers, also means knowing where your shoppers go to shop. You can be creative here. Be prepared to go deeper and ask questions like who’s willing to take a drive to get what they want versus who wants to stay local and may scout out a quick solution. 

Turn to Video 

Advertisers need to know how to stand out. You may be thinking that’s an obvious part of the job – it’s their job to catch consumer attention – but the fact is that every advertiser will be bringing their A-game to reel in their audiences over the holiday weekend. During the holiday season, ad spend in retail in the United States hit $1.8 billion in Q4 2021. What sets apart one marketing team from another when everyone is yelling, “pick me!”?

Video advertising is a great way to make an impact. Video is a language in its own league because it allows you to emotionally reach and connect to your audience. If you are an advertiser looking for a more worthwhile place to spend, turn to video. 

Bottom line is, if you are planning on succeeding during the shopping frenzy you have to know where to look. With precise data, contextual targeting, and the right video, you can be sure that your consumers won’t be the only ones striking up deals this holiday season.

The post How Advertisers Can Get Jolly-Good Results This Holiday Shopping Season appeared first on Primis.

Primis, the leading Video Discovery platform for global publishers and founders of Sellers.guide (part of Universal McCann and Interpublic Group), today announced their new partnership with IRIS.TV, the leading video data platform. The partnership expands video contextual targeting capabilities in OLV for better transparency and reach.

Primis’ integration with IRIS.TV provides advertisers and publishers access to actionable, video-level metadata at scale. Strong contextual data is a key component for brand messaging that is both on point and delivers.

Primis publishers will immediately be IRIS-enabled for video-level content analysis without the need for additional integrations. Providing an easy way to unlock the full potential of their content. The relationship also provides an important competitive advantage as the end of third-party data looms.

The partnership combines IRIS.TV data integrations with some of the largest contextual intelligence companies like GumGum, Oracle, Silverbullet, Comcore, and more that advertisers trust with Primis’ broad presence in the online video environment. For advertisers, tapping into IRIS-enabled video provides a transparent and trusted source of inventory to reach their audience.

The post Primis and IRIS.TV Partner to Bring Elevated Contextual Targeting to Video Discovery appeared first on Primis.

To succeed in buying media you need to understand supply paths. There are sometimes hundreds of paths to reach any desired impression, some of them are not efficient enough, and some of them are a complete fraud. According to the latest research, 15% of ad spend “vanishes” as it enters the supply chain and only 51% of a bid goes to the publisher. Optimizing these paths is crucial for the success of any campaign, this is why we are seeing a rise in SPO.

The Path is The Destination

Supply path optimization (SPO) is considered to be a direct result of the Header Bidding technique’s increased usage, which meant pathways to a single opportunity increased manyfold. This new economy is very wasteful, creating an incentive for buyers to try and determine the best path for each impression. Implementing a smart SPO process could have a massive impact on campaign results. 

Transparency into the supply path is a requirement for SPO. Without a clear vision of a process, it is impossible to make it more efficient. Initiatives like ads.txt and sellers.json have gone a long way in promoting that transparency. However, even with this increased transparency, it’s not always clear to a media strategist/buyer what immediate actions they can take to improve their campaign efficiency, meet their KPIs, and raise their results. 

The (Supply) Path to Success

So, how can you create an effective programmatic media strategy based on SPO principles?

First of all, you need to understand your supply path. Know your buying journey and the vendors on the way to your audience. The good thing about buying programmatically, especially now, is that transparency is up for grabs. Make good use of sellers.json and ads.txt. There is no reason to buy from vendors that don’t have a sellers.json file or publishers who don’t have an ads.txt file. 

Rank your partners by their past success for reaching campaign KPIs. Look at your previous campaign data and create a list of quality media partners. For example, if you bought video inventory through five different supply paths, check which ones delivered the best results and are cost-efficient. When looking at video performance, viewability and completion rates are key metrics you want to follow; the best creative out there will not bring any value if no one sees it. So when buying video, adding a list of partners you can trust on top of your domain list would increase the efficiency of the campaign.

Cut to the chase. Once you have a trusted vendor list, always try to get closer to the source. If you can create a direct relationship/PMP with quality, dependable, efficient vendors that bring you closer to the end-user, you can take a good supply path and turn it into an amazing one, which can have a game-changing impact on your campaigns, and help you negotiate the price over what you get in the open MP.

And of course, as always with digital advertising, test, optimize and repeat. Keep on the lookout for bad pathways and new quality vendors which will make or break reaching your campaigns’ goals. 

The Importance of Relationships

It’s kind of funny that programmatic media buying is often thought of as eliminating the human aspect from the buying and selling of traffic when in actual fact, relationships still have a big impact on results. As technology rapidly evolves, so do tactics, and creating and maintaining a quality programmatic setup means vetting, testing, and building strong, long-lasting relationships. In the end, these are imperative for the future success of your campaigns.

If you’re a media buyer and want to learn more about Primis media packages then reach out here.

The post SPO: Creating an EFFICIENT Programmatic Media Strategy appeared first on Primis.

Publishers vying for their share of the action want to enjoy the same opportunities as the big platforms, and Video Discovery allows them to do this. The automated technology recommends video content relevant to the users’ interests, keeping them engaged longer, and consuming more video, thereby creating additional opportunities to sell.    

In this article on monetizing Video Discovery, we look at the advertiser’s perspective in the ad tech world. By understanding their behaviors and priorities, publishers can increase CPMs and grow their bottom line. 

The Advertiser

Advertisers work hard to craft campaigns that create a clear message around their brand. The process is timely and expensive, involving dozens (if not hundreds) of people contributing to the strategy, copywriting, design, and production required to create an advertisement. So when it goes live, they need to make sure it’s all been worth it. 

Getting inside the mind of an advertiser can help publishers to create appealing ad units that are attractive for advertisers and their specific needs and result in effective monetization. 

Viewability: Now You See Me

The main goal of advertisers is for their ads to be seen. They value viewability and need their target audience to watch their video ads for as long as possible, preferably from start to finish. After all, the best creative in the world is nothing if no one sees it.

Publishers who increase their inventory’s viewability can significantly increase demand and overall revenue. Google reported that an increase in video ad viewability from 50% to 90% resulted in more than an 80% increase in revenue when averaged across desktop and mobile sites. In support of these results, our own research showed a 50% increase in viewability rates raised eCPM by 74.5%. 

Placement and Size: Sizing you up!

Advertisers want to make sure their ads are placed in a prominent place on the page where users will naturally pay more attention to their creatives. Most advertisers will want their ads to appear above the fold, where traditionally, they get higher views. However, this is not always the case, and it really depends on the page’s content. It’s worthwhile to continue testing different positions until you find the optimal location for ads from the perspective of the advertiser.  

Placing the player at a natural break within the text’s main body will prevent disrupting the user’s view of the page content and provide a more comfortable user experience. In the past, shoving it in their face may have worked, but that leads to a higher bounce rate and advertiser campaigns being skipped and unseen. 

Quality and Brand Safe Content: Context is Everything

Advertisers look for quality, brand-safe content to appear alongside their ads. No advertiser wants to risk sponsoring the wrong or controversial content, leading to bad press and damage to their brand’s reputation. However, quality content can do the opposite. 

Before bidding, advertisers look at how safe your brand is. Advertisers are likely to pay higher CPMs to publishers who are improving the quality of their brand-safe inventory. It’s important to review your site and video playlists for fake news or topics that may be distasteful to advertisers and their desired audiences. If you can do this, you are more likely to sell your impressions on the page and build confidence with advertisers.

Transparency: I See Through You

Transparency has been a huge topic of interest in the ad tech world of late, and for good reason. This is especially true when it comes to the supply path, with around 15% of advertising spend getting lost on the way to the publisher. Advertisers want to leverage the most efficient supply path to make the most of their ad spend. While publishers need to know exactly who is selling their inventory, how they are selling it, and to whom.

For example, Ads.txt gives advertisers assurance that they are buying authenticated inventory, allowing them to buy it with confidence. So publishers must regularly monitor and maintain their ads.txt file. Publishers should be aware of what each line represents to avoid undesired reselling and inefficiencies of traffic, providing advertisers the smoothest path to the consumer. 

Stay Focused

In 2020, the world’s internet users spent a cumulative 1.25 billion years online… that’s a lot of content! 

Publishers who keep the advertiser’s frame of mind in consideration are ultimately better equipped to deal with the constant changes in the advertising world and are more likely to stay ahead of the competition. By maintaining full transparency and understanding advertisers’ behaviors, publishers can create increased monetization opportunities.

The post Why Publishers Should Think Like Advertisers When Monetizing Video Discovery appeared first on Primis.

In addition to the political climate being exceptionally heated this year, another wrinkle has entered the equation; the ongoing pandemic. With online becoming more appealing for political advertising, spend has shown a big leap since the initial drop due to the onset of the lockdowns, and, according to Primis data, that spend has increased by 441% over political spend in January.   

This is also reflected by the share of political ad spend out of Primis’ total revenue. Although many other ad categories managed to recover in Q3, after the initial shock of COVID wore off, political budgets have taken an even bigger share. Political video ad spend has grown from just 4.2% of overall ad spend to 12.4% in just the past two months. This trend is predicted to hit a crescendo in November.

Political Media Buying: The KPIs You Need to Know 

There are certain factors that media buyers should look for in political campaigns. We’ve gathered here the most important aspects to consider when assessing the quality of ad traffic.

Contextual Targeting

The importance of ads fitting naturally in context cannot be overstated. Ads that are contextually relevant are 43% more engaging. 

When it comes to political advertising there is an additional layer of importance. While it’s common sense that political ads should be shown on articles that discuss politics or current events, it is also important to place the ads alongside topics that don’t conflict with their political leanings. 

Geofencing

Geofencing is a way to obtain very specific location data (e.g. around a business, shop, etc.) from a mobile user and target them with relevant ads. In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign used this technique to push catholic churchgoers in Wisconsin toward voting. That helped him win the state by fewer than 23,000 votes. 

Smart targeting of audiences is key in political media buying. Cross-referencing that with data, like voter rolls is a powerful combination. 

Data

While many ad campaigns rely on data, there is no doubt that data will make or break the success of a political campaign. Whether it’s 1st-party data or 3rd-party, data is necessary to reach a desired audience. It can also be helpful in finding and targeting voters who are still struggling to decide. 

Scale

Usually, all of the previously mentioned targeting options mean that the audience is limited. In order to reach your desired audience, budgets must be diversified across various platforms and formats so that the specific audiences can be found. That can include web, apps, CTV and more. 

Summary

As with any digital campaign, constant optimization is key for a successful campaign. Monitor your campaign’s viewability rate to make sure your ads are being seen. Also, completion rates can help identify if the ad was interesting for the user and to constantly monitor the effectiveness of each ad. Keep an eye on brand safety so that your budgets will be spent in appropriate settings. 

Having these stats aligned is a pretty good sign that you are on the right track.

There are a lot of shared attributes between succeeding in political media buying, and buying media for other campaigns. However, the need to scale quickly, yet reach users in a safe and effective manner truly raises the stakes.

The post Political Video Advertising in 2020: The Campaigns Behind the Campaign appeared first on Primis.

We at Primis know publishers and how their users consume content, especially on video. Our research shows that one site category is influenced disproportionately over the holidays; cooking. Cooking sites see a very large increase in the days leading up to both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and for good reason.

Cooking Up Some Ad Spend

The fact that the cooking category takes the lead makes sense for several reasons. First of all, many people are having family and friends over for the holidays, and are expected to provide a delicious and festive meal. People need special recipes and a lot of them. This impacts one of the most important metrics in video advertising, video duration. The longer video content is viewed, the more ad slots there are. You can think of it as the display equivalent of article length.

These ingredients come together to form a very tasty recipe; more quality traffic to the website, users watching videos for longer, and ad budgets looking to be spent. No wonder cooking sites are the best performing category to close out the year. For example, during the end of the year holidays* in 2018 we saw a 80.7% increase in video traffic and a 24.6% increase in video duration.

These changes on regular days may not raise scale so significantly. On an average day, advertisers may have a set maximum number of video ads they want and, even if they do surpass it, they will pay lower rates. However, with the strong advertising demand during the holidays and the end of Q4, ad impressions went up 233.5% and ad avails were up 251%. This resulted in a jump of ad spend by 238.8%!

Thanksgiving Day vs Christmas Eve

One important difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when the campaigns end. While on Thanksgiving Day the advertising spend is still high, on Christmas the drop starts, on the 24th of December. It lasts longer on Thanksgiving weekend probably due to the preparation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

When planning for Thanksgiving, you will want to concentrate on the day itself, in addition to the days preceding. This will be when many of your target audience will be at home and looking to spend some quality “family” time on their phones looking for good deals. When planning for Christmas, if your campaigns aren’t holiday sensitive, you may want to allocate some budget to the days preceding New Year’s, as you can get great media for very reduced prices with low competition. 

Get Ready to Deck the Halls

Wondering how this holiday season will affect ad spend? We’ll be releasing our results after the holidays, so be sure to sign up for our newsletter below. Also, feel free to ask us about what sites perform best and what works best for your specific campaigns. Check out all our advertising solutions and reach out to us for a consultancy. 

*November 21-22 + December 23 – 24. US and Canada only

The post Holiday Digital Advertising on Cooking Sites appeared first on Primis.

Quality content that resonates with a target audience takes a lot of time and investment to create, so it’s important to leverage that content as much as you can and give it the best opportunity to return on that investment.

Below we’ll go over a few actionable hints and tips publishers can use to monetize their video in 2019.

Prioritizing Viewability

Advertisers are looking for effective messaging, and this cannot be achieved if the users will not see their ads. Viewability is defined as a video being at least 50% viewable on the user’s screen and playing for at least 2 seconds. In terms of monetization for the publisher, it is a simple equation; better viewability = higher revenue. Many advertiser campaigns will not even bid on unviewable opportunities.

As a publisher, there are a few measures you can take to improve viewability with direct impact on user experience: 

Tech – Pay close attention to the loading times of your page and the video player. By increasing the speed at which a video is loaded, the viewability is directly impacted, as there are more chances for the user to actually view it. 

A responsive website and video player optimized for mobile devices does the same. According to eMarketer, mobile ad spend will surpass TV in the largest ad market this year and it will account for 69.9% of all digital advertising.  Optimizing your website for mobile in particular has been shown to increase viewability rates, due to the smaller screen size when compared to desktop.

Content – Know your audience, and serve them relevant content that they will want to consume. This will make it more likely to keep your users engaged with your videos and thereby create viewable opportunities to serve ads.

Placement – When it comes to video player placement, looking at your metrics will be very useful. Choose your most trafficked web pages and test placing dedicated video placements on them. Follow best practices, but test and optimize whatever placements you can. 

Centering your video player in a prominent, well-trafficked area on your website will expose it to more viewers, increasing the viewability rate.

You may be surprised to find out, for example, that while above-the-fold can be reserved as premium inventory, below-the-fold can prove just as viable of an option for buyers, depending on the content of the page. Understanding the way your users are consuming your content is the key.

Size – Video player size can also be a significant factor. According to our research of millions of video impressions at Primis, increasing a player’s size improves the viewability rate by approximately 15%, which can lead to an estimated 25% increase in CPM. 

Keep in mind that location remains paramount regardless of size. So, you can have a larger player, but, if it’s located where users can’t see it, it will not necessarily generate higher revenue.  

Video Header Bidding

After you’ve established your relationships with your demand partners, Video Header Bidding is one of the best options to grow and maximize the revenue you can make with them. Unlike the traditional waterfall method, which calls the demand partners one by one, header bidding sends parallel asynchronous requests, giving an equal shot to your demand partners to bid on the opportunity to serve an ad.

The process includes finding a Header Bidding vendor and placing their wrapper (snippet of Javascript code) on your webpage, which will send bid requests to multiple demand partners at once. In most cases the SSPs and Ad Exchanges on the receiving side of the bid have themselves multiple demand partners bidding for the opportunity. The highest bid will win the option to serve an ad on your site and the whole process should take up to three seconds. 

Using header bidding often increases overall revenue by giving the option for lower tier partners to bid on the opportunity along with high tier partners, thereby generating the highest possible CPM. The method can also help you discover the small, but still quality, partners that can generate nice revenue. Header bidding can also generate higher fill rates for each opportunity, as you have all partners competing, which ensures greater demand coverage.

Opt-Outs

Regardless of which approach you use, waterfall or header bidding, it’s important to constantly prune your demand sources. 

This means looking at the metrics and deprioritizing or removing any demand sources with high opt-out/time-out rates. If you are sticking to the waterfall method, this means pushing the low-quality demand sources further down the waterfall. 

Keeping Up With Video Monetization

Getting the most out of displaying videos on your website requires some strategic planning in terms of content and placement. But, no less important is choosing the best monetization methods that fit your needs, and ongoing vetting of the partners and methods you are using. 

Remember, in a constantly changing monetization and publishing landscape you must always keep updated with the latest technological innovations to get the most out of your digital assets.

The post Video Monetization: Best Practices for Publishers appeared first on Primis.