We’re less than 6,500 hours from the single most significant third-party signal loss our industry has faced: the end of the Chrome third-party cookie. And it’s time for us all to stop hopping from lily pad to lily pad looking for Band-Aids. There are proven solutions to this signal loss – ones that offer the advertising performance and measurability we collectively need. In particular, authenticated inventory offers publishers and advertisers the ability to reach premium, authenticated audiences, driving better results and building stronger relationships with consumers.
The heart of the issue
Publishers used to chase users for scale, but that’s no longer a sustainable strategy for growth, much less long-term survival. Recently, chasing scale has led to a number of different shortcuts, very few of which meet the standards that publishers and marketers should be setting for themselves – and it seems to be no secret.
Question: How many articles have you read about Made for Advertising (MFA) content in the last few months? This kind of content is rightfully raising eyebrows, as it draws consumers away from legitimate publishers, draining marketing budgets with minimal business outcomes as pressure ratchets up on the industry.
Notably, the Association of National Advertisers is starting to develop guidelines around MFA content. No doubt this will help. But there’s a bigger question at the heart of this latest specter: Why are we advertising to anonymous audiences?
Let’s be clear. Advertisers that buy anonymous inventory are lighting their budgets on fire, and will be left with no measurable outcomes to show for it. If this seems dramatic, ask yourself: Who are their campaigns reaching? What real business outcomes are they driving?
Across the gamut of ‘unauthenticated’ to ‘probabilistic’ advertising, there’s a sad through line: Nobody knows the real people their ads are reaching, nobody can measure tangible outcomes, and few have shown the ability to plan beyond the seismic shifts of third-party cookie deprecation and fingerprinting countermeasures.
We are now at a critical juncture: Chrome cookie deprecation will be the most significant signal loss that the ad ecosystem has faced. And while many have already started their journey away from the third-party cookie, others are waiting until the eleventh hour to switch. With tighter regulation as well as a generally uncertain economy exerting pressure on the industry, publishers and advertisers need to tighten up and prioritize more accountable advertising.
Authenticated inventory is the new premium inventory
There’s a clear antidote, one put up by the biggest and most cutting-edge publishers: authenticated inventory, which allows impressions to be addressable and measurable. For those impressions that are not authenticated, advertisers and publishers can build panels that enable measurement using their authenticated impressions as the gold standard.
Authenticated inventory allows publishers and marketers to go beyond devices to reach real people. It taps into deep wells of first-party data to personalize customer engagements, driving more value for all.
Further, authenticated inventory can be paired with first-party publisher and contextual data to enable insights across more than just authenticated inventory. We see publishers starting to explore how they can integrate marketer insights across their own data, using authentication as the linkage.
Publishers are taking the same approach on the measurement side: using the clear, deterministic measurement on authenticated inventory to panel what is happening on unauthenticated inventory.
Publishers with a strong base of authenticated inventory are well prepared for the post-cookie era. These publishers are focused on building relationships with consumers by transparently communicating the value they give in exchange for personal information. These high-quality websites include 80% of the Comscore 50.
This is a viable and forward-looking strategy for publishers and advertisers to counteract signal loss – centered on a first-party relationship where consumers agree to share their own information. Yes, it’s more expensive in terms of CPMs than throwing money into the ad-spend fire using anonymous advertising. But it’s proven to drive better results.
Case in point: We recently helped Danone get ahead of cookie deprecation by shifting to authenticated inventory and Deal ID-based media buys. The strategy immediately boosted video engagement and ultimately drove a 40% increase in cost-efficiency metrics, compared to Danone’s previous cookie- and device-based impressions.
Every dollar marketers spend should be traceable to an outcome. With unauthenticated advertising, this is impossible. But every authenticated impression is a measurable impression. As such, authenticated inventory is the way forward, even if it will be a “premium” option for some.
By working with top Comscore publishers, or any publishers transacting on authenticated identity in a private marketplace, advertisers can ensure their buys retain a strong signal-to-noise ratio. They’ll not just reach real consumers, but the right ones.
The trail is already blazed
Authenticated inventory empowers publishers and advertisers to reach premium audiences. This not only drives better results in the near term; it cultivates stronger and more sustainable relationships with consumers.
These deeper and richer relationships with customers are not only immediately beneficial for addressability, but also help publishers to sustain themselves with long-lasting relationships over time – a drastically different approach than short-term scale chasing.
Moreover, publishers now have easy on-ramps to getting started with authenticated inventory. Plug-and-play solutions like LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution give publishers a trail that’s already blazed through the uncertain territory that is our industry in 2023 and beyond.
Publishers that get ahead of this curve will stay ahead of their competition. Marketers already leveraging authenticated inventory will reap the benefits long beyond the deprecation of the Chrome cookie. And the rest of us – whether you’re an ad tech company helping onboard new solutions or an agency counseling clients on how to navigate the field – have a responsibility to help our partners and customers to be forward thinkers and make decisions that will help bring the ecosystem into the addressable future.
For more articles featuring Travis Clinger, click here.
