Data

As the nation continues to diversify, brands must broaden their ideas of a target audience. They must move away from defining their consumers in traditional, broad segments like Gen Z or Gen X, and understand the diverse range of individual needs.

Like the tectonic plates that shift beneath our feet, the digital advertising industry is in a state of flux. The landscape as we know it is changing dramatically, driven by a series of dynamic forces that create both opportunities and risks.

As the industry waves goodbye to the cookie over the next two years, the conversations have to move beyond vilifying one data collection methodology while championing another and focus more holistically on actionability as well.

Marketers can lay the foundation for a privacy-safe strategy by assessing their current data practices, minimizing data collection, privatizing information, and clearly communicating with customers.

Both advertisers and publishers are making efforts to harness first-party data and develop new solutions as well as leverage alternative user targeting methods to help restore trust among sceptical digital consumers. While this intent is commendable, the ecosystem has a long way to go to develop a credible solution for the loss of third-party cookies and MAIDs.

The entire industry, including publishers, must continue to take positive steps forward on this journey to privacy, compliance, and respect.

The right Identity Graph plays a critical role in ingesting that data and creating those linkages to determine what consumer behaviors the campaign influenced.

The time has come for publishers to hold themselves accountable and play their part in bringing transparency to the industry. It starts by understanding that ads.txt is a great tool that should be utilized to its fullest extent.

Ultimately, as AVOD’s value and affordability inspire European households to switch to ad-supported content, brands are presented with a golden opportunity to reach addressable audiences at scale.

Those who participate in a balanced collaborative ecosystem will be able to grow addressability across video and TV environments, create new and high-value first-party audiences, and overcome historic silos between linear, digital video, and CTV to measure and value holistically and at pace with modern viewing habits for the first time.