‘They will need to use multiple routes’: Shifts appear in the publisher-SSP union, as alternative identifiers proliferate

By Seb Joseph

As the ad tech industry rewires itself around the contours of privacy, supply-side platforms are reinventing themselves (again).

In fact, reinvention is becoming something of necessity at this end of the market. Otherwise, those sell-side ad tech vendors would struggle to grow what is an inherently commoditized business — helping publishers sell their inventory to as many advertisers as possible.

But unlike the most recent reinventions, where SSPs were effectively scrambling to become the preferred way advertisers bought programmatic ads from publishers, now they’re trying to be the preferred way publishers scale their data to advertisers.

The reason: As third-party cookies are phased out of advertising, one of the few alternatives to the data they held will be the data publishers own. But the problem with this data is that it can only be used within the publisher’s own ecosystem. Enter SSPs. They see themselves as the ones to bring together multiple publisher’s first-party data so that marketers can buy specific audience segments across those sites — all without mixing those sets together in these privacy-conscious times.

It’s what Magnite was testing in April when it ran its own identity solution on three billion transactions across 30 buy-side and sell-side players including PubMatic, Havas and Adform. The publishers like Hearst Magazines and Condé Nast that participated in the test sorted their visitors into groups based on whether they were interested in areas like sports or fashion. Marketers were then able to buy those segments across the sites of the publisher based on their first-party data.

While the amount marketers spent on those transactions “wasn’t notable”, said Garrett McGrath, Magnite’s vp of product management, it was enough to give a proof concept. Now, it’s pushing that concept further. See the company’s efforts in recent weeks.

Deals have been struck to make Magnite’s identity solution part of the taxonomy task force for the Prebid ad tech industry organization alongside the IAB Tech Lab’s Addressability working group. Doing so, goes the thinking, could help define some of the standards needed to make it easier for marketers to buy specific audiences across publishers and therefore spend more with them. Reaching a consensus of sorts via these groups is key, especially when it comes to a common taxonomy.

The taxonomy is effectively the recipe used to define an audience. Without it, a marketer will struggle to reach similar audiences across different publishers because the way they define what those groups look like varies. But this problem goes away if the publishers have a common way of reporting those audiences. It’s why the Prebid deal is so important to Magnite.

“All of these ingredients are the scaffolding needed for publishers to be able to create and address meaningful audiences at scale from a publisher-led point of view,” said McGrath. “In these ecosystems, the first-party cookies are inherently per site and don’t have any cross-site abilities. Here, it’s the …read more

Source:: Digiday