The trend toward the unraveling of personal identifiers extends far beyond cookies and web browsers, however. In the mobile environment, which has been relatively trackable until now, Apple’s Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) will soon require users to opt-in. Android IDs are likely to follow suit. Additionally, the fragmentation of devices and platforms is making the creation of addressable audiences (as opposed to devices) much harder, with users rapidly diversifying away from single web-based screens such as laptops to app-based mobile, IoT and CTV experiences.

Publishers need to consider how these challenges will impact personalization, which is key to creating relevant, engaging user-centric experiences from a content and an advertising perspective. An appropriate personalization and monetization strategy for the cookieless web will not only help publishers maintain revenues but will enable them to deliver tailored user experiences and increase content-driven value.

Content personalization versus personalized monetization

The personalization of content on publisher sites will remain largely unaffected by the deprecation of cookies as publishers will continue to be able to use publisher-specific identifiers such as first-party cookies or log-in information. Disruption of content personalization will only occur when publishers want to use the full breadth of their available cross-domain data to optimize personalization profiles and maintain a consistent user experience across all of their properties.

Depending on the acceptance of first-party sets — a mechanism that allows marketers to link a user’s ID across related domains — first-party cookies may or may not operate across multiple domains. Regardless, the development of more sophisticated ID solutions will inevitably have a positive knock-on impact on content personalization.

Personalized monetization strategies will, however, be significantly impacted. The inability to buy or sell third-party audience segments requires new methods of delivering personalized advertising to maintain and grow publisher revenues. The loss of addressable identifiers for personalized monetization will drive the acceptance of persistent IDs, boosting publisher personalization efforts.

Creating scale on top of first-party data strategies

First-party data strategies provide a logical answer to the deprecation of third-party identifiers. What’s more, Google’s recent announcement that it will not support alternative ID solutions for cross-site tracking on its properties puts even more emphasis on the importance of creating addressable audiences using first-party data.

Publishers should look at their addressability strategy as a multi-layered menu of approaches and apply it dynamically based on data and identifier availability.

For starters, publishers can create basic reach among the users they know and can then syndicate their users and profiles through ID solutions or identity networks on the open web. Similarly, within Google’s ecosystem, publishers will have connectivity solutions that can also be integrated into a publisher’s addressability strategy. This method ties first-party data to a wider identity connectivity layer and builds larger first-party-based addressable audience segments.

But with these approaches, addressable reach will remain low until identity solutions …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron