‘We see a world where publisher data replaces third-party data’: News U.K. puts its data at the nucleus of post-cookie push for media budgets

If and when third-party cookies go the way of the dinosaur, News U.K. will have left nothing to chance.

Like so many of its peers, the publisher believes the value of its data — and subsequently its commercial ambitions — are inextricably linked to the fate of those cookies. The scarcer those cookies go, the more valuable the data owned by publishers like News U.K. becomes — it’s essentially the next best alternative an the publisher is doing all it can to make sure advertisers remember that.

To do so, it has overhauled the way it collects, sorts and monetizes its audience data across all its titles, including The Times, The Sun, Talk Sport and Times Radio, via its own first-party data platform Nucleus. The publisher is pitching the data platform as a way advertisers can work directly with its own data, whether its from login, registrations or first-party cookies, in a privacy-centric way. They can then model data sets from their existing target segments or modify them based on News U.K.’s proprietary preference, opinion and emotion signals. It launched earlier this summer and already all of the publisher’s biggest sponsorships include data from the platform as a way for advertisers to see the recommended audiences.

“When we talk to advertisers we’re being challenged on what we know about our audiences and can we create segments and offer data which offer a unique insight,” said Ben Walmsley, commercial director for publishing at News U.K. “That doesn’t come from data that is freely and readily available to anyone who can buy it via third-party data sets and cookies.”

Not only is Nucleus trying to fortify News U.K.’s own ads business, but it’s also sharpening how content is personalized across its sites. The data even allows the publisher to personalize e-commerce and content to those audiences. “At the foot of certain articles now you’ll see content recommendations or recirculation units, which are powered now by Nucleus,” said Walmsley. Previously, those recommendations would’ve been powered by an ad tech vendor. “We still work with some of those vendors, but the means or delivery is based on what we know about our audiences,” said Walmsley.

As much as Nucleus sounds like a typical data management platform, its features are limited to the publisher’s data only unlike a DMP. Indeed, this data will only directly impact direct media, programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace-style deals. The overall aim is to increase spending on News U.K. properties, regardless of buy type.

“We see a world where publisher data replaces third-party data to a large extent, particularly at the premium end where we would typically operate with other larger publisher brands looking to drive mid to upper-funnel impacts for marketers,” said Walmsley.

As much this shift in spending is being compounded by the protracted death of third-party cookies, it’s also spurred …read more

Source:: Digiday