Programmatic Advertising 2020 – How Do Publishers Manage Changes?

In the last weeks of Q4 2019, instead of counting usually record earnings after Black Week, digital publishers who want to maintain and grow advertising revenue are setting strategies to go smoothly through the regulations awaiting the programmatic industry in 2020.

Check if others have taken the same actions as your business, or maybe your plans are completely different?

The ecosystem of programmatic advertising is experiencing problems associated with entering market maturity – there is less and less space for ad hoc, and legal and technical regulations are multiplying.

Privacy standards, which the publishers have been working intensively on since 2018 or are just about to get ready for – GDPR, CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), collecting user consents, changes in tracking cookies – overlap with internal industry changes (switch to the first-price auction model and introduction of bid shading models by the buyers, struggle for a positive user experience and more caloric sessions, increased interest in the topic of brand safety).

How to introduce change management in the programmatic department?

Each publisher tries to adapt to top-down recommendations – and at the same time, understandably, to do so at a reasonable cost. It is all done in a more or less guerrilla-style.

The publishers we spoke to during the winter edition of YieldFest take the following change management approaches:

• A hybrid style, in which the main focus is on the development of in-house competencies, but using external solutions (products and services).
• Dedicated teams (consisting of eg. product owner, developer, designer & analyst), responsible for mapping changes on specific local markets or within specific publishing groups.
• Following the bigger players – implementation of requirements in appropriate scope, but with the simultaneous observation of solutions implemented by publishing leaders (this approach assumes smaller investments at the beginning of the shift with readiness to increase dynamics and workload based on the first market observations).

How to support users while increasing our revenues in the course of changes?

In the fight for the well-being of users, not the users but the market giants and data providers gain the most.

Expectations of publishers regarding the collection and use of personal data are increasing, however, this is not followed by good solutions for the users. Most consent management boxes (with long and intricate supplier lists) are not understood by the average Joe and Jane.

In addition, the load of messages puts a strain on websites and increases page latency. All this affects us, the content creators. We’re in a situation where most publishers could grow – but that doesn’t happen.

Michał Frasiński, Direct Sales Supervisor @ Brainly

Among remedies aimed at strengthening user satisfaction in the face of market requirements, diversification of income sources is becoming increasingly popular. Solutions that were harder to incorporate just a few years ago are spreading.

Internet user profile changes quickly. We’re getting used to paying for content, which is why subscription models are becoming more common. Much of this is due to streaming platforms, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, which make users aware of it. As a publisher, we also see great potential for caloric visits. We invest in it, developing related content and making sure to be in line with the recommendations of Coalition for Better Ads.

Marcin Ciechanowicz, Head of Programmatic @ Gremi Media

Testing is a constant good practice, probably known to every employee of the programmatic industry. In the face of extensive changes, however, we need to look at it a bit differently than usual and go beyond the simple A / B scheme.

When running a smaller business based largely on advertising revenue, the lack of certainty of how our ecosystem will look in half a year is a strong limitation. That is why we focus on testing: in recent months we have analyzed, among others, diverse advertising grids, expanded tables of contents at the beginning of articles, or user acquisition using the Q&A model.

Surprisingly often, the test results are exactly the opposite of the thesis we used at the beginning. For me, it is a clear premise that in order to know, and not only guess, but we also need to keep on testing.

Mateusz Mucha, Founder @ Omni Calculator

We collected these thoughts during the 3rd YieldFest meeting. In 2019, the meetup gathered a total of around 100 European publishers and dozens of industry experts who wanted to discuss the challenges and problems of programmatic advertising in an atmosphere of cooperation.

Do you want to know if your programmatic advertising strategy is ready for the challenges? In 2020, we will organize more YieldFest events – sign up for our newsletter to know when and where the next meeting will take place!

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