Google AdWords, now known as Google Ads, is an online advertising platform by Google. It allows businesses to display ads on Google search results, YouTube, and other sites. Advertisers bid on keywords and pay each time their ad is clicked, using various ad formats like text, display, video, shopping, and app promotion ads.

Bidding Before December 2023

Maximum CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Bid: Advertisers set a max amount for each click.

Ad Rank: Determined by bid amount, ad quality score (relevance, expected click-through rate, landing page experience), and ad extensions.

Automated Bidding Strategies:

• Target CPA: Bids for cost per acquisition.
• Target ROAS: Bids for return on ad spend.
• Maximize Clicks: Aims for most clicks within budget.
• Maximize Conversions: Aims for most conversions within budget.

Changes After December 2023

Enhanced Machine Learning: Improved algorithms predict clicks and conversions better.

Adding new Bidding Options:

• Maximize Conversion Value with Target ROAS: Aims to maximize total conversion value while meeting ROAS targets.
• Seasonality Adjustments: Allows bid optimization for expected seasonal changes.

Refined Quality Score Components: Provides detailed feedback on ad relevance, click-through rate, and landing page experience.

Real-Time Bidding Adjustments: More precise bid adjustments based on user behavior and intent.

Improved Integration with First-Party Data: Better use of advertisers’ data for personalized ad targeting.

These updates enhance bidding efficiency, transparency, and alignment with business goals using advanced machine learning.

What did we observe?

We observed that the exact date for rolling out these changes was 8th December 2023. We wanted to find out how these changes affected the performance characteristics of different publishers. To do that, we analyzed the performance changes in early December across three different inventories:

Case #1: A big news publisher, one of the local market leaders,

Case #2: Another big news publisher, one of the local market leaders,

Case #3: A big global publisher, no Prebid implemented.

On the first glimpse, not much has changed in AdWords’ shares

In all three cases, the share of AdWords in both revenue and impressions remained relatively flat. However, what is more interesting are the changes in its average eCPM.

Side note:

On all eCPM charts, to make the data easier to compare and to protect our clients’ privacy, December 1st is always indexed to 1.0. The following days are then compared to this index. For example, if the eCPM on a given day is 1.2, it means it was 20% higher than on December 1st.

Case #1

We saw a slight increase of AdWords share both total revenue and impressions, however to be completely honest, the change was rather marginal. These fluctuations (especially in revenue) can be however explained by volatile eCPM which noted two peaks in that period:

Case #2

Case #2 showed a similar situation; however, here we saw that eCPM decreases after the 8th of December. We do not show this data here, but in 2024 eCPM started to increase again. But as you most likely all well know, we shall not compare the early new year’s performance to the first weeks of December (or, frankly speaking, rely on period-to-period comparisons unless the change is super evident).

Case #3

This case is quite an eye-opener. Since AdWords is dominating the open market (this publisher is not using Prebid at all), we expected the changes to be most visible on that inventory. However, what we saw exceeded our expectations – the eCPM after December 8th dropped by almost 50%!

Let’s get deeper!

On the first glimpse, if Adwords is not basically the entire Open Market (like in cases #1 and #2) the changes are not very visible. But maybe something changed deeper underneath? To understand that, we verified if AdWords changed the way it reacts to changing the floor prices.

What did we do?

On the same inventories at the same time, we checked AdWords total revenue and impressions on four parts of the traffic that differed in floor price applied. Essentially, we were A/B/C/D testing four different hard floor price levels (each price handled the same percentage of the traffic). This allowed us to see what happened with AdWords bidding on December 8th in terms of two metrics: revenue and impressions.

Side note:
On all charts, to make the data easier to compare and to protect our clients’ privacy, no price applied is always indexed to 100. The higher price levels are then compared to this index. For example, if the revenue on a given day is 80, it means it was 20% lower than on no price applied.

Case #1

The change introduced on December 8th has drastically impacted AdWords’ sensitivity to price changes. Before December 8th, increasing the floor price resulted in higher revenues (even 20% higher than when no price was applied). However, after that day, a higher price led to a loss in revenues. If we compare the high price revenue vs no price applied revenue, we can see that it used to be ~20%, but after the change, it dropped to ~-15%!

This drop in revenue is caused by a decreasing number of ad impressions at higher prices.

Revenues:

Impressions:

Case #2

Case #2 is basically Case #1 “on steroids”. The change introduced on December 8th resulted in a drastic change in AdWords’ reaction to different price changes. Here, the revenue uplift of high price vs. no price applied dropped from +60% to -30%!

Similar to Case #1, the number of AdWords impressions at higher prices decreased, which was the primary cause of dropping revenues.

Revenue:

Impressions:

Case #3

Case #3 confirms that the changes observed in the previous two cases are not by chance. The same mechanics changed, and AdWords’ sensitivity to price changes was similarly affected (here the high price revenue uplift vs. no price applied dropped from ~15% to ~-20%.

Revenue:

Impressions:

So, what’s the conclusion?

To conclude, we must consider our analysis as a whole. It pointed out that after December 8th:

• The share of AdWords in total revenue and impressions remained stable.
• Average eCPMs slightly decreased.
• Revenue began to negatively react to floor price increases.
• AdWords started purchasing more impressions at lower prices.

These changes suggest AdWords began selecting ad requests more carefully and buying cheaper impressions, thereby increasing profitability. It appears AdWords shifted from targeting specific users to buying in bulk, leveraging a better understanding of user behavior to maintain profitability without higher prices.

What should you do as a Publisher?

If you manage your pricing manually, be sure to revise it. Decreasing the price often leads to higher overall revenues (not always, but as a rule of thumb). This might be a good time to automate the price management process to be prepared for similar unexpected changes in the future.

The post How did Adwords change bidding at the end of 2023? (performance analysis) first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Ad blocker is of the most heavily discussed topics by publishers worldwide. Why? Because more and more users are running it on their devices. How will this change the way online businesses live? And is it really that big of an issue?

Over the last few years, a lot has been written about ad blockers. From a user’s perspective, it’s God; from the publisher’s side, it’s the devil. Adblocker usage continues to rise, as seen in the chart below. Moreover, according to Hootsuite, 42.7% of internet users are blocking ads.

In the good old days, ad block usage was less than 1 percent for many years. Since then, sites have been heavy and slow to load, as ads used more download bandwidth than ever, and annoying pop-ups kept distracting the user. Today everyone knows that using an ad blocker will improve their user experience. Additionally, nowadays, it’s also possible to block ads within an app – which was seen by publishers as a great way to bypass the blocking of ads.

Publishers – learn from the telco industry!

Telco has been in a difficult battle for over a decade. It started when the entrepreneur Niklas Zennström started Skype, the free phone service using bandwidth from Telco providers. Telco lost billions on their cash cow in just a few years – pay for landline phone calls. Bandwidth/Data was an add-on service with simple flat rates, which opened the door to OTC (over-the-counter) providers and data-free riders, where a small percentage of users consume a proportional percentage of data traffic.

Nowadays, the telco is more like Swisscom, Orange, and some U.S. wireless carriers that already offer unlimited voice and data bundles, where you can choose from different data & speed packages. They may have found a way to co-exist with third-party online content providers such as Skype and WhatsApp.

How ad blockers work?

So how does this relate to ad blockers for publishers? Ad blockers work by blocking ad requests and hiding parts of the page that show ads. When an ad blocker is used, the publishers earn no ad revenues. The publisher has, in most cases, a free, open website where they distribute their articles, which are partly financed by the ads. Let’s compare Skype and Whatsapp with the ad blocker and apply the telco’s recipe. What will be the results? First, we have to accept co-existence with a third-party adblocker. Second, it will increase the need for “data bundles” – a paywall solution in the publishers’ world.

>>> Are you a publisher who found the third way? Just click and let us know

Spotify model and adblocking

The paywall allows you to consume a publisher’s site – or, more likely, its content in the same model as Spotify lets you consume music by various artists. The same applies to information. “Newsify” aggregators are more and more popular as aggregators are now a global trend (just look at Amazon in the US, which aggregates 30% of all e-commerce). The Nordic media group Egmont recently launched a “newsify” (an app named Flipp), where you pay 10€ monthly and get access to more than 30 magazines. If you are a paper subscriber, you get a 50% discount. This is a good way to convert paper to digital – it doesn’t solve the ad blocker problem but solves the free-riders and opens a new revenue stream. And that is thanks to data!

A paywall in combination with a DMP (data management platform) is gearing up for monetization since data becomes the key here. From the paywall, it’s a lot of data: user demographics, behavioral, and offline syncing data. With accurate data, the publisher can increase revenues in premium sales.

>>> And we know how to help publishers with that. Let’s have a candid discussion and we will tell you, what we can do for you. Contact us!

Is it the game over for publishers without a paywall?

Yes and no. Let´s look at some scenarios. If you (as a publisher) are still selling a premium CPM campaign without any advanced targeting – on a normal day, the sell-out rate is 40%, the remnant is most likely sent to SSP (supply-side platform) or a yield-optimizing company that might be able to sell an additional 40%. That still makes 20% remaining unsold. If you have 30-40% ad-blocked users on your site, which nowadays is the average in Europe, with a fully functional adblocker – or unblocker – you might get 40% more impressions to sell. That, however, will not increase revenue that much. It will most likely still end up unsold. So ad blocking might not be the issue in this case.

In the next scenario, we have a publisher operating in a niche – let’s assume his site is focused on gaming and fast cars. The target group of users has a much higher adoption rate of ad blocking, often up to 80%. And with a loss in traffic of 80%, it becomes hard to sell the premium CPM campaigns. So here, there will be a loss in revenue. Several publishers in this segment have already started to change their business model into sponsorships and are struggling. Without users paying to consume their content, I think it’s very hard to survive on a healthy margin.

Evil twin of an ad blocker

It’s pretty interesting that the largest adblocker has a sister company, Eyeo, to which publishers can pay between 10-20% of ad revenues from users they unblock. So by paying these “pirates,” you as a publisher can show ads to users with an ad blocker.

That is the way for publishers in countries with the highest ad blocker penetration. For example, in Poland, where the rate is close to 40%, most of the largest media groups will probably become Eyeo’s clients sooner or later.

Crowd proof

OK, but is this how a free, open internet was meant to be? Most ad blocker users don’t realize this, but sooner or later, they will have to react.

Let me tell you a story: Imagine an evening. It’s me and my 17-year son, sitting side by side on the sofa, both browsing the web. He visited Tv3.se with, like all other 17-year-old guys, an ad blocker activated, and he got a message to switch off the ad blocker or allow Tv.3 ads to be shown or pay for premium. Immediately he, acting automatically, whitelisted TV3 in his ad blocker. I asked him why. He replied, “I just want to see the video. It’s annoying, but I don’t want to pay”.The whitelisting of sites has been working well for several UK news sites, who, earlier this year, started informing their users that if they want to access their news content, they have to whitelist the pages and allow ads since they need the ad revenues to survive. Up to 40% of the ad block users seem to accept this honest and straightforward approach. But it will only work for publishers who have quality content.

>>> Are you a publisher with high-quality content and you want to get more out of it? You came to the right place! 

Can´t Facebook Instant Article or an ad blocker cure this headache?

Why not additionally ship the content to the largest distribution platform with access to 1,7 billion users? Facebook’s instant article might be an additional revenue stream. They are more or less free of ad blockers, while not all ad blockers can block in-app usage.

Let’s wrap up regarding this broken business model. In all honesty, ad blocking will continue to increase its popularity. Today it is used by billions users – and these users are more than satisfied since it gives them faster loading times and fewer data usage (especially important in emerging countries – where ad blocking has the fastest growth). For publishers, the ad blocker is similar to the telco´s headache – both just have to deal with the new reality and launch a sustainable strategy to monetize ad-blocked and non-ad-blocked users by using dedicated tools such as Predbid Stack, which module integrates effortlessly with anti ad-block solutions, empowering publishers to recover revenue from users who employ ad-blockers.

>>> And how you cope with a broken business model? Click and let us know!

This blog contains my personal thoughts, and so I have to include this disclaimer. This blog post is simplified and might lack several other dimensions that were not mentioned. If you want to discuss this further, you are always welcome to contact us at Yieldbird.

The post Ad Blocker – an Answer to a Broken Business Model? [Updated 2023] first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

What is Digital Services Act

The Digital Services Act refers, inter alia, to entrepreneurs providing hosting of content supplied by users. One interpretation of this definition might be associated even with the operation of a discussion forum or allowing users to comment on the articles published. 

Regulations of Digital Services Act

1. Regulating an unlawful content releases

The DSA specifies the rules for releasing publishers from liability for unlawful content posted on their websites. It points out that they must introduce the possibility of reporting illegal content to be available for the users. But this change is definitely not a revolutionary one, because similar conditions already resulted from the regulations that were already in force before.

What is important here, is the fact that the DSA does not define what is considered as unlawful or illegal content. This might be defined in other laws either at EU level, but some additional categories of content might be considered as illegal by regulations introduced at national level. The example of unlawful content at the EU level is terrorist content or illegal hate speech.  

2. Excluding sensitive data usage

The Digital Services Act also excludes the possibility of profiling and targeting children, as well as profiling users based on sensitive data. The sensitive data includes but is not limited to the person’s health or sexual orientation. In some jurisdictions the regulations that covered this were already in place. 

3. Prohibiting “dark patterns”

The Digital Services Act also prohibits the use of so-called “dark patterns”. An example of such a pattern is the usage of malicious elements built into the website design. Something that would fit this description and was present for a long time would an ad displayed on a layer, that in theory can be closed by pressing “X” button, while in reality the click redirects user to another page on the site. This might also include highlighting the button to accept marketing consents while at the same time reducing the size of the button to reject these consents.

4. Tagging sponsored content

Another obligation arising from the Digital Services Act is the need to appropriately mark broadcasted advertisements and provide the user with real-time information on whose behalf the advertisement was presented, who paid for it, and what parameters were used to determine the target group of the advertisement. An example of this could be seen in Poland on Facebook, when the ad bought before the recent elections were clearly marked as sponsored by specific parties. 

It is clear as day that the above obligation is enforceable only with a lot of support from the tech giants (e.g. Google) that serve the markets where these ads are bought and sold. Without their support, this information is not available directly to the publisher, so it could not be presented.

What is Digital Markets Act

The Digital Markets Act, in turn, is a document related mostly to the largest entities (such as Google, Facebook and Amazon), which are to be the so-called “guardians of access”. They would need to comply with several obligations in order to maintain the competitiveness of economic operators in digital markets. 

What should publishers expect?

Our preliminary analysis shows that it will not directly impose new obligations on publishers. Due to the fact that large entities are covered by these obligations, this may indirectly affect some changes, e.g. in the content monetization rules applied by these entities. Hence, at this point, it’s difficult to specify what the publishers should expect from the enforcement of the DMA. 

For example, we expect Google to introduce some additional measures in place in order to present the data required by the Digital Services Act They will probably take place somewhere in the Google Ad Manager interface, in a form of a feature that needs to be turned on (opt-in), or rather is going to be turned on by default, but the published can opt-out of it for given geos. 

If you would  like to learn more about what is coming to the programmatic markets in the following months, and figure a way to make the most of the expected changes, reach out to Yieldbird. Schedule a call with our experts to discuss how we can help you grow your programmatic business.

LET’S GET IN TOUCH!

Krzysztof Lis
Partnerships & Consultancy Expert
publishers@yieldbird.com

[contact-form-7]

The post Unleashing Transparency: How the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act Will Impact Online Publishers first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the current state of alternative user identification methods and explore the latest updates on Google’s Privacy Sandbox and other solutions that publishers can adopt.

Updates on Google’s Privacy Sandbox Timeline

Google’s announcement of another delay in phasing out third-party cookies has provided a sigh of relief for most of us. The pre-launching period for trials and changes will last until Q2 2023. The “General availability” period will last one year until the second quarter of 2024. 

What about the Privacy Sandbox – a collaborative project that aims to develop innovative technologies to prioritize privacy and replace third-party cookies? During this time, it will be active on 100% Chrome traffic, and the fade-out period will take two months in Q3 2024. Chrome will lose third-party cookies support after that. You may check more information here. 

Google’s decision to phase out cookies will impact publishers who might procrastinate in preparing new user identification methods. 

Moreover, Google needs to attract all supply chain members to test and adopt new Chrome APIs and increase transparency in the testing process. The addressability landscape update shows that Google Privacy Sandbox and FLEDGE trials are ongoing.

Addressability Landscape Update: FLEDGE Trials

FLEDGE is a privacy-safe way to run remarketing and create custom audience solutions by advertisers to re-engage with site visitors. The user browser stores advertiser-defined interest groups instead of third-party servers, and the auction between retargeted ads and FLEDGE ads will occur on the user’s device. The FLEDGE test is aimed at developers trying new API features separately from other experiments and giving feedback. Primary participants are from the buy-side, including well-known retargeted Criteo and RTBhouse. They are testing aspects such as adding and removing users from interest groups while running ad auctions and serving users with ad impressions while registering clicks and conversions.

After moving tests to 1% Chrome users, RTB House served close to 7 million ads across 2,700 advertisers in 50 countries from early April to 15th September. Key takeaways mentioned by company representatives are:

• Not enough support from ad servers and SSPs that did not allow testing of complete programmatic integrations. 
• Lack of clarity on how the integrations between SSPs and publishers’ ad servers will work in the FLEDGE environment. 

On the other hand, according to Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer at Café Media, who participated in a test from the supply chain’s sell-side, the FLEDGE proposal worked “pretty easily.”

First-Party Data: Secure Signals and Seller-Defined Audiences

Secure Signals (previously Encrypted Signals) and Google’s support for Seller Defined Audiences (SDA) enable publishers to share their first-party data with advertisers in cases once done, e.g., only in private deals. SDA broadens it to open exchange and works with IAB standards for segment taxonomy. This solution will add a common language and help publishers group audiences more reasonably.

The Importance of Experimenting with Multiple ID Solutions

The optimal strategy to cater to a wide range of users is to utilize all available techniques, including both Open Market and PMPs/Direct methods, and employ various types of ID solutions, such as deterministic, probabilistic, and first-party data. Publishers must leverage multiple solutions to maximize user data and enable marketers to serve personalized ads across different platforms and devices. This approach will ultimately lead to increased demand and higher eCPMs. Publishers who are proactive and eager to stay ahead of the curve should experiment with different universal IDs as an alternative to cookies for ad targeting, which helps develop their unique strategies. These changes should also encourage the industry to implement new creative approaches to cookieless advertising. 

In the last quarter of 2023, publishers will further test and implement Universal IDs, and Privacy sandbox initiatives will continue trials. Google will hopefully increase the scale of the test, as only large enough will allow the industry to determine the usability and effectiveness of its solutions. We might also expect more Sell Defined Audiences to be adopted.

Hopefully, the additional time before third-party cookies depreciation will be well spent by publishers exploring as many available ID solutions as possible and completing their strategy for the upcoming cookieless future.

Stay up-to-date with the latest news from the industry and subscribe to Yieldbird Digest – programmatic, newsletter for publishers.

LET’S GET IN TOUCH!

Piotr Niedziela
Optimization Expert
publishers@yieldbird.com

[contact-form-7]

The post How Publishers Can Prepare for the Cookieless Future first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

In this article, I will share with you my perspective on why it is so important to have both a consistent sales strategy and some additional tools on hand so as to safeguard the value and prices of the impressions you have available to you.

Algorithms and automation: the constant arms race on the programmatic market

Publishers and advertisers share one common goal: and that is to run effective ad campaigns that will hopefully bring some benefit to the users. Beyond this, their goals diverge.

Buyers want to get the best impressions for the lowest prices, getting the highest return on ad spend and the lowest cost per action. On the other hand, publishers want to get the most money from the impressions available, driving up both the prices and the fill rate.

Buyers have a lot of tools that help them to buy cheaper and more effectively, and they are using them with greater frequency.

One of the most important of these tools is bid shading. When SSPs moved from the second-price to the first-price auction, DSPs needed to implement algorithms that would help them limit the bid values and drive the sufficient prices down. It was easier in the second-price auction when the winner paid not what they were bidding, but what the second participant had bid, +0,01$.

Bid shading algorithms are both complex and fascinating. For example, here you can find a research paper publisher in July 2021 regarding a specific bid shading algorithm that was able to deliver almost a 9% increase in ROI for CPA-based campaigns following its implementation.

The other automation tools that are available for buyers are used to optimize the ad spend, and below I have listed several possible approaches:

• if the ad campaign has several line items, the DSP tries to spend the most money where the campaign performs best, thus adjusting the budgets accordingly,
• when the Line Items target a specific inventory, additional targeting options allow the DSP to bid only for the impressions next to the relevant content (contextual targeting), or not to bid for impressions in articles about war, car accidents, or murders (brand safety),
• if the impressions are being bought on different domains and ad units, the DSP tries to buy only the impressions that are likely to deliver the desired viewability level, or have achieved the lowest possible CPC/CPA, or both,
• if the campaign has more than one creative set available, the DPS may try to optimize in that area as well, displaying only the most relevant and enticing creatives.

Buyers have little to no control over how these tools work in detail and should think of them as a black box that they are feeding with money and getting some impressions and clicks out of. They deliver great results but still require attention and manual input.

Compared to a homepage takeover-type of creatives, better results are available with CPC when using an automatically optimized Line Item: buying on the Open Market impressions on some ad units on the bottom of the page. In this instance, we found that the CTRs were 20x worse, but the CPMs were 40x better, so in the end, we paid half as much for a single click.

To be clear, advertisers are availing of a large number of automation tools, and they are using them in order to drive the CPM rates down and the ROI up.

How can a publisher respond?

The number of tools available to the publishers is limited, but that doesn’t mean they should remain inactive and watch how the value of their inventory goes down over time. In fact, they should do the opposite!

First of all, a publisher should devise a consistent sales strategy, one that incorporates the following key points:

• the inventory should be available on all transaction types,
• the better transaction types (i.e. deals like Programmatic guaranteed or preferred deals, which have higher priorities) should have higher CPM rates,
• the floor prices set for the Open Market should be used to find the best balance between CPMs and fill rates (basically to find the highest product of multiplication of both these performance indicators),
• the value of the inventory, in terms of viewability, completion rates (for video and audio ads) and CTRs, should be constantly increased.

The more the market develops, the more automation tools are available to help in the achievement of these points.

For example, at Yieldbird, we have devised a complex machine-learning solution called Price Genius, which constantly tries to find the best-unified pricing rules to sell the fewest impressions whilst generating the most revenue for a given inventory. Price Genius uses various algorithms and is able to change the floor prices a couple of times every day to make sure that it closely aligns with the market changes. This is very helpful when there are significant and fast changes in the market, for example, when your local currency’s value changes rapidly (and you have a significant portion of buyers from outside your local economy bidding in EUR or USD).

Another tool we have built to help publishers achieve the best value from their inventory is Viewability Booster which tries to determine the best position for ad slots in order to drive the viewability higher for every possible impression. With the help of this tool, publishers can spend less time on the optimization of ad layout.

Are the machines winning? To some extent, they actually are. And so, if you’re on the publisher side, you should get some AI of your own.

LET’S GET IN TOUCH!

Krzysztof Lis
Partnerships & Consultancy Expert
publishers@yieldbird.com

[contact-form-7]

The post How do Advertisers Use Machine Learning to Buy Cheaper Impressions? first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Now we present current and future Programmatic trends together with objective feedback. We believe that these insights will propel and inspire in your own various dealings and activities.

In-house vs Outsource, Cookies, Business Developing. What trends in Digital Publishing and Yield Monetization will gain momentum in the coming months?

Bartosz Nowak, Head of Sales
Spider’s Web

I see that the in-house trend is becoming more and more popular. I can see this happening with several large Advertisers on the Polish market and I predict that we shall observe the same situation on foreign markets. This move would represent a threat to both agencies and media houses. The question is how quickly and how much Programmatic support will be transferred in-house before media houses feel the effects of these actions; and the related losses. It is not an easy matter, because real specialists, not those who have read three articles on Facebook, are few and far between.

This dearth of specialists is particularly visible on recruiting websites, where we can see that the same companies have been looking for specialists for half a year or more. These people are simply not to be found. I think this phenomenon will be the main challenge for the Programmatic market. You need to prepare the team and train people who will be able to handle the campaigns. In my opinion, one of the downsides of the Publishing market is that half-measures are being sought from all sides; and training priorities are falling by the wayside. Such neglect is bound to adversely affect everyone.

We all know well that it is impossible to handle a large number of campaigns without the participation of software solutions. But because Programmatic is moving forwards at such a rapid pace new solutions are being overlooked. To make matters worse, large companies such as Google do not always inform their users about new solutions in as comprehensive a manner as they should. It is often the case that when browsing our user panel, we find new functions that were not available a week ago. Indeed, it is proceeding so fast that Programmatic doesn’t even communicate all the changes. There may be Google partners who receive this information, but most users will not be afforded the same courtesy.

Ari Bernardete, COO & Co-owner
FrontSTORY

Yuval Friedman, Head of Monetization
FrontSTORY

Trends are not the same around the world; what is true for the U.S. is not true for Europe or; if we take countries like China, Russia, India, they are all characterised by different ball games and approaches. With such complexity, you need to adapt to each market; and I think that’s what we are endeavouring to do.

If we look at recent times, more and more e-commerce is taking up an ever-increasing part of the internet and this is affecting the Publishing industry as well. It certainly impacts the Publishers who combine organic traffic and paid traffic as the prices go up. But also you find more and more articles that capture users’ attention, which is from the e-commerce sector.

Stephan Asmussen, Data and Optimization Manager
JP/Politikens

In my opinion, in 2022 we will see highly influential and branding Advertising campaigns. We will also see a decline in the popularity of so-called “performance marketing” as it will be more difficult to measure the results of launched campaigns due to the change in regulations governing the collection of third-party data. Also, their optimization, which so far has been easier thanks to cookies, will have a completely different dimension; and it is not yet known which direction our industry will head in.

So I think buyers will move to use more of their own data provided by the Publisher – we at JP Politiken started this process 2 years ago. And although Google has yet to introduce real changes that would translate into an advertising reality, the entire industry is preparing itself for a seismic change.

Mats Lidgren, Yield Manager
flightradar24

A lot of people are talking about data and also the demise of cookies. But ideally what we want is a new system which is less intrusive than the last one. And of course, we as a company are quite dependent on the steps that Google and Apple are taking, and in the absence of solutions we are hedging our bets and holding off for now.

We are shifting to a lot of contextual strategies and trying to add more information. This is very important for us. When you have a news portal it is very easy; you have a lot of text with a lot of information in an article; but on our site we just have an airplane. Therefore it is challenging to contribute more contextual information. We want to make it easier for ad crawlers to understand what is on our website and how it will benefit the buyers.

The challenges of a maturing market. What global phenomena and entities shape the Digital Publishing market the most?

Stephan Asmussen, Data and Optimization Manager
JP/Politikens

The publishing market will certainly struggle with Google. We will increasingly experience not only their favouring of their own systems but also problems with data security. For a Publisher like us, a Publisher who does not use the full Google stack, we have seen a lot of problems with brand security algorithms that block the buying on our site due to very strict rules that categorize our site as an unsafe environment. And even if the Advertiser does not categorise our site as dangerous, they will want to make sure that they find sites that are actually safe for their brand. Unfortunately, this Google activity blocked in some cases all buying on our site…

We will also face a completely different challenge. We have noticed that in 5% of the cases, the data the buyer uses to buy impressions on our sites through DV360 does not match with data from SSPs other than GAM. So in our case, we are seeing a lot of Advertisers who trust 100% of Google’s data and therefore they can’t get any spend on our site. This is in some way also why DV360 buyers tend to put all spend through different GAM accounts, because here they can bid on more inventory. In 2021 we spent a lot of time finding solutions to cater for DV360 buyers.

Ari Bernardete, COO & Co-owner
FrontSTORY

Yuval Friedman, Head of Monetization
FrontSTORY

It will be all about keeping up with the game. There will be many changes in the way Google works, particularly in terms of its privacy policy and cookies. The cookie conundrum is the best example of how the user base will look in the future, particularly when we think about targeting. Most Publishers are dependent on the industry giants, and are making large changes regardless of the cookies. This means they are moving their partners and moving their policy program; and they are not sharing a lot of information. We don’t know the what & when of it all. There is Facebook obviously, and there are others.

Mats Lidgren, Yield Manager
flightradar24

In our opinion, the subscription model will become more and more popular, but you have to be cautious when you want to have income from Ads and subscriptions. Sometimes achieving a good balance can be a challenge, but I think for us it has been a perfect model, especially now during COVID. But it is quite hard to get the balance right, and not cannibalise either side of the business. So ad formats are like rewarded ads, which unlock certain levels of subscription-based functionality when you watch an ad, and in that sense, we don’t want to give the user too much, because maybe they will take an extra step and become a subscriber. A subscriber will always give us more than any basic user generating ad revenue. So it is something of a tightrope act. But having said that, I think a hybrid model would represent a step forward for many companies.

Programmatic Audio, Video and CTV – which of the popular advertising formats are the most promising in the opinion of publishers? Which emerging formats will work only for some?

Bartosz Nowak, Head of Sales
Spider’s Web

In our case, the process of considering the introduction of new formats is a consequence of the market demands. For example, we were quite hesitant as far as video is concerned, but it quickly turned out that with the growing demand, the growth of other Publishers and the importance of the video format itself, we had to swim with the tide. In my opinion, this video pressure will only increase and it will be one of the biggest things to look at in 2022. In the case of audio, I’m not sure how the situation will turn out yet, but looking at the growing podcast market, I imagine that come the end of 2022 it will be necessary to say: oh, audio, it’s interesting.

Ari Bernardete, COO & Co-owner
FrontSTORY

Yuval Friedman, Head of Monetization
FrontSTORY

We think there is still a lot of organisational work to be done. In audio & CTV there is huge potential for IVT and wrongdoing. However the potential is there, and year on year we have been seeing a huge increase in smart TVs; particularly given that the younger generations are more accustomed to consuming their content in this format. I don’t remember when was the last time that I just turned on my TV and started to watch something… maybe 2 years ago. Regarding audio, for sure work needs to be done; but now when people are consuming their content in the car, we have to regard audio as having potential.

Stephan Asmussen, Data and Optimization Manager
JP/Politikens

We’ve definitely noticed an increase in the use of high-end formats such as Topscroll, Wallpaper, and Midscroll / Interscroll; both with video or actually banners you can engage with. We also see an uplift in video spend other than TV/Broadcast.

Responsible and safe industry. How do publishers keep their brands safe?

Ari Bernardete, COO & Co-owner
FrontSTORY

Yuval Friedman, Head of Monetization
FrontSTORY

Legitimate Publishers like us spend a lot of money on external tools like GeoEdge, Clean.io, etc., and if you allow for any fraud, the other side will catch on. If you are building a sustainable business, you want to build a brand and a reputable name. You want Advertisers and partners to work with you, and you want to reach out to brands also.

I’ve read an article that 50% of internet traffic is bots. We are doing as much as we can to prevent this because we care about what the other side gets. We want both sides to do well.

For SSPs, we verify obviously RPMs, CTRs (very high CTRs raise suspicion). So we have built our own system to alert us about red flags. We get alerts when something is not in line.

Bartosz Nowak, Head of Sales
Spider’s Web

One of our biggest concerns is the huge amount of URLs and creatives that we have to throw into the “exclusion” category, and it is very bothersome. Among the most burdensome are those about investing, supplements, weight loss, and fake news about celebrities and politicians that send users to dangerous places on the Internet. You could say that for a Publisher like us, this is a total nightmare.

I would like to see Programmatic deal with this issue better, but the same Programmatic is pushing bogus ads that people are willing to believe.

Today, all Publishers are struggling with the issues of personal data protection, cookies, GDPR … But if a user has clicked on everything and everywhere over the past few years, they should not expect that in 2022 their digital footprint will have been cleaned up. Because if they wanted their data to stop floating around the Internet, they would have to go to every single place where they have been and unclick every single consent they had previously clicked. Unfortunately, to the consternation of Publishers, internet users then accuse Publishers of delivering unwanted ads. It is impossible to go back in time, and all we can hope for is the phasing out of this trend.

If we took 1000 internet users and sat them down for a week in front of their computer and started showing them ads in a Programmatic model, how many of them would click to exclude those unwanted ads? How many clicks on this Google triangle would we see? This is due to a very pragmatic approach taken to allowing Programmatic on our websites. If you flag industries that are undesirable in the basic settings, you need to realise that this is a waiver of a larger or smaller part of Programmatic revenues. Because what generates the most revenue? Fake news, casinos, and all kinds of undesirable (from our point of view) content and creations. If, when implementing Programmatic, the Publisher establishes pragmatic rules of the game, then the whole process becomes much easier.

In addition to the blocking settings, the second issue is also the floor prices. Most spam and the crap from fake news Publishers occurs when you build from 0.01 gr.

On the other hand, an industry like casinos have cash to burn and they are trying to get in through a back door like this. They come and say, ok if you don’t let us on the display surface, then we’ll buy content from you and put links in … That’s why we need a consistent policy for not allowing such content at all.

There are Publishers who forgo a filter, and that means they are taking a risk.

Do you have any thoughts on the position of publishers in the programmatic industry?

Let us know in the comment or write to us directly!

Hanna Majka
Business Development Manager
publishers@yieldbird.com

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The post Programmatic in 2022 from the perspective of Publishers first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

2021’s Programmatic Big Event

Was there an event that influenced the entire industry across the board? Yes, such an event was the postponement of the “cookie apocalypse”, i.e. the postponement by Google of the date from which Chrome will no longer transfer data to third parties (third-party data). Initially, the end of cookies was set for 2021, so preparations for the cookieless world consumed the resources of the entire industry in the early part of the year.

The announcement of the postponement of the transition in June had a colossal impact on further actions on the part of Publishers, Advertisers, and Technology Providers, and we began to observe that many companies began to treat this horizon prospect as an opportunity to focus on more local and singular challenges.

The most important trends in 2021, the prospects for 2022

In 2021, even more than in previous years, we could see the growing importance of measuring revenues from Programmatic sources. This was not only in the context of single ad impressions or page views, but it also related to the entire user session and even the revenue generated by the user over the course of an entire month. As a result of this trend, Publishers focused on maximizing revenues put more emphasis on user experience – i.e. the most widely understood UX – and those indicators that may affect traffic acquisition.

Activities that have a positive impact not only on the Publisher’s revenues but also on the comfort of consuming content by the end-user are becoming popular. This is a positive and desirable trend that shows that the market is maturing; and that both Publishers and Advertisers have an increased sense of agency and responsibility.

From the perspective of technological solutions and formats, Connected TV is being seen as the next big thing. However, 2022 is unlikely to see a step forward in this matter, at least in our local market, but the subject of CTV will gain traction. Technology providers will have growing importance and will support both Publishers and Advertisers in terms of helping them to effectively manage their Programmatic budgets, but also in terms of further preparations for what will be a cookieless world.

What did the pandemic change in the Programmatic industry in 2021?

The Internet Advertising industry and its rapidly growing Programmatic branch belong to a market segment that flourished during the pandemic. After 2020, when we found ourselves having to adjust to the new reality, there came the calmer, and more predictable 2021, which saw no such fluctuations or the sudden freezing of budgets, as had happened in the spring of 2020. We could also see that the parts of budgets transferred e.g. from outdoor to Programmatic channels, remained with these same channels for longer.

For the highly technological Programmatic branch, based largely on agile and automated solutions, the pandemic was indeed a test. But we were not checking at the time whether the monetization models developed under standard conditions would adapt to the new realities. Instead, we checked how quickly this adaptation would happen – and from the perspective of this past year and a half, we can confidently say that Programmatic has passed the test with flying colors.

The challenges for 2022

Even This year, both Advertisers and Publishers will reap the rewards in terms of how they reacted to Google’s announcement to postpone its departure from third-party cookies. Changes in the ecosystem are on the way, so if last year’s work on alternatives to cookies was postponed in favor of more immediate challenges – 2022 will see a refocusing and a redoubling of efforts.

There will be challenges ahead, whether it involves measuring the effectiveness of advertisements by buyers, retargeting options, or indeed the setting of caps on displayed ads. Collecting and monetizing first-party data will also prove to be a daunting task.

LET’S GET IN TOUCH!

Do you have any questions regarding your future in the publishing market?
Please feel free to contact us – our team will be more than happy to discuss it with you!

Karol Jurga
Head of Business
publishers@yieldbird.com

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The post Programmatic Advertising in 2021, and what can we expect for 2022? first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Technology & Data Science consists of teams of Developers, Data Scientists as well as technology and programming experts, all of whom work on creating, modifying and developing Yieldbird products. They usually work in scrum teams, with 1-week sprint tasks involving daily planning and review work. Such meetings facilitate information flows and communication, allowing for the timely recognition and solution of problems. The teams work mainly remotely – from all over Poland, and they also have office hubs in Warsaw and Kraków.

Developers in Adtech Company

Developers work on a project by project basis. These projects are divided into backend and frontend API. Project teams can number from 2 to 6 people. Teams work mainly on internal projects in the company. The technologies are JavaScript (React), Ruby / Ruby on Rails version 6.1, Redis, Postgres, Graphql, Docker, Terraform. Everything is based on AWS, where we avail of various services such as EC2, ECS, ECR and Load Balancer. Developers usually work in pair programming teams.

Developers with more experience, in addition to programming, building architecture, and planning work on a given project, advise and oversee the work of younger developers; and from time to time they participate in meetings with the client. A lot of time is spent on developing new product functionalities. There are of course smaller maintenance projects as well, but only a few hours a week are spent on them.

What’s it like to be a Data Scientist at Yieldbird?

The Data Science team is a team that combines a research approach with a technological one, dealing with the development of current and new Yieldbird products, taking into account the dynamics of the AdTech industry. The team is constantly looking for new opportunities by carrying out research and development works in the area of ​​Programmatic technology and internet technologies with the use of Machine Learning tools. The team also coordinated the implementation and the validation of concepts.

They also follow the latest possibilities and rules of the AdTech industry. Working closely with other teams, they implement the research results for scalable technological solutions, implementing them productively or overseeing their maintenance. Their work combines research elements (the formulation and validation of hypotheses), including knowledge of IT technologies such as databases and cloud services, Machine Learning and a knowledge of Python.

Being in a Product Strategy Team

The Product Strategy team is primarily responsible for guiding the Yieldbird product portfolio. This includes searching for new product opportunities as well as acting as a link between customers and the Customer, New Business and Technology teams. Knowing the possibilities and the entire product strategy, the Product Strategy team works closely with New Business or Customer teams, supporting sales and explaining products and their market values. The team takes part in the business dialogue within the company, preparing product presentations and offers.

Shaping the product portfolio by the Product Strategy team includes researching both the market competition and formulating business cases: the feasibility of assumptions, what is the expected cost of the investment, and what is the return. If a decision is made to start work on a new product, a team is gathered to develop the product and appoint the Owner of the product. The idea for a new product or the development of a new technology may be the result of feedback from customers, but it may also be an idea of ​ the Yieldbird team as well as a suggestion of people who are closest to sales, who, knowing the client needs, have spotted new areas for growth opportunities.

When the Project Strategy Team completes developmental work on a new product, the next step is to prepare an offer by the Product Strategy team. This includes the preparation of all documentation related to the product: its description, specific target group, value proposition, description of the delivery process, determination of pricing, and the preparation of all legal documents.

What does work in the Product Management Team look like?

The Product Management team focuses on the creation of products, whilst always thinking about direction and functionality. The Product Manager talks a lot with customers in order to recognize their needs and describe them precisely, and the team led by the Product Owner is able to prepare the right product. It is also very important to prepare a road map for each product. The Product Manager oversees the product throughout its life cycle: they define the vision of the product, know the users and the competition well. They also make sure that the product delivers, is in line with the company’s strategy, and brings benefits.

The Product Owner has more hard competencies, although it happens that this role intertwines with the role of the Product Manager depending on the project. The Product Owner understands the product creation process and can analyse and modify it so as to deliver the required product on time. The Product Owner spends most of their time on implementation, structure development, managing the product backlog, and working with the development team on more products.

In Yieldbird the Product Manager and Product Owner communicate within the company what is happening with a given product, in terms of release update, and the new functionalities that are being introduced.

The UX/UI Designers conceptualize the product, create web application interfaces, and select colours and individual elements so that they are intuitive for users. If there is such a need, they also collect information from customers or users by creating surveys and conducting interviews. In addition, of course, they create prototypes, mockups, and conduct application usability tests in order to learn about the weaknesses of the UX project; and, based on them, they draw conclusions and introduce changes. The UX/UI Designers at Yieldbird work closely with the development team and the Product Managers / Owners.

In addition, our Product Managers, Product Owners and Strategy Managers support the Growth department in terms of marketing activities or advanced sales – where they participate in a demonstration with customers and answer technical questions. It also happens that in more complex cases, these positions become a second line of support during the implementation processes. Their knowledge and experience related to both Programmatic and our products are central to Yieldbird’s activities going forward.

The post Yieldbird – Behind the Scenes of an AdTech Company – part II first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Judging from my 15 years of experience in online advertising, I can say that there’s only one thing that is constant on the market: it constantly changes. The more flexible the publishers and advertisers are in adopting new strategies, the better, as a majority of the players on the market are not big enough to fight and eventually stop these changes.
A good example of that would be the case that’s described in the “How are app marketers managing programmatic advertising campaigns in the post-IDFA world?” article. It shows different approaches taken by marketers in order to adapt to the change caused by the launch of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. The best approach is probably to utilize the strategies that worked in the past, while trying to come up with new ideas to target the most relevant users on the in-app inventory.

Another trend that we’re all facing is the change of available inventory (impressions) due to the pandemic. Last year a huge number of publishers were able to get much more traffic than a year before. In 2021 this curve also flattens, as people are trying to spend more time offline, and are less interested in reading about the newest coronavirus variants. A nice analysis of this trend can be found in the article published by Max Willens at Digiday.

Happy reading!

Krzysztof Lis, Customer Success Team Manager / Yieldbird

The Programmatic Digest, hosted by Helene Parker, is a 20-30 minutes weekly podcast rounding up fresh, top programmatic and digital headlines from our preferred digital media sources.

35% consumers are receptive to ads based on their previous purchases

Source: Integral Ads Science

The post Ad Tech &Programmatic Newsletter – August 6th 2021 first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Does your company avail of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence? They are fast becoming the driving force behind Publisher planning and innovation; and are now being incorporated into processes and set-ups. “These new technologies are the new printing press,” says María Florencia Coelho, New Media Research Manager with La Nación in Argentina, commenting on the AI / ML trends report, just published by International Media Support.

We are supporters of this approach, because we can see how much can be gained by using these solutions. And in support of our own stance, we present here our own Publisher case study involving Machine Learning.

In other features, we discuss Google’s Privacy Sandbox rollout, coming a month after the announcement that 3rd party cookies will be with us for some time yet. What is more, IAB Europe shares insights from its Contextual Advertising analysis.

Happy reading!

Marta Todorczuk, Marketing Manager / Yieldbird

IAB Europe released its ‘Guide to Contextual Advertising’ to provide further education on alternatives to third-party cookies and to help planners and buyers of media navigate this solution.

44% of consumers have tried a new brand due to seeing a relevant ad alongside a piece of content they were consuming.

Source: IAB Europe

The post Ad Tech &Programmatic Newsletter – July 30th 2021 first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.