Category: In the News

“We will go from a very small minority of impressions in 2019 that used first-party data compared to third-party data to meaningful growth on that this year, and next year we expect much more than a majority of our impressions across the platform will use first-party data compared to third-party data,” said Ryan Pauley, chief revenue officer at Vox Media, which launched its first-party data platform Forte in December 2019.

Meanwhile, SHE Media plans to include first-party data options in the majority of its pitch request responses in 2021, said Ryan Nathanson, svp of operations at SHE Media. “In 2020, [first-party data options were] included when a strategic advertiser was asking for it or looking for it, but now it’s going to be much more proactive and default,” he said.

The third-party cookie’s impending demise is one catalyst pushing publishers to prioritize their first-party data in programmatic ad sales, but advertiser demand has accelerated that push in 2020. Not only are advertisers more frequently asking about deal options involving publishers’ first-party data, but publishers are finding the deals employing those options are likely to be more lucrative. 

The unnamed publisher said that advertisers signing private marketplace deals including first-party data as an option spend more than twice as much money than PMP deals that don’t include the data.

The publisher attributed the difference to the advertiser being more invested in the deal and therefore likely to spend if it expressed enough interest to be briefed on and select the first-party data option. By contrast, an advertiser or agency can set up a standard PMP and just as easily leave it dormant and not funnel any money through it. “The hit rate on those [deals not involving first-party data] is way lower. When we establish that relationship with an advertiser and activate those [first-party data] deals, we have generally seen the spend come through,” the publisher said.

In light of that, this publisher has incentivized its sales team to strike deals involving first-party data. If a seller is able to secure a deal in which the advertiser spends a certain amount of money — in the tens of thousands of dollars — buying ads using the publisher’s first-party data, the seller receives a bonus, according to the publisher.

SHE Media, which works with data management platform provider Permutive, has seen its first-party data boost not only PMP deals but also direct deals. “We see an increase in [insertion order] size, in general, when we get the opportunity to walk through our first-party data strategy,” said Nathanson, noting the increase is around 20%.

However, publishers cannot simply utter the words “first-party data” and expect advertisers to widen their wallets. The increased importance of first-party data has coincided with heightened interest among ad buyers in how that data is collected and managed. “There’s more scrutiny for sure in recent years, especially around data sourcing practices as well as from an ethics perspective. That’s probably a two-year increasing trend,” said an agency executive. A newer aspect of that trend is that ad buyers are not only trying to understand the integrity of individual publishers’ data but also how consistent it is with other publishers, Pauley said.

Corresponding to the increased interest in publishers’ first-party data, publishers are taking more steps to build out their data sets. SHE Media plans to conduct more audience research on advertisers’ behalf, such as running polls and surveys on its sites, and connect those results to its first-party audience segments, Nathanson said. 

And Vox Media is working to take more contextual data, such as how someone arrived at page on its sites, into account, Pauley said. For example, if a person visits The Verge from a Google search for a tech product, Vox Media would be able to use that as a signal when deciding which piece of ad creative to serve them. “That’s where we’ll continue to invest a lot of time and energy — understanding all those elements of context: what’s on the page, where did the user come from, what is the ad creative, what time of day it is, where are they based,” he said.

Vox Media’s The Strategist saw its Cyber 5 revenues leap 120% year over year, thanks not only to holiday guides but pieces it refines all year. Indeed, a bigger percentage of that growth was powered by revenue from evergreen articles rather than Black Friday- or Cyber Monday-specific ones, said Camilla Cho, Vox Media’s svp of e-commerce.

Verizon Media Group’s second big run — this is its second Cyber 5 after a major investment in commerce — at the holiday stretch saw its revenues increase 105%, and a nearly 200% increase in gross merchandise volume, head of consumer revenue Joanna Lambert said.

The strong growth was a payoff for work done all year to adapt to extraordinary circumstances. But now, those and other publishers have to figure out how much of what they experienced is a signal about what might happen next year — and what is an anomaly.

While people across the industry have talked about coronavirus as an accelerant which sped media and marketing down paths they were just starting to tread, much of what happened during this year’s Cyber 5 was driven by highly unusual factors.

For example, lots of merchants and retailers began releasing their deals a lot earlier than usual, hoping that getting orders in earlier might help them avoid potential fulfillment problems caused by a crush of online orders.  

(Another thing they hope was an anomaly: The affiliate network Impact went down for almost two hours, causing a wave of panic to roll through many publishers’ commerce war rooms.)

But even with 2021 still a few weeks away, and many unknowns still hanging over the economy, publishers and agencies both teased a few things out of this year’s Cyber 5.

A longer shopping season
A whole host of factors conspired to start the 2020 holiday shopping season a lot earlier, ranging from merchant fulfillment concerns to Amazon holding Prime Day in mid-October.

Whether one of those things was more important or not, “that pull forward from the merchants was real,” said Jessica Spira, vp of partner growth and management at Ziff Media Group.

Spira noted that the data gathered across ZMG’s sites showed their audience shopping decisively. “[Average order value was up], our conversion rate was double what it normally is,” Spira said. “Our lead in [to the Cyber 5] was super strong.”

Media and affiliate budgets will keep coming together — because more publishers are making the case
Historically, brands and retailers have managed their affiliate and media budgets separately. And while publishers have spent years trying to talk advertisers into doing package deals, “it’s a small set of publishers that have begun to crack that nut,” said Natalee Geldert, senior director of brand and media partnerships at PMG.

But this year, Geldert said, “the list of publishers that can do it grew,” and their success could help reorient more people around the wisdom of using their media inventory in innovative ways to drive conversions.

More always-on thinking
While publishers and retailers still rely on shopping tentpole events to drive large amounts of revenue, this year reinforced that publishers need to be able to help keep sales strong all year. That will be especially important over the next six months, as the country waits out the distribution and effect of a coronavirus vaccine.

“Most clients are trying to figure out the moments to win in the everyday,” said Amy Lanzi, commerce practice lead at Publicis. “The things we know to be true from a holiday perspective or how you plan a marketing calendar are broken…We’re not clear on what’s going to happen in Q1 and Q2.”

That focus on evergreen content helps during tentpoles too. Vox Media’s the Strategist drove more Cyber 5 revenue growth from its evergreen articles than it did from its holiday guides.

Faster is better
Typically, the data and reporting lag from affiliate networks makes it hard for publishers to figure out which posts are driving the best results, which makes it difficult to maximize their revenue in real time. But publishers that invested in figuring out other signals did great.

For example, BuzzFeed has identified a range of metrics and indicators that helps it understand which articles to promote on social.

“We’re generally getting better at swarming the internet,” BuzzFeed’s Ali said. “In the past, it was more of a ‘let’s try this and see what happens.’ We now have multiple years of testing tactics at Facebook and Instagram and Apple and our sites and knowing where things work best.”