A privacy-centric future is inevitable for digital advertising as the industry collectively takes the proper measures to uphold consumer trust. We’ve already seen sweeping changes in privacy regulation and platform updates to limit the use of identifiers in recent years.
Restrictions will continue to tighten moving forward. Though Google again delayed its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome until 2024, they are already restricted in Safari, Firefox, and Edge. And following Apple’s move to require consumer consent for its advertising identifier, the IDFA, Google is planning to limit its Android Advertising ID and launch a Privacy Sandbox initiative for Android.
These decisions have wide-ranging implications and will require a major shift in the fundamentals of digital advertising.
So what’s required to thrive in this privacy-first addressability landscape? That’s what we explore in our new guide, “Preparing for the Future of Addressability,” which covers how to evolve your addressability strategy, evaluate new solutions, and proactively prepare for success starting today.
Here are three key takeaways.
1. Optimize for authenticated and non-authenticated audiences
The future of addressability is about maximizing context for both authenticated and non-authenticated audiences.
Some consumers will feel that authenticating and allowing their log-in data to be used for targeting and measurement is a fair and equitable value exchange for the digital content they enjoy. Others will choose not to log in, consent, or authenticate, instead remaining anonymous on the sites and apps they visit.
Each audience calls for its own unique strategy, so publishers and marketers will need to take a multipronged approach to maximize addressability.
2. Test and implement an addressability portfolio
While there are many alternative addressability solutions available to optimize for both authenticated and non-authenticated audiences, each comes with its own drawbacks.
We recommend implementing a portfolio of addressability solutions in order to maintain effective targeting, measurement, and attribution. An addressability portfolio provides options for engaging both buckets of addressable audiences and provides flexibility to choose solutions based on your business objectives and regional privacy policies.
Here’s a look at the key solutions for each audience group.
Optimizing for authenticated audiences relies on:
- Authenticated universal IDs, allowing for people-based marketing using a consented, anonymous online identifier
Solutions to optimize for non-authenticated audiences can be broken down into three categories:
- Inferred universal IDs at either the device- or site-level
- Google Privacy Sandbox, including the Topics API for targeting interest-based cohorts and FLEDGE for site visitor retargeting
- Publisher first-party data, including Seller-Defined Audiences and advanced contextual targeting
3. Take advantage of the addressable opportunity today
Though preparing for the eventual demise of third-party cookies and device identifiers is important, there’s already a significant opportunity in the cookie-restricted web today.
Browsers such as Safari, Firefox, and Edge account for 35% of browsing on the open web and already limit the use of third-party cookies. The majority of activity across iOS devices no longer carry IDFAs—in fact, we see just 34% of iOS bid requests on the Index Exchange platform contain an IDFA.
Testing new addressability solutions in these environments will not only help prepare for the future, but may also provide an immediate boost to publisher revenue and marketer campaign performance.
Proactively taking action now means a better digital advertising ecosystem in the future. Marketers will be better positioned to reach their desired audiences, publishers will be able to effectively monetize their content, and consumers will be increasingly able to retain control over their privacy.
Be sure to download the full guide, “Preparing for the Future of Addressability,” to learn more about the state of addressability today, key considerations to evaluating new solutions, and the steps you can take to get started today.
