On the first day of this year’s IAB Audience Connect, we spoke with Angelina Eng, vice president, programmatic and data center, about the current state of data in marketing and the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s new report.
Carla Rover: How has the current “state of data” changed the way advertisers think about the audience, measurement and compliance?
Angelina Eng: Given the current “state of data,” our industry has to rethink our approaches to how we target consumers, deliver relevant ads and measure effectiveness with privacy-first solutions. The companies we interviewed all agreed that rebuilding consumer trust and communicating the consumer value exchange are top priorities.
CR: Please tell us some of the biggest compliance and data privacy issues facing advertisers.
AE: They are:
One: how to comply with five new privacy laws in the span of a year.
Two: When a consumer opts out of “sales,” that likely includes measurement and frequency capping. So even if you deliver an ad that does not involve the sale of personal information, there is still a challenge to measure it and frequency cap delivery.
Three: When a publisher or advertiser independently engages a measurement company or DSP as a service provider, it cannot measure, or frequency cap insofar as those activities require a combination of personal information, which is prohibited by the CPRA. The CPRA adds contract requirements for third-party, contractor and service provider agreements and will result in a major effort to amend contracts by Jan. 1.
Four: Certain parts of the digital adverting supply chain that involve the disclosure of personal information do not typically have governing contracts (e.g., pixels in the ad creative or disclosures from the advertiser’s ad server to the publisher’s ad server). Putting in place new contractual relationships will be a critical challenge.
Five: New state privacy laws include additional user controls over the use of personal information and sensitive personal information, which must be built into compliance plans.
CR: How has the advertising landscape evolved over the last five years with respect to the challenges facing advertisers?
AE: Over the last five years, we’ve moved in a direction where privacy regulations and consumer privacy require us to rethink the way the advertising ecosystem collects and uses data to target, measure and optimize. Advertisers are looking for alternative solutions beyond the current third-party cookie and moving towards privacy-preserving solutions such as CDP, Clean Room and CMPS. In addition, advertising needs to shift away from 1-to-1 personalization and measurement and embrace cohort-based solutions and probabilistic attribution.
CR: How are marketers and advertisers adjusting to the ever-changing digital landscape and new challenges around data?
AE: Advertisers are prioritizing rebuilding consumer trust and testing privacy-preserving technologies. They are currently evaluating various cookie-less targeting solutions, such as Identity, Cohort, and Contextual targeting. However, they realize that the way they measure performance will be difficult with ongoing legislative and platform changes. The fragmentation of state legislation is also making it difficult for advertisers to keep track of the regulations.
CR: What does the new State of Data report cover this year, and what are some topics that it delves into?
AE: First, investing in deterministic first-party datasets (data from logged-in, “known” audiences) remains vital. Yet, in most instances, this only represents about 20 percent of potential consumers. Marketers need proven, probabilistic solutions to target and measure the 80 percent of consumers who are not part of their first-party data.
In addition, creating consistent measures and protocols that work inside their companies and with external partners has become a major issue. In the face of rising complexity, the majority of respondents agree a “one size fits all” approach spanning multiple jurisdictions is probably necessary. But there is a significant trade-off: failing to leverage data that is fully permitted in certain states means lost opportunities.
