CHICAGO – The advertising industry is only just wrapping its head around the necessary and beneficial move from indiscriminate ad targeting to identity-based audience targeting – but now the solutions on offer for the latter already look like splintering.

That’s the view of one ad-tech exec who says advertisers may have to accept that what comes after cookies is several different solutions altogether.

But Ryanne Laredo, Amobee Chief Customer Officer, says that it’s perfectly possible to stitch together those solutions in a meaningful way, so that advertisers can benefit frmo an overdue upgrade to traditional ad-tech infrastructure.

Shifting norms

Three main trends are challenging accepted ad techniques:

  1. Third-party cookies are being deprecated.
  2. Privacy legislation like GDPR and CCPA are forcing advertisers and platforms to move to opt-in tracking.
  3. But advertisers and publishers may be sitting on first-party audience data, or at least an opportunity to collect it – more valuable than old methods.

Laredo explains why this emerging ecosystem will be an improvement, not a downgrade.

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“There’s so much in the news about the dire straits that our industry is in because of privacy and technology challenges that are pending or changes that are pending,” Laredo says.

“I have a different POV on that.

“What we previously had in our reliance on cookie  was not the best for consumers, and it also wasn’t ever fully realised potential. Cookies were really a hack on a hack and we need to do better.

“Every challenge gives us an opportunity to rethink what is the balance of personalization and privacy for consumers.”

Patchwork of solutions

Technologies are being put in place to enable that future, of course. But, thanks to that and to different marketers’ different data maturities, Laredo doesn’t imagine any single one of them being a direct replacement.

Rather, we are emerging toward a patchwork of solutions.

“I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all,” she says. “There are people who are data-rich who have one-to-one relationships, a lot of e-commerce platforms who already have the necessary consent to do highly personalised advertising, but, in those cases, they don’t necessarily have the opportunity to pass that consent outside of their own walls.

“A big focus is having an ability to just tie different solutions together because not everyone is going to choose this same identity partner.

“Then there are advertisers who I wouldn’t consider data-poor, but have less one-to-one relationships in a digital world with consumers and they must have a way to enrich the information that they have.”

Key considerations

Laredo says balancing interoperability for privacy, consent and identity solutions is paramount to advertisers’ success.

She is encouraging advertisers to consider three factors as they do so:

  1. Establishment: “What does your current one-to-one relationship look like? Is it necessary to maintain the level of information that you have about those consumers? Do you have their permission?”
  2. Enrichment: “How do you enrich that relationship with the consumer so they know that you care about their privacy? How do you have this two way conversation that says, ‘I care about your privacy, but I’m going to use data to make your experience better and that value exchange is understood and able to be’?”
  3. Interconnection: “Utilising the right technologies that can interact between partners to honour that relationship and that value exchange that you have gathered from your customers or from consumers as a whole.”

Partner for personalization

Just as there will be no one-size-fits-all solution, no one company in isolation can bring results to customers.

Laredo says Amobee relies on partnerships with data companies like TransUnion, Tapad and LiveRamp to enable “data-rich strategies”.

She says connected TV is going to be a big focus in 2021, after TransUnion published a study suggesting a 70% increase in consumers’ time investment in the channel.

You are watching “The New Media Reality: A Consumer-Centric View of Identity and Personalization Emerges,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Transunion. For more videos, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews