Message from Our CEO: Google’s Commitment to Consumer Privacy Is the Publisher Advantage We’ve Been Waiting For

By Doug Huntington, CEO, FatTail

We embrace Google’s commitment to help publishers “thrive in today’s privacy environment.” We take to heart their reminder that we, as tech providers, are here to serve the interests of publishers and their advertising clients, not the other way around.

Google has spoken. We are going to put consumer privacy first. If the writing was on the wall before, it is now flashing before us in neon lights. Social and regulatory pressure will only get stronger. Profiling in any form, as part of groups or otherwise, will be closely scrutinized.

This growing momentum to do the “right” thing as it relates to privacy will initiate a flight back to quality and encourage and reward trusted relationships between premium publishers, advertisers and consumers. It is, after all, their interests that matter most. Everything we do and build should be designed to further the bonds between them.

We see a lot of disruption on the horizon, much of it aimed at the indirect Real Time Bidding model. While the open auction market will still have its place in the ecosystem, there will be a marked shift of interest in favor of direct deals delivered through programmatic pipes with trusted partners. We expect increased interest in programmatic direct from advertisers and Demand Side Platforms as part of a cookieless strategy. 

Technologies will quickly emerge to enable similar decisioning, operational efficiency, and scale for direct markets as exists today for indirect programmatic markets. These technologies will automate price and inventory discovery and provide low-cost transaction processing.

Much of this technology already exists within the publisher tech stack. It just needs to be “opened up” to the buy side. Google’s announcement should serve as a call to action to demand side partners to work with publishers to connect directly into their ad management platform for direct access to premium inventory.

All of this is good news for our partners. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks about ideas and projects we have been working on in anticipation of this “new” advertising paradigm. We are in favor of anything that gives publishers more control over their inventory and data and buyers optimal decisioning, measurement and low-cost execution, all while protecting consumer privacy. It is an exciting time to be helping publishers thrive.