How Publishers Can Build Sustainable Ad Strategies in 2022

By Doug Huntington, CEO of FatTail

Last year’s predictions for the state of the supply side of the advertising industry in 2022 were largely dour. The impending elimination of third-party cookies and other privacy changes will make it harder for publishers to develop robust audience profiles to drive granular ad targeting. Publishers find themselves in need of more powerful means of collecting their own customer data as well as new revenue sources and process improvements that will help them make the most of every ad dollar.

But publishers are coalescing around sustainable strategies that will propel them to success in the more privacy-oriented years ahead. According to Forbes and Cox Automotive, to name two examples, building first-party data systems, seeking additional revenue opportunities, and simplifying the creative process are among the top imperatives for publishers looking to build ad strategies that will set them up for success not just this year but over the long term.

Building first-party data systems

The death of third-party cookies on Chrome, the leading browser, will force publishers to double down on first-party data: information about audiences gleaned from publishers’ direct relationships with them. This data is more likely to comply with emerging privacy regulations because the publisher can ask the reader directly for consent. In addition, first-party data is likely to be deterministic and more accurate than the cobbled-together, often probabilistic data sets bandied about by third-party data platforms.

But the question is how publishers develop robust systems for collecting first-party data and then share that information efficiently and ethically with third parties. Forbes, for example, is building out a proprietary first-party data platform. The fast-growing part of Forbes’ business will allow the publisher not only to develop audience profiles based on their own information but also to share granular audience insights with advertisers. 

“We are going into 2022 with a strong focus on data and analytics by sharing with our partners what we’ve learned about their business, the audience that engages with their ads or their content, and the topics that most resonate with their target,” said Alyson Williams, SVP of digital operations and strategy at Forbes. “It’s great to see advertisers really focused on these insights in addition to the standard impressions or clicks.”

Similarly, Cox Automotive is developing an identity graph to combine its first-party online and offline customer data. With those expanded data management capabilities, Cox can control who has access to its data and what data they can view — simultaneously offering more value to clients and increasing audiences’ control over their data. Cox is also exploring data clean room possibilities. This would enable customers to onboard their data and insights into the Cox Automotive ecosystem to be used for activation across Cox’s broad suite of brands, said Bill Sapp, senior manager of ad platforms and capabilities.

Seeking additional revenue opportunities 

In addition to better understanding their audiences, publishers can craft sustainable ad strategies by exploring additional revenue opportunities. These can be sorted into two buckets: optimizing current practices and connecting with audiences in new ways such as e-commerce.

In seeking to optimize their current ad operations, publishers can court the full power of automation while not leaving behind the potential to drive higher value through deals. For example, Cox plans to invest in automating remaining manual processes, with Sapp noting that the company has only “scratched the surface” of what automation can do to maximize performance. But the company will also focus on monetizing impressions not sold directly via [RTB] programmatic channels. 

For its part, Forbes will be diving into e-commerce. This is part of a larger trend in which publishers realize the dormant value of highly engaged audiences — whom publishers understand as well as any other online seller — by selling products and services often related to the content readers are perusing on publisher sites. 

In essence, this is the promise of contextual advertising — advertisers reaching consumers reading about content related to their wares — combined with the frictionless buying potential of headless commerce. Readers do not have to go elsewhere to buy something they read about in Forbes; they can buy directly on the site, giving the publisher a chunk of the profit and a new way to monetize audiences.

Simplifying the creative process

Finally, advertisers can improve operations by focusing on streamlining the creative process. Despite the efficiency programmatic enables, getting ad creative developed and placed on a site — even in the case of native advertising, where the publisher may be developing the creative — is too cumbersome. 

“We are a high-volume team with quick turnaround expected, but there are too many steps, and the process can be a bit clunky around support for native ads, which now represents the majority of our ad opportunities,” Sapp said of Cox.

The typical creative process may look something like this: Assets are sent in a variety of formats and with varying degrees of compliance to client specifications. Parties manually sift through asset packs to identify workable elements, which then need to be resized. Assets then need to be run through a CMS tool before again receiving approval from the client, triggering multiple rounds of revisions.

This is not the best way to run ad operations in 2022. Accordingly, many publishers will seek to make the process more efficient for themselves and advertisers by seeking tools that increase transparency, reduce back-and-forth messages, and automatically show clients proof of results that facilitate payment. This is a question of not only efficiency but also providing the best customer experience possible, a potential differentiating factor for publishers in a tough environment. 

A new hope for publishers

The elimination of third-party cookies will indeed force publishers to get creative to prosper in 2022 and beyond. But increased attention to privacy is an overdue change, and it will propel innovations in first-party data products, revenue generation, and operations. With the right investments, publishers will be on a far more sustainable path come the beginning of 2023, delivering ad products that respect the end user and facilitate stronger results for advertisers.