Publishers need to make the most of their own data if they hope to stand a chance against the likes of Facebook and Google.
This is the upshot from an Econsultancy and Signal report, which notes that 80% of digital publishers say they need better data-driven capabilities to help advertisers target their customers at scale, with 96% saying it would be valuable to offer an advertiser the ability to identify customers and allow those advertisers to target their customers in real time.
Warren Billington, managing director for Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia at targeting and data business Signal told AdNews that having the ability to offer advertisers targeting of known users is a way publishers can drive increasing CPMs.
“In terms of the opportunity for publishers today, if they start to allow their inventory to become addressable, so actually targeting know users and known segments with that data with an inventory connection, that's going to lead to publishers being able to drive increasing CPMs,” he said.
Publishers surveyed in the report agreed that they see the opportunity to turn the tide by improving their ability to recognise cross-device consumers, utilising in-the-moment intent data and import first-party advertiser data to generate unique inventory, and help brands reach addressable custom audiences. A total of with 88% of digital publishers surveyed said connecting visitor identity across devices and platforms would add a CPM premium.
Signal obviously has an interest in this game with the business having a platform which offers publishers these capabilities, however Billington explained that what is going to get publishers ahead isn't just getting a better grip on their data, they also need to work better with advertisers and each other in order to drive the type of scalable insights that the likes of Facebook and Google offer.
“The nature is as you become more targeted from a user perspective, that is going to reduce the available audience and it's going to reduce the scale.
“What publishers are looking to achieve is scale from a media perspective, that's why from our perspective the answer to that is where we need to start seeing collaboration in market amongst publishers, but also with advertisers as well.
“How do we create an alternative scalable kind of identity proposition an identity network which allows them this targeting of known customers to be achieved at some scale,” he said.
See the full report for yourself here.
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