Advertisers and publishers have an opportunity to build new privacy solutions that could set the industry up for years to come as cookies finally crumble to an end.
PubMatic vice president of audience solutions Alex DeSanctis says Google Chrome’s recent announcement that it would remove third-party cookies within the next two years gives the industry a chance to build a better alternative.
“It's a chance for us to update the infrastructure and to suit what we need today: privacy,” DeSanctis says.
“[I’m] thinking of it as a great opportunity for us to take a ‘privacy by design’ approach to targeting consumers.”
While the announcement has been welcomed by most of the industry, the unveiling of Privacy Sandbox as the alternative has been questioned by some.
DeSanctis says the industry should take this as an opportunity to build something better and longer lasting.
“In terms of Chrome and Privacy Sandbox, I think this is such an amazing opportunity for [the] industry to come together to really design solutions that are going to set us up the next 50 and 100 years,” he says.
“Why are we playing in Google’s Sandbox? This is an opportunity for the community to come together and form out solutions for each market.”
He likens the opportunity to the beach with much more room to play.
But while Google may be playing chess with how it approaches the ongoing privacy conundrum, DeSanctis says PubMatic has been busy playing poker.
Earlier in the year, just before Google Chrome’s announcement, PubMatic released its own solution.
Identity Hub helps publishers to monetize programmatically and ensure buyers can recognize and bid on their desired audiences as third-party cookies become more restricted.
“We’re looking at what's going to set this out for the next few years down the line - even past this Sandbox,” he says.
“With our publisher-centric approach, we've been building out [and] investing in new opportunities for publishers to be able to monetize first-party audiences in a privacy-safe way.”
Contextual advertising has become one of the most popular solutions for publishers but DeSanctis says this option is more than just sticking an ad for food on a cooking site.
With advanced contextual advertising, he says there are a range of insights that can help build an audience profile beyond just what they are reading on the page.
These insights include how they are engaging with content on the page and what other types of content are popular among these audiences.
Outside of contextual advertising, he sees offering an “ad stream” as another alternative which empowers the consumer.
This would allow consumers to opt in or out of certain types of advertising.
“There’s an opportunity on the outside as well to create this ad stream with what you're interested in and being able to opt in to specific types of advertising,” he says.
“That will help having express consent [from consumers] that want fashion ads, food ads or whatever it may be.
“I think there's going to be an opportunity for publishers and advertisers to come together and serve better messaging at the end of the day.”
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