THE LAST WORD: Wednesday
There was a combination of both upbeat and downbeat takeaways from the anchor commentators on the last day of the conference.
There was a combination of both upbeat and downbeat takeaways from the anchor commentators on the last day of the conference.
The IAB Programmatic & Data Center examined the impact of the loss of third-party cookies and identifiers on the digital advertising ecosystem, particularly on brands and publishers. This report measures the industry’s sense of preparedness, expectations for revenue and data-driven tasks, and progress into leveraging first-party data. Two studies were executed, conducted by Ipsos and McKinsey, surveying and interviewing key data leaders across categories.
Inaccurate responses to basic demographic and media consumption questions asked in surveys are very problematic, since these responses form the bedrock data points for all demographic research and media consumption measurement.
Jon Puleston analyzed some of the reasons why respondents are not truthful in surveys and the challenges raised. As a result of inaccurate respondent responses, the industry has been mis-measuring basic demographics and media consumption for decades.
Microsoft’s goal was to create a solution to bring independent data sources together. Their database contains 2+ years of data on millions of Microsoft’s identified customers, usage across 10+ core consumer products, and revenue (both direct and indirect, across these products). This database is also GDPR compliant. Protecting this data is a priority.
Raj Mann reviewed the evolution of Microsoft’s infrastructure. In the past, research was slower due the need for a lot of data manipulation and quality control challenges. The investments have increased extensibility of data and removed obstacles that prevented data access for researchers and improves collaboration. Microsoft’s infrastructure investments resulted in a 70% reduction in time for data analysis on the 600 studies Microsoft conducts annually.
Lucid is a research technology platform that delivers programmatic access to first-party survey data that can be used to drive business initiatives. Using survey-based methodologies to help clients understand the accuracy and effectiveness of their advertising efforts.
In her presentation, Bridget Bidlack shared recent research Lucid conducted on consumer sentiment on data privacy as it relates to the concept of a “free Internet” and sharing of data. Although the Internet is “free” to users, there is an inherent quid pro quo requirement: users must view ads and share data to use the Internet, and this “contract” isn’t always transparent.
In a 2019 Pew survey, 79% of Americans say that they know big companies track their online behavior while 59% say they don’t know how the data is used and have little control over how the data is used. In a 2020 survey, Pew found that most Americans want the right to permanently delete their health related data.
While attribution has been around two decades, a great breakthrough for digital, the deprecation of third party cookies is likely to have a significant impact. Options to MTA include: walled gardens, focused on one channel only, and data clean rooms such as those operated by the identity companies. Cleanrooms are data intensive but much better than single channel walled gardens.
Moderator Jorge (TikTok) asked the panelists three key questions:
Xandr’s Peter Doe reinforced the omnipresence of bias in TV measurement as he outlined four key areas of bias in assessing DirecTV’s (DTV) set-top box (STB) data for its national data-driven linear TV advertising. Noting DTV’s relatively low sampling size (7M STB homes) has a high level of bias when measuring for national TV viewing, Peter provided a top-line overview of Xandr’s viewership data methodology relevant to advertisers and marketers working with big datasets.
Scott introduced Marc Pritchard to the ARF stage with a discussion about the most important marketing and advertising measurement challenges in the industry and Procter & Gamble’s priorities in approaching solutions. While the perpetual fragmentation of the media ecosystem is complicating accurate measurement across platforms, advertisers still have the same simple questions, according to Marc. The consumer is the center of it all – how many people are advertisers reaching, how often are they reaching them, and how effective and efficient is the advertising itself?