On September 21, 2022, speakers from Kantar, Meta, Next Media Partners, Snap, VMLY&R, Wunderman Thompson Intelligence and XRGuild shared insights into how the Metaverse will impact marketers. They discussed implications for interoperability as well as paid advertising.
There was a combination of both upbeat and downbeat takeaways from the anchor commentators on the last day of the conference.
Few would argue that a solution for identity resolution is needed to effect cross-platform video measurement. However, connecting different digital devices to unique users and households is fraught with legal, technical, and organizational barriers. How likely are we to see some kind of interoperable ID system that all industry participants can and will adopt?
All agreed that just because something is technically feasible does not mean that it should be done—or will be understood and appreciated by consumers. (Example: Concerns that Amazon’s Echo is always listening in the background.) As alternatives to the current practice of behavioral tracking (with or without consumer awareness and understanding), ask: What are replacement forms of data? How can these be collected? At what cost? How will you activate such data? YouGov’s surveys point to the need to compensate consumers in exchange for their personal data. Next year’s IAB survey can be a “report card” on how well companies are managing this transition.
A Wunderman Thompson survey of 1,000 consumers each in the U.S. and U.K. found that concerns about data privacy rank 4th—behind only the economy, the COVID pandemic and healthcare. Most consumers see the collection and use of their personal data as an opaque process, creating a “negative halo” for companies they associate with this. Consumers generally do not perceive the benefits to them of sharing personal data and desire greater control—without necessarily knowing how this could be done. Mazda’s Brad Audet said that best practice in communicating about data privacy must start with a focus on the consumer, not the company’s data needs. Citing the example of Amazon, he urged that companies “co-create opportunities with customers” to use data for personalization that creates real value for them. Otherwise, their concerns will add to the current “cascade of distrust” in government and other large institutions.
In this moderated discussion for the track, Cross-Platform: Measurement & Identity, the speakers answered questions from the attendees about their respective presentations and discussed cross-platform challenges.
David Kingsbury reviewed data from his 2019 ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE presentation, and IRI’s subsequent advances to improve accessibility, targeting, and measurement of the digital invisible. This research has helped uncover a sliver of those invisible, i.e., households that move and are lost (either temporarily or permanently).
Research during the summer of 2021 revealed that the demographics of the digital invisible remained the same. Digital invisible consumers are more likely to skew low income, no kids, and under 34 years of age. They are part of the 13% of the population who move annually. Additionally, some consumers don’t want to be tracked. This population is not receiving targeted advertising and their purchases are not being measured.
Dennis Buchheim has a unique perspective from “two sides” of the ad industry. He leads Facebook’s Ads Ecosystem team after serving as CEO of IAB Tech Lab. Dennis shared a view on how the industry is grappling with the shifting regulatory, platform, and technology landscape. Only together can the industry understand these changes and create paths forward. As opportunities are evaluated to evolve how data is used, research will be critical in refining the industry’s foundational knowledge and providing tactical guidance.
As consumer concerns about privacy are growing and legislators are responding by introducing legal restrictions, marketers are focusing on contextual targeting (instead of cookies) to make their advertising more effective. Research by Integral Ad Science (IAS) has shown that the growth of contextual targeting is not only being embraced by marketers, but also welcomed by consumers: they prefer ads that match the content they are viewing – which makes them more relevant to them.
Truthset was founded 18 months ago to address the concern that attributes in Big Datasets used to define target audiences were not always accurate. Aaron reported that a female audience segment from a data provider that Truthset had examined turned out to be only 58% female. Truthset receives data on 2.6 billion IDs from 19 data providers each quarter and provides them with “truth scores” for the demographic attributes of each ID. The truth scores, which range from 0 to 1, represent Truthset’s estimate of the probability that an assigned attribute is correct.