Behavioural Targeting Should Be More Transparent Say UK Publishers

Some data released today from Improve Digital indicates that a majority of UK premium publishers believe better transparency around behavioural targeting will encourage acceptance by consumers. The poll was carried out at the recent AOP event, 'New Rules of Revenue'. 62.5% of respondents said the best way to address concerns around retargeting was to be open and transparent about how publishers use consumer data (see my EPTAB suggestion). Publishers also felt that users would be more comfortable with BT if they could be provided with more targeted and relevant ads.

A further 52 percent of publishers also said that third party vendors should be able to use audience data for retargeting, provided there was full transparency on its use. That is an interesting number, as it makes me think that either 48% disagree with the practice or they simply don’t have a data strategy. The reality is that publishers will have to use external parties to understand their data and use it effectively. How many publishers really know how to segment? Do they have the technology? Do they have the in-house resource to do it? Publishers need to get smart about their data and their audience. How can you effectively sell inventory if you don’t know your users?

There was an interesting piece this week from The Drift on how digital sales organisations need to look at their business as having three distinct areas: namely the page layer, the integration layer and the audience layer. Of the three the one that interested me most was the audience layer. In the post Doug Weaver suggested that “segregating and centralizing the audience selling activity inside your organisation” was a good strategic decision. The main reason for this is the move towards audience buying by demand-side traders. As data becomes more valuable than inventory it is almost a necessity now for publishers to either hire specialists to understand and trade their data or outsource these functions to third part vendors. To be honest monetising data is still a relatively new concept for publishers. But remember ad nets have been collecting data and using it to optimise inventory profitably for years. And how did they build these cookie pools? Yep, you guessed it: by collecting data from the publishers.

So now is probably a great time to start looking at all the options available. Those publishers that are sitting on a ton of data they can’t use, should be thinking about ways to trade with data hungry DSPs, agencies, ad networks and even publishers. Granted there is still no market to sell (suc as Blukai and Exelate), and there is still some confusion about the EU directive. But pubs must be more pro-active in getting together a comprehensive data strategy or they risk losing valuable revenue in the long run.