Advertising Guest Columns
4 mins read

Publishers’ data challenges for 2023, and how to tackle them

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In digital advertising, 2022 has been everything but boring. Namely, from a publisher’s perspective, the data-related challenges are quickly piling up ahead of 2023. Anton Liaskovskyi, CEO of AdPlayer.Pro explains more…

Despite its quick bounce-back from the disruption of the last few years, the global digital advertising market is dealing with new, serious challenges in 2022.

On the supply side, many publishers are facing complex tasks related to the notion of ‘data’, which encompasses both their users’ personal data and their advertising data as well – the attainability of their revenue goals in 2023 will inevitably depend on how these will be tackled. 

Access to Quality Data in a Privacy-Safe Environment

The importance of publishers’ compliance with regional and country-specific data privacy laws and regulations has grown immensely in recent years. And while most publishers have successfully adjusted their data processing practices to GDPR and CCPA, the looming possibility of the U.S. Federal Privacy Law (ADPPA) and soon-to-be new UK Data Reform Bill may complicate their operational management.

Not only does this mean yet another thorough audit of their first-party data collection policies (and their timely improvement, if needed), but also the growing urgency to select quality, privacy-first environments for the creation of merged datasets for ad purposes, too.

How to tackle this? The use of so-called data clean rooms will certainly be a working solution for niche-specific publishers, while larger players can stay focused on the upgrade of their in-house CX data platforms.

Interestingly, yet another postponement of the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome until 2024 may have both positive and negative effects on publishers’ data policies. On the positive side, the pressure to develop efficient, yet privacy-safe solutions fast enough has created momentum. On the flip side, the task itself isn’t going anywhere, and advertisers are likely to slow down the implementation and testing of publishers’ new first-party data tech.

Also, the ongoing ad tech market consolidation may open the way to developing new demand-side-driven identity resolution technologies, sophisticated enough to compete with existing solutions.

So stay tuned for… if/how fast the digital industry will expand the adoption of Unified ID 2.0 and Google Topics API in 2023.

Data Measurability Challenges

If you’re already tired of discussions around immersive advertising and NFTs, there’s a new buzzword, which is gaining more traction in online advertising – attention data measurement. While the value of viewers’ attention towards ad creatives, especially in digital video advertising, has always been huge, its measurability has often evoked doubts.

However, given the fast evolution of video ad tech solutions over the past few years, an increasingly bigger number of video advertisers, for example, are raising ad attention measurement to the top of the list of their priorities.

From a publisher’s perspective, this may mean the necessity to implement third-party tech into their digital properties or develop their in-house solutions instead. Both of these require excessive operational resources and put extra pressure on their website/app load speed, among other things.

How to tackle this? If your premium demand partner expresses particular interest in the implementation of audience attention measurement tech, selecting a mutually suitable vendor (and maybe even sparing the implementation costs?) could be a working solution for 2023.

And if it isn’t enough… Google’s announcement of the upcoming shift from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 is only adding to the list of urgent tasks, forcing publishers to begin their team’s GA4 training as soon as possible, or take immediate action and move their business to a totally different analytics platform.

How to tackle this? There’s no better time than the present to make a choice regarding a utilized analytics platform, and postponing it will only make things more difficult. In view of this, while the winter holiday season isn’t the best time for a big shift, missing the opportunity to do it in the first months of 2023 could be a mistake.

Sustainability Challenges

There’s one more challenge – the growing need for publishers to adjust and modify their data practices in order to reduce their carbon footprint. While the problem of climate change isn’t new, and the heated discussions on how to make more sustainable commitments in the digital ad industry are ongoing, the issue is gaining more importance.

Major advertisers, especially in the top-tier segments, are demonstrating increasingly greater interest in how their supply partners are adopting sustainability standards in their workforce and workflow management, as well as their data practices.

And while the solutions in the first two cases may seem pretty obvious (e.g. shift to a hybrid office, less travel with more Zoom calls), the necessity to process and analyze increasingly bigger chunks of customer data inevitably leads to the increase of data server load, hence adding extra carbon footprint instead of reducing it.

How to tackle this? Publishers will inevitably need to restructure their data practices at large, by changing their entire paradigm from “process all data, select what’s needed later” to “limit processing to selected data segments”. 

More importantly, reconsidering partnerships with hosting providers, i.e. opting for vendors who utilize renewable energy sources, would also be a good idea.

Anton Liaskovskyi
CEO, AdPlayer.Pro

Founded in 2016, AdPlayer.Pro provides publishers, brand advertisers & agencies with an ecosystem of advanced outstream video advertising solutions, powered by a robust ad-enabled video player technology.