Hazel Broadley, Author at Lexical Llama

Privacy Sandbox: keeping the conversation going in 2024

The introduction of Google’s Privacy Sandbox and impending deprecation of third-party cookies are reshaping the ad tech industry – which is undergoing arguably its most significant transformation in a decade.

Two recent industry debates, hosted by The Women in Programmatic Network and IAB Tech Lab respectively, brought together key stakeholders to explore the implications of these changes.

Here’s our key takeaways on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

1. The impact on revenue and reporting

One of the most pressing concerns raised during these meetings was the potential impact on revenue and reporting. For publishers, for instance, “the yield gap between Chrome and Safari inventory is about 25%,” according to one participant.

This suggests that while the removal of third-party cookies may not be as catastrophic as some fear, it will undoubtedly require adjustments to current monetisation strategies.

But time is of the essence. As one industry leader pointed out, “buyers should look at what’s happening to their reporting now.” Shifting to Privacy Sandbox will necessitate new ways of tracking and measuring ad performance, which could pose challenges for advertisers used to relying on third-party cookies.

2. The need for testing and engagement

The IAB urges the industry to start testing tools, emphasising the importance of being prepared, with one participant advising: “if you haven’t started testing yet, IAB Tech Lab has, alongside its [Fit Gap Analysis] report, provided a bunch of tools to help.”

The sentiment was echoed by others, who stressed the need for the industry to actively engage with the changes. As one participant noted, “it’s important to start talking about it internally within your organisations and at least form a steering group, or a collection of two or three individuals, who are focused on it.”

3. The challenge of resource allocation

Transitioning to Privacy Sandbox is not only a technical challenge, but also requires resources to manage. As one participant noted, “this is a serious time suck and an unnecessary burden in many ways.”

Smaller publishers, in particular, may struggle to allocate the necessary resources to navigate these changes. “Publishers might be looking at one or two tech heads [to oversee the transition]. And smaller publishers, who also have less resources to put on direct sales partnerships, are therefore really reliant on the open marketplace and being able to monetise inventory that they have.”

4. The role of Google

Google’s role in this transition has been a topic of much discussion. As one industry leader pointed out, the tech giant has “inserted a new layer of ad tech with literally no oversight, no responsibility, and no contracts.” This raises questions about transparency and governance in the new paradigm.

The sentiment was echoed by others, who expressed concerns about Google’s dominance in the industry. As one participant attested, “quite a lot of us are heavily reliant on Google.”

Indeed, this reliance on Google underscores the importance of ensuring the transition to Privacy Sandbox is fair and transparent.

5. The potential for a new advertising model

Despite the challenges, some industry leaders see the opportunity for a new, more effective advertising model. As one person admitted, “maybe the way we as an industry have been running targeted ad campaigns wasn’t actually that perfect anyway. Maybe there was a huge amount of wastage. Maybe it’s not been great for the planet. Maybe there are better ways of doing this.”

This sentiment suggests a potential silver lining to such a transition. While it will undoubtedly pose challenges, it’s without doubt an opportunity for the industry to reassess current practices and develop more effective, sustainable advertising models.

Google’s response

In a further development, Google posted a riposte to the IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox Fit Gap Analysis, acknowledging their effort while pointing out perceived inaccuracies and misunderstandings.

Google emphasised that the Privacy Sandbox aims to enhance user privacy while supporting digital advertising, noting that it’s not designed to be a direct replacement for third-party cookies or cross-site tracking. Instead, it aims to adapt and invent new approaches to meet business objectives without compromising user privacy.

Google addressed technical assessments, clarified misconceptions, and highlighted areas where ad tech providers also need to innovate on top of the sandbox. It also welcomed further collaboration and feedback from IAB Tech Lab and the wider industry, reaffirming its commitment to phasing out third-party cookies by the second half of 2024, contingent on resolving remaining competition concerns.

The road ahead

The transition to Privacy Sandbox is a complex process that raises many questions and challenges. However, it also presents an opportunity for the industry to reassess current processes and develop more innovative ad solutions.

As we continue to navigate this shift, it will be crucial to keep the discussion going and engage with the tools and resources available. The future of digital advertising may be uncertain, but discussions like this will provide valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

As one industry leader aptly put it, “whichever way you look at it, it’s going to be an interesting year.”

Indeed, the journey to cookieless solutions promises to be just that.

Tackling the attention deficit, one impression at a time

Adtech, Data / By Hazel Broadley

As up to 10,000 ads continue to flood our screens every day, the fight to gain real human attention has never been so rife.

But as this figure rises – while attention spans remain the same – the chance of us seeing an ad inevitably diminishes. This results in what we call the attention deficit – something the ad industry is striving to overcome.

But how do we begin to measure true attention, let alone improve it?

Combining viewability with attention

For years, the industry has focused on standardising metrics around viewability, i.e., how much of an ad is visible on screen and for how long. And this is still important. After all, you can’t engage with an ad if you can’t see it.

But the industry is beginning to recognise that ‘viewable’ does not equal ‘viewed’. In fact, as consumers, we ignore almost 35% of all programmatic display ads. And so it’s become clear that viewability metrics alone are not enough. They are more like ‘hygiene’ metrics rather than predictors of quality. And that’s why we need to bolster this campaign insight with attention data.

Steps to leveraging attention

As Rob Hall, CEO at Playground xyz explains, there are generally four steps to leveraging attention.

First, you need solid research. This should be from your own campaign data, but also learnings from other brands who have tested the impact of different ad formats, content types, devices, channels or targeting strategies on attention metrics.

Second, once you’ve gathered this, you can use it to enhance your channel planning, by creating and scheduling campaigns that have the best chance of performing.

Third comes the task of actually measuring attention, by tracking key attention metrics such as hover rate and touch rate on a mobile device, plus more traditional performance metrics such as CTR, bounce rate and conversion rate.

And finally, to have the best chance of engaging your audience in the long term, you need to be able to optimise in real time according to what’s working and what’s not. This kind of dynamic creative optimisation (DCO), focused on attention, will be a key driver of campaign performance over the coming years.

Using data across TV, desktop, tablet and mobile, we can measure a whole range of attention metrics. But perhaps the most prevalent is Attention Time.

The new metric in town

Attention Time is important in any campaign because it measures how long a user is physically eyeballing the ad. Once you’ve measured this, you can then look at a host of other user activities, such as clicks, cursor position, touch rate, scroll rate and depth, audio on/off, volume etc.

Measuring engagement with eye-tracking data

As Lumen Research’s MD Mike Follett suggests, eye tracking data, used at scale across different channels, shows that “when users do look at an ad, it tends to perform really well”.

There are a number of attention technology partners on the market including Lumen, Playground xyz, Amplified Intelligence and Adelaide, that can help marketers determine true engagement through two main types of eye-tracking measurement: proxy-based and gaze-based.

When testing creative or context, gaze-based (or eye-gaze) metrics are generally thought to be a more accurate method than proxy-based metrics. This is because they demonstrate that a user has actually engaged with an ad. This data comes from vast opt-in panels of consumers allowing eye-tracking cameras to follow the path of their eyes across the screen as they consume the open web.

By combining this with the other user activities above, you can get more granular with each impression, and optimise the ad creative or format more effectively.

Now is the time to tackle the deficit

When looking for an attention partner, be sure to ask them:

how they define attention (e.g. do they include all user actions?)
what kind of eye-tracking they use – gaze-based or proxy-based data, or (preferably) both
and how long they will apply optimisation to ensure the most accurate measurement

As the range of attention metrics grows, so too does the need for industry standardisation of these metrics. But for now, there’s no time to waste when it comes to experimenting and A/B testing with different creatives and formats. This way, you can get ahead of the curve before attention-first campaign strategies become mainstream, and make every impression count.

If you need help sharing your thoughts on attention with the world, we’re here to help. Chat to us today to learn more.

This article was originally posted on Digilah (November 2023)

The third-party cookie is crumbling: what’s next for publishers?

Leave a Comment / Adtech, Technology / By Hazel Broadley

The third-party cookie has enabled marketers to serve targeted online ads for the last two decades, allowing websites to remain free, while ensuring content publishers are paid for their work.

But now, in response to privacy concerns and new regulations, web browsers are quickly deprecating these snippets of code. Apple blocked third-party cookies by default in Safari, while in January, Google announced a complete replacement in Chrome by 2022.

Despite this, the majority of digital advertising still relies on them. In response, we recently spoke to leading industry experts about the future of the ad tech ecosystem. We asked: how smaller publishers in particular can adapt.

Here’s what we found:

Dare to diversify

There isn’t yet a predominant replacement for third-party cookies, so we don’t know where (or when) the industry will settle. In the meantime, there’ll be a fracturing of ad tech. The key strategy for publishers during this transition phase will be to sell ad inventory in multiple different ways.

The most promising solutions avoid falling foul of both data laws and privacy-conscious tech developments:

Subscriptions. While this may be supplemental to ad revenue for smaller publishers, it’s crucial to renew focus on building a first-party subscription base. The advice from industry leaders is to offer a value exchange and make users feel like an exclusive member of a club.

Contextual intelligence. Contextual targeting serves ads based on the content of the webpage (e.g., training shoes on a fitness forum), whereas behavioural targeting uses individuals’ browsing activity. Although behavioural targeting has come to dominate the web, there’s little evidence that it improves revenues. Meanwhile, AI and machine learning have drastically improved contextual methodology, earning it the moniker ‘contextual intelligence’. Many industry leaders think it’s worth betting on this supercharged comeback.

Data clean rooms. These are a legally compliant and accurate way for publishers to continue using behavioural targeting. They can compare their first-party visitor data with those in ‘walled gardens’, e.g., Google and Facebook, to optimise ad matching. However, clean rooms can be expensive and therefore not necessarily viable for publishers with smaller datasets.

Edge Computing. Marking the age of “zero party” data, this data-conservative approach is becoming a popular way for publishers to sell remaining inventory.

Data is collected and analysed directly on the user’s device, rather than on a server, which allows publishers to serve behavioural ads while completely respecting the user’s privacy.

Test and test again

With so many options available, validating their effectiveness will be just as important. Chris Hogg, EMEA Managing Director at data management platform, Lotame, stresses that now is the time to start testing.

“Test solutions and strategies while third-party cookies are still around to compare against. Ask for proofs of concept around Safari and Firefox inventory. The fact we don’t have cookies in some of the other browsers presents a good opportunity for publishers to test out solutions and tactics today rather than later.”

Consequently, publishers will need to be far more involved when it comes to their audience data. Mattia Fosci, Founder and CEO of edge computing solution, ID Ward, urges smaller content providers to approach data analysis with both partnerships and off-the-shelf technology.

“While it may not be viable to hire a full-time data analyst, don’t underestimate the importance of analysis on your bottom line. Publishers should have more control of their audience data, but they do not need to build their own in-house solutions… Instead, publishers should work with partners that protect and enhance their relationship with their own audiences.”

Turn obstacles into opportunity

While ad tech’s brave new world is an uncertain place, one thing’s for sure – it puts publishers in a much stronger position than before. As David Reischer, Head of Product at edge computing solution, Permutive, explains, “The death of the cookie is a huge opportunity for publishers to course correct on what has happened, with their data being aggregated at scale, repacked and sold as audiences or models.”

Now, publishers can use their first-party data to bring brands even closer to audiences. By being prepared, respecting privacy, and fostering user loyalty, the entire industry stands to benefit from the change.

Head over to What’s New in Publishing to download the full report.

Image courtesy of Pezibear

Is deepfake technology a threat to society?

Leave a Comment / Data, Technology / By Hazel Broadley

You’d be excused for being sucked into the recent hype as one of the most famous actors in the world joined TikTok. The 53-year-old is seen practising his golf swings, falling over in a store, telling anecdotes and performing a magic trick with a coin. Already, the account has 11 million combined views and a following 383,000.

Only… it isn’t Tom Cruise. These videos are highly sleek deepfakes – the latest technology causing a storm across the world.

What are deepfakes and how do they work?

Deepfakes are highly realistic videos or audio recordings that look and sound like the real thing. They are constructed using a new application of machine learning called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in which two deep neural nets are trained in tandem based on the way our human brain works. Both are trained with same data, but each with different a different task.

Input real video and audio data of a specific person and the software recognises patterns in speech and movement. Introduce a new element to the software such as someone else’s face and voice, and a deepfake is born. As with most AI applications, the amount of data available determines the sophistication of the end product. This explains why Tom Cruise – one of the most photographed celebrities – has become a number one deepfake target.

Potential dangers

So far, deepfakes have mostly been created or used by amateurs on social media platforms. However, their future potential to be used in a malicious manner is of real concern. Experts suggest deepfakes are an imminent threat to the erosion of democracy. In an era of fake news and clickbait, widely-circulating deepfakes, such as those of highly authoritative figures making believable yet false claims, is detrimental to reputation and public trust. Deepfakes have the power to skew our perception of reality to such an extent that genuine reality is something we plausibly deny.

Deepfake software applications such as DeepfakesWeb and Faceswap are increasingly accessible to the public with no experience needed to get started. In the wrong hands, deepfakes can easily be used to enter fake events as evidence in court tribunals, as well as posing personal security risks to data currently protected by face and voice recognition. As deepfakes mimic and transcend security barriers, they leave the door open for increased malware and cyber attacks.

There is a strong likelihood that criminals will use deepfakes in the future, for instance in phishing attacks, or in extreme cases, to blackmail individuals for ransom. With the technology being used for such basic ruses as imitating the voice of a family member or friend asking for a money transfer, deepfake technology is undoubtedly establishing smoother routes of operation for cybercriminals – at an alarming rate.

Net positive for humanity?

Using state-of-the-art technology, deepfakes hold considerable potential for everyone, regardless of who we are or how we communicate. In a 2019 campaign for Malaria No More UK, deepfake technology simulated David Beckham delivering an anti-malaria message in nine different languages. Here, the positive global impact of deepfake technology was evident whilst enabling influencer marketing to reach the next level.

Moving away from media, deepfakes are also on track to deliver revolutionary benefits within the healthcare sector by aiding the development of new disease treatment. Researchers have already trained algorithms to create ‘fake’ MRI brain scans that are just as accurate in detecting brain tumours as algorithms trained using real medical images, but without using real patient data.

The potential benefits of deepfakes to society mark exciting tech prospects, equipping us with the ability to impact at scale and speed. However, as the tech becomes more widely available, so too does the opportunity for misuse. We need to be questioning its morality and safety within our society now, before it’s too late.

How to make your SEO plug-in happy (and work harder for you)

Leave a Comment / SEO / By Hazel Broadley

There’s a lot to think about when writing your business blog. An SEO plug-in – Yoast, Wix SEO Wiz, Rank Math etc – can help maximise your blog’s reach, but no software can do it alone. But there are a number of steps you can take to improve the quality and readability of your content – and engage your audience – without breaking the bank.

Two billion websites are competing for attention

The Google search engine is the go-to platform for 92.71% of all online searches, and captures information from an estimated 2 billion websites. That’s a whole load of competition. But this is where clever use of your SEO plug-in, and a targeted approach to writing copy, will help focus your online efforts – rather than wasting time trying to turn those red crosses – the problems your plug-in flags up – into green checkmarks.

Some of the common issues an SEO plug-in might flag up include:

· Using the passive voice

· Long sentences

· Long paragraphs

· Lack of subheadings

· Readability

· Strength of your focus keywords or phrases

· Broken links

· Website load times

Writing more effective copy and avoiding some of those red flags really is fairly simple. Here are just a few tips to keep your plug-in happy and make sure your blog works harder for you.

The key to better copy

One of the first things to eliminate is the passive voice where possible. If you’re not sure if a sentence uses the passive voice and you want to avoid your plug-in telling you off, add the phrase ‘by zombies’ to the end of your sentence. If it still makes grammatical sense, you’ve used the passive voice. Example: ‘A question was asked’…’by zombies’. That’s the time to turn your sentence into the active voice, for instance: ‘He asked a question’. (Or, if you’re writing a zombie apocalypse novel, ‘The zombie asked a question’.)

Something else to think about is ‘the rule of three’ that novelists, graphic designers and professional communicators often use. The premise is that the human brain most easily grasps ideas in threes: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’; ‘Ready, Steady, Go’; Three Little Pigs. Short, effective, memorable. Structuring your blog post this way will focus your writing. Keep it simple, sharp and to the point.

Consider the following from George Orwell: “Never use a long word where a short one will do”. Clean, clear sentences help your reader find the information they need and pinpoint how you can offer a solution to their problem.

Holding your audience’s attention

Sentence length is another red flag for a plug-in. The best writing uses a varied sentence length: too many long sentences in a row can be tiring for the reader. Too many short sentences can make your text feel disjointed. The same is true for paragraph length – you’re more likely to lose your audience if they can’t find the main idea quickly. You only have a short time to capture their attention – around eight seconds – before they move on. A little variety enhances your post and keeps your reader on the page.

Don’t forget subheadings…

Subheadings allow your audience to zero in on the ideas and solutions they’re looking for and will help you clarify the message you want to convey. Strategic subheadings capture attention and also make it more likely your reader will stick around to read your post for longer than those precious eight seconds.

…Or keywords

A plug-in will allow you to test out the keyword you want to use for your post, help you find related keywords and see how many searches a particular word or phrase garners on Google. Once established, it’s important to use these keywords throughout the post. Having the freedom to quickly play around with this saves you valuable time while boosting your chances of increasing your post’s ranking.

It’s the little things

These are just a few simple tips to optimise your content and boost your online presence. Maximising how you use those helpful plug-ins makes a big difference in your search rankings. If you’re still feeling unsure about how you can enhance your blog’s reach, get an expert to to check your draft before you upload, and before your plug-in bears its red flag.

Image courtesy of Alexas_Photos from Pixabay

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Hazel Broadley