Why publishers are shifting to first-party audience data

Pub­lish­ers have long lament­ed that peo­ple come online to read their qual­i­ty con­tent and yet the “duop­oly” of Google and Face­book hoover up around two in every three pounds spent on dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing in the UK.

To add insult to injury, pub­lish­ers have accused the duop­oly of rou­tine­ly mon­etis­ing their sto­ries in search results and through social media shar­ing, with­out any reim­burse­ment. It was this angst that led to Face­book block­ing news con­tent in Aus­tralia before reach­ing a com­pro­mise and agree­ing to pay for con­tent. The deal was struck as both Google and Face­book are in the mid­dle of rolling out new sec­tions to their UK ser­vices that, for the first time, will pay for con­tent.

Hav­ing won the argu­ment on the prin­ci­ple of get­ting paid for use of their con­tent, pub­lish­ers are now being proac­tive on grab­bing their share of the UK’s adver­tis­ing pot. The tim­ing is per­fect with Google bow­ing to pub­lic pres­sure and prepar­ing to drop the track­ing cook­ies that aid adver­tis­ing tar­get­ing, but con­sumers have found intru­sive. 

As the old sys­tem of adver­tis­ing comes to an end, the year ahead is going to see a huge amount of upheaval as pub­lish­ers start col­lect­ing their own first-par­ty audi­ence data. This will include iden­ti­fy­ing vis­i­tors’ inter­ests by con­tent con­sumed and not­ing their email address, if they are logged in. Own­ing this data, and turn­ing it into high­ly defined audi­ence types, enables pub­lish­ers to sell adver­tis­ing direct to brands at high­er rates, mak­ing media own­ers less reliant on Google’s data and adver­tis­ing plat­forms. 

Publisher data improves ad revenue

Imme­di­ate Media, the own­er of many spe­cial inter­est sites, includ­ing BBC Good Food and Radio Times, is an ear­ly adopter. Chief rev­enue offi­cer Dun­can Tick­ell reveals con­cen­trat­ing on devel­op­ing its own data, via a plat­form pro­vid­ed by data busi­ness Per­mu­tive, has seen adver­tis­ing rates more than dou­ble. 

Tick­ell believes this extra slice of rev­enue is not com­ing from Google alone, but also the adtech providers that sit between an adver­tis­er and pub­lish­er and “gob­ble up data and rev­enue”. 

He points to a recent find­ing from a report by the Incor­po­rat­ed Soci­ety of British Adver­tis­ers and PwC which found only 51 per cent of the bud­get spend on an adver­tis­ing cam­paign actu­al­ly goes to pub­lish­ers. The rest is sucked up by agen­cies, plat­forms and adtech ven­dors, includ­ing Google. The most wor­ry­ing aspect is the report found 15 per cent of all cam­paign spend­ing is com­plete­ly unac­count­ed for. 

“We’re claw­ing back some rev­enue from every­one behind what publisher’s call the ‘tech tax’,” says Tick­ell. “It’s not only Google, with first-par­ty data and sell­ing direct­ly we can avoid a lot of these adtech busi­ness­es in the mid­dle.”

Oth­er pub­lish­ers wean­ing them­selves off cook­ies to pre­pare for a first-par­ty future are report­ing sim­i­lar suc­cess. Rob­bie Bates, head of pro­gram­mat­ic and data strat­e­gy at Hel­lo!, says adver­tis­ing for the lat­ter half of 2020 was 56 per cent up on the same peri­od the year before, now the pub­lish­er is “less reliant” on Google. He also claims brands can expect a 33 per cent lift in click-throughs on their adverts when audi­ences are high­ly tar­get­ed and bought direct. 

Sim­i­lar­ly, Antho­ny Hitch­ings, dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing oper­a­tions direc­tor at FT.com, reveals the site ditched work­ing with track­ing cook­ies sev­er­al years ago. Its most tar­get­ed audi­ences give the site a 44 per cent bet­ter yield.

Can publishers beat Google?

It all sounds like good news and to a cer­tain extent it is. How­ev­er, there is a “but”, Alex Brownsell, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try com­men­ta­tor and senior edi­tor at media researchers WARC, points out.

“This is a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for pub­lish­ers to step out of the shad­ows and take advan­tage of in-depth knowl­edge of great audi­ences, which is very attrac­tive to adver­tis­ers,” he says. 

“But col­lect­ing that data is very expen­sive and is prob­a­bly only some­thing a large pub­lish­er is going to do well. It’s pos­si­ble many pub­lish­ers just won’t have the resources and will keep on danc­ing to Google’s tune. It owns Chrome so will set the future rules of engage­ment in adver­tis­ing. It’s a pow­er­ful gate­keep­er.”

One option for pub­lish­ers is to band togeth­er rather than fight alone. This is already hap­pen­ing for local media via 1XL, and nation­al news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines at the Ozone Project. Although they still need to invest in data-gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties, com­ing togeth­er allows them to offer adver­tis­ers vast scale through a sin­gle plat­form. It is nec­es­sary, Damon Reeve, chief exec­u­tive at the Ozone Project, believes to help com­pete with the huge pow­er Google holds over them.

“In the days of print, pub­lish­ers earned mon­ey through adver­tis­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion,” he says. “The prob­lem now is Google is all pow­er­ful in adver­tis­ing and it con­trols dis­tri­b­u­tion; around 80 per cent of the clicks a typ­i­cal news pub­lish­er receives will come from Google and Face­book. We have a mas­sive year of tran­si­tion ahead of us because Google will make sure that what­ev­er it does next will suit Google, not pub­lish­ers.”

Publishers must work with brands on targeting

As for brands, Pete Markey, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at Boots, believes pub­lish­ers improv­ing their under­stand­ing of audi­ences and deal­ing direct­ly with adver­tis­ers can only be a good thing. The one aspect pub­lish­ers need to improve on, though, is tak­ing to the front foot and being more explic­it with brands about what they are doing to improve tar­get­ing via direct deals. 

“Brands will work with media own­ers whose own audi­ences fit well with those of the brand and there­fore allow the chance to deep­en rela­tion­ships and pro­vide a bet­ter expe­ri­ence over­all,” he says.

“So media own­ers can start to pro­mote the oppor­tu­ni­ty they present for brand engage­ment. Brands will grav­i­tate to this oppor­tu­ni­ty as it removes some wastage from tar­get­ing; it’s more laser focused.”

The switch to pre­ci­sion first-par­ty tar­get­ing is gain­ing trac­tion, but the feed­back is pub­lish­ers need to be more explic­it with brands about the ben­e­fits of deal­ing direct. 

Media own­ers prob­a­bly have the best part of a year, while Google works on a replace­ment for cook­ies. By the time a new sys­tem is launched, how­ev­er, the pub­lish­ers will have had the chance to both refine their direct-sell­ing capa­bil­i­ties and how they are pre­sent­ed to brands.

This gen­er­ous time­line means, by the end of the year, a par­tial shift in the bal­ance of pow­er between Google and media own­ers is on the cards.