Month: May 2018

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, COO at Goodway Group. In the past two weeks, I’ve been to two supply-side platform (SSP) summits and spoken in depth to more than a dozen publishers. I’ve learned a lot. In short,… Continue reading »

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A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem… AdExchanger: Origins AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part I) AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part I) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part III) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (The Conclusion) AdExchanger: Angels And Startups AdExchanger: Rumble In Arbitrage Plaza… Continue reading »

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cleaning The Nest Twitter debuted a set of political advertising policies it will have in place for the 2018 US midterm elections. Read the blog post. Political advertisers will have to verify their identities and that they are based in the US, either by… Continue reading »

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California agencies are starting to feel stifled by a new ruling that makes it harder to classify a freelancer as a freelancer, but there’s another issue ad agencies face: rising freelancer rates. Agencies are finding that freelancers are becoming costlier as project-based work becomes the cornerstone of agency work.

The rising freelancer costs can be seen across all types of agency work — from strategists to developers. Because the industry is choked of talent, some agencies have no choice but to meet freelancers at their pitch. Yet the consequences of doing so are not ideal. In some instances, it might result in agencies pushing up their own rates for clients, making them less competitive in the market. Or, because freelancers can come in to help on a variety of projects such as retainer projects or nonbillable pitches, hiring freelancers, and at escalating prices, means making less margin on work, according to executives.

Digital agency We Are Social, which employs about 30 freelancers, sees the fastest-growing rates coming from freelance strategists, who are charging as much as 50 percent higher than typical rates for comparable levels of experience, said Benjamin Arnold, managing director of digital agency We Are Social. The agency sees freelance strategists charging from $750 to $1,500 a day depending on the type of strategy.

“That upper end has definitely increased faster than inflation over the past 12 months,” said Arnold.

Josh Kelly, managing partner at branding and design agency Fine, said the agency is seeing all freelance roles become more expensive, but particularly with developers whose skill sets are in high demand.

“Their costs have gone up 20 percent or more as they increasingly find stable in-house opportunities and shift companies and projects a lot,” he said.

Meanwhile, Charlene Short, director of talent and culture at agency DNA Creative, said she’s seeing freelance creative directors now command a day rate of $1,500 to $3,000, a rate that wouldn’t have risen beyond $2,000 until a few years ago. Rates for creative freelance roles overall are seeing an increase of 30 to 50 percent since 2016, said Short. These rates jump higher if agencies work through staffing agencies because of overhead, with some firms charging as much as a 10 percent fee, according to several executives.

The increased costs are driven by the rise of more companies taking production and creative in-house, while hiring on more agencies for specific project-based work, according to Justin Gignac, co-founder of Working Not Working, a 6-year-old network site for freelancers. Gignac said that since he began freelancing in 2007 at agencies like Fallon, Wieden+Kennedy, Mother and Droga5, the industry has noticeably changed in what rates freelancers can now demand.

“The opportunity and demand for creative talent has dramatically increased,” he said. “The agency of record model is going away. The Nikes of the world work with so many different shops that need the flexibility of freelancers to be able to bring the right people in at the right time and go with the ebb and flow of project-based work.”

With all the options freelancers now have, coupled with the fact that the industry is suffering from an overall lack of talent, freelancers are finding that they can charge what they want for the skills agencies so desperately need.

“There is a talent crisis in our industry,” said Short. “People are burned out, tired of zero loyalty from agencies, especially from agencies that are owned by parent holding companies and tired of working for assholes. People are leaving the industry. Agencies are in a bind. We’re having to pay the high rates to get the talent we need.”

Things aren’t likely to change soon, said Short. “I work with plenty of freelancers that work for three months and then go to Costa Rica to surf for a month, and then back to freelancing. It’s become a way of life for them. So, for now, unless there is a big shift in our industry, I don’t see freelance rates changing anytime soon.”

With the higher costs, the question for agencies becomes whether to bear the rising costs of freelancers and feel better prepared for project work, but possibly charge more for their services, or operate with a leaner staff and learn to turn down projects they cannot fulfill. Most of the time, agencies are hungry for as much project work as possible.

“Agencies should perhaps learn to say no to more projects,” said Arnold. But until that happens, it becomes important to find and retain freelancers who are loyal and skilled, agencies said.

We Are Social, for instance, conducts a trial period for all freelancers they use to scope out whether a relationship with a freelancer will work or not, said Arnold. Agencies are also making sure they build out strong, long-term relationships with the freelancers they do work with, even if they are only working with them for a short period out of the year.

“I make sure that their experience at DNA is a positive one, so they want to come back, especially if I need to pull in a favor,” said Short. “Freelancers network all the time, so I want to make sure they have a positive experience at DNA, so they will want to come back or recommend us to other freelancers.”

Still, not all agencies are willing to pay exorbitant fees for freelancers, no matter what skill sets they possess.

Fine’s approach has been to price freelance work on the same basis the agency gets paid, so not hourly, but with fixed fees for each project or milestone, said Kelly.

One agency executive, who requested anonymity, said the agency rarely, if ever, will pay a freelancer a high-end fee because of the uncertainty that comes with hiring them. Some freelancers, this person said, are only working in that vein because they are out of a full-time job, so they do not end up producing the quality of work they charge for.

“The freelance space is, let’s face it, totally unregulated right now,” this agency executive said. “Anyone can register themselves as an entity, but there’s no sense of qualification or quality control over output.”

Lauren Ranke, director of creative recruiting at Wieden+Kennedy, which employs between 10 to 20 freelancers a month on its creative and design teams, said the agency is only paying freelancers higher wages if they have proven work and can offer something that no one else does.

“The freelance talent pool is growing very fast, but there’s a natural Darwinism to it,” said Ranke. “I find that there are a lot of unproven freelancers with decent but not amazing work. Those in the proven elite levels of talent can ask for more and as many projects as they want.”

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The General Data Protection Regulation is finally here. Earth has continued to rotate.

Despite a two-year grace period in which to prepare before enforcement of the law, most businesses have scrambled to get compliant in time for the May 25 deadline. In other words, it’s been a bit of a mess.

The law itself should be accountable for some of the blame: The bombardment of consent notices and requests for opt-ins or opt-outs over the last few weeks highlights just how broadly the law has been interpreted. The market is divided into those who have attempted to follow the spirit of the law to the letter, and those who have crossed their fingers and hoped for the best.

As with anything, there are winners and losers. Bluntly speaking, any business that doesn’t have a direct relationship with users is in for a difficult time.

Winners:

Google
It’s no secret Google’s GDPR approach has angered many in the digital advertising world, particularly publishers. Its decision to reveal its GDPR approach just weeks before the deadline, after publishers had spent the last year developing compliance strategies, has been met with iciness.

Google is not immune to GDPR pressure. The company has been under fire from Brussels for years and has a handsome collection of multibillion-dollar fines courtesy of behavior the European Commission has deemed anti-competitive. Its GDPR approach will likely be scrutinized in-depth, although whether individual-country regulators have the resources to take on a company with Google’s resources is another matter. Google will also likely be a core target of privacy activists.

Google is rightly being taken to task by the world’s biggest publishers. Regardless of its dominant market position, it will want to retain good relationships with the big publishers. In some cases, it will have to rely on publishers gaining consent on its behalf and can cut off third-party tech vendors that it deems noncompliant whenever it likes.

Regardless of size, it will take a brave publisher to cut off Google from its supply chain. Even the mighty Axel Springer, which has gone public about how it is weaning itself off relying on Google’s platforms, must still stay in the company’s good graces enough to be able to use its ad products, to sustain digital ad revenues.

Combined, Google’s core products DoubleClick Bid Manager, AdX, DoubleClick for Publishers and its attribution solution generate just under $5 billion net revenue, dwarfing its nearest competitors in each category, according to a recent post from U.S. publisher trade body Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint. “Google both creates the market and makes the market,” he said.

There is widespread concern that Google has used GDPR as a cover to gain competitive benefits, such as restricting the DoubleClick ad ID to its own platform and restricting the number of ad tech vendors that publishers using its CMP can plug in. “Google regards GDPR as a strategic play,” said Jon Slade, chief commercial officer of the Financial Times.

Publishers with muscle
When it comes to GDPR, size matters. While larger, known brands are likely to attract the eyes of regulators and privacy activists, they’re also well-resourced. That means they have the funds for lawyers and to create their own technologies such as consent management systems, and they have enough clout to push back on the GDPR terms being dictated by dominant U.S. tech platforms like Google and Facebook.

European media powerhouses like Axel Springer will be in a strong position. The publisher had the resources to develop its own consent management platform that it has opened to other publishers to use as open source, and it has enough clout in the market to stand up to the platforms. It also, like many other premium publisher groups, has a sea of consumer brands that people recognize.

Subscription-focused publishers
While most publishers can speak directly with users, either via email newsletters, sites, apps and other marketing messages, subscription publishers are clear winners. People are prepared to pay for their products and services. They needn’t harbor the fear on other publishers’ minds: that users may opt out or choose not to give consent. Therefore, they won’t have to worry about programmatic revenue deficits caused by a drop in the amount of audience data they can run advertising against. Publishers with registered users will also be in a strong position. Anyone that has logged in to use a media owner’s product has chosen to do so because they believe that product is worth it.

Lawyers
It isn’t for nothing that “ambulance chasers” has been the GDPR phrase du jour for some time. Overall, industry consensus is that in truth, everyone loses something — apart from the sea of lawyers who have been no doubt rubbing their hands in glee at the onslaught of business requests from terrified businesses.

The general public
OK, the current confusing sea of emails requesting users to opt in or check out new privacy policies is annoying. But look at the long term. GDPR has been devised to give people more control over how their data is used on the web. Some may care fiercely about how their data is being used; others may be unbothered by the reams of opt-in and opt-out requests they’re now receiving. Although there is a danger that site user experience will suffer for a time, ultimately, this is all intended to give consumers more control of their data.

Losers:

Ad tech vendors
Pity the Lumascape. So far, two U.S. ad tech vendors, Verve and Drawbridge, have exited Europe and cited GDPR as a core reason. There will be others who decide that risking the burden of costs in getting compliant, along with the difficulty of gaining user consent for multiple data purposes, is simply not worth it, especially if European revenue is a fraction of what it is in the U.S.

Ad tech vendors that rely on large amounts of traffic from other ad tech vendors will also likely have a tough time, as will vendors that rely on bid-stream data to create segments and audience. Retargeting companies will also suffer: Just look at how retargeting firm Criteo’s stock price has fluctuated over the last six months.

Vendors that haven’t bothered to cultivate relationships with publishers, agencies or brand advertisers that would in turn be willing to gain consent on their behalf: Good luck. If they don’t have the endorsement of their partners, they will also be kicked out of Google and Facebook’s ad ecosystems. Data management platforms will also take a hit.

Facebook
Facebook’s position is far harder to read than Google’s. It has the same advantages as any of the other big four U.S. tech platforms (Apple, Amazon and Google) and large pot of people who have to log in to use its products — which are a daily habit for many, whether it’s Facebook’s main app, WhatsApp or Instagram. Yet it has been under a very uncomfortable spotlight since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted.

Agencies
Agencies also do not have direct relationships with consumers, unlike the advertising clients on whose behalf they work. Therefore, gaining permission directly from users will be tough. Naturally, they will look to established partnerships with publishers to gain consent on their behalf. Larger agencies will be better equipped to cope with compliance demands, but they are also vulnerable to clients pulling programmatic spending in the immediate aftermath of GDPR.

Publishers overreliant on programmatic advertising
Savvy publishers have focused on diversified revenue strategies ever since print advertising revenues started plummeting. But there are still many reliant on programmatic revenue for a large chunk of income. Publishers that have asked users for informed consent are not expecting 100 percent opt-ins. Whatever percentage of their audience chooses not to opt in, they can no longer target with personalized ads. For that reason, certain publishers have estimated they will lose programmatic ad revenue, in the short term at least.

Small publishers
It’s only really the big publishers that have the resources and market position to contest the tech platforms. Case in point: Google’s meeting yesterday would have likely been well-attended by mid- to long-tail publishers that have no choice but to keep on the right side of the tech giant. As such, they won’t have much of a voice in all this.

US publishers with (albeit) small European operations
Some U.S. publishers that cottoned on late to GDPR have decided to just halt all ads from running on their European pages. USA Today has stripped its page of all ads and has claimed to offer a “EU site experience” in a disclaimer to anyone visiting the site from Europe. It’s easier to just turn the tap off rather than risk fines for what’s likely a very small portion of their revenue.

Facebook-reliant publishers
Digital media publishers that hedged their bets on posting to Facebook to scale fast are now regarded as a cautionary tale. Case in point: Facebook-dependent U.S. publisher LittleThings, which was forced to shutter in February after Facebook made its last algorithm change. While it’s fair to say that any publisher that hasn’t done enough to establish its brand or found a way to diversify its distribution beyond Facebook will struggle to attract loyal readers, that will only intensify post-GDPR. With people’s inboxes bursting with emails from every company under the sun that has ever used their data, consumer-consent fatigue is inevitable. Soon, giving consent, filling in email details or even just clicking to opt in to the sea of messages will become a chore. Publishers that don’t have well-known brands and rely on flyby readers clicking through to their sites from Facebook or other platforms will likely find readers don’t care enough about that one headline to go through a series of cookie notices and consent requests.

Consent dodgers
The confusion over whether a business can rely on legitimate interest or not has been intense. No one will know for sure until someone is reprimanded for it by the regulators. But in reality, it’s a stretch for any ad tech business that survives by legitimate interest will make the cut. Those who have relied on it entirely and made no effort elsewhere to gain consent likely know they don’t have a genuine legitimate interest to use personal data.

So, while some businesses will be able to claim a legitimate interest in using people’s data without having to seek explicit permission, no ad tech vendor that relies on bid-stream data to create segments and audiences can use the legitimate-interest loophole, and they will face a reckoning.

Get our complete guide to GDPR, including exclusive research, recent developments, checklists and much more. 

The post It’s here! The winners and losers of GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

In its quest to win back the love of influencers and stay alive in Facebook’s world, Snap has created an incubator for content creators called Yellow (aka the color of Snapchat).

Snap described Yellow as a “launchpad for creative minds and entrepreneurs who are looking to build the next generation of great media companies” in its May 23 blog post. The program lasts for three months, with the first group running from Sept. 10 to Dec. 7. Snap will provide funding; mentorship; networking events; workspace in Venice, California; and distribution through Snapchat.

The program could be an opportunity for a recent college grad, someone currently working inside a media company, a homegrown Snapchat influencer or anyone interested in creating mobile-first content. The publishers we spoke with had questions on what exactly Yellow requires.

Why is Snapchat doing this?
Snap hasn’t always been the most welcoming to even the homegrown stars of its platform. The company also angered some high-profile celebrities, including Rihanna and Chrissy Teigen, due to an insensitive ad about Rihanna. Meanwhile, average users are upset with the app’s redesign.

Those problems, among others, have potential applicants concerned about “being taken advantage of. Business insight doesn’t always come naturally to creators, despite how successful they may be as a creator,” said one interested applicant who runs a content studio.

One reason Snap created in Yellow is that it follows the company’s point of view that mobile is a new medium that requires custom content, according to a Snap spokesperson. A Snap spokesperson said Yellow also was inspired by the company’s media partners in Discover. It’s similar to Snap launching Truffle Pig with WPP to help advertisers create vertical video ads.

How much equity are they taking?
TBD.

Snap said it’s investing $150,000 in funding for each company accepted to Yellow, but it did not share any additional information on the terms of the investments.

“‘Investment for equity’ is so shady,” said Joshua Kozak, a fitness creator. “How much equity? Legit accelerators are upfront with their terms. This reads: ‘investment for as much equity as we can squeeze out of you.’”

A Snap spokesperson declined to give a specific equity percentage, but said it should be in line with other accelerators.

It would be quite ironic if Snap tried to screw with founder’s equity given the bad terms Evan Spiegel received from initial investor Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Do I have to make content for Snapchat?
Snap said it’s looking for people with expertise in augmented reality (within phones, headsets, glasses or other devices), interactive storytelling and narrative storytelling. Each storyteller should be focused on mobile.

Yellow also isn’t just a direct pipeline into Snapchat Discover. Participants may have an opportunity to be a part of that, but regardless, Yellow participants can make content for other platforms such Facebook, YouTube or Twitter (cc: Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann for V2).

How competitive is Yellow?
It depends on how many people apply. Snap is accepting 10 participants into Yellow. Participants can mean one person or a team of people.

In regard to background or experience, Snap is interested in filmmakers, editors, producers, writers, influencers, founders of early-stage companies, college graduates or anyone with a good idea in the mobile-first content space, a Snap spokesperson said.

Snapchat listed content themes on its website: beauty and style, business and entrepreneurship, design, esports, gaming, health and fitness, humor and comedy, journalism, news and politics, music, pets and animals, science and technology, social causes and activism, sports travel culture, youth and student life.

Will Snap pay for my moving costs?
No. Snap is requiring all participants to live in Venice, California, for the duration of Yellow, but it isn’t directly covering those costs. The $150,000 participants get could apply to that, of course.

Participants can be from outside the United States, but Snap won’t cover visa costs.

A Snap spokesperson said the company could direct participants to rental agents or other service providers. Snap also will allow people to keep earning an income, if they already do, whether it’s their old job or branded content. All participants just need to be committed to the full-time program.

The post 5 questions publishers have about Snap’s new content creator incubator appeared first on Digiday.

Personal finance publisher Kiplinger has never relied heavily on Facebook for distribution. But when it comes to growing its free newsletter, it’s found a lot to like about the platform.

The publisher has used Facebook ads to gather more than 30,000 new email newsletter subscribers in the past couple months. Subscribers, in turn, help to fuel Kiplinger’s fastest-growing source of revenue. In the past year, native advertising and branded content has grown from 5 percent of Kiplinger’s digital revenue to 20 percent, said Andy Nolen, the publisher’s director of digital operations and advertising.

Most of that growth comes from native ads that run in its free newsletters that go to 300,000 readers. It costs as little as $1 apiece for new newsletter subscribers, and Kiplinger makes an average of $3 on every subscriber it gets.

“We sustain that list and grow that list largely through Facebook now,” Nolen said. “We find that to be very good ROI.”

Kiplinger’s revenue comes from several different sources. In addition to digital advertising and a section of its site where it offers affiliate commerce deals, it also has paid newsletters and a print magazine with a circulation of over 500,000.

Kiplinger’s site gets around 3.5 million visitors per month, with about 55 percent of them coming through search, according to SimilarWeb data. According to Nolen, organic social media accounts for less than 10 percent of the site’s visits.

Based on the free newsletter growth on Facebook, Kiplinger wants to test it to sell subscriptions to its paid newsletters and other products. “We see [our Facebook page] as sort of store shelves that are empty at the moment,” said Ben Demers, Kiplinger’s social media manager. “Once we have that established, I’m going to start rolling our regular organic posts [about those products]. The ROI is untested on that.”

While publishers have noticed that the price to distribute branded content through Facebook has risen since Facebook cut the organic reach of publishers’ content in the news feed, the price of the lead ads hasn’t crept up in the same way.

Facebook has tried to help publishers acquire newsletter subscribers through its Instant Articles format. But those efforts never made much of an impact on Kiplinger, which found — like many other publishers — the format’s monetization prospects too limited.

To target prospects, Kiplinger uses Keywee to help find lookalike audiences similar to people who have liked Kiplinger’s Facebook page. It expects to spend more over time. “As native advertising grows, the ROI’s only going to get better,” Nolen said.

The post How Kiplinger uses Facebook ads to grow its newsletters appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook’s new ad-labeling policy has come under fire from publishers who are concerned that their news articles will be treated as political advocacy ads, and at least two — The Financial Times and New York Media — have suspended their paid media spending on Facebook in response to the policy.

Facebook has been under intense pressure over the spread of misinformation on the platform that bubbled up during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the policy is part of its response. But some news publishers spend on Facebook to spread awareness of their articles, and in the case of subscription-driven publishers, the hope is that some of that traffic will convert to paying readers. Industry association the News Media Alliance argued that the Facebook policy would label and archive paid news articles from publishers the same as political ads and asked for established news organizations to be exempt from the policy.

Facebook scheduled a conference call with reporters today to discuss the policy. Its executives have said Facebook recognizes that news about politics is different and was committed to finding a way to distinguish news from non-news content in the archives, but didn’t give specifics or a timeline.

Some publishers also have expressed concern over the requirement in Facebook’s policy that advertisers verify their identity — a stipulation that publishers say would pose liability risks for the publishers’ employees.

“We strongly believe to conflate news with advocacy is a very dangerous direction to take,” said Jon Slade, the FT’s chief commercial officer. “There’s also a lack of clarity around the liability.”

“For the time being, New York Media is pausing its paid marketing on Facebook for content and brand promotion unless we’re certain that it can’t be construed as political, and thus subject to Facebook’s ad archive disclosure requirements as we understand them,” a company spokesperson said. “We object to any grouping of quality news publishers with political advocacy organizations and propagandists, and believe it would impede our ability to serve our journalistic mission. We hope that Facebook will find an appropriate solution for quality news publishers.”

“This issue hits everybody in the news business,” said David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance. “I don’t know what working with individual publishers means because there is no individual solution. They always have this divide and conquer instinct, especially when it comes to news publishers. Why would they prefer to work individually with publishers? I have 2,000 news organizations in my network. They’re not working with all of them individually, certainly.”

The ads policy is just one front on which publishers are wrestling with Facebook. Facebook said it would favor news from high-quality publishers, but publishers have questioned its methods for defining such quality. Facebook has been testing a subscription tool for publishers, but the test has been limited and subject to restrictions. And of course, publishers continue to wonder if they’ll ever make any meaningful revenue from distributing their content on the platform.

Suspending paid traffic activity isn’t without risk. Publishers have been gradually getting less and less organic reach for their editorial content than they used to from Facebook. The trend intensified in January when Facebook said it would de-emphasize news posts in the news feed. But the platform is still a crucial source of traffic for them. Slade said the FT would look to redirect its Facebook spending elsewhere to make up for any decline in traffic it expected to see from Facebook.

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Google yesterday met with about 70 people from publishing companies and their trade groups to discuss their concerns about Google’s plans to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation.

Google organized the meeting after four trade groups — the News Media Association, European Publishers Council, News Media Alliance and Digital Content Next — sent a letter to Google complaining that its plans came too late for publishers to adequately react and posed several questions about how Google plans to comply with the European privacy law, which took effect May 25. But the four trade groups refused to attend, saying they wanted Google to answer the questions in writing first. With the company’s staunchest critics sitting out the meeting, the meeting itself was nonconfrontational, attendees said. So despite the boycott, the meeting just seemed to reinforce Google’s vast advantage in the Google-publisher relationship.

“It was their agenda. Google does what Google wants to do,” shrugged a publisher attendee, reflecting general publisher sentiment that Google has rammed through its GDPR policy without bothering much to hide its dominant position. The approach, from many publishers’ view, was less negotiation than explanation of the terms.

Another attendee came away appreciating the chance to meet with Google execs face to face and having with a better understanding of its position on GDPR. But while Google said the right things, publishers still worry that in the GDPR era, they are at the mercy of Google’s actions, this person said. “That was a real concern.”

About 100 were invited, according to someone close to the situation. In attendance were reps of trade groups including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Local Media Consortium. Publisher attendees included BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, The E.W. Scripps Co., Vice Media and Haymarket. AccuWeather and Weather.com also sent reps, according to an attendee.

The main meeting took place at Google’s headquarters in New York; others attended through video conferences at Google’s offices in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and London. Attendees heard from Bonita Stewart, Google’s vp of global partnerships; and Scott Spencer, director of product management, and were given a chance to ask questions.

Reps of the IAB, which Google belongs to, had positive things to say about the meeting.

Productive meeting at google today with many publishers around the table. Robust Q&A and positive momentum. Highlighted challenges of complying with a law when so little guidance is available. Open dialogue is a necessity.

— Dave Grimaldi (@dfgrimaldi) May 24, 2018

Google issued a FAQ and letter to attendees afterward. Among the topics covered were how Google will enable publishers to show non-personalized ads to European site visitors who haven’t given their consent to be targeted and why Google considers itself a “controller” of data, which publishers worry will give Google too much control over the publishers’ user data. Google also laid out a timeline, starting in early June, for when it will integrate into the industry standard set by the IAB. Like most things about GDPR, there’s much uncertainty about how regulators will interpret it, and Google also acknowledged that its policy may change depending on how the law is ultimately enforced.

Get our complete guide to GDPR, including exclusive research, recent developments, checklists and much more. 

The post ‘It was their agenda’: Google meets with about 70 publishers and reps over GDPR concerns appeared first on Digiday.

Publishers are pulling out all the tactics to encourage people to stick with them once the General Data Protection Regulation kicks in.

In keeping with the new law, publishers need to ask people for permission to collect and use their data, rather than risk fines that could total 4 percent of global revenue. As such, publishers have been firing off emails and writing consent requests for their sites, causing no small amount of consumer-consent fatigue.

There’s a broad spectrum of consent requests because the law is still wide open for interpretation. Some sites are blocking content before people give consent or simply informing them that if they take no action at all, that will be viewed as permission. Others are closing the door to European traffic.

Publishers have the tricky task of trying to keep readers informed without overwhelming them with lists of hundreds of possible third-party partners. Here’s a roundup of how publishers are approaching gaining consent in light of the new law.

The light touch
A number of publishers like The Sun, the Guardian and iNews are using discreet banners on their sites explaining they use cookies to improve the ad and site experience, with links to changing privacy settings. Clicking on these pulls up a host of verbose terms and conditions for new policies.

The half-screen approach
A few publishers like Vox Media are using dialogue boxes that take up nearly half the screen, asking people to accept the terms or change them in the settings before freeing up the space. Vox Media banners are detailed, and only allow a cookie or other tracking technology to be dropped if the “I accept” tab is selected.

MailOnline uses this approach, too, but the wording and tone is simpler.

The full-screen approach
TechCrunch, as part of Oath, asks visitors to change their settings or accept the terms before they view content. According to a spokesperson, the company’s new privacy policy, complete with a microsite and privacy dashboard, is a “stepping stone toward creating what’s next for our consumers while empowering them with transparency and controls over how and when their data is used.”

The ‘on yer bike’ approach
Interpretation of the law is murky. Some publishers are trying to avoid it altogether by blocking European audiences until they get more clarity. One example is WRAL, a local media company in North Carolina that gets 2 percent of its traffic from Europe.

As Digiday has previously reported, health and news lifestyle publication Well+Good is also taking this approach, with less than 3 percent of its audience coming from Europe. Entertainment news site Topix gets 10 percent of its audience from Europe, although because rates of ad blocking in Germany are higher than those in the U.S., this traffic is monetized less effectively, according to the publisher.

The going-dark approach
USA Today has stripped its European site of all trackers so it doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information, aside from whether or not the visitor is from the EU, and the company has turned off ads for European visitors. This may be most site visitors’ ideal situation, but forgoing this chunk of ad revenue is unlikely to be a long-term strategy other publishers will adopt.

Download Digiday’s complete guide to GDPR.

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