Month: February 2020

Publishers have plenty of uses for third-party cookies — from syncing with ad tech and analytics vendors, through to making sure user logins work across their different domains — and began bracing for the potential of sites breaking on Chrome 80 launch day on Feb. 4.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. But that’s not to say the SameSite update has been straightforward.

For starters, it turned out Feb. 4 wasn’t SameSite D-Day after all. Instead, web developers needed to circle the week of Feb. 17 on their desk calendars for rollout — not that Google had made that entirely clear from the beginning.

“Many roll-outs, and all dangerous ones, are controlled by an experiment fraction that we change over time,” tweeted Google software engineer Michael Kleber. That tweet was in response to other members of the developer community who, surprised at seeing “Feb. 17” mentioned in a launch timeline update, figured the SameSite rollout had been postponed.

And entering week two of the SameSite cookie rollout, it’s still unclear what’s at risk.

That’s partly because the rollout has been limited so far, with Google planning to ramp up the sample set of users in the test over time. Eric Lawrence, a principal program manager at Microsoft, looked under the hood on Feb. 19., which suggested only around 1% of Chrome 80 users were affected by the SameSite tests at the time.

Chrome hasn’t yet (at the time of writing, on Feb. 21) provided details on the sample size of the SameSite rollout so far, nor the results of those tests, or the estimated time before that sample size reaches 100% of Chrome users.

Similar to Chrome’s January announcement about its intention to kill off third-party cookies “within two years” — but with no clear sign yet as to what the alternative will be — publishers and the wider online ad community are left in a tricky state of “wait-and-see.”

“The SameSite change has been a tiny preview of what’s to come over the next two years,” said Zach Edwards, founder of analytics firm Victory Medium. “Google got a trial run on the SameSite cookie change to prove that they could properly communicate Chrome browser changes that impact their Google Advertising competitors — and they failed miserably.”

Insider has been testing Saga with 20 different clients including running its own house ads for its premium subscription tier, BI Prime. As well as its pool of logged-in users, Insider has scale: Business Insider had 127 million monthly unique users globally in December according to Comscore. Stitching together different these data sets and systems has been complex, said Jana Meron, senior vice president programmatic and data strategy.

“We’re only bringing in deterministic first-party data,” she said. “It’s less about telling us the email address to target [audiences] with. It’s ‘did they fill out a mortgage calculator or take a survey?’ This data will inform the strategy which will inform audience targeting which provides insights. It’s an endless loop and all the data informs the content we create.”

For over a year the publisher has worked with first-party data-based data-management platform Permutive. The vendor’s DMP provides a single, unduplicated view of an individual across different devices such as desktop and mobile web and in-app. Insider first-party data is then mapped to each ID, based on how that specific user interacts with Insider’s sites, like what they read on its site, how often, whether they came from Facebook or Google search and on what device.

A strategic goal is to become more consultative to clients, said Meron. In a recent case for a financial client, wh typically used third-party data to reach its niche audience, Insider’s first-party data audience segment outperformed against the client’s existing third-party data audience segment by 11% on the client’s key performance indicators. As a result, the client renewed with Insider’s first-party data as core to the plan. The publisher didn’t break out the specific KPIs.

Insider declined to share revenue details but said Saga will grow programmatic ad revenue by growing the size of campaigns and increasing repeat bookings. According to Meron, it has already won the publisher new business. Insider will also save money by cutting down on third-party data sources. The publisher will offer Saga to all clients regardless of campaign size or spend and will be on every request for proposal from advertisers.

Previously, Insider would have been more reactive to briefs rather than being able to influence them, said Michael Ogunjobi, senior customer success manager at Permutive. “They have been building up that holistic view of audiences to compel advertisers to come on board,” he said.

Browser crackdown on third-party cookies and tightening privacy regulations mean that more publishers like Immediate Media and The Washington Post are flexing their first-party data targeting capabilities. Now, there has been a shift in behavior from the buy-side who are increasingly asking for more first-party audiences in RFPs. Publishers are seeing that demand increase, according to Permutive.

Rather than license the tool to other publishers and generate an additional revenue stream, like The Washington Post does with its first-party data targeting platform Zeus Insights, Insider will use Saga as a point of difference in the market. Insider said the investment in technology and training its staff has been significant.

“This is the vision we have for where we want to take business and be more consultative,” said Meron. “This is a move away from demographics and third-party data which has proven itself to be not very valuable. This vision precedes cookies and is more about a better product rather than a reaction to the industry.”

For Saga, getting a clear read on the whole audience on desktop and mobile has piqued agency interest, said Meron.

“If a publisher has phenomenal scale and can deliver good reach and frequency then they are in a good position if they can apply that comprehensively,” said Dan Chapman, managing director, products and solutions at Havas. The issue with any publisher’s own solutions, he cautioned, is coercing planners to use more than one audience targeting tool against multiple publishers and how that can scale.

Insider wouldn’t share how much the browser crackdown on cookies has impacted its revenue. On average, 46% of publisher traffic is no longer visible on the open marketplace across Permutive’s network in January.

In October, Insider told Digiday that mapping its first-party data to Permutive’s ID led to growth in programmatic direct deals, private marketplace deals and programmatic guaranteed deals. Both the volume of deals and the amount of advertising bought per deal has risen by double digits, in some cases triple-digits.

When the outbreak happened in China, it inadvertently created a boon for e-commerce as shoppers stuck at home bought their goods online.

Sales of fresh food on JD.com, which is partly-owned by Tencent, jumped 215% to almost 15,000 tonnes during the 10-day period to Feb. 2.

The outbreak has also triggered a spike in online sales of provisional supplies from those would-be shoppers concerned about keeping their families safe from a viral outbreak, including brands selling immune-boosting products. Online sales of disinfectant produced by the Reckitt Benckiser-owned Dettol rose 643% year-on-year between February 10 and February 13 on the Chinese e-commerce business Suning.com, for example.

“We predict it will be highly dependent on the type of product categories the company manufacturers, such as toys, baby-care items, personal care, household cleaning, which are often disproportionately manufactured in China,” said Jonathan Treiber, CEO of e-commerce-focused ad tech vendor RevTrax. “This compares to the huge swathe of food-based consumer goods manufacturers, which typically manufacture their products within a broader set of geographies.”

But the surge in online orders has also heaped pressure on businesses to fulfill them. In some instances, this pressure is getting too much for businesses and threatens to upend their e-commerce operations.

Executives from Procter & Gamble told shareholders last week that the coronavirus was putting pressure on their e-commerce business. As sales from stores that sell their products slide, with many either closed or open for shorter periods of time, the demand has moved online, said the CPG company’s chief financial officer Jon Moeller at a Consumer Analyst Group of New York event. While the demand for products is there, the supply of them is limited, he said.

“The operating challenges change with the hour, and of course the path of the virus is unknown, making it very difficult to provide precise estimates of impact,” said Moeller.

Transport routes have been severely disrupted as a result of areas across China being quarantined, while staff employed at warehouses to fulfill orders have been unable to work.

With the coronavirus scaring some advertisers from buying ads in parts of China, there’s less competition for advertisers still committed to running campaigns on platforms like WeChat. Several clients for digital agency Roast have elected to pause or significantly reduce online media spend in the impacted regions.

Automotive businesses have jumped on the opportunity. Mercedez Benz is running a campaign on the WeChat app that lets people see a 360-degree interior view of its GLB SUV. Meanwhile, Chinese automotive manufacturer Geely has recently launched a service that lets customers buy its cars online and get them delivered to their homes.

The disruption has even taken its toll on China’s most valuable company. Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang told investors earlier this month to expect a slump in sales from its core e-commerce business due to the coronavirus outbreak preventing its employees from processing and delivering orders.

The coronavirus isn’t the first time these sorts of disruptions have hit retailers and their customers. Long before this outbreak, the SARS virus in 2003 was a turning point for both Alibaba and Tencent. At the time, e-commerce was relatively primitive but as the outbreak left many Chinese suppliers with few brick-and-mortar stores to sell their goods, many turned to the online platforms that hadn’t been forced to close.

Single-sponsor verticals are not a new model for the Wall Street Journal. The publisher launched a partnership with Adobe in 2013 where the company was the sole sponsor for the CMO Today vertical. That partnership then ended after two years and Deloitte took over in 2016. Since then, Stinchcomb said the partnership has been renewed with Deloitte and expanded with the sponsorship of the Journal House in Cannes.

Stinchcomb said he sees this model as becoming more appealing to the Journal’s sponsors as they need traditional branded content from publishers is waning.

Brands “are building out their own content studios so the role that publishers traditionally played, which was to co-create or create the content on their behalf. There is less of a need for publishers to do that. What they need from publishers is a way to distribute that content in a contextually relevant environment,” said Stinchcomb.

The new vertical will feature both display ads and branded ads, but over time, he said he expects SAP to use the vertical as a distribution vehicle for its own content that they create in-house. The deal with SAP is for multiple years, however he wouldn’t disclose the exact length or the terms of the deal. He said, however, that if the sponsor didn’t want to renew at the end of the term, they would look for another sponsor, rather than shutter the vertical entirely.

The Wall Street Journal’s custom content studio, The Trust, won’t be creating any content for the vertical, according to Stinchcomb, however he said the account management arm of the division will be tasked with maintaining the partnership with SAP.

“Sometimes we’ll just be the [distributor]. That’s the reality of the branded content world for digital publishers,” said Stinchcomb.

While the initial purpose of custom content labs — to produce custom content for brand partners — will not be used in this project, Stinchcomb said he still sees plenty of opportunity for The Trust and isn’t worried about this division losing its viability.

“A lot of our growth is coming around custom events and custom moments where we’re helping sponsors of our events program their time,” he said.

Another area he said he sees opportunity is growing the consulting services of the group, which he said has already begun helping brand develop their own in-house content studios. “Maybe puts us out of work ultimately on the other side of the business, but it’s an opportunity in the short term,” he said.

The idea for the vertical was inspired by a conversation Stinchcomb had with SAP leadership at Davos two years ago, who thought this is an area of coverage that the newsroom thought would be significant enough to dedicate converage for.

“[It’s] a form of content marketing or even branded content, but it’s not what you think of when you think of branded content and publishers, like we’re going to create a video series or a series of articles. It’s a little more nuanced than that,” he said.

Currently, he said that programmatic and high-touch direct-sold advertising have together become a larger portion of revenue for the company than other parts of its businesses. This portion is also growing at a faster rate than the publisher’s overall revenue. He wouldn’t disclose the total amount of revenue coming from The Trust or the advertising business, however.

Stinchcomb said that the Journal will be creating more of these single-sponsor model verticals and sections this year, though he said it will in no way replace the other forms of advertising on the site.

“I think it becomes an important foundation for some of our bigger partnerships and emblematic of the fact that branded content or content marketing is going to start to take on a lot of different faces than it has in the past five years,” he said

At the Digiday Brand Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, we asked five prominent marketers about what’s keeping them up at night. Their concerns ranged, but one thing remained consistent: these marketers are ready to tackle these worries head-on.

Here are some highlights:

• Rachel Finley, content & community strategist at Hero Cosmetics, is kept awake by concerns about scale, particularly with influencer marketing. It’s one thing to maintain personal relationships and a level of intimacy with a set number of people — but what happens when that number goes from 100 to 1,000?
• Antonia Hock, global head of the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, wants to see a world in which business leaders better understand their power. She discusses people at brands and companies that simply punch in and punch out, and says that’s a waste of human energy.
• Ben Conniff, co-founder and CMO of Luke’s Lobster, names communication as his chief concern. He says he wants to ensure that all of his teams are moving toward the same goal — a constant challenge for a business that’s growing in multiple verticals.
• David Zane, managing director, marketing, NASCAR, stays up thinking about emerging platforms. He says the goalposts are always moving, and so it’s up to marketers to stay ahead and determine what constitutes success.
• Erica Chan, strategy and operations, North America B2B at Alibaba Group, says her team operates like a startup: that means worrying about prioritization and ROI. Being able to attribute cause and effect is difficult — and figuring out how to make that case compellingly is what keeps her up at night.