The digital advertising industry is in the midst of a titanic shift with challenges and opportunities alike on a number of fronts—from audience addressability to privacy frameworks shifts and beyond.
Ogury recently hosted a Sydney breakfast as part of its curated event series, Perspectives, which brings together media leaders, agency executives, and brand strategists to explore the future of digital advertising. In Sydney, attendees discussed challenges ranging from privacy-first innovation to signal fragmentation in depth, sharing insights and best practices in an intimate, influential setting.
B&T was among the lucky attendees at the event. While we’re not at leisure to give you the full low-down as the event was held under Chatham House rules, we can give you some select nuggets to help your business navigate the impending changes.
Changes in use of data
The first, and perhaps most important, cab off the rank on the day was a discussion on the looming second tranche of changes to Australia’s Privacy Act.
The changes to the Privacy Act have been a hot topic for some time in the industry (and if you’re not across them, then where have you been). But with the second tranche of measures due to arrive soon, privacy is more relevant than ever.
Just a few years ago, privacy was often a largely back-office function helmed by compliance teams and lawyers. Now that has changed, with privacy becoming a mainstream concern.
The first tranche of changes to the Privacy Act included increased penalties for breaches of the rules and a statutory tort giving individuals the right to complain about serious invasions of privacy.
Another tranche of changes is expected, which could impact on how businesses handle data. It could have significant impacts on a number of fronts, the panel said.
How To Stay Ahead
The panel had a mix of expertise with agencies, brands and adtech platforms all represented. However, there were a range of views on a variety of topics facing the industry.
For instance, two of the panellists were in broad agreement about the ways they’ve reassessed their addressability strategy given recent changes to audience identifiers.
“In the past, we’d really tried to focus on and observe what our customer data would tell us—email addresses, their location, age, data created through their usage of our services and purchase data. But we run into scale roadblocks, and privacy reforms have hindered the usage of that data,” said Jacqueline Vo, marketing manager at VGW.
Now, they’re combining first-party data with alternatives, including working with Ogury on personified advertising. Personified advertising, to be clear, is not personalised advertising. It uses Ogury’s exclusive surveys which provides it with self-reported zero-party consumer data that informs its target targeting. Combined with contextual and semantic signals, as well as bid request data, this can provide a powerful view on consumers—who they are and what they’re looking for. Plus, as the user data is self-reported, personified advertising is a powerful tool without the risks that other forms of digital advertising are facing.
“A couple of years ago, we pivoted to double down on zero-party data being a key focus of our data modelling strategy… We’re feeling very confident that it’s going to be significant in the next few years,” said Chris Manson, Ogury’s country director for Australia and New Zealand.
It’s a stake in the ground that’s providing results in the market, too.
“We had to take our first-party data strategy and look for tools and vendors to help us build personas of our target audiences, including Ogury… it’s volunteered data, so you don’t have any inference. You’re not doing any guesswork,” said Vo.
Thinking more broadly about harnessing zero-party data could be a significant defender of growth.
“As signals disappear, create new ones. That’s what we’re doing,” said Manson.
“We’re building these signals at a placement level instead of an environment or website level or instead of trying to connect it to one person. Find new compliant, future-proofed signals.”
Some have suggested data clean rooms as a means to address the effects of privacy changes. However, for one of the agency staff on the panel, the solution doesn’t work in Australia. Or at least for most businesses due to a lack of scale.
“It’s a significant investment for a brand to get them up and running. But they only serve a very small percentage of Australian advertisers because very few have the number of records and volume of data to make it worthwhile,” said Sorcha Doran, programmatic solutions lead at iProspect.
Both agency staffers on the panel said there is a significant opportunity for agencies to become trusted advisers on zero- and first-party data strategies.
“We help a lot in terms of how you segment the value of first-party data. Clients talk a lot about ‘optimising for lifetime value’, but most don’t even have a good understanding of what the lifetime value of a customer is. There’s a lot of work we do consulting around that and trying to explain the uses of first-party data and what clients can expect from it, as opposed to just segmenting and activating,” added Doran said.
Personalisation: a red herring?
There’s an important note here, too. Much has been made of one-to-one personalised advertising at scale. It has dominated comms from the world’s largest ad firms and many leading marketers. But might the halcyon days of predicting one-to-one personalised advertising be over?
“We can start to move away from this whole notion of one-to-one personalisation. I think that’s dead,” said Manson. “Do people really want a fancy, personalised ad to them specifically? I think we can get a bit carried away with these things.”
“People said, I expect personalised advertising, so we all said ‘Let’s personalise the hell out of it,” said Greg Cattelain, national head of biddable media at Spark Foundry.
“But all they want is a product that is even remotely relevant to them and if they engage with a brand, after purchasing, stop advertising to them! As far as it goes with personalisation, we can kind of overcook it,” said Cattelain.
It’s here that personified advertising can have significant benefits for clients. There’s no risk of intrusion on users’ privacy but relevancy for customers is ensured. When many are scrambling to find new signals, help could be closer at hand than you realised.
Much of this, however, needs to be couched in arguably the second-greatest shift the Australian digital ad industry has ever seen: generative AI. It’s still somewhat early days for the technology’s applications in creative and media planning and buying. However, in search, the chatbots are already starting to rip up the rulebook.
“AI and the changes to search will shorten the consideration window,” said Doran.
“We’ve been working with partners to create affiliate and influencer content that can become credible sources for AI. We’re also investing more in awareness channels,” said another.
“But it isn’t simply about what you produce. It’s about what others produce about you in a trusted and authoritative way,” said Cattelain.
“Brands are going to become more important than ever,” said Manson. “In a way, chatbot results will give you options to choose a brand, so if you still have a brand connection, then that will still win out in the end.”
What was clear from all the panellists, however, was that first- and zero-party data will only become more important, not less, in the months to come. And while the gaps between brands that have their data sorted and those that haven’t might not be immediately apparent now, it soon will—and with material business impacts.
It also seems that the days of personally identifiable individual users at scale for targeting might be over. That’s likely a good thing for the industry—the word “creepy” was used more than once on the panel, after all. But it also presents agencies and brands with a significant first-mover or at least a fast-follower advantage to use tech, like Ogury’s personified advertising, to find addressable, relevant audiences while maintaining scale and, of course, privacy.
Find out more about how Ogury can help you meet the coming challenges facing digital advertising.
