Changes in election and privacy laws aren’t the only things that can help increase direct buy digital sales this year. The folks who make web browsers have stepped in with changes in how ad trackers can follow consumers – which can only help publishers.
These and other suggested changes are going to affect political ad targeting – not at some future point when laws take effect and regulations have been approved – but now, as we head into the 2020 election cycle.
The big driver here is Apple, whose Safari browser no longer permits the wholesale use of cookies.The Firefox browser has similar blocking. This is important because the wholesale buying and selling of this tracking information, so-called “cookie pools,” is a vital part of online voter targeting.
Some may console themselves with the fact that Google, with its Chrome browser, hasn’t been as aggressive but that’s bound to change. Google and Apple compete head to head in the mobile market – Android v. iPhone – and Apple is doing a pretty good job of showing up Google in the “don’t be evil” argument to consumers. Respect – defense, even – for user privacy is part of that effort.
In other words, many of the technologies that political advertisers depend on – cheap bought banner and video ads, targeting voters using cookie pools – won’t work as effectively six months from now.
Within the ad tech community, there seems to be one common theme: given these changes, buying ads directly from outlets is safer and more effective than relying on ad exchanges or networks.
Spot-On’s been prepared for these changes for a while. That’s because we know that political buyers don’t always know how to reach outlets directly or, even more frustrating, have little time to research the outlets talking to their voters.
That’s why we built our Pinpoint Placement buying platform, which automates direct buying and provides transparency and security for buyers and sellers.
We’ve got clients ready to test things out and are looking for publishers to join our publc beta testers.
Interested? Send an email and we’ll set you up with a demo and introductory package.
