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Digital advertising and measurement are evolving fast, driven by privacy centric measures. These driving forces consist of changing legislation, growing awareness for data ethics, privacy enhancing browsers and hardware, developments such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox and data clean room solutions. Also, there are ‘new kids on the block’ introducing zero-party data technologies such as AI agents, customer questionnaires for data collection, personal data wallets where customers are in control of their data.
At the Privacy-Centric AdTech Summit, all these topics were explored by eight experts at an event attended by 180 professionals from advertising, marketing agencies, tech providers, publishers, and legal firms. Organized by the Data Driven Marketing Association (DDMA) and VIA, the event successfully delivered rich, comprehensive content from all relevant perspectives, ensuring attendees gained valuable insights from the most important players in the space. The total package made it a high end and rounded summit evaluated highly by the attendees.
As a member of both DDMA and VIA, Artefact’s Dirk Melief co-organised the event, recognizing the importance of the discussed developments in shaping our client consulting services for advertising and measurement strategies. Artefact’s presence and expertise reinforced our ongoing commitment to leading innovation in privacy-first digital marketing.
In this article, Jan Hendrik Fleury, Director Data Consulting at Artefact, provides a recap of the insights presented, including his personal observations.
1. Current Legislation is not Sustainable
‘Future-proof’ organizations either don’t use personal data or use personal data with the right consent. Consent must be given freely, informed, for specific purposes, explicitly, and with as little personal data as possible. A key challenge lies in the concept of being ‘informed’. To be compliant, we need to overload customers with information, such as privacy statements and cookie forms, resulting in the current situation where customers cannot and will not consume the information. This is a privacy paradox that is not sustainable.
2. Upcoming legislation
Next to GDPR and the Digital Services Act (DSA), there is new legislation upcoming: the Digital Fairness Act (DFA). This may introduce additional restrictions on dark patterns, extending transparency obligations from the DSA on all actors. Also, we might expect a ban on advertising to vulnerable customers. This raises important questions: What is the definition of a vulnerable customer and how do we exclude them from advertising?
3. Google Privacy Sandbox developments
Google is in close contact with many stakeholders in the advertising and measurement industry and has established a large and growing community for gathering input and testing. Under the Privacy Sandbox initiative, there are more than 20 new privacy enhancing technologies being developed. One of the things that caught my eye concerns a remarketing technology. Google’s Protected Audience API re-engages relevant audiences by anonymizing insights as shown below.
Also, I am pleasantly surprised by a Protected API case study where ad delivery performed similarly to current retargeting systems, even generating a higher CTR in some use cases. Who would have thought that a year ago!
4. Data-driven Persona’s at Ogury
Ogury offers a solution which targets personas instead of people, using customer questionnaires as the foundation. It also integrates data from contextual bid requests, open source and the Privacy Sandbox. This is also called a zero-party data solution. It uses data customers provide and translates it to usable information for advertisers to target a diverse range ofvarieties inpersonas.
Data-driven personas are an interesting addition to the traditional methods, one that feels future-proof to me.
5. Panel Data at Dentsu
Dentsu uses panel questionnaire data to target and activate audiences directly in platforms. With over 10.000 customer attributes – all cookieless, it uplifts campaign ROI through propensity models. The addressable inventory can be connected with walled gardens, data partners such as LiveRamp and Zeotap, open internet such as Quantcast and ID-less environments such as Airgrid.
The use case effectively demonstrated the significant impact of segmented creatives on conversion rates.
6. Marketing ROI Measurement with Just Eat Takeaway
Just Eat Takeaway (JET) is very experienced in holistic marketing effectiveness measurement. However, privacy enhancing developments are impacting measurement because of data signal loss.
Key takeaways from their case: Instead of a single source of truth, they are building a system of sources to unearth different aspects of the truth – what they call a Marketing Effectiveness Framework. Incrementality experimentation is the gold standard for effectiveness measurement. Meanwhile, privacy-centric click-based attribution is still good enough to make good decisions on an operational level. More accessible and better MMM solutions can help with portfolio-level decision making.
7. Data wallet with Jouw-ID
Other privacy-enhancing solutions are applications such as ‘Jouw-ID’ (a.k.a. ‘Datakluis), which offers customers full control of their personal data, ranging from demographics and interests to the companies they want to share (part of) their data with as shown below.
Jouw-ID’s wallet includes declared data, behavioral data, identity data and potentially could include verified official records such as driver’s licenses and medical documents.
While I appreciate the idea of control, I have two concerns. First, I’m unsure whether customers would be willing to store and actively manage their records and interests. It might work if they could do so effortlessly with a one- or two-click experience. Second, security is a major concern — if compromised, the risk of identity abuse would be significant.
8. How DPG Media Supports Advertisers in a Changing Digital Landscape
DPG Media is proactively addressing the challenges of the evolving digital advertising landscape by leveraging its first-party data, technology, and extensive media reach to support advertisers in a privacy-compliant, cookie-less world. Here’s how they are navigating this shift:
To conclude
Summarizing, the event offered the audience solutions and visions from many tech angles and POV’s in advertising measurement, making it a high-end and rounded ad tech summit. I am looking forward to the second edition next year to see where we are then.
