“Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
We here at ALC welcome all perspectives and the discussions they create, for it is through dialogue that we learn and evolve. No two people are alike. Each of us brings a story and a set preferences and differences, of which we and our partners in marketing, advertising, and product development work to understand. In no case is it acceptable to let our differences drive the suffering of any individual. We are deeply saddened and angered by the injustices that have occurred in Minneapolis and historically across the US. We stand against racism and police violence. We stand for black lives and inclusion.
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This Week’s Update:
We have talked in the previous weeks about the impact COVID-19 has been having on our customers’ direct marketing campaigns.
Results have varied. Our primary insight on what to do has been “it depends” and the answer on results is “still being formed”. We would love to offer a more definite answer, but none truly exists. Each of us must put in the effort to understand the impact on each individual context. The good news is that we are seeing a shift back to normalcy. Here at ALC we saw our YOY total list order volumes dip 24% and 35% in March and April, respectively. In May the dip was only 14% and we see signs that June will be even less.
This week we would like to shift our focus to the ongoing changes in our industry, specifically the impact of the deprecation of 3rd Party cookies. It is a topic that is becoming more front and center with Google’s announcement that they are looking to end 3rd Party cookies in the coming years. And while our partners at Oracle and the Trade Desk have share perspectives that advertisers need not be too worried as the market will evolve to accommodate, we believe it is important that everyone understands the changes so as to not find themselves cut off from key audiences or beholden to the walled gardens like Google and Facebook. And publishers, for their part, must understand how they will monetize traffic, leverage data, and have a path forward.
Specifically, we believe everyone should understand the following:
- One of the core tenets of the internet, serving free content in exchange for relevant advertising, has relied on cookies as a key technology to facilitate this exchange.
- As consumer content consumption moves to non-browser based channels, and the larger browsers limit the use of 3rd Party cookies, the relevance and efficacy of cookies in enabling the content for advertising exchange or the recognition of customers in managing experiences will diminish.
- The walled garden platforms (Google, Facebook, Amazon) will continue to be able to demand a higher premium for limited audiences or customer access unless the advertising ecosystem can adopt an effective alternative identity solution.
To succeed going forward, each marketer must have access to an identity solution that allows them to work outside the walled gardens to maintain independence and economic viability. Any selected identity solution for people-based marketing needs to abide by the following core principles:
- Precision – an ID solution should be precise in identifying an entity, browser, device, individual or household
- Persistence – an ID solution should persist for a long period of time and provide consistent identification of any entity.
- Prevalence – an ID solution should be available for a large portion of the web traffic and be able to inform targeting and measurement decisions for a vast majority of impressions.
- Portability – an ID solution should be portable across different channels and business entities.
- Privacy compliance – an ID solution should capture and honor consumer consent and choice around the use of their data.
We also recommend that your ID solution not be reliant on singular identifiers like the 3rd Party cookie to execute campaigns, an approach which leaves advertisers vulnerable to regulatory and industry changes. Instead, we recommend a solution that considers multiple identifiers across multiple media channels to enable long term stability.
Should you look for more help on this topic, please reach out and we would be happy to help. Email us at connect@alc.com
ALC in Action:
We continue to work to support the efforts of so many with our data. To date some 45 organizations have engaged with our non-commercial COVID-19 offering and we are here to help as many more as we can.
If interested in ALC’s offer, email COVID19Response@ALC.com for more details.
Jason Bier has launched a petition that has now received over 750 signatures, asking the internet browsers, namely Google and Apple, to stop blocking emergency alerts, including those for missing and exploited children across 31 countries. The petition also asks the browsers to refrain from script blocking, which blocks advertising revenue from being generated by publishers through Google’s competitors. Publishers include religious and news websites. Journalism has suffered immensely during Covid-19, and the conduct of Google and Apple has exacerbated the harm by blocking revenue and resulting free content. Please sign this petition to add your voice to this important cause.
Here is the link to the petition. Jason Bier Petition
Articles of Interest:
Our insights are again only a small fraction of what is being shared out there. Here are some other interesting articles and opinions we thought to share to both inform and inspire discussion.
- Trusted News – In times of uncertainty, James Colborn of Verizon Media shares why news and trusted content is more important than ever and brands alignment with premium environments drives better business outcomes than avoiding news altogether
- SMBs Rely On Social Media During COVID-19 – Just Not The Paid Ads
Allison Schiff talks to how small business are turning to social media as part of their marketing mix to keep their message out and survive - Marketing Clouds thrive on noise in the CDP Space – Tasso Argyros, CEO & Co-Founder of ActionIQ talk about how clients are being forced to rethink their marketing strategies and need new data, analytics and orchestration capabilities to enable the new strategies
- Marketers Need To Optimize Across, Not Within, Channels – Tom Treanor at Arm Treasure Data talks to how the pandemic is accelerating marketers to omnichannel marketing to succeed
- What changes ( and accelerates) in ad tech during a recession – Seb Joseph at Digiday covers off on many of the changes marketer need to take into consideration and the new challenges to solve for, like scale in Connected TV and the need to better manage 1st Party Data
Positivity Press:
We can all use a little positivity in life. Here are some of the recent highlights from our internal Positivity Press that we wanted to share with everyone:
Tour our National Parks: Good news is that scientists have found that even enjoying nature virtually has profound benefits for our mental health. Take a virtual tour of the best parks in the US.
Volunteer Match – This page features virtual and on-site volunteer opportunities to aid communities impacted by COVID-19 (Coronavirus).
Submit Your Story – “The World From My Window” is building a global anthology of stories from isolation. Why not join in.
SGN – And whenever we can… a little more SGN from John Krasinski. That last content for a bit from him, but always puts a smile on our face.
As always, we look forward to keeping you up to speed with useful and actionable info that can help us all get through this together. Stay safe.
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