IAB versus GPT on Publishing's fundamental question

How do the humans compare to the bots when it comes to answering the key publisher question of our day?

We had a lot of conversations early last week about what media owners are doing to to safeguard the loss of the third party cookie. To have some fun, we asked Chat GPT the same question:

"Whats the best way for publishers to safeguard the loss of the third party cookie?"

Here's what we heard from the humans...  

• Invest in capturing 1P data.  While many other methods may prove viable and effective, first party data is a unique asset that publishers can capture and control. It should be worth $2~$5 per year per registered user and it will safeguard the future of monetization for medium and large publishers alike. This data also is the bridge to jus about any other revenue streams around data or audience sales after the cookie
•  Clean rooms are important and are the bell of the ball these days. However, the floodgates for clean-room generated revenue have not fully opened in the US. We heard a lot of buzz around Amazon's new clean room (both happy and suspicious) as well as the usual list of independents like Optable, Infosum, and Habu. It's apparent that true interoperability - or the functionality for a publisher using a clean room to collaborate with any other clean room system - will be critical to affordable, effective, and privacy-safe data collaboration with publisher first party data.
•  Invest in building and maintaining your own graph and data story. Many of our colleagues have started capturing  universal IDs (ID5, Unified ID 2.0, Ramp ID, Panorama, Fabrik, SharedID, ConnectID, Xandr, Amazon, etc.) along side their 1st party identifiers so that they to have their your own match tool. This empowers the publisher to not rely too heavily on any one identity vendor and their respective potential deprecation due to coming privacy regulation. This was music to GrowthCode's ears given our platform offering :)
•  It's back to the future with context. Contextual data will help drive the publisher value proposition. Contextual partners (the good ones at least) will help pubs drive value for buyers. Using quality classification will help you create, organize and match your audiences. While a full-blown DMP is unlikely to have a good ROI for most  mid-sized publishers, the one thing that is clear is that contextual data will be legal and valuable in the future as buyers return to leveraging publisher data for targeting.  

Now onto the AI responses. Here's what we heard from Chat GPT:

The loss of third-party cookies is a significant challenge for publishers, as it can affect their ability to track and target ads, personalize content, and measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. Here are some strategies that publishers can use to safeguard against the loss of third-party cookies:

•  Use first-party cookies: First-party cookies are those that are set by the website that the user is visiting. These cookies are generally not being phased out and can be used by publishers to track user activity on their own site. Publishers can use first-party cookies to gather data on user behavior and use this data to personalize content and target ads.
•  Implement alternative tracking technologies: There are several alternative tracking technologies that publishers can use to gather data on user behavior, including server-side tracking, browser fingerprinting, and device graphs. These technologies can be used to help publishers target ads and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
•  Build a direct relationship with users: Publishers can also build a direct relationship with their users by offering them incentives to opt in to tracking and targeting. This could include offering personalized content or access to exclusive features in exchange for consent to track their activity.
• Explore new ad formats: Finally, publishers can explore new ad formats that do not rely on third-party cookies. For example, native advertising, which blends seamlessly into the content of a website, does not typically use third-party cookies. Publishers can also consider using contextual targeting, which targets ads based on the content of the webpage rather than the user’s browsing history.

So how did everyone do? Agree? Disagree? Are the bots coming for us??