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How the next wave of monetization will usher in a transformation of the publisher stack and a transition of power (and data) back to independent publishers, as it reduces tech costs.
In order to respond to all of the changes within the industry, Publishers are going to need to deploy many different solutions that help to replace the single third-party cookie. Some of these solutions will be trivially easy, others will involve much more work as publishers build entirely new revenue models and seriously lean into the business of data acquisition.
The new stack will be agile, and ideally rentable so that publishers don’t have to overbuild as in past epochs of Adtech. Today, most publishers outside the largest vastly overpay for tech which they only use 20% of – and are locked into licenses that don't serve them as the business changes. Vendors that truly understand this reality and the dynamism of the next wave of publisher innovation will offer infrastructure-as-a-service to support.
Each of the channels in the diagram outlined below require a specific set of syncs and connections that require care, maintenance, and optimization. Most mid-tier publishers simply do not have the staff or budget to do so. As a result, they will lean into their core competencies while trusting vendors to deliver the optimal stack as-a-service so that their focus can remain on building great content, community and audiences.
The future monetization solutions include a variety of channels that need to be created, managed, then optimized – hence forcing publishers to deploy the new technologies in the stacks they rent or build, including:
- Ownership and management of the Publisher 1st party ID graph: Stating the obvious here, without the data publishers don’t have a strategy. If publishers don’t own and operate their own graphs, they will never take back control of monetization from the myriad of vendors that have made millions (billions?) on their backs.
- DMP capabilities will be needed to create segments and interests of the readers. These capabilities will allow the creation of seller defined audiences (SDA) as well as the segmentation of users into data sets that can be directly sold or licensed to demand partners and other marketplaces
- Identity Tokenization: Publishers will need to support a real-time infrastructure allowing data to be directly synchronized with a variety of demand partners, often in the server-to-server environment
- Customer Valuation tools, such as a CDP: Publishers will need to understand – say the value of the user they acquired from YouTube versus Snap – then understand the revenue contribution of each user in terms of their ad, affiliate, and subscription contribution (newsletter ads or standard content subscriptions).
- Sync and Connection infrastructure: to move in an agile way to test and scale new methods and channels, publishers need to have the systems in place to sync with partners, manage data within marketplaces and deliver it at the time of need without piggybacking on antiquated and privacy-risky tools such as the 3rd party cookie.
- Data Capture tools and strategies: the lifeblood of a graph is first-party data and all publisher short of the platforms are in dire need of getting good at this quickly and managing the user experience such that they acquire the handshake and consent with the user directly
While each of these methods will be more or less prevalent in each publisher’s business, the presence of many methods and the necessity to constantly adjust and tweak each to maximize profits will force all but the largest publishers to leverage a lean and agile publisher tool set that can be configured to suit the idiosyncrasies of the business and its pace of change.
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