In this guest article, Brandon Lee, Director of Publisher Development, Audience and Data Sales at PubMatic tells us why a solid relationship with your sell-side platform is mutually beneficial and key to future-proofing your business.

When it comes to data and identity, as with everything, Asia Pacific is a fragmented market. The maturity of the data footprint and identity adoption in Asia Pacific is at varying stages of implementation across the region.  

This is partly due to differences in government policies – most governments are aware of the urgency to review or roll out a robust data privacy act and implement a legislative framework to protect its citizens. However, they must achieve a balance of privacy protection and permitted data usage to ensure the sustainability of their data driven digital economies. The result is that every data provider and user, which includes media owners and advertisers, needs to understand not just their local legislative framework, but also adhere to those in place in all the countries they operate in. The resulting complexity has had a major impact on our data reliant industry.

Despite the potential headwind, media owners need to continue to inform advertisers about their audiences and provide behavioural insights to be competitive. This need has driven the emergence of a raft of privacy compliant identity solutions to meet the requirements of both parties. Each solution can be unique and geographically specific, so must be carefully reviewed and its suitability for the organisation established. As yet, no ‘silver bullet’ has been developed – one solution that meets all the identity and addressability needs of all parties. And while industry bodies are in the process of establishing standards with initiatives such as ‘Seller Defined Audiences’ and ‘Data Transparency Standards’ to avoid market confusion and drive consistency, the reality is that a portfolio approach is required to achieve the required outcomes that work for all parties.

A forward thinking sell side platform (SSP) can play a pivotal role in supporting both media owners and advertisers navigate the new world of data targeting. An SSP can help manage the nuances of the various privacy regulations as it assists with the monetisation of the media owners’ digital inventory and data assets. Media owners can maintain full control of their own first party data and benefit from a more streamlined operational workflow to mitigate data leakage or breaches. This allows media owners to focus on their other business priorities such as privacy consent management, customer experience and generating new revenue channels.

Advertisers can also benefit from having a collaborative relationship with media owners through their sell side platform technology partners. They are directly integrated with the media owners and connected to all of their buy side technology counterparts whom the advertisers use. This places them in a unique position in the digital supply chain; to forecast and only send advertisers the media owners’ inventory that matches the audiences that the advertisers would like to reach. An optimal match rate improves the efficiency to reach the desired audiences and reduces media spend wastage. The majority of the sell side platforms also offer a transparent commercial model with no additional fees when facilitating data exchange between the two parties. This can drive better campaign performance and a positive return of investment of marketing budgets.

Future proofing is always high on the agenda of every business and embracing a privacy first and collaborative position with your SSP is a significant step towards adapting to the new status quo in our fast changing landscape.

TAKEAWAYS 

 Advertisers: 

• Explore all the addressability solutions that a media owner offers   
• Demand fees transparency and more efficient workflows from your technology partners to drive higher return of investments and profitability  
• Achieve optimal audience match rates for your digital marketing campaigns by implementing data targeting through sell side platforms  

 Media Owners: 

• Collaborate and be open to data sharing with your relevant technology partners and advertisers while respecting privacy laws 
• Review each identity solution for its suitability for your business   

• Create a portfolio of addressability solutions and consider supporting industry standards like ‘Seller Defined Audiences’ to maximise flexibility and monetisation