As 2020 comes to a close, this will go down as quite a pivotal year for adtech for many reasons. And all of this during a global pandemic! But ultimately whether you are a very technical adtech person or the CEO of a large brand, 2021 is going to bring about a new way that digital advertising in particular will operate. I wanted to pick out 5 core things that everyone should be keeping a close eye on in 2021.

Data Legislation is just warming up

The impact of data legislation and how data is handled in a privacy first manner should not be underestimated in any condition. GDPR had a colossal impact on certain vendors in Europe when it first came out in 2018, but seemed to strengthen the Walled Gardens even more. CCPA on the other hand brought a glimpse of what this would look like in California for the USA but at a much less strict level.

But do not think for a second that this is the end, for the fun is still to come for the rest of the world. Throughout 2020 we saw other countries follow with similar legislation such as Brazil’s LGPD. I imagine more will follow suit with data such a powerful commodity now. But the real test is where the US is going with CPRA, the upgraded form of CCPA as well as ePrivacy in Europe which equates to GDPR on Steroids.

I personally have surveyed a lot of the largest brands in the world from a London IP address and rarely find any that actually provide consent frameworks that actually work without doing something sneaky with network calls.

But why is this something to be focusing on? Aside from preventing fines that could derail entire businesses, those that actually do make the effort to implement consent properly will have noticed the implications it has to advertising campaigns, whether that is the ability to remarket to website visitors or more importantly for some, the ability to measure success. If you suddenly cannot track between 10-50% of users because they do not consent, imagine the implications on performance data. And doing YoY analysis goes out the window. How to implement consent properly on web is another topic entirely but it is good to see that Google have released their Consent Mode to Google Tag Manager as a means to solve this. But knowing Google, I imagine there is some ML going on to use this data to infer on those that do no consent. And that leads me onto point no.2.

Evolving Measurement & Attribution

To say it has been a challenging year to measure the success of digital ads using traditional methods is an understatement. For the large majority, the reliance on cookies (both 3rd & 1st party) as well as device id’s (IDFA / AAID) is fundamental to Multi-Touch Attribution. Google signalled their attention with Chrome by putting a timebomb on when 3rd party cookies will no longer work on Chrome by 2022 as well as their SameSite methodology. And then Apple decided to follow suit but at a much faster pace with getting opt-in consent for IDFA scheduled for early 2021, which Facebook are publically battling on the behalf of “small businesses”. Though as with all of these things, always read the smallprint. Apple in fact have been busy with small but powerful changes on iOS14, which tackles some of the workarounds that certain vendors have done on web to get around 3rd party cookies going away, including the CNAME cloaking approach which is now capped to a 7 day maximum window when found, which in turn hurts a lot of analytics tools.

There are a lot of unknowns still as to what the future of more in-platform / daily attribution looks like but the picture seems to be that user level MTA is on the way out. Whether this is replaced by some sort of aggregated view or modeled approach is the direction the ecosystem seems to be going. Despite the best intentions of some of the smartest vendors in the industry to build a new identifier, I personally do not see how this will scale outside of the US and be able to cope with data legislation. And MMM solutions are not exactly the saving grace either, considering how they have had to pivot due to the volatility of the pandemic impacting models. That being said, those big 2 vendors that have both MMM & MTA solutions may feel like they have a heads up as we move forward.

So what to focus on for measurement in 2021? First understand truly what the impact of no cookie or device id attribution actually means, Evaluate your technology partners to see what they are planning. The Google Privacy Sandbox is still very much in its infancy but you should definitely be watching this with great interest. I expect to see the return of more regional / holdout approaches to measurement as a way to measure incremental value. But in order to do this properly, this brings the 3rd point.

1st Party Data - now or never

Data has always been the foundation of anything in adtech, and it is more important than ever to be both accurately storing & utilising this data. With regards to how data from an advertiser and into an advertising strategy, the points above have put a hard blocker in the way. The removal of 3rd party cookies makes cookie syncing pretty redundant in its standard form, thus having an impact on certain technologies such as DMP’s. And using a cookie or device id to build a persona is also now more meaningless, if you can’t actually activate against the result.

First party data starts with your own data, so ensuring you are passing back as much that is legally possible (always remember data legislation) and making sure each destination / platform gets the same level of treatment is very important. Your site analytics may be your source of truth, but really means nothing when it comes to using those data points if the other platforms are not setup in a similar manner. Your tag management & data layer is more important than ever. And so is ownership of your data, especially ad accounts, which future proofs you for change.

The other side for advertisers & publishers is whether there should be more focus on a login. If you look at this from a purely marketing perspective, this unlocks a match id that is not a cookie / device id, which can be leveraged to do some (but not all) of what is important to marketers. But can every advertiser / publisher afford to make their conversion funnels login only (no guests) or paywalls? Answer is a firm no.

With a solid data foundation, you do put yourself in a stronger position to deal with the ecosystem changes but by no means are you able to do everything you expect to do. The emergence of data cleanrooms like Google Ads Data Hub / InfoSum, a clear pivot towards customer data platforms (CDPs) and server side tagging are all in the same bucket of maximising use of first party data. There are some really interesting use cases here, again that may benefit the Walled Gardens over open ecosystem platforms but again having the right framework is important.

Emerging Programmatic Channels

The global pandemic has helped escalate many digital trends that expected to happen, especially with more people at home. The clear shift in user behaviour is on Connected TV, which continues to grow at a rapid rate. YouTube offers an easy, free way to access this at scale but the propositions in market from the likes of Roku & Samsung are making this accessible. And increasingly whilst CTV was very much an USA only thing at its infancy, other markets are slowly catching up though be aware of ad fraud!

But this is also supported by other more innovative channels that can be bought programmatically via the leading DSP’s. Audio / Podcasts are blowing up right now, again with YouTube releasing their version of Audio ads during the autumn. Gaming based ads are also moving at a rapid pace, whether that be via Amazon’s Twitch as a premium supply source or in-game via the likes of Bidstack. Out of Home as a programmatic channel is becoming a more mature product, from both the supply & buy-side, with DV360 expected to roll out this from Beta in 2021. Watch out for Amazon bringing a more refined product to market.

These channels again should be thought of with regards to the first 3 points, being able to run them in a compliant, measurable way with a data led strategy. The large majority of these channels do not have clicks so do not expect to see them show up in a Google Analytics dashboard by default. A smarter approach to proving the value of these channels but also linking to a full funnel media buying strategy is something to build upon.

Structuring your business

A lot of people may argue that setting up campaigns on the likes of Google Ads & Facebook Ads is easy. And to a point, that is true especially considering the way that Google/Facebook are moving towards a simplified setup with ML doing all the work. But if you take a step back, especially considering the first 4 points, most individuals / guru’s are really not set up to action on these points nor even know what it means in the first place. There is as much fake news about the impact of iOS14 on advertising as there is truth for example. But this is also true of how companies both brand & agency side should be set up to be able to action on this evolving ecosystem.

The first point is that data piece, ensuring you have the knowledge but also process to be able to maximise the amount of consented data you have to work with. Then comes the actual media planning / buying & finally defining success. This means different teams being able to work in tandem with each others but in an aligned manner. On the advertiser side, looking at positions that focus on data / compliance sounds logical outside of traditional digital marketing managers. Creating working groups with your partners is also critical for long term success, considering a new change to the industry seems to come every few weeks. Education is also a clear focus to be able to stay on top of everything.

Final Thoughts

2021 promises to build on where 2020 ended. I don’t think anyone can say truthfully they know what will happen nor be able to sell you the dream of something that still works for all use cases. My favourite is Contextual being the saviour of a cookieless world. Sure that may be true from a targeting perspective (even though most vendors struggle to do it well) but last time I checked no contextual vendor had the magic answer to measuring key KPI’s (no not quality metrics) in a way that does not depend on cookies / device id’s. I can spend 1 million on contextual targeting but if I can’t measure the success of it, is it truly the solution?

There are lots of other questions that are unanswerable right now:

• When Apple release the Opt In IDFA ATT, what will be the real impact to remarketing / attribution / frequency capping / targeting?

• Will the anti-trust lawsuits break up elements of Google / Facebook and what does this mean for the adtech world?

• Will an unified ID actually work on a global level that is compliant?

• What will be the endgame of the Google Privacy Sandbox?

Investing all your budget into Walled Gardens may sound like the easy way out but it is very important to understand that the likes of Google / Facebook / Amazon are also impacted (albeit at a lower level) with ecosystem changes. The changes that Facebook have highlighted in terms of setup / tracking / measurement for the iOS14 ATT change could be a taster for what is to come from other vendors. I for one am both excited but also nervous as to where we will be by this time next year!