Publishers continue to feel the pressure as they battle GDPR requirements in the EU, and CCPA in the US on top of the unrelenting competition from Facebook, Google, and Amazon and the impending deprecation of third-party cookies. These issues are all having an impact on the publishers' revenue goals. However, there is a powerful but relatively dormant source of revenue that a publisher might currently be sitting on - monetizing their first-party data.
Publishers might have been reluctant in the past to develop data monetization strategies but we have observed that this is changing. Previously it might have seemed too risky or too complicated to attempt to generate revenue from their data, but now they have the ability to do just that in an environment that allows them to retain their desired level of control and brand safety. There is a treasure trove of valuable data just waiting to be activated.
There are various ways that publishers and data owners can activate their data within the online advertising ecosystem and begin to generate revenue from it. Here are the 3 main ways that publishers should consider:
Publishers can monetize their data assets anonymously through audience data marketplaces, which can then create an additional revenue stream for them. As long as the data is collected in a privacy-compliant manner, any publishers with registration data, online sales, surveys, quizzes, forums, booking engines, reviews or competitions are sitting on a potentially valuable source of additional revenue. By working with an audience data expert, your data assets could be made available programmatically to all major brands and advertisers for targeted online advertising through a global distribution network of advertising technology platforms.
2. Private Data Marketplaces
If a publisher would like more control, one option is a private data marketplace, where publishers can choose exactly who their data can be used by, when and at what price. This provides ultimate control however the challenge of a private data marketplace is that individual suppliers often don’t have enough scale for advertisers to excite advertisers with respect to fulfilling campaign volume targets. Therefore, Eyeota is pulling together multiple suppliers within key verticals to help create transparent scale, in turn, simplifying the process for publishers and advertisers.
3. Publisher Alliances
An alternative is to combine data assets with other publishers to build publisher alliances or co-operatives. This united approach can provide advertisers access to quality audiences at the scale they need whilst still allowing publishers to have a significant level of control. Simon Haynes, Head of Digital at Northern and Shell spoke at the Eyeota Audience Data Summit on the power of publisher alliances: “Unfortunately no publisher in isolation has the volume of data and the frequency of usage to compete with the duopoly of Google and Facebook and I think that has accelerated the collaboration that we see today. Publishers realizing that the strength they have in their unity, and the collaboration, and the sharing, and the aggregation of that data can actually give them a competitive edge”.
To confidently survive in an environment with dominant walled gardens, rapidly changing consumer needs and wants, privacy issues and evolutions in technology publishers need to carefully consider all possible sources of revenue. And one simple option might be a data monetization strategy.
If you want to understand more about the data monetization process then check out our Data Monetization Toolkit or get in touch with an Eyeota Supply Account Manager.