Freestar partners with many of the world’s largest publishers, a success made possible through strong, strategic relationships with top SSPs, DSPs, agencies, and advertisers. In the past year alone, we’ve seen over 200% growth in deal-based revenue. By raising our standards for publisher quality, we provide advertisers with greater confidence in the value and integrity of our network, reinforcing trust as they invest across our portfolio of sites.

With traffic from major referral sources of the past decade—such as Google organic search, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest—declining, it’s crucial for publishers to focus on UX and content quality. These elements are now essential in building brand reputation and attracting premium advertisers who prioritize engaging, high-quality sites for their campaigns.

Freestar’s Publisher Acceptance Requirements

1. As a publisher you must be able to show 6 months of historical traffic data. It’s hard to establish the amount of traffic it takes to accumulate meaningful ad revenue in anything less, and even 6 months seems short. It’s safe to say that if you are, paid traffic is a significant part of the strategy.

2. Content must be unique to the publisher, and meant for human consumption, with the majority of traffic being unpaid. A healthy diversification of traffic is safest. We do require access to Google Analytics (or equivalent) to verify that pageviews are from legitimate sources. A diversified traffic makeup commonly comes from a mix of organic search (Google, Bing, Yahoo), social (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram), Google News, Google Discover, Google Images, YouTube, Reddit, and news syndication sources (Smart News, Flipboard, News360, Newsbreak). We use internal testing tools to identify paid traffic, MFA and AI-generated websites.

3. Content must be brand safe. We do not monetize websites that publish, utilize or condone:

• • Piracy
  • Violence
  • Hate-speech
  • Adult content / NSFW 

4. Publishers must be in good standing with all major ad providers. If you’ve had issues in the past with demand flags, penalties or rejections, we may not be able to work with you.

Related: Publisher Services

In order to provide publishers the high CPMs we do today, we are committed to upholding high quality standards.. As a part of this, we may request access to GA4, and ask for insights into your website traffic, revenue historicals and the relationship status with current demand partners.

Rules Around Content

We pride ourselves on being content agnostic, with publishers representing 18 different content verticals. As long as you meet all the guidelines we just listed above, it doesn’t particularly matter the niche. Some of our largest content categories are sports, news, finance, automotive, gaming and entertainment. 

Content should either be original to the publisher, or using content syndication best practices with proper permissions. The most successful monetization comes in the form of engaged website users. Content strategies that will not be accepted: stolen/scrapped, fully AI-generated, clickbait headlines for the purpose of paid media, and content with potential copyright issues.

Additional Considerations

We don’t have a hard pageview requirement for acceptance, but in order to bring you meaningful revenue, the average pageviews for our publishers are typically at least a million per month. Once accepted, we have a team of audience development experts ready to work with you on traffic growth strategies!

If you’re ready to monetize with Freestar, meeting our publisher acceptance requirements is the first step toward unlocking new revenue potential. By partnering with us, you’ll join a network that prioritizes quality, transparency, and value, offering a seamless path to higher CPMs and premium demand

Are you ready for the next steps? Click the link below to get started. We can’t wait to meet you!

The post Publisher Acceptance Requirements: Are you ready to Monetize With Freestar? first appeared on Freestar.

Publishers are increasingly reliant on first-party data to drive ad revenue and deliver personalized experiences to their audiences. However, effectively leveraging this first party data can be a complex task. This is where identity solutions (ID) come into play and create efficiency. By providing a unified view of users across different devices and platforms, identity solutions enable publishers to maximize the value of their first-party data.

Rich Audience Segmentation

This allows for more personalized ad targeting and content delivery, leading to improved user engagement and higher click-through rates allowing users to spend more time on the website which in any intent signal tracking and push them to come as returning users to the site. This increases quality traffic on the site which helps in organic ranking across. 

Addressable Inventory Across Browsers

With identity solutions, publishers can track users across different browsers and devices, ensuring that their ad targeting remains consistent and effective. This enables publishers to reach their audiences on a wider range of platforms, increasing their potential ad revenue.

Improved Data Privacy

The lack of consent from IOS users including Safari have hit eCPMs hard, with revenue dropping drastically across the board. Survey data shows that eCPMs on an average, 70% lower than those from publishers’ addressable inventory. These impacts depend heavily on the percentage of traffic coming from non-Chrome browsers, which can make up about 40-50% of total traffic in regions like the USA, UK, and Australia.

Identity solutions can be implemented in a way that respects user privacy by obtaining explicit consent for data collection and usage. This helps publishers comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, mitigating the risk of fines and penalties.

Enhanced Contextual Targeting

Identity solutions can be combined with contextual targeting to deliver ads that are highly relevant to the content users are consuming. This improves user experience and leads to higher engagement rates and better ad performance on the site creating an overall positive user experience for visitors.

Increased eCPMs

By delivering more targeted and relevant ads, publishers can command higher eCPMs from advertisers. This translates into increased ad revenue for publishers, ultimately improving their bottom line.

Better Measurement and Data Attribution

Identity solutions provide more accurate tracking of user behavior and ad performance, allowing publishers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Publishers are in need of a secure storage solution for their growing first-party data, and a data lake is often the go-to choice. Unlike traditional databases, data lakes can handle both structured and unstructured data. Publishers can safely store all customer information and easily create custom datasets when required.

Improved User Experience

Identity solutions enable publishers to deliver personalized content and recommendations based on user preferences, improving the overall user experience.

Enhanced Ad Fraud Prevention

Identity solutions can help detect and prevent ad fraud by identifying suspicious patterns and malicious activity. This protects publishers’ ad revenue from fraudulent traffic and ensures that their campaigns are delivering genuine results.

Advertisers and publishers can work together through data clean rooms, enabling them to share data in a privacy-compliant manner. Stand alone  clean rooms, in particular, allow data owners to match similar audience segments and improve user profiles using look-alike modeling, while personal information remains anonymous. 

Greater Ad Inventory Monetization

Identity solutions enable publishers to optimize their ad inventory by matching the right ads with the right users. This maximizes the revenue potential of ad inventory and ensures that publishers are getting the best possible rates for their ad space.

Long term viability

Identity solutions are designed to be adaptable to future industry changes, such as the evolving landscape of data privacy regulations and technological advancements. This ensures that publishers’ ad revenue strategies remain viable and effective in the long run and thus being able to be agile in motion. Through a definite ID framework publishers can collect data in the way they observe it from users’ behaviors and actions on their sites, while advertisers can collect it to help with targeting and campaign measurement which as mentioned above will increase user engagements, eCPMs, inventory management and higher ad revenue. 

What does it mitigate?

This reduces all risks involved in the mapping of audiences and segments between advertisers and publishers, in the programmatic ecosystem where there are many intermediaries and bidders.

At Freestar, we specialize in helping publishers navigate these complexities and optimize their monetization strategies. Don’t let the competition leave you behind—contact us today to learn how we can help you implement an ID Graph solution and unlock your full revenue potential.

The post Top 10 Reasons ID Solutions Help Publishers Leverage First-Party Data for Increased Ad Revenue first appeared on Freestar.

Delivering personalized content is key to capturing user attention and driving engagement. However, personalization is only as good as the data behind it. That’s where Identity (ID) Graph solutions come into play. By leveraging ID solutions, publishers can connect data points across devices and platforms, helping deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.

What’s an ID Graph Solution?

An ID Graph solution connects a user’s interactions across multiple devices, platforms, and channels, creating a unified profile that informs how content is personalized. This holistic view, often referred to as an “Identity Graph,” provides publishers with the ability to deliver content experiences that are finely tuned to individual user behavior and preferences.

Here’s how an ID Graph makes content personalization a reality:

1. Comprehensive Audience Profiles

ID Graphs aggregate user data from multiple sources, creating rich audience profiles. These profiles allow publishers to deliver personalized content tailored to each user’s preferences, behaviors, and interests, and the usage of a device The result? More relevant content that leads to highly targeted content that boosts more engagement, and increased loyalty.

2. Smarter Content Recommendations

ID solutions enhance your ability to offer more accurate content recommendations by drawing on a user’s history across devices and channels. By serving personalized recommendations, publishers can guide users to consume more content, driving deeper engagement that increases the time spent on the site, and improve the click-through rates.

3. Cross-Device Content Consistency

With an ID Graph, users can receive personalized content no matter which device they’re using. This cross-device consistency is vital for maintaining engagement as users switch between mobile, desktop, and other devices thus ensuring the ads are being delivered seamlessly across devices.

4. Increased Relevance

Using an ID Graph allows you to deliver content based on highly specific user behaviors. Whether it’s adjusting headlines or recommending articles, the increased relevance makes users feel more connected to your site. This not only makes the website relevant but also can drastically reduce bounce rates and increase page views, achieving a higher level of personalization.

5. Detailed Audience Segmentation

ID solutions enable publishers to segment their audience with incredible detail. By understanding nuanced behavior patterns, publishers can tailor content for specific audience segments, delivering hyper-relevant material that improves engagement. The more tailored your content, the more time users spend on your site.

6. Boosted Engagement

Personalized content has been proven to generate higher engagement. With an ID Graph, publishers can present users with content that aligns perfectly with their interests, boosting click-through rates and interaction. This increase in engagement not only helps build loyalty but also contributes to higher ad revenues.

7. Optimized Ad Targeting

ID solutions don’t just enhance content personalization—they also improve ad personalization mapping a better user journey.. By using the same data to tailor both content and ads, publishers can ensure that users see ads that are relevant and engaging, leading to higher click-through rates and better monetization opportunities.

8. Data-driven decisions

 As ID solutions provide valuable insights into the various user behavior on the site, it helps publishers to make not only data-driven decisions but be data-informed as well at all times. This will in turn boost better content creation, superior ad placements, that will in turn impact the ad revenue. 

These help in creating long-lasting relationships with the audiences by ensuring that each interaction feels tailored and relevant. 

9. Be compliant

While privacy concerns are becoming highly notable across industries, ID solutions create “privacy-friendly” ways to target users. The shift away from third-party cookies encourages greater transparency and empowers users to have more control over their data, improving online security and reducing cyber threats.

10. Future-Proofing Personalization Efforts

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, reliance on first-party data becomes even more crucial. ID Graphs allow publishers to maintain personalized content delivery even as third-party cookies disappear, ensuring they remain competitive and continue providing a valuable, relevant user experience.

Don’t Miss Out: Elevate Your Content Strategy with ID Solutions

Personalized content is no longer optional—it’s essential. Implementing an ID Graph solution allows publishers to offer tailored content that captivates users, drives deeper engagement, and boosts revenue.

At Freestar, we help publishers unlock the full potential of their content by integrating powerful ID solutions. Contact us today to learn how we can help you personalize your content and enhance your monetization strategy.

The post Top 10 Reasons Why ID Solutions Help in Personalizing Content first appeared on Freestar.

To gain further insights and strategies for managing publisher traffic and maximizing revenue, watch our recorded webinar, The Truth About Publisher Traffic

Watch Now

The post Top 10 Reasons How ID Graph Solutions Help in Increasing CPM Rates first appeared on Freestar.

The most recent Google core update appears to be one of the most positive updates that Google has released, especially for smaller publishers, specializing in user-focused content! Google has stated that,
“This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”

In the last 2 weeks, we have seen numerous publishers experience increases in traffic, demonstrating the positive impact for those who prioritize user experience over search engine algorithms. 

To recover from a Google penalty or a significant traffic decline following a core update requires strategic action and can be a lengthy process, often spanning over months. However, core updates present a unique opportunity for recovery as websites are reassessed against the new guidelines. There is a strong reason to believe that the publishers who have invested in creating high-quality, user-centric content will see their sites rise in search rankings during these times.  

It’s important to adopt a proactive approach to website optimization rather than passively waiting for updates to change the game. Publishers should have a plan and a strategy that is being reviewed and implemented to ensure their website’s continued success. By implementing these guidelines below, publishers can capitalize on traffic gains and maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving search engine landscape.

1. Know your Audience.

Understanding your audience is paramount in creating content that resonates with them and is an essential key step to delving into your audience development strategies. Direct users are the most stable of traffic sources that take pressure off the rise and fall of search engines. This aligns with Google’s EEAT standards enabling you to produce high-quality valuable content that is curated specifically for your audience.

2. Track your Metrics.

Be proactive in investing time in evaluating your Google Analytics (GA4) dashboard to understand what content is performing well and those that are not. Knowing what content is performing better and those that are falling short, you can make data-driven decisions that can make or break your content strategy. Embracing a flexible approach and adjusting your priority based on performance metrics is key to maximizing the website’s traffic.

3. Audit Existing Content

Avoid being hindered by outdated content that no longer meets current-day standards. Refreshing existing or evergreen content can be a relatively efficient way to keep your website content fresh and engaging.. If content is not able to be updated, placing a NoIndex tag can prevent it from being indexed by search engines, thus avoiding potential penalties

4. First-Party Data Strategy

Implementing a strategic approach to obtain your users’ First Party Data is critical to optimizing site revenue and owning your own audience. Gaining a way to target your audience can help with things like newsletters which can gain site traffic, surveys which helps you know your audience, and even integrating additional interactions on the site through voting systems. Furthermore, having FPD allows for optimized revenue through your ad partner (Freestar!) as CPM’s are higher when the ads are curated for the specific user. 

By following the above guidelines you can be in a place to be positively impacted when core updates are launched. While optimizing your site remains crucial, it should never come at the detriment of the user experience.  

More important than that, by following the above best practices you can improve your site and make the user experience better. You want to be a site that users are coming back to, are typing your site in their browser, have tagged and saved and used in their everyday lives. Google appears to be finally listening to the publishers and there are a lot of positive changes happening. Provide the best, user-first content that you can, and the traffic will follow!

Learn more on how Freestar can efficiently monetize your content while maintaining a positive user experience. 

The post Google’s New Game: Are you a Winner? first appeared on Freestar.

To gain further insights and strategies for managing publisher traffic and maximizing revenue, watch our recorded webinar, The Truth About Publisher Traffic

Watch Now

The post The Current State of Publisher Website Traffic and How to Avoid Algorithm Penalties first appeared on Freestar.

But what does this entail?

Continue reading to discover the most frequently asked questions from publishers about hashed emails. Be sure to scroll to the very end to explore Freestar’s monetization opportunities for this valuable data point.

The FAQs of Hashed Emails

What are hashed emails?

Hashed emails are email addresses scrambled into a fixed-length string of characters using a cryptographic hash function. This process converts the original email address into a unique identifier, ensuring the user’s privacy is protected.

Why are they a part of the cookie deprecation discussion?

The deprecation of cookies is occurring because many consider the functionality of third-party cookies a violation of user privacy. As third-party cookies are phased out, companies are shifting their focus to first-party data—information collected directly from users. Email addresses play a critical role in this first-party data.

Email hashing provides a secure method for managing email addresses by transforming them into a non-reversible, anonymous format. This allows for practical uses such as targeting and tracking while enhancing data privacy and security. As a result, email hashing has become a valuable technique in various applications.

Can they still track users from site to site?

Yes. Similar to third-party cookies, hashed emails can be used to recognize users across different sites and devices. For example, if a user logs in with their email on multiple sites, the hashed version of their email acts as a consistent identifier without revealing the actual email address.

Is this a new thing?

No, it isn’t! Hashing data became popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s, driven by the growing emphasis on data security and privacy. A series of major data breaches exposed the personal information of millions, highlighting the critical need for robust data protection.

By the 2010s, hashing had become a standard practice for safeguarding email addresses and other sensitive information.

Is there industry standardization?

While there is emerging industry standardization around the use of hashed emails, driven by the need for privacy compliance, interoperability, and consistency across platforms, there is still room for improvement. Discrepancies exist in how different identity providers expect to see and receive encrypted emails.

Initiatives like UID 2.0 by The Trade Desk offer an open-source framework for using hashed emails as identifiers. UID 2.0 aims to create a standardized approach to email hashing and user identification that can be widely adopted across the industry.

Why does advertising value hashed emails?

Hashed emails provide advertisers with a powerful tool to accurately and securely identify, target, and track users in a privacy-compliant manner. They enable enhanced targeting, data integration, and performance measurement while reducing risks associated with data breaches and regulatory non-compliance. As the digital advertising landscape evolves, hashed emails offer a robust and future-proof method to achieve marketing objectives effectively.

What is Freestar doing to help publishers maximize monetization of email addresses?

Expanding deterministic user IDs presents a significant opportunity for publishers to boost ad inventory value, especially as third-party cookie coverage declines. Freestar’s hashed email (HEM) passthrough allows publishers to share a hashed version of a user’s email with vendors, such as Prebid User ID modules and bidders.

As publishers enhance their first-party data strategies and increase the number of collected emails, Freestar helps monetize these at premium CPMs with quality advertising deals. Publishers can pass their hashed emails to major identity providers for monetization.

This solution maximizes revenue by unlocking the full spending potential from advertisers, working with trusted providers like LiveRamp and The Trade Desk, whom buyers rely on to target users.

If you’re already partnering with Freestar, reach out to your support team for more information on our hashed email solution.

By adopting hashing techniques, organizations can build trust with their users, mitigate risks, and uphold their responsibility to protect sensitive information.

The post Hash It Out: All About Email Hashing and What it Means For Publishers first appeared on Freestar.

Several industry experts like Mike King, Rand Fishkin and Danny Goodwin have provided helpful recaps, but these can be highly technical. Here’s a TLDR; a simplified summary of their key points and actionable steps for publishers.

Biggest Takeaways For Publishers

1. Brand Mentions are as Good as Links

Backlinks (ie links pointing to your site from other websites) have long been a crucial SEO factor, based on the theory that people link to content they love, indicating high quality. The API leak confirms that backlinks still matter, but brand mentions are now equally important. Increased brand mentions signal popularity, just like backlinks. For publishers, having a strong presence across various digital channels, like social media, email marketing, and online communities, can help increase the amount of people who know about and talk about your brand.

Actionable Steps:

• Build a strong presence across digital channels outside of Google Search (social media, email marketing, online communities).
• Enhance brand recognition.
• Create quality, engaging content that establishes your brand’s authority and trustworthiness.

2. Monitor your Clickstream Data

The leak revealed that Chrome clickstream data is the most powerful ranking signal. Clickstream data includes user navigation details, such as pages visited, time spent, next destinations, and exit speed. Clickstream data is measured any time a URL loads in a browser, from any referring source.

Actionable Steps:

• Create content that attracts and retains users.
• Use tools like SimilarWeb or Google Analytics to analyze user interaction.
• Monitor metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and click-through rates.

3. All Traffic Matters

Metrics from all traffic types impact organic search rankings. Great content and exceptional user experience reflect positively in metrics, which Google rewards. Conversely, low-quality traffic can harm rankings. Google uses a variety of measurements, including badClicks, goodClicks, lastLongestClicks and unsquashedClicks to determine value of a webpage.

Actionable Steps:

• Focus on attracting high-quality traffic.
• Avoid buying low-quality traffic that results in short sessions.

4. Google Systems are Connected

The leak introduced a factor called “glue,” which integrates signals from other Google platforms (YouTube, Google Maps, Google Reviews) into the organic ranking system.

Actionable Steps:

• Maintain a presence on relevant Google platforms.
• Create helpful videos on YouTube and embed them in your articles.

5. SEO Basics of the Past are Still Relevant

Factors like Pagerank, backlinks, authorship, entities, meta data, HTML title tags, page speed, and structured data remain important.

Actionable Steps:

• • Read Google’s quality rater guidelines to understand what constitutes high-quality content.
  • Add structured data to your pages (organization, article, breadcrumb, and sitelinks)

Focus on Quality and User Experience, and Signals Will Follow

To succeed in Google’s organic search index, publishers must focus on delivering value to their customers through high-quality products, services, content, and experiences. Google’s advanced algorithms evaluate how users interact with your content and consider signals from other platforms where your brand is present.

When people value your business, they will contribute links, reviews, and brand mentions. They will engage with your site, share your content, and visit regularly. These signals help Google determine your placement in search results, reflecting the value of your brand.

Building a valuable brand leads to better search rankings, as Google measures data from all these interactions to decide who ranks at the top.

The post 5 Big Takeaways For Publishers From Google’s API Leak first appeared on Freestar.

On Friday, April 26th, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) published its Q1 2024 report on the implementation of the Google Privacy Sandbox (“GPS”). This is the CMA’s eighth report on the GPS and its ability to replace cookie technology while not giving Google an unfair advantage as a key player in the ad industry.

This Q1 CMA report will be of particular interest to Google and the wider industry because it sets out quite clearly that Google still has a lot of work to do to demonstrate that the current design of the GPS isn’t anti-competitive. As if this wasn’t enough, the Q1 report is bolstered by a preliminary assessment by another UK regulator – The Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) which oversees Privacy & Data Protection compliance in the UK. The ICO has leaned heavily on its reports addressing real-time bidding and online advertising from 2019 and 2021 as they set out the expectations they have for a compliant approach for the GPS within the CMA report.

CMA Competition Concerns

The backbone of the CMA report remains familiar, and the CMA are adamant that Google should restrict the use of its first-party data so that it doesn’t swallow up ad spend.  However, Google appears to be further away now than they were in January from convincing the CMA that the GPS isn’t anti-competitive for the industry, and meets established Privacy standards.  There were 79 concerns outlined in this Q1 report versus 39 in the previous report in January.  

The CMA is acutely aware of the fact that ad spend could move away from open display and into O&O inventory or walled gardens.  Additionally, there are inherent design aspects of the GPS which self preference the Google ecosystem.  Google Ad Manager (“GAM”) for example will not participate in Protected Audiences API (“PAAPI”) component auctions unless it is the top-level PAAPI seller. This means that publishers will have to use GAM in order to access AdX demand.  The CMA has rightly described this as a “high priority area” for their assessment and review.  

Google has said “We welcome the dialogue with the ICO and are already working to address its feedback on how Chrome can best communicate to users about Privacy Sandbox. We also affirm the ICO’s expressed desire for sites and ad tech companies calling the Privacy Sandbox APIs to communicate clearly with their users and offer appropriate controls.”  Some of the key privacy concerns are outlined below.

Privacy Assessment by CMA & ICO

Topics API

• There’s a reluctance from Google to accept the key role which governance and access controls play in maintaining compliance to applicable privacy legislation.  The Topics API makes cross-site insights available to API callers with no Google-imposed restrictions limiting the purpose of topics data to interest-based advertising only.  Google has said they view the overall risk to be “low” but the inability to police an abuse of the Topics API would make it next to impossible to classify it as privacy compliant.  W3C has voiced similar concerns following their testing of GPS but this feedback hasn’t produced any changes from Google as yet.  For those familiar with the basic requirements under Article 5 of the GDPR and the concept of purpose limitation, this is a red flag.

Protected Audience API

• Within PAAPI Google proposes to deploy PAAPI without key privacy enhancing technologies (“PETs”).  Some PETs will not even be operational until 2026.  Google has said they are working on privacy mitigations for known cross site tracking risks, but these may not be finalised at the point of deployment.  The ICO is concerned that the absence of key controls which are outlined in the current roadmap will leave significant privacy risks unresolved.  
• The CMA has outlined that it is possible to create interest groups (“IGs”) which are bespoke to individuals and this may lead to a situation where cross-site data and profiles from third-party sources can be leveraged in PAAPI.  As a result of this the ICO has voiced their concern “that combining first- and third-party data in PAAPI will not address a range of data privacy concerns potentially leading to non-compliance with Applicable Data Protection Legislation.”  
• It has been suggested by the CMA that Privacy hasn’t been a key focus for Google as they work on enhancements to the PAAPI within GPS.  Google has made a number of updates to the original PAAPI design which are focused on utility and adoption (e.g., removing k-anonymity controls for IGs).  This has led the CMA to state that “we are concerned that privacy is not appropriately considered by Google”. As a result, over time, there is a risk that PAAPI will evolve in a direction that leads to non-compliance with Applicable Data Protection Legislation.

Attribution Reporting API

• Even Google themselves have acknowledged that for event level reports and the signals returned for training models, that any measurement product that permits events to be connected to an individual will always present a cross-site tracking risk.  Google feels this risk is sufficiently mitigated, however there are limited preventative measures in place, and potential misuse by organizations creates a real risk that lawfulness and transparency requirements within applicable privacy laws are not met. 

Conclusion

The back and forth between Google and the CMA feels like a war of attrition, but with Google having given legally binding undertakings to the CMA in 2022, they might have to blink first on their third-party cookie replacement.  Some big questions also remain outstanding for the industry; does the GPS function, can it be tested rigorously, and how viable is it as a replacement for third-party cookies when some key components aren’t even built yet? 

The CMA is leveraging the support of the ICO for the Privacy analysis, and the ICO in turn has made it fairly clear what they expect from Google.  In their view, there must be a privacy-by-design approach that gives users clear choices and there must be accountability within Google for how personal data is processed end-to-end within the online advertising ecosystem.  The processing within that ecosystem must then have a clearly defined purpose and should address existing privacy risks.  This isn’t an easy balance to strike for Google while also maintaining parity for all participants in the market. 

The post Freestar Explains: CMA Q1 2024 Report Google Privacy Sandbox first appeared on Freestar.

As traffic from Facebook and X to publishers has declined, we’ve been paying particular attention to potentially new traffic driving players but this platform isn’t new at all. Reddit launched in 2005 and is majority owned by Advance Publications, — “owner of magazine publisher Condé Nast among other properties, acquired the startup for $10 million 18 months after it launched.”.

With the rise in Reddit-infused SERPs, I started thinking about what it is that Google considers so valuable from this community. Like you, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of discussions and debates in these communities, so it didn’t take long to compile a list of reasons why people are visiting the site in record numbers.

Why Reddit is on the Rise

1. Reddit is based on user generated content. The writers of articles and the people commenting from their own experiences increase the trust of users. In the site’s purest (non-sponcon) form, people contributing have no monetary gain from interacting. 

2. Reddit has focused on community involvement and authenticity over marketing efforts, and ad revenue. Google favors content that helps other people, and their engagement metrics show high time on page and pages per session.

3. Reddit also has such an expansive knowledge base that you can find almost anything. As a user, this give me more opportunities to enter the site and as long as my experiences there are generally positive, trust builds over time and repeat visits increase. 

4. Reddit users are the ones who are directly controlling the internal cataloging of content on the site. When poor quality content is posted, it gets 0 user interaction and down voted to quickly be lost in the depths of the internet. And helpful content is moved to the top of the rankings through upvotes, user interaction, and how many people are viewing the page. 

5. Google is paying Reddit in a content licensing deal to use as training for their AI bot, Gemini. It must be mentioned, as I can only imagine that when the deal was struck, Reddit’s indexing improved, more conversations were exposed and SERP real estate allotted for these threads. After all, the more people see them, the more they engage and that gives more conversations to Google to use for Gemini.

How Publishers Can Replicate Reddit’s Helpfulness

Not every brand is a fit for a messaging board type environment, but there are still things we can take away from their recent successes. 

View the content you are publishing through the lens of a writer whose sole purpose is providing first hand information that they care about, to the average user on the internet. Produce content that is user first, helpful, and engaging. Being personal in the way we communicate with users brings a trust and a humanity to writing in the age of AI.

Strategize and brainstorm how you can leverage user generated content to keep your site active and moving. This is not a cookie cutter solution. Discuss with your team (or with Freestar’s Audience Development team!) how to best implement user generated content to make your site more helpful to the users! 

Lastly, stay in your lane of expertise. Don’t stretch to make your site a jack of all trades if you focus on cooking. Expand to what you can expand to, but don’t compromise your quality for quantity. Reddit has shown us that only the good stuff thrives, and they aren’t jumping around making changes everyday. They are experts at what they do, and they let that stand the test of time.

The post Reddit On The Rise: What We Can Learn From Reddit first appeared on Freestar.