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.

Freestar recognizes and respects a user’s right to their data, and that’s why we’re drilling down on what privacy policy questions help our publishers most.

Does every website need a privacy policy, even mine?

Yes, even yours! As a publisher, having one is essential for protecting yourself and your users. A privacy policy helps to ensure that you comply with federal and state laws regarding user data and industry regulations. It also helps to protect any confidential information that may be collected from users.

Not having one puts your business at risk.

What is the purpose of a privacy policy?

A clear and concise policy should explain to the user what personal information is collected, how it will be used and stored, and how it will be kept secure. You should also explain to users how they can access their data and their rights regarding the collected information.

Where should the privacy policy be linked?

Your website’s privacy policy should link within plain view on your website’s home page. Typically, this is linked in the footer or the main menu and contains the word “privacy.” Demand partners look for this, and if they are still looking for it, your website may not be approved for that partner. Users should also be able to find it, if needed, quickly.

What happens if I choose not to?

Without one, you’ll likely be violating specific laws and regulations and could be subject to penalties from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or other governmental agencies. Depending on the type of information being collected, you may be unable to obtain the necessary licenses and certifications to operate your website.

Because of this, your website would be subject to a fine if it is found to be collecting personal information without the user’s consent. At a starting rate of $7,500, the fines add up fast.

Furthermore, consumers may become wary of your website if they cannot find information about how their data is collected and used. This could lead them to take their business elsewhere, as they may only be comfortable giving their personal information if they know how it will be used.

Are they any other benefits to having one?

A well-crafted privacy policy can help build trust between you and your users.

By creating a comprehensive privacy policy, you can help ensure that your users feel safe and secure when using your services. Not only will this help to maintain trust between you and your users, but it will also ensure that you comply with all relevant laws and regulations.

What constitutes as data from my users?

Glad you asked. There are two kinds of data the user gives you. The stuff they know about and the things they don’t. Both types must be included in the privacy policy. Common examples include the following:

• IP address/user location
• User behaviors (related to Google Analytics tracking and others) like time on page, session time, clicks
• Browser and operating type information
• Cookies track actions cross sites

Freestar monetizes my site; what data do you collect?

You can find our privacy policy online, which discloses the data we collect, and how it is tracked, used, or stored. This changes frequently as we add and reduce third-party vendors we work with or the data we collect. For publishers we conduct advertising for, we require you to update your privacy policy to disclose our relationship, which links to our privacy policy on Freestar.com.

This way, we can update ours frequently, but you only have to update yours once. If you have any specific questions, contact our customer support team today.

The post Privacy Policy FAQs For Publishers first appeared on Freestar.

According to IBM, we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. By 2025, it is estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally. These are mind blowing numbers and a lot of investment is required to process and store this data – the investment is worth it because, when harnessed correctly, this data can revolutionize industries. At Freestar, we process billions of data points every month.

This data is often referred to as “big data”. It is extremely large and complex data sets that are difficult to process using traditional data processing techniques. These data sets may include structured, semi-structured, or unstructured data, and can come from a variety of sources, such as social media, sensors, transactional data, and more.

Analyzing big data can reveal patterns, trends, and insights that would be difficult to discern using traditional data analysis methods. The insights gained from big data can be used to inform business decisions, improve customer experiences, and drive innovation in a variety of industries.

Today, I’m sharing with you how Freestar is using this technology and how we’re applying it to help our publishers maximize their ad revenue.

Let’s dive in.

How Freestar is Leveraging This Technology

Big data capabilities have been accelerated by the introduction of cloud computing. Cloud computing gives access to a variety of technologies that help organizations capture, store, process, analyze, and derive insights from massive amounts of data.

• Cloud Computing – Freestar has the advantage of being “cloud native” – we started life in the cloud, so have been able to harness its power from day 1. Cloud computing allows Freestar to process and analyze large volumes of data and extract value from it. The value we receive can tell what to optimize more, how to operate more efficiently and really where to focus our efforts. It gives our publishers a huge advantage because we’re able to enhance our ad operations which in turn, improves their bottom line.
• Machine Learning – Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses statistical techniques to enable computer systems to learn from data and make predictions or decisions. Our aim, at Freestar, is to personalize every ad request. We can accomplish that by using machine learning. Due to the volume of ad requests and the layers of data we have, it’s not something that can easily be done without this technology. Machine learning let’s us ask “what the most optimal way of serving this ad to this user?” We’re able to analyze data on a granular level to make ad experiences as customized and optimized as possible.

In this industry, you often come across the same questions. For example, “how do we optimize ads for iOS user in the United States?” That’s a relatively straightforward question where you take the answer and apply it to all iOS users in the United States. What big data and machine learning allows us to do is to split iOS users in the United States into many more facets (e.g. usage, time of day, etc.), so we can make far more granular decisions in real time and serve users an ad request catered to specifically to them. Using big data and machine learning, that straightforward question would have a different answer for every ad request.

Applying This Technology Today

Big data provides us with a wealth of information and insights that can be used to drive better decision-making, improve efficiency and productivity, enhance the customer experience, and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Today, Freestar is applying cloud computing and machine learning to two ways:

• Dynamic Flooring – Our flooring technology utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to calculate the best performing floor price by website, ad-unit, geo, device type, day and hour for each impression delivered to maximize the ad request eCPM. We developed our dynamic flooring technology to help publishers more intelligently set floors in a first-price, header bidding world.
  
  Freestar has a dedicated team of data scientists to analyze and monitor all the data points. Our dynamic flooring has been tried and tested on all types of inventory and it understands known and unknown inventory. The AI is smart enough to be able to predict the floor prices for new inventory it’s never seen before, based on all the inventory it’s seen in the past.
• Ideal Ad Stack – An ideal ad stack varies depending on the needs of the publisher, but at Freestar, our ad stack has a goal of constant optimization. We’re always adding new dimensions to see how we can improve publishers’ ad revenues and personalize the ad experience. We look at every facet to ensure we’re optimizing each ad request – looking at timeouts, testing and running demand client-side or server-side, and considering turning specific demand off, etc.

  We also look to keep our ad stack flexible to adapt to changes in the industry and constantly optimize to the most up-to-date technology and features for our publishers.

Key Takeaways

• Freestar processes billions of data points every month and leverages cloud computing and machine learning technologies to extract value from big data and personalize ad experiences for publishers.
• Cloud computing allows Freestar to process and analyze large volumes of data, while machine learning enables the personalization of ad requests by analyzing granular data on a per-user basis.
• Freestar applies big data technologies to dynamic flooring and an ideal ad stack. Dynamic flooring technology utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to calculate the best performing floor price for each impression delivered to maximize ad request eCPM. The ideal ad stack is constantly optimized by looking at every facet to ensure optimization of each ad request and adapting to changes in the industry.

Overall, big data can help businesses operate more efficiently, effectively, and profitably. That’s what Freestar is doing for our publishers. If you’re a publisher looking to leverage this technology, get started with maximizing your ad revenue today!

The post How Freestar is Leveraging Emerging Technology first appeared on Freestar.