Cookies and adverts: major issues

Integral Ad Science (IAS) has presented its traditional report on industry development for 2021 (Industry Pulse Report 2021).

While a year ago the industry cited legislation related to personal data protection as the biggest challenge, now they are concerned about the impact of legislative restrictions.

Nearly half (49 per cent) of ad industry respondents are concerned about opting out of third-party cookies, the report found.

Issues of user attribution - creating a profile that gives insight into the use of different devices - worries 42% of respondents.

36% cited the issue of accurate media measurement.

34% cited measuring the ROI of advertising campaigns.

The need to comply with data privacy legislation dropped to fifth place.

Brand safety (adverts appearing next to inappropriate content) is a concern for only 6% of respondents.

The anxiety of market players is quite understandable. Over the past year, Google, Mozilla and Apple have announced various data protection measures.

However, the advertising industry assumes that the desire of the tech giants to do away with advertising tracking will lead to the destruction of the traditional set of concepts that exist in digital, as well as deprive marketers of tools to understand user preferences.

Priority areas for the next year are:

digital video / OTT services (57%),

"smart TVs or Connected TVs (54%),

social media (47%).

This picture is in line with the changes in media consumption in 2020. Last year, mobile internet was the priority.

The market is waiting for innovations from platforms where users watch online video. Above all, it is about targeting (20%), attribution (10%) and measurement (9%).

Facebook (70%), YouTube (65%) and Instagram (64%) are expected to be the main social platforms in 2021, according to the study participants.

The most vulnerable digital channels to advertising friction were named by market representatives as:

programmatic advertising (53%),

social networks (30%),

banners on desktop (30%),

banners on mobile devices (29%).

According to AVSEO's research, respondents most often consider SSPs (55%) and to a lesser extent DSPs (26%), publishers (49%) and verification technology providers (42%) to be responsible for fake ad traffic.