Five questions with Mail Metro Media’s Hannah Buitekant

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Mail Metro Media’s executive director of digital talks cookie alternatives, the importance of first party data to publishers, improving cross-industry collaboration and the transparency of the programmatic supply chain

Happy New Year! What are you most looking forward to in 2021?

Happy New Year! It goes without saying that I am most looking forward to spending time with family and friends. An overseas holiday would also be fabulous… and I would very much like to retire from home schooling.

Professionally, I am most looking forward to another year of progression. 2020 saw many businesses onboard remote working, mental health investment, product development through to business acquisitions. 2020, aside from some limitations, presented opportunities to test and learn – be it with new media modules such as audio or trialing first party data solutions.

Alongside the challenges we face such as cookieless browsers and Apple’s update to app tracking transparency, I believe 2021 will have many more positive developments, such as industry collaboration to resolve browser challenges, and I am looking forward to tackling such challenges head on.

In order to address browser changes such as Chrome’s impending 2022 block on cookies, or Apple’s IDFA identifier opt-in for advertisers, the advertising world is preparing for a cookieless world… but hasn’t yet found a solution. What is going to be the best route forward in 2021 to finding this solution?

Right now there is no silver bullet solution, but it is important to note that Google has said they are not eliminating cookies until there is a comparable solution available. Therefore 2021 will continue to be a period of test and learn. Publishers are already well versed in the implications of “no cookies”, as we’ve seen the impact of ITP across Safari for a few years now and we know that we can’t just replace cookies with a like-for-like.

For advertisers, one of the major complexities is that publisher data is currently too varied across multiple domains and therefore it is not feasible for advertisers to recreate their full buying efforts through this. For that reason, we are also engaged in a number of solutions which look to standardise some of the audience and contextual data to simplify optimisation levers from an advertiser perspective.

Fast-growth DTC brands have been building their first-party data quickly during the ecommerce boom. Is first-party data the key to successful customer relationships? What can publishers learn from this?

I think direct customer relationships are key for all brands, combined with product quality and good customer service. DTC brands don’t rely on legacy systems or technology, they embrace the newest shopping platforms and their data acquisition is embedded in their CRM.
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This means they can be agile and react to buying signals with their consumers, sending offers or reminders automatically. Their communication is more than just selling the product, but also about the brand’s eco credentials or purpose. When a user has entered their details with a DTC brand they are part of that journey and product development, so the first party data informs future growth and audience acquisition.

Similarly, publishers are excellent at understanding user behaviour. We write over 2,000 articles a day and our editors plan, optimise and write based on this data. We were also some of the first to adopt cookieless data management platforms to harness that into something that can benefit the advertising ecosystem.

What is really exciting now is that publishers are expanding into ecommerce, audio and much more, strengthening our relationships with our consumers from selling holidays to finance products. Combining this with the powerful fact that news has never been more needed means we are in a really unique position with consumers and the first party data that gives us access to.

Questions were raised about the transparency of the programmatic supply chain when ISBA released their report with PwC and AOP in May. Since this, have you seen improved collaboration between agencies, tech vendors and publishers? How are you working with your partners to drive greater return for advertisers?

Definitely – an appetite to collaborate has increased significantly. However there are wider implications beyond just what is technically possible. We have to work out how we can get the industry to work to the same data fields, ensure bidstream data remains GDPR compliant yet still auditable, and also preserve competition within the marketplace with increased transparency. Collaboration around the technical pipes is only part of the solution.

At Mail Metro Media we are highly involved in every steering group to drive this change. Every chance we have, we stress top line objectives of consistency, transparency and fairness. We hope to have more conversations with advertisers who want to access our inventory directly and refine their individual supply chains.

Whilst we work on improving collaboration to increase return for both advertisers and publishers, we are actively trying to reduce our programmatic supply chain via direct DSP connections. It’s early stages and complex, but we are focused on this being a successful strategy for 2021.

And finally, what major changes do you expect the industry to undergo over the course of this year?

I predict that there will be more consolidation of DMPs and DSPs; either through mergers and acquisitions or expansion of services to offer a seamless way to leverage an advertiser’s data into something that is instantly transactional. The power of Chrome will become more apparent. I mentioned earlier our focus to increase scaled audiences and contextual solutions are starting to generate traction which I hope scale into 2021.

The introduction of Apple’s app tracking transparency prompt is likely to have a notable impact on app advertising within iOS and perhaps we will see more apps move to paid-for models. The industry is also being challenged with increased regulations. We seek to anticipate and offset any unintended consequences from these.

One thing’s for sure, it certainly won’t be boring!