PubMatic’s clear and stated mission is to fuel the endless potential of Internet content creators. As such, we believe Google’s latest announcement of their view of a third-party cookie–less future may actually accelerate publishers’ responses to third-party cookie deprecation. This could benefit advertisers who are seeking to diversify spend away from the walled gardens without losing the personalization and campaign ROI they are used to from third-party cookies.
We strongly support consumer privacy for a sustainable and healthy ad tech ecosystem. PubMatic developed its addressability product suite with an understanding that the industry was still in the early stages of the evolution around the subject and there was no single path forward; the solution to post-cookie addressability will not be one-size-fits-all.
What this means for advertisers, publishers, and the consumer
Consumer privacy and control are critical components of a healthy and sustainable open internet. Developing first-party connections between publishers, advertisers, and consumers has been a key part of PubMatic’s approach to post-cookie addressability and is further validated by Google’s latest announcement.
In an era of intense competition and disruption, publishers and advertisers have a new opportunity to do things better. We work with publishers in their move away from third-party cookies, helping them lean into first-party data, private marketplaces, and other strategies for more meaningful, sustainable monetization. Our global advertisers are looking for ROI and engagement outside of Google and the walled gardens, and have been encouraged by testing our open internet identity and inventory solutions.
PubMatic’s approach to addressability
Our approach to audience addressability employs various strategies to ensure that publishers and advertisers have access to privacy-compliant addressability solutions at scale, while putting consumer privacy, experience, and control at the forefront. This includes:
- Curating and promoting partnerships with leading alternative and independent IDs through Identity Hub, which will continue to be supported through DSPs other than Google;
- Supporting publisher first-party data-based addressability in privacy-safe ways via our solutions such as Connect;
- Leveraging unique contextual data signals to improve advertising relevance.
In alignment with many of our peers, we also have a strong commitment to industry partnership to building a better future path to addressability for advertisers, publishers, and consumers. We are helping to lead several industry initiatives for safe alternatives to third-party cookies at forums like IAB, Prebid, W3C, and others. We will continue to join other leaders in advocating for experimentation with additional potential privacy-centric pathways, including with initiatives such as Google’s FLoC.
What this means for the future of addressable advertising
This could be a huge opportunity for the open internet to come together around user experience and consumer choice. Travis Clinger of LiveRamp, one of our independent identity partners, put it succinctly in a recent blog post:
We view [Google’s] announcement as very much in line with what we’ve been advocating for years. Third-party cookies were a flawed identifier and caused the industry to lose the trust of the consumer. We have an opportunity to restore that trust through strong first-party relationships, and as an industry, we should lean into transparency and control for the consumer.
The next chapter in the story of the open internet is still being written, and we believe firmly that it will be centered around a more efficient and beneficial dynamic for advertisers, publishers, and consumers.
