IAB Europe has just released its 2023 AdEx Benchmark Report, and it's packed with insights into the booming digital advertising market in Europe. Despite economic and geopolitical challenges, the sector has demonstrated impressive resilience and growth. Here are five key takeaways from this year's report:

1. Staggering Growth in Digital Ad Spend

Europe's digital advertising market grew by an impressive 11.1% in 2023, reaching an all-time high of €96.9 billion. This growth rate outpaces that of the US, which saw a 7.3% increase. This places Europe in a strong position, showcasing the region’s ability to thrive even in challenging times. 

2. Concentration in Major Markets

The bulk of digital ad spending is concentrated in five key markets: the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, which together account for 69% of the total spend. However, there's notable double-digit growth in 13 other European markets. Central and Eastern European countries like Turkey, Serbia, and Ukraine are leading this charge, with Turkey experiencing a phenomenal 50% growth.

3. Explosion in Video, CTV, and Audio Ads

Video advertising saw a 20.9% surge, with a 15.0% rise outside social platforms, underlining its importance in the display ecosystem. Audio advertising also boomed, with a 23.1% increase driven by a 32.5% rise in podcast popularity. Connected TV (CTV) is another standout, with a 23.5% growth rate, outpacing other non-social video formats.

4. Maturing Programmatic Market

Programmatic advertising remains dominant, accounting for 51.9% of total display ads. However, growth in this segment is maturing as budgets shift towards new channels like CTV and Retail Media. This shift is also influenced by privacy concerns and the impending phase-out of third-party cookies, pushing the industry to explore alternative solutions.

5. Retail Media Emergence

Retail Media has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising ecosystem, attracting considerable investment. As traditional retail and e-commerce continue to blend, advertisers are finding new opportunities to reach consumers directly on retail platforms, driving growth and innovation in this space.

Three months after the entry into force of the Digital Services Acts, IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab would like to understand how industry players are leveraging the DSA Transparency OpenRTB extension intended to facilitate compliance with Article 26, which issues they may be experiencing, and where they need more support. Your valuable input will only take a few minutes to share and will be kept strictly confidential.

The survey is open for your participation until Friday 21st June 2024. 

Take part here

The countdown is on! In just two weeks, the wonderful world of advertising and marketing will descend on the South of France for the Cannes Lions Festival 2024. 

Embodying creativity (and luxury) like nowhere else, the fast-paced environment and jam-packed schedules will return 17-21 June as senior leaders from across the globe get together to celebrate the industry, forge connections, and look to drive innovation forward. 

This year, the team from IAB Europe will be there to meet, greet, and share expertise with our members and to create new connections with companies from across the ecosystem.

Focusing on Retail Media and Sustainability, our Industry Development & Insights Director, Marie-Clare Puffett, and Data Analyst & Sustainability Manager, Dimitris Beis will be on hand to discuss the integral work we are doing and how we can help you to meet your needs in these innovative areas and more.

Here are some of the exciting things we have planned for our time in Cannes:

Tuesday 18th June

Retail Media: The Road Ahead for Europe with IAB Europe & Criteo

On Tuesday, June 18th at 10 CET, immerse yourself in an exclusive gathering hosted by Criteo and IAB Europe, alongside key leaders from across the ecosystem. Amidst the buzz of Cannes Lions, we'll convene to tackle the pivotal question: What strategic steps must our industry take in the forthcoming year ahead?

Speakers include:

• Moderator: Marie-Clare Puffett, Industry Development & Insights Director, IAB Europe
• Jessica Wegner, Vice President, New Business & Retail Media, Douglas
• Marc Fischli, Executive Managing Director, EMEA, Criteo
• Paul Wright, Head of International Sales, Uber Advertising UKI

Expect thought-provoking insights from a diverse panel of Retail Media experts, fostering an interactive dialogue aimed at navigating the complexities of decision-making. Following the session, there will be networking opportunities and light refreshments — all set aboard the Criteo yacht.

Find out more and register to join here.

Wednesday 19th June

In-Store Breakfast Roundtable 

Hosted in partnership with PRN, IAB Europe will bring together thought leaders from retailers for an invitation-only roundtable discussion on the evolving area of in-store retail media.

For more information on how to join please contact Marie-Clare - puffett@iabeurope.eu 

Meet Us There!

If you are heading to Cannes and would like to connect with the IAB Europe team, please reach out to:

Marie-Clare Puffett - puffet@iabeurope.eu 

Dimitris Beis - beis@iabeurope.eu  

We look forward to connecting and celebrating with you in Cannes!

On 21-22 May we hosted our annual flagship conference Interact 2024 in Milan where we brought over 240 industry leaders, innovators, and experts together to answer the big questions needed to shape the future of the digital advertising and marketing industry. 

Thanks to the support of our sponsors, media partners, the team at IAB Italy, and our event host Joanna Burton, we enjoyed two days of content, which focused on our theme ‘The Big Questions. The Smart Answers’. 

View the event images here.

Going beyond standard keynote presentations and panel discussions, we brought the ‘interactive’ back to Interact this year, with each session framed around a key question that our elite, expert speakers endeavored to answer. No beating around the bush. It was all about delivering smart answers to the industry's most important questions. Plus we addressed additional questions live on stage through our engaging polls and audience Q&As. 

We unpacked a huge variety of topics as we looked to address some of the industry’s biggest challenges and innovations head-on. From the latest ad spend figures, the demise of third-party cookies, and Retail Media to sustainability, policy, measurement, publisher advertising models and more, our esteemed speakers provided smart, sharp answers to our industry's biggest questions of today.  

The big questions included:

• Are sustainability strategies delivering across the value chain?
• Is the industry ready for the end of third-party cookies?
• Where is the business value of AI for digital advertising?
• Is TV programmatic buying finally going mainstream?
• After the hype, is it time for a reckoning for retail media?
• In "polycrisis" times, what outcomes should digital advertising be delivering?
• How can publishers reinvent their digital advertising business?
• What do buyers really want from digital advertising?
• Where is future digital advertising growth coming from?
• What comes next for digital advertising regulation?

If you didn’t have the opportunity to join us or you did and want to relieve all of the great content again, in this post you will find links to all of the highlights, including session overviews for you to read in your own time. 

Event Highlights 

• AdEx Benchmark 2023 Report - As always, our Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp kicked off Interact by sharing the top-level results from IAB Europe’s widely-anticipated 2023 AdEx Benchmark Report to show whether the digital advertising industry experienced growth for 2023 and if so, what markets and channels contributed to this growth. Mark your diaries for 12th June when the full report will be released. 

• Day one highlights included a fireside chat with Diageo and TIM Group on what brands really want from digital advertising, presentations by IAS, RTL Group, and Brand Metrics on leveraging digital to achieve superior results, the evolution of TV,  and measurement, and big questions on Retail Media, post third-party cookies, the future of measurement and more. For the session overviews you can check out our day one round-up here.

• Day two started with an update from IAB Ukraine’s CEO, Anastasiya Baydachenko who shared how we can continue to support Ukraine. The day also explored sustainability and how to reduce the carbon emissions of advertising without leaving a negative impact on effectiveness with a keynote from Scope3 and Sanofi Consumer Healthcare. Key speakers from National Federations also shared the approach of industry bodies to sustainability in key European markets. We delved into the publisher perspective with a keynote for Mail Metro Media and an in-depth panel discussion on how publishers can reinvent their digital advertising. On the policy and legal side the upcoming EU elections and how this will influence the future of policy, the latest iterations of the TCF, and the Digital Services Act (DSA) were also explored. Check out our day two round-up here. 

If you’d like to know more about IAB Europe and the membership opportunities available to dive into these key topics and more, reach out to the team at communication@iabeurope.eu.

Thanks to the support of our sponsors, media partners, the team at IAB Italy, and our event host Joanna Burton, we enjoyed two days of content, which focused on our theme ‘The Big Questions. The Smart Answers’. 

View the event images here.

Going beyond standard keynote presentations and panel discussions, we brought the ‘interactive’ back to Interact this year, with each session framed around a key question that our elite, expert speakers endeavoured to answer. No beating around the bush. It was all about delivering smart answers to the industry's most important questions. Plus we addressed additional questions live on stage through our engaging polls and audience Q&As. 

On day one, we focused our attention on tackling the industry’s biggest challenges and innovations head-on, exploring key topics and unearthing the much-needed answers to areas including the latest digital ad spend figures, what buyers want from digital advertising, how ready the industry is for a world without cookies, what’s next for programmatic TV and Retail Media and if we are measuring the right things. 

Below you can find overviews and key takeaways from each session.

AdEx Benchmark 2023 - Where is Future Advertising Growth Coming From?

Interact 2024 opened with a keynote from our Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp, revealing the top-level results from IAB Europe’s widely-anticipated 2023 AdEx Benchmark Report to show whether the digital advertising industry experienced growth for 2023 and if so, what markets and channels contributed to this growth. 

Daniel gave an exclusive presentation on the key results which will be released on the 12th June! Mark this date in your calendars to access IAB Europe’s 2023 AdEx Benchmark Report. This is the definitive guide to digital advertising expenditure in Europe. 

What Do Buyers Really Want From Digital Advertising?

Following the opening keynote, to ensure we deliver on the growth seen and that we have all of the y components in place to attract advertiser investment, key speakers from Diageo and TIM Group joined the stage to reveal the secrets of what they are really looking for when it comes to digital advertising. They shared exclusive priorities and focus areas, innovative areas that excite them, and their thoughts on what they think is driving the future of digital advertising. 

Speakers:

• Hannah Bowler, Senior Reporter at The Drum (Moderator) 
• Tiernan Omorain, Digital Transformation Director at Diageo
• Alessandra Marinacci, Head of Brand at TIM Group

Key takeaways:

• Brands want transparency in how data is collected.
• Testing and learning are important to brands.
• Brand loyalty is created with a good customer experience.
• Tiernan shared that Diageo has experimented with creative AI and is innovating with audio by creating personalised audio ads based on location - they see this as an area of growth but that it is more difficult to create engaging creative in audio campaigns.
• On maintaining clean marketing in mobile campaigns, Alessandra shared that TIM Group leverages social media to make it entertaining to their audience, whilst ensuring that ads aren’t delivered at too high a frequency. It’s important to them to tap into the power of mobile and leverage video to encourage social engagement and sharing. 
• On the topic of DE&I, Tiernan shared some key insights on what Diageo has done so far:
  • 45% of Diageo’s ads have been created by female producers
  • Diageo ensures its media investment is more representative of the society that enjoys its brands
  • On Guinness’ long-term relationship with rugby, they used this as a platform to have more conversations with publishers to support greater coverage of the women’s games
• Regarding trends and opportunities in the year ahead, Alessandra shared that TIM Group is exploring VR and more ways to enhance user experience with Generative AI.
• Diageo is also exploring how to measure views cross-platform in a privacy-compliant way as this will be a ‘game-changer’.

What is the New Intersection of Creativity and Technology?

Continuing on the theme of asking questions to the buy-side, our next session explored the evolving relationship between creativity and technology in content creation with speakers delving into how agencies harness emerging technologies to push the boundaries of storytelling and brand communication. From immersive experiences to AI-driven content, the group answered questions on the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in leveraging technology to enhance creativity. 

Speakers:

• Constantine Kamaras, Chairman Emeritus, IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Sergio Amati, General Manager, IAB Italy
• Erika Fattori, Group Brand & Communication Director, Nexi

Key takeaways:

• The group agreed that leveraging first-party data is important as it needs to be optimised in a stricter regulatory environment.
• They also dived into how Generative AI is empowering creativity if used in the right way.
• They highlighted that it is important to understand how technology and data work and the origins of the data.
• Finally, they discussed how technology is changing people’s skills and is creating new marketers. As an industry, we are looking for people with skill sets that don’t yet exist. There is a need for people who understand technology and are ready to discuss its problems but can also transfer this to a business perspective. 

How Does the End of Cookies Lead to Better Digital Marketing?

Next, it was time to tackle one of the industry’s most discussed topics of 2024 - the post third-party cookie era. Given the importance of the subject, the next few sessions were dedicated to answering key questions about how stakeholders are preparing to navigate this new paradigm. 

To kick off the cookie conversation, Mediaplus argued that the abolition of cookies is not imminent but has already happened. With alternative targeting technologies already established, they revealed how data minimsation makes advertising better, not weaker.

Speakers:

• Sascha Dolling, General Manager at Mediaplus
• Erika Barbieri, Client Lead at Mediaplus Italia, Mediaplus Italy 

Key takeaways:

• Sascha began the presentation by stating that as regulations continue to evolve and browsers and gatekeepers restrict global IDs, digital marketing must change. More targeted independent, scalable, and sustainable solutions are needed.
• In light of this Mediaplus has released NERO AI, a solution that relies exclusively on global identifiers for more precision. 
• He demonstrated that the solution relies on three approaches - verified context taxonomy, interests and behaviours of users, and individual value systems. 
• He showed that the solution works with the content of the website, and how it uses a large language model for a deep understanding of the users behind the content. This helps to define the audience and audience targeting characteristics using cookie-less and consent-less targeting.
• By leveraging behaviours based on interest, intent, and psychographics it improves media placements, increases target group affinity, and reactivates additional reach with ID less traffic for marketers. 

Leading Players Are Preparing for Third-Party Cookie Deprecation. Are You Ready?

In the next session, Google and Adlook joined the conversation to discuss how future-thinking ecosystem players are preparing for third-party cookie deprecation. Covering innovative solutions based on Privacy Sandbox technologies they explored what actions you can take today to get ready and stay ahead in the post-cookie world.

Speakers:

• Hanne Tuomisto-Inch, Director, Privacy Sandbox Partnerships EMEA, Google
• Lukasz Abgarowicz, Global VP of Sales at Adlook (Part of RTB House) 

Key takeaways:

• Hanne kickstarted the discussion by explaining why the demise of third-party cookies in Chrome has been delayed. She shared that this was for several reasons including diverse feedback on industry readiness, general industry feedback, and feedback received by the CMA.
• Even though it is delayed, she confirmed that Privacy Sandbox is not going anywhere. It is here to stay and is one of the tools in the toolbox that will be used in the post third-party cookie era.
• Both Hanne and Lukasz reiterated that the web and mobile must continue to adapt and raise the bar on privacy to ensure success in this new era. 
• To conclude they shared that advertisers and publishers should now focus on a cookie-less future, work on website audits, use tools to analyse dependencies on third-party cookies, and continue to provide feedback.

View the presentation here.

Is the Industry Ready for the End of Third-Party Cookies?

To further explore and round up the conversation on the impending world without cookies, our next panel answered key questions on the current challenges, opportunities, and strategies for navigating the post-cookie era, assessing whether our industry is ready for this seismic shift and how strategies can be adapted to ensure effectiveness in the future. 

Speakers:

• Pete Danks, IAB Europe’s Third-Party Cookie Working Group Lead (Moderator)
• Christer Ljones, Director of Advertising Data Capabilities at Schibsted
• Alex Cone, Privacy Sandbox Senior Product Manager at Google
• Lawrence Horne, Country Director UK at Ogury

Key takeaways:

• Addressing the delay to the end of third-party cookies in Chrome the panel stressed that we must not to stop testing and learning. The industry should follow its peers and lean into the new era.
• They also discussed how collaboration and education are key. Numerous advertisers aren’t into the technical side of things, so industry leaders need to ensure that we educate.
• As signals reduce and privacy grows we need building blocks that will work.
• In terms of viable solutions, speakers discussed first-party data and why where that goes is important. Zero-party data was also mentioned as a viable solution as it is founded on user respect and understanding intent. 
• From a Google Chrome and Android perspective the adoption of APIs is a priority area. 
• When thinking about what scales best for publishers, speakers discussed first-party data having the largest reach and the need to utilise different sets of targeting. 
• Overall the group agreed that there is still a lot to do on expectation setting and understanding the paradigm shift. 

In a Landscape of Uncertainty, How Can Marketers Leverage Digital Advertising to Deliver Superior Results?

With the post third-party cookie questions answered, it was time to turn to outcomes and other challenges marketers face. In a world affected by the pandemic, climate crises, and misinformation, there are multiple challenges for marketers to overcome. In this keynote, IAS shared strategies for combating misinformation, safeguarding brand reputation, and fostering consumer trust. They also discussed the importance of adopting tools to face ever-evolving circumstances.

Speaker:

• Michael Issacs-Olaye, Business Development EMEA at Integral Ad Science (IAS)  

Key takeaways:

• Michael outlined that there is confusion in the market because of incomplete and inaccurate data, meaning reliable data is key to success.
• He shared several challenges and key factors that marketers should keep in mind:
  • Climate change - how this is affecting the world and how we should play our part
  • The pandemic - when advertisers found smarter ways to spend in a digital environment
  • Macroeconomic impact - the importance of navigating the market in light of macroeconomic changes and geopolitical conflicts
  • Misinformation and fake news (especially with elections coming) and how to deal with it
• In terms of consumer expectations, Michael revealed that:
  • 94% believe brands should promote sustainability
  • 57% of consumers prefer to see advertising on safe websites
  • 80% think misinformation sites should be avoided
  • 80% believe brands should promote diversity.
• He then shared that media tools are important to help manage quality. This includes brand safety and suitability measurement, viewability, and invalid traffic.
• He rounded this up by saying that industry alignment on the quality and assessment of tools is crucial. 

View the presentation here. 

What Does a Holistic Ad Tech Stack for Broadcasters Look Like?

It was then time to turn our attention to one of the industry’s most discussed and rapidly evolving channels - CTV and addressable television. With so many questions, panels, podcasts and conferences on this topic, we wanted to give it due care and attention by starting with a fascinating keynote from RTL Group.  Focusing on the recently announced tech cooperation between RTL Deutschland and ProSiebenSat1, RTL explored what it can do, how it opens up completely new performance dimensions in total video advertising for publishers, agencies, and advertisers, and what the future holds.

Speaker:

• Martin Hoberg, Chief International AdTech Officer at RTL Group 

Key takeaways:

• Martin opened his presentation by explaining that to create the right environment for cross-media ad products and to find a way to improve how the digital TV ecosystem and the linear TV ecosystem can work together, you need one holistic video advertising engine, and how this can be created by bringing the two corporations together.
• The main idea for the cooperation is to become one innovative leader for total video.
• He shared that both companies have the tools to measure and operate linear, addressable, connected TV and online video and can create stronger solutions by aligning their systems. 
• Finally, he revealed that the overall goal is to transform the ad system for greater efficiency, autonomy, synergies, and go-to-market strategies. 

Is TV Programmatic Buying Finally Going Mainstream?

To explore the wonderful world of TV further, our next session brought industry leaders together to address the rise of TV programmatic buying in Europe. To answer questions on how it’s growing and what will happen next, the panel explored the challenges and opportunities inherent in this evolving and often complex landscape and shared insights and practical examples of how TV buying is moving to the mainstream.

Speakers:

• Vincent Flood, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at VideoWeek (Moderator)
• Beatriz Pérez Montequi, Head of Sales Italy & Spain at Samsung Ads
• Anthony Katsur, CEO at IAB Tech Lab
• Adrien Masson, Head of Ad Tech Sales, Southern Europe at Amazon Ads 

Key takeaways:

• The panel opened by discussing how TV conversion varies by region. How addressable TV is bought in the U.S. differs from the European market, with Europe still mostly dedicated to CTV.
• On main challenges, the panel discussed the advertiser’s need for scale and reach and how to avoid ‘Zombie TV’ (i.e. when a TV is left on to stream but isn’t viewed by a person). Technology solutions, including the Tech Lab SDK, can detect things like Zombie TV so ads aren’t wasted. 
• Regarding programmatic setup, the panel discussed how greater connections between DSPs and the media agencies’ buying solutions enable more dynamic pricing to be used in programmatic guaranteed.
• They then discussed how traditional TV was typically restricted to bigger brand budgets and how real-time bidding (RTB) has helped democratise advertising for all. Now smaller local and bigger brands have access to the same programmatic systems and data - this is the beauty of programmatic TV.
• The panel finished up by discussing measurement and the potential of cross-screen measurement. They shared that if we want CTV to be successful, we need to get the measurement right. This enables the industry to rethink TV measurement and ensure consistency across platforms. 

After the Hype, is it Time for a Reckoning for Retail Media?

It was then time to move on to another high-growth channel - Retail Media. Much like CTV, Retail Media has captivated investors, journalists, and buyers in 2024. During this session, speakers teased out the answers to the much-asked questions on Retail Media. Reflecting on the current state of Retail Media in Europe and its future trajectory in digital advertising, they explored the hurdles we need to overcome to fuel growth and innovation and the key opportunities retailers as media businesses present to brands. 

Speakers:

• Marie-Clare Puffett, Industry Development & Insights Director at IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Kim Ludlow, Head of International Retail Media Sales (EMEA & APAC) at Microsoft
• James Allison, Director Market Development at Advertima
• Marco Magnaghi, Managing Director at GroupM Nexus, Italy
• Luis Gisbert Lobo, Head of Retail Partnership for Iberia and Italy at Unlimitail 

Key takeaways:

• The panel opened up by discussing that while there is hype around Retail Media it is still in a nascent stage.
• As an industry, they suggested that we are still at the beginning of the journey and need to understand Retailers first.
• Regarding the current challenges, the group discussed the importance of closed-loop reporting metrics and how different regions in EMEA are at different stages in their Retail Media journeys. They suggested that while the IAB is doing good things for standardisation, each market is different and that we need to recognise each market, retailer, and vertical and understand the assets to apply common standards. We need to ensure all environments are connected by data too.
• The group also discussed how Retail Media presents a massive opportunity to communicate to consumers in-store, and that the future lies in a full-funnel approach, and having a one-stop shop for Retailers.
• When asked whether Retail Media is on the road to a reckoning, speakers suggested that we need an omnichannel approach and to close the loop with more unified reporting and metrics to show brands why they should invest in this space. Transparency is key to this.
• To conclude this session, the speakers suggested it is not yet time for a reckoning as it is too early. We need to ride the wave for Retail Media in less developed markets and talk less and do more to make it happen.

Are Fading Signals Creating New Opportunities?

To round up the day we turned our attention to measurement. Welcoming Brand Metrics to the stage and setting the scene on measurement, this keynote explored the changing nature of campaign outcome data in shaping future strategies by drawing exclusive insights from 30k+ brand lift measurements. .

Speaker:

• Anders Lithner, CEO at Brand Metrics

Key takeaways:

• The presentation started by discussing how the industry has focused on data delivery in digital ad campaigns and how it mainly measures exposure (reach) and delivery (clicks).
• Anders then went on to say that we should also be able to measure the intermediary steps, which can be classified as brand-lifting elements, and that agencies should ask for brand-lift feedback data for all channels. 
• He then showed how the Brand Metrics tool runs brand lift measurement and demonstrated its scale.
• Across 25k campaigns the average brand lift results showed:
  • Brand awareness: 3,1%. – top performing: 5,7X
  • Brand consideration: 2,9% - top performing 7,4X.
  • Brand preference: 2,4% - top performing 6X
  • Action Intent: 1,7% - 3,9X

View the presentation here. 

Are We Measuring the Right Things?

And just like that, we were at the end of day one, and what better way to finish the day than by answering some of the arguable most important questions on measurement? To round everything up and leave our audience with the answers to what tools they should be using, panelists in the last session explored whether we are measuring the right things and what our focus should be on in terms of measurement as we move into a new era of digital advertising.

Speakers:

• David Cohen, CEO at IAB US (Moderator)
• Steve Lockwood, Head of Client Measurement at TikTok
• Mattia Salvi, CEO & Co-Founder at Aryel
• Nick Reid, SVP & Managing Director, EMEA at DoubleVerify
• Alice Beecroft, Senior Director, Global Strategy & Partnerships at Yahoo Advertising 

Key takeaways:

• The discussion started with the speakers sharing the KPIs they thought were most important to advertisers, with ROI taking the top spot. It was also highlighted that a continuation of measurement, from impressions and attention to outcomes as a whole, is also very important.
• The panel then went on to discuss how the use of reach and frequency are evolving and how the most sophisticated advertisers will look at both this and how it can drive ROI.
• Regarding what works well, the group discussed how the ability to measure media quality has evolved significantly and that the resources to measure marketing these days are incredible as we have endless tools available.
• When thinking about challenges, the group discussed fragmentation as the greatest source of frustration as there is no single way of measuring. This makes it more difficult to put budgets across channels.
• Diving a little more into AI, the group discussed how it can be used to enhance performance and agreed that it would be interesting to see how it helps improve measurement.
• David then asked how each speaker would change the industry if they had a magic wand. Answers included:
  • Removing any nuances with ad property to enable cross-media measurement 
  • Breaking down walled gardens to help enable standardisation
  • Ensuring a willingness to drive change in all environments
  • Simplifying processes 
• To round everything up, the panel played a short game of quick-fire word association. Here’s what they came up with on the spot:
  • MFA - Issue
  • Attention - Outcomes
  • Incremental reach - Opportunity
  • AI - Misunderstood
  • Attribution - Optimisation
  • Probabilistic - Deterministic 

After a jam-packed day of interactive and engaging content, attendees were invited to attend a networking cocktail reception to continue the great conversations and connections, and to celebrate with fellow attendees.

Check out the Day Two highlights here. 

Thanks to the support of our sponsors, media partners, the team at IAB Italy, and our event host Joanna Burton, we enjoyed two days of content, which focused on our theme ‘The Big Questions. The Smart Answers’. 

Going beyond standard keynote presentations and panel discussions, we brought the ‘interactive’ back to Interact this year, with each session framed around a key question that our elite, expert speakers endeavoured to answer. No beating around the bush. It was all about the smart answers that our audience was after. Plus we addressed additional questions live on stage through our engaging polls and audience Q&As. 

On day two, we focused on how we can support Ukraine, dived into how strategies can make the supply chain more sustainable, and assessed how publishers can reinvent their digital advertising businesses. We also turned our attention to policy and legal matters to look at the future of digital advertising policy, what’s next for the TCF, and how we can ensure transparency with the Digital Services Act (DSA). 

Below you can find overviews and key takeaways from each session.

How Can the Industry Support Ukraine?

The second day of Interact began with a poignant keynote from IAB Ukraine’s CEO, Anastasiya Baydachenko. Having travelled at length to be with us again this year, she kindly shared an update on the situation in Ukraine and her latest experiences. She also shared practical examples of how we as an industry can collaborate and continue to support Ukraine, to help drive digital advertising forward in the region. 

View the presentation here. 

Advertising’s First Sustainability Standards Are Coming - Are You Ready?

Sustainable advertising is a big industry topic and creating a no-waste, clean ad ecosystem we can all agree will benefit marketers, media owners, and tech companies alike. To kick things off in this area Scope3 and Sanofi Consumer Healthcare took to the stage to share insights into how more efficient, effective, and sustainable advertising is within our reach, and why it's needed as we head into the next era of digital advertising.

Speakers:

• Paul-Antoine Strullu, Head of EMEA at Scope3
• Anna Kechekmadze, Global Digital Media Strategy Lead at Sanofi Consumer Healthcare

Key takeaways:

• Paul started the session by sharing the weight of digital advertising’s carbon emission problem - Advertising generates 4x more emissions than the USB-C Charger estimates.
• He shared that standards will help to point our industry in the right direction and that marketers can be the driving force behind the movement.
• Handing over to Anna, Anna shared how Sanofi Consumer Healthcare is taking action from a marker’s perspective. This includes taking collaborative action across measurement implementation, setting baselines and targets, identification of reduction opportunities, and performance evaluation and optimisation. 
• By working with Scope3 to reduce their carbon emissions in their digital advertising campaigns, Sanofi saw a 30% reduction in emissions in their pilot test.
• They concluded the session by sharing that everyone can make positive steps towards reduction while achieving better marketing outcomes by using the right measurement tools. 

View the presentation here.

Are Sustainability Strategies Delivering Across the Value Chain?

To continue to answer key questions on sustainability, the first panel of the day assessed the state of readiness of our industry and shared insights on what is being done to achieve sustainability in digital advertising. 

Exploring the current tools and frameworks available to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced by digital advertising, important regulations, and priorities for businesses, the panel considered if our industry is doing enough to reduce its carbon footprint and what other tangible actions can be taken to deliver across the value chain. 

Speakers:

• Rachel Smith, CEO at ExchangeWire (Moderator)
• Arthur Millet, Director General at Alliance Digitale
• Dimitris Beis, Data Analyst & Sustainability Manager at IAB Europe 
• Lisa Vieweg, Co-Lead Sustainability in Digital Advertising Lab at BVDW
• Suzanne McElligott, CEO at IAB Ireland 

Key takeaways:

• The panel agreed that measurement standards have been an important component of the sustainability process from the outset but in order to be effective they need to be universally applied. This is why National Federations such as BVDWAlliance Digitale and IAB Ireland have connected with IAB Europe to achieve this.
• Alliance Digitale’s journey started in France in 2021 as it is now mandatory for businesses to publish their scope 3 emissions. This is why they have been working on a framework for quite some time. 
• Several Trade Bodies have been working on frameworks and aligning on what to measure in the industry. When it comes to digital, National Federations have come together to work with other trade organisations such as the Global Alliance of Responsible Media (GARM) and Ad Net Zero to help deliver digital guidance into a wider media framework.
• By focusing on accurate estimation and delivering a framework that is fit for purpose, National Federations hope to encourage digital advertising to be more responsible and efficient. 

Is it Time to Build a New Playbook for Digital Publishing?

Moving from sustainability strategies to publisher development, our next session welcomed Lauren Dick, Executive Director at Mail Metro Media to the stage to share macro industry trends from a publisher’s perspective. From harnessing first-party data strategies, and creating original content to delivering ecommerce outcomes, she covered all key valuable attributes in today’s media mix. 

View the presentation here.

How Can Publishers Reinvent their Digital Advertising Business?

Continuing on the innovative insights that Mail Metro Media shared, the next session allowed the audience to discover how publishers are moving, shaking, innovating, and reinventing their digital advertising businesses to ensure success in the new world of digital.

Speakers:

• Constantine Kamaras, Chairman Emeritus at IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Lauren Dick, Executive Director at Mail Metro Media
• Francesco Barbarani, Director of Digital & Experience at Rai Pubblicità
• Karen Nahum, General Manager of Publishing & Digital at Grupo 24 ORE

Key takeaways:

• The session focused on the key assets and competitive advantages that publishers possess in the advertising market - specifically, panelists discussed the growing value and utilisation of first-party data as well as context (namely the quality of the editorial environment).
• Emerging strategies in programmatic were also debated. Especially in terms of supply/demand path optimisation and the emergence of new metrics, such as attention, with publishers noting that these are in the early phases of development and implementation.
• FInally, there was a focus on strategies to capitalise on e-commerce and Retail Media, with publishers becoming more ambitious, aiming to extend their offering to cater to the evolving demand of clients.

What Comes Next for Digital Advertising Policy?

After a well-earned coffee break, it was time to answer the big questions on policy. Welcoming our first policy-focused session to the stage, speakers dived into the future of digital advertising policy in the European Union and answered questions on what to expect next. 

They examined the influential factors that will steer EU perspectives on digital advertising policy, particularly in light of upcoming elections and their impact on setting the agenda. They also focused on the post-election landscape, identifying the potential hurdles and issues that EU policymakers must confront and navigate in shaping effective advertising regulations.

Speakers:

• Inés Talavera de la Esperanza, Public Policy Manager at IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Paul Goode, SVP Strategic Partnerships at Comscore
• Alexander Whalen, Public Policy Manager, EU Affairs at Meta 
• Achim Schlosser, VP Global Data Standards at Bertelsmann

Key takeaways:

• The group started by dissecting the EU techlash against big tech that has characterised the current mandate and considered key points for policymakers in the next mandate regarding digital advertising regulation. 
• They also explored how the industry could better communicate its value to policymakers and improve relationships.
• The group then shared insights into possible upcoming regulations, suggesting that digital advertising, particularly issues surrounding personalisation, will be on the Commission’s agenda. 
• Overall the speakers emphasised the need for better communication and knowledge, urging EU institutions to gather unbiased evidence and engage with all stakeholders to identify problems and propose effective regulations. 
• The discussion also posed questions on how the industry can improve and bring value to society if it is run solely by growth and innovation. 
• It was also suggested that industry initiatives could be the answer to support the industry in addressing this challenge. 

What are the Key Factors Driving the Continuous Development of the TCF?

Moving to the topic of the IAB Europe Transparency & Consemtn Framework (TCF), our next panel of experts explored the TCF in light of the CJEU ruling in connection with IAB Europe’s appeal of the February 2022 decision by the Belgian Data Protection Authority. They discussed the latest adaptations to the framework and how it is evolving to work with new developments and innovations in the ecosystem.

Speakers:

• Ninon Vagner, Privacy Director at IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Julien Delhommeau, Chair of IAB Europe's TCF Working Group 
• Christoph Zippel, Chair of IAB Europe's TCF Policy Working Group 
• Giulia Sala, External Legal Counsel at IAB Italy 
• Will Howard, Legal Counsel at Google

Key takeaways:

• The panel opened by discussing the latest adaptations that have been made to the TCF and how they align with current regulatory challenges. The group shared the benefits that the latest version of the TCF (v2.2) brings to their respective companies. 
• Regarding the next iterations of the TCF, the speakers discussed the ongoing efforts that are being made to improve the framework, especially in light of the recent CJEU ruling in connection with IAB Europe’s appeal to the Belgium Data Protection Authority’s decision on the TCF. 
• Finally, the panellists looked at what was next for the TCF. Covering both the current regulatory challenges we are facing and the technical developments that are being made by the industry, including the deprecation of third-party cookies. The speakers agreed that things would continue to evolve in line with this over the next 12 months.  

How Can the Industry Work Together to Meet the Transparency Obligations of the Digital Services Act (DSA)?

In the final session and to conclude Interact for 2024, our last group of industry leaders discussed the release of the technical specifications for the DSA Ads Transparency Solution by IAB Tech Lab, in collaboration with IAB Europe, as well as the interplay between the specifications and EDAA's Advanced Advertising Transparency Programme (AATP). They also explored how compliance with Article 26 of the DSA can be facilitated and streamlined through common technical approaches, and the outstanding uncertainties underlying the enforcement of this new piece of legislation at both the EU and national level.

Speakers:

• Townsend Feehan, CEO at IAB Europe (Moderator)
• Martina Gerli, Project Coordinator at EDAA
• Elena Turtureanu, Global VP Legal and Privacy at Adform
• Rowena Lam, Sr. Director of Product, Privacy & Data at IAB Tech Lab
• Lucio Gagliardi, Privacy & Ad Tech Program Lead at Adevinta

Key takeaways:

• The panel started by discussing the advertising transparency requirements of the DSA and how they differ from what is already laid down in the GDPR. While the GDPR focuses on transparency and legal requirements for Data Processing, Art. 26 of the DSA introduces additional requirements for transparency in online advertising, specifically regarding information provided to the users. Another difference is that the GDPR applies to every actor processing personal data, whereas the DSA only applies to Online Platforms.
• Regarding different tools the industry has put in place for compliance, the panel discussed how essential it is for the whole industry to move towards a common approach and standard practices to create transparency and shared ways of presenting information to users.
• When discussing advertiser confidence that disclosures are being made to enhance user trust, the panel said that advertisers are looking for advice on solutions and that they should be aware of their vendor's awareness and execution of DSA disclosure obligations. 

Well, that’s a wrap for Interact 2024, and what an amazing two days it was. 

If you are interested in finding out more about IAB Europe and how you can get involved in our work across all of these key areas and more, or are interested in joining us for Interact 2025 and would like to know more about the event and how you can participate, please contact the IAB Europe team at communication@iabeurope.eu. 

In recent months, the conversation on sustainability in digital advertising has been largely centred on the development of much-anticipated product-level standards. The anticipation is justified; brands have long expressed that the streamlining of environmental performance estimation is a key prerequisite to substantial reductions of their ad spend’s carbon footprint. A common basis for emissions models would also enable solutions providers to focus on optimisation and deal with the uncertainty created by the current variance between estimates.

Programmatic is an area of focus, commonly regarded as a hotspot in terms of a digital ad campaign’s value chain. Trust and transparency, supply path optimisation, measurement, and ad fraud prevention are all topics that share a significant intersection with environmental efficiency.

While viewing the issue of programmatic emissions through a product-level lens is certainly valuable in terms of integrating greenhouse gas (GHG) impact into the decision-making processes (especially to IAB Europe members, brought together by the digital advertising business model and value chain), an enterprise-level perspective can provide valuable insights. Cedara’s newest research report, titled Scope 1-3 Emissions Measurement for Digital Media Businesses, addresses a topic that sometimes takes the role of the elephant in the room: the interplay between product-level programmatic emissions and the total GHG footprint of ad tech platforms across the ecosystem. Cedara’s strategy is characterised by a focus on enterprise-level emissions; the figures shared in the research report represent averages of activity and intensity data collected directly from digital media businesses.

Before addressing the report’s implications, it must be noted that it is also a great educational resource for digital ad professionals seeking to build an understanding of emissions scopes within their field. The report includes a clear explanation of the emissions sources considered based on GHG Protocol’s categories. Besides product-level emissions, considerations include corporate overhead such as purchased electricity and business travel across all three emissions scopes.

What important insights are shared in the report?

1. More than 95% of a programmatic ad platform’s total emissions fall under scope 3, also known as supply chain emissions. Of those, more than 90% come from media, as estimated by the SRIxAD framework. The framework includes ad selection and delivery infrastructure as well as user devices as emissions sources.
   
2. Of those emissions tied to programmatic, about 73% are tied to auctioning calls (avail transmission, bid requests/responses) and 14% are tied to the transmission of the creative. In total, 87% of emissions result from network utilisation, and only 6% result from data centres.
   
3. In the case of managed services, 63% of emissions are associated with transmission of the creative, and 33% result from load and render on user devices.

What are the implications?

1. On voluntary reduction targets set through the Science-Based Targets initiative: digital ad emissions must be included in the emissions inventory of any firm with an environmental profile resembling the above. Quoting the report, “SBTi requires that if total Scope 3 emissions represent 40% or more of total scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, then they shall be included in near-term targets. SBTi doesn’t yet have an understanding of the total emissions derived from media delivery so businesses may be able to slip through by leaving out media operations. However, the media industry should assume that SBTi will have this data in the future which could have a possible effect on a business' prior net zero submission (assuming media data was not included).” Cedara’s conclusion is aligned with a previous IAB Europe blog post on SBTi and GHG Protocol.

2. On programmatic ad platforms considering their sustainability strategy: good news, upcoming standards will enable harmonised estimation of the apparent carbon hotspot in the value chain. As such, the levers for reduction are likely to become clearer. When reducing programmatic waste and addressing issues, such as excessive reselling, ad tech platforms will also be tackling their largest source of emissions. The digital advertising ecosystem must work together to support these efforts and minimise GHG impact across the value chain; these emissions are part of scope 3 for everyone involved.
   
3. On emissions modelling and placement- or campaign-level GHG estimation: additional work is required to understand the actual environmental impact of network transfers. At present, there is no clear consensus regarding the GHG intensity of the internet. It would be virtually impossible for firms within the digital advertising ecosystem to model a system so large and complex. However, there are meaningful actions that can be undertaken to ensure the intensities used are as representative as possible given they can significantly alter final estimates:
   
   1. Assess intensities derived from research and lifecycle assessments (LCA) in terms of robustness. A qualitative check can include parameters such as recency and applicability of assumptions. For example, LCAs may rely on data that is only representative of specific local markets.
      
   2. Refine the network transmission component of GHG estimation solutions through increased levels of granularity in terms of data transfer and payloads. Furthermore, integrate modelling of content delivery networks; their usage likely has a substantial impact on total efficiency across both data centres and networks.
      
   3. Converge on specific common assumptions and protect GHG estimates from undue adjustments. Seeing as network usage represents both a large and largely uncertain portion of total emissions, it might be prudent to establish a baseline intensity until estimates can be further refined.

Cedara’s report is a valuable addition to the growing collection of work connecting advancements in product-level GHG estimation with enterprise-level accounting. With a significant portion of programmatic ad platforms' total emissions falling under scope 3, particularly from ad delivery and network utilisation, the path forward involves concerted efforts in streamlining estimation methods and targeting the most impactful areas for reduction. Embracing upcoming standards will not only clarify the carbon footprint across the value chain but also enable ad tech platforms to effectively address their largest sources of emissions, thereby supporting voluntary reduction targets such as those set by the Science-Based Targets initiative. As the industry moves towards more precise GHG intensity assessments and harmonised modelling frameworks, collaboration and transparency will be key in minimising the environmental impact of digital advertising and achieving long-term sustainability goals.

Emissions estimation, carbon footprint across the value chain, and voluntary reduction targets are just a few of the core areas IAB Europe’s Sustainability Standards Committee focuses on. If you are interested in finding out more about any of these topics, the work of the committee, or how you can get involved, please contact Colombe at michaud@iabeurope.eu or me at beis@iabeurope.eu. 

Committee participation is open to all members of IAB Europe and key resources produced by the committee can be explored in our Sustainability Hub here.

Political Landscape:

According to the current political climate, the next European Parliament is expected to witness a significant increase in its centre-right and right-wing seats. Currently, the biggest parties in the European Parliament are the European People’s Party (EPP; centre-right, currently 179 seats) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D; centre-left, currently 141 seats). The third biggest party is Renew (currently 101 seats), which has a complex membership of mostly centre parties, including centre-left, centre-right and liberal factions. The Greens (centre-left, left-wing) slightly outweigh the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR; right-wing). However, recent polls indicate that the rise of right-wing parties and sentiments in Europe may change this dynamic.

Although the EPP and S&D will likely remain the largest parties in the Parliament, the ECR (predicted 1  to obtain 72 seats ) and ID (Identity and Democracy, predicted to secure 66 seats) are likely to experience an increase in votes, while the Greens are expected to see a decline in support (predicted to secure 41 seats). This shift could influence future coalition-building, voting behaviour, and the Parliament’s own initiatives.

Despite many parties, including the Socialists, Greens, Renew, and Left parliamentary groups, signing a declaration calling upon all democratic parties to reject coalition-building or any alliances with the far-right , the EPP has refused to sign the declaration. Multiple national parties have signed agreements with far-right parties in their countries, such as the Renew equivalent (VVD) in the Netherlands. This is an important factor since the EPP will remain the largest party in the Parliament and could cooperate with the right-wing (ECR) and the far-right (ID) to secure a majority on new or ongoing legislation. This cooperation could support more "business-friendly" policies. 

Key Issues: 

Several key issues and pieces of legislation will shape the next mandate and be important to the digital advertising industry. For instance, the upcoming review of the GDPR will be a significant part of the next mandate. Although there is a general reluctance among policymakers to reopen the GDPR debate, there could be important changes or additions that impact the industry. IAB Europe submitted in January 2024 its feedback to the public consultation on the GDPR to represent members’ experiences, successes, and grievances with the law's application.

Another important aspect of the next mandate will be the implementation and enforcement of newly introduced legislation, namely the DSA, DMA, and the AI Act. Policymakers and the digital advertising industry alike are calling for the next Commission to invest time and resources into the efficient and harmonised enforcement and implementation of these regulations.

Additionally, the upcoming report on the Digital Fairness Fitness Check, an initiative launched in 2022 by the Commission to evaluate existing consumer legislation, will provide insights into whether these laws ensure an adequate level of consumer protection in the digital environment. This report will address issues such as dark patterns, personalization practices, and influencer marketing. Expected to be published in June, the report will also include main outcomes from the cookie pledge initiative.

Furthermore, rumours indicate that the Commission is likely to revisit the ePrivacy regulation in the next mandate. The pending proposal, which has been on hold for years already, will most likely be withdrawn and might come back in a different shape with a new proposal or multiple new proposals tackling different provisions within the ePrivacy directive. 

Candidate Profiles: 

The ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure requires all political parties to nominate a candidate for the position of the Commission President. The following candidates have been nominated for the position: 

• Ursula von der Leyen (European People’s Party)
• Nicholas Schmit (Party of European Socialists)
• Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe Now)
• Terry Reintke (European Green Party)
• Walter Baier (Party of the European Left)

Many expect Ursula von der Leyen to remain in her post due to the predicted prominence of the EPP in the European Parliament. However, this remains to be seen, as the Commission President has to be approved by the Parliament by an absolute majority. Ms von der Leyen remaining in power could mean that the next Commission increases focus on the implementation and enforcement of the legislation introduced during the previous term. Other important personalities and posts to mention include Didier Reynders, the former European Commissioner for Justice, who has taken unpaid leave from his position to be a candidate for the position of Secretary General at the Council of Europe. 

Timeline after elections: 

As the elections are drawing near, here are some important key dates following the elections that will shape the EU’s next mandate’s trajectory. 

• 10 June onwards (no definitive deadline): formation of the political groups 
• 27-28 June: European Council meeting, where an agreement on the candidates for high-level posts such as the Commission President will be reached
• 18-19 July: First plenary of the new Parliament 
• September: Election of the Commission President
• December: The new European Council President takes office

 1 Polls conducted by Politico & Euractiv.

Let’s be honest, third-party cookies have always been limiting. Despite being widely used they offer a false precision, and the continued conversation around what marketers will do when they’re deprecated remains a distraction. Now is our chance to do better, for both consumers and brands. 

The way we can help brands to do better, and deliver relevant advertising that matches customers with products and brands they’re genuinely interested in, is through solutions such as audience modelling and contextual targeting. These solutions are powered by a combination of contextual and first party signals using advanced AI, to deliver advertising that is more relevant and helps brands better understand how their customers shop, stream, and browse. They will define the next era of digital advertising, and brands can start their journey today, by utilising solutions that are already available, all without a third-party cookie. Here’s how: 

Improving relevancy through model-based solutions

86%^₁  of consumers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products, placing an even greater emphasis on brands to deliver relevant, interesting advertising. Model-based solutions can use shopping, contextual signals and purchase signals to predict ad relevance to help customers discover new products and brands while they browse online. 

Powered by AI and machine learning, modelled solutions get smarter with every campaign that runs, improving engagement for the future. This increased relevancy can have a big impact. For example, we’ve seen brands across verticals experience a 34.1% ² increase in return on ad spend, without having to take any action, after utilising our modelled solutions.

Building better connections with context-based insights 

We know addressability remains a key priority for brands, and that this will only be compounded as 95% ³ of web traffic is expected to be unaddressable via traditional advertising methods by the end of this year.

Using AdTech to unlock real-time content consumption insights already available to brands today is an obvious place to start. For example, contextual targeting helps brands reach consumers based on current content consumption, without relying on ad IDs. It does this by enabling brands to select the specific products, categories, and content where they want their ads shown. This helps brands engage with audiences who are already in a mindset aligned with the content they're consuming. 

At Amazon Ads we take this a significant step further. When brands use the Amazon DSP, we use AI and AWS models that leverage our shopping, streaming, and browsing signals with metadata about the content being viewed (i.e., contextual signals) to better ensure customers are seeing ads for products and services they may be interested in. Doing this has already increased return on ad spend across US Amazon DSP campaigns by over a third ⁴. This further evidences how we can solve for the future of addressability without relying on third-party cookies or other ad identifiers.

Empowering brands with clean rooms  

Clean rooms are central to giving marketers durable analytical capabilities in a world without ad identifiers. Why? Because they’re privacy-safe spaces that enable brands to perform queries across the pseudonymous signals that are available to them. Crucially, this helps marketers to understand how they are reaching customers across different channels, as well as how their ads across those channels are (or aren’t) delivering business impact.  

It’s important to remember however that while clean rooms have the potential to empower brands, they are reliant on the inputs they receive. By collaborating across first-party signals and third-party inputs in a clean room, marketers can perform analytics to help them understand customer shopping journeys, generate unique audience segments, and analyse ROI in a safe and secure way. 

For example, one domestic appliance brand utilised Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), the Amazon Ads clean room solution, to improve the efficiency of their ad spend. The brand worked with their agency, Kepler, and tapped into the Kepler Intelligence Platform (KIP) dashboard that makes AMC analysis available in real time to identify emerging trends, enabling them to see when customers were most likely to engage with their adverts. They found that while early mornings saw far less efficient conversions, the same activity was far more likely to engage audiences later in the day. With this insight, the brand implemented dayparting to ensure that ads were only displayed at those more active times. This change resulted in a 46% increase in orders, 66% increase in sales and a 15% increase in ROI ⁵.

The deprecation of third-party cookies offers brands the chance to do better and new technologies are already making this ambition a reality. Let’s take this opportunity now.

_____________________________________

 ¹ Salesforce, WW, 2023

  ² Source: Internal Amazon, U.S., Jan – Dec 2022, 140K campaigns across verticals 

 ³ StatCounter, WW, 2022

  ⁴ Amazon Internal, US, 2023

  ⁵ Amazon Ads internal data, WW, 2023

This article was originally produced for New Digital Age.

A big thank you to the following contributors for sharing their thoughts:

Esme Robinson, Director Platform Solutions, EU Enterprise Products at Epsilon

Jason Westcott, Chair of IAB Europe’s Retail Media Committee and Global Head of Commerce Solutions at GroupM

James Allison, Director of Market Development (Europe) at Advertima

Q. Retail Media has been an integral part of trade marketing budgets for some time. What is compelling brands to invest further, i.e. beyond trade marketing, in retail media?

Jason - "First, it is important to understand the following dynamics. A brand’s trade marketing focuses on influencing trade intermediaries (retailers, wholesalers) to promote and sell their products more effectively. Brand spend or Advertising & Promotion (A&P) targets the end consumer to generate demand. Digital retail media evolved from e-commerce site tenancy rooted in trade marketing, to addressable advertising more akin to A&P. So, the evolution to the behavioural targeting of individual consumers has naturally attracted A&P spend. The ability to attribute sales to this media is an upside to marketers and budget controllers seeking proof of ROI for their budgets. This is endemic to more modern retail media and has helped fuel industry growth."  

James -"Jason's point about growth extending beyond trade marketing is key. The ability to measure media's impact on sales across the entire marketing funnel, thanks to the rich data now available, is driving this expansion. Retail media isn't just about influencing purchase decisions anymore. Brands can leverage connected online, offline, and in-store media channels to measure and optimise for upper funnel awareness as well. Standardising measurement and integrating retail media with broader digital advertising across all channels are crucial for continued growth."

Esme - "Brands are in a position they've never been in before: from the efficacy of targeting - being able to not just reach buyers of their brand, but accurately suppress those to reach net new prospects, to the way in which those campaigns can be attributed to real people, across a host of new and existing channels. Brands can meet shoppers where they are at more stages of their shopper journey than ever before. And the work that IAB Europe and others are doing to create standards gives brands confidence in the rigour and efficacy of retail media networks and their vendors." 

Q. What should retailers be doing to attract brand budgets to their media offering? 

Jason - "Brand marketers want addressability at scale, to be able to deliver the exact creative message they want within the brand-safe environments they have approved, plus delivery/impact measurement that aligns with their broader digital investment framework. A simple concept but challenging to deliver. With a one or two exceptions, on-site is less appealing to Brand, being mostly lower funnel. Off-site propositions that offer cross-channel flexibility for the buy side will be more attractive to brand marketers and agencies. Shiny new formats will always attract brand marketers’ attention, but if they do not align to the tenets above, they will lack longevity."  

James - "Traditionally, retailers focus on proving sales results (ROI/ROAS) to brands, pitching their ad space primarily as a conversion tool (with the exception of certain activations). This caters to shopper and trade marketers seeking direct sales impact from media buys. However, retail environments are also prime spots for building brand awareness. Consider frequency, crucial for brand recognition: European grocery shoppers spend an average of 41 minutes per visit, providing a lot of exposure to in-store media and therefore driving brand recognition. 

As mentioned earlier, consistent measurement and long-lasting, plannable formats (both digital and in-store) are vital. By showcasing the power of brand building alongside clear measurement standards, retailers can attract brand budgets."

Esme – "It is important that retailers understand how e brand budgets work, especially within agencies. Brands or Brand agencies expect consistent, transparent person-based performance reporting – in fact 75% of Brands rated ‘transparency on up-to-date campaign performance reports’ as the most important capability of a retail media network (Epsilon RMN Survey Report: The state of retail media in 2023) as well as wanting customer insights to complement measurement. To attract brand budgets, retailers need to demonstrate how these results and insights can inform media planning compared to just being the provider of an audience to buy." 

Q. Can you give an example of some evolving use cases for retail media and brand budgets?

Jason - "Brand marketers can leverage digital retail media's audience targeting to achieve specific brand objectives. For instance, they can boost customer lifetime value by using retailers' customer profile data to offer brand-exclusive subscriptions via their owned domains. To regenerate demand from lapsed buyers, targeted video content is effective to help consumers reengage with the brand - optimising for video completions rather than immediate sales here is the best approach. Video can also be used to drive awareness among relevant audiences, leveraging shopper profiles based on real shopping behaviours, such as tech enthusiasts or pet lovers, especially during new product launches, offering reasonable scale with less wastage." 

James - "Building on the concept of audience-based marketing, a powerful new use case is emerging: real-time, seller-defined in-store audience targeting. This reduces ad waste by allowing brands to deliver targeted messages directly to relevant shoppers at scale.

Imagine a drink brand with four flavours, each popular with distinct demographics. With audience AI, they could promote the entire range using mid-funnel tactics like mobile ads and digital out-of-home displays near stores to attract "all adults." Then, in-store, the technology personalises content for each SKU based on real-time shopper data. This hyper-relevance drives lower-funnel conversions by reaching the right person with the right message at the point of purchase. This strategic combination of mid-funnel awareness and targeted in-store promotion creates a powerful tool for brands."

Esme - "Beyond the channel and data points mentioned above, an evolution we’re seeing is that brand budgets aren’t just being spent with retailers they have an endemic relationship with. There’s a definite rise of non-endemic retail media, which is born from the expansion of the types of retailers and brands that are entering the retail media space. Non-endemic retail media gives brands from all verticals the opportunity to target hyper-relevant potential shoppers and opens up a new revenue stream for retailers, which they can then funnel back into their overall marketing budgets."

Q. Can you share two top best practices for brands? 

Jason - "Retail media client strategies I have designed consistently emphasise the advertiser's business objectives throughout. Successful approaches weight performance across a retailer's media offerings, aiming for genuine business impact rather than chasing superficial sales metrics. Key practices include valuing targets appropriately, such as being prepared to flip competitor’s customers even at a negative campaign ROAS, and maintaining clear campaign segmentation with a single KPI per objective to avoid conflating multiple goals across line items. This ensures campaigns remain focused and effective in driving growth and achieving genuine business outcomes."

Esme – "Brands should embrace a strategic channel mix to maximise opportunities to connect with shoppers – but always maintain overarching strategy and goal to prevent disparate conversations or unnecessary duplication. Brands will need to know exactly what they want to achieve (trusting their convictions) and will ideally be able to tie back messaging from any channel to a real outcome from a real person. This relies on good identity resolution and people-based targeting and attribution – with this assessment of capabilities being a necessary best practice for brands when considering where to spend budgets." 

Q. How do agencies and advertisers view retail media now versus 5 years ago?

Jason - "Five years ago, digital retail media operated independently from core digital channels, often in isolation with limited alignment and accountability. Today, there is a shift towards integrating retail media into core media frameworks and processes across marketing organisations. More retailers have become media owners or expanded their offerings, often through technology provider integrations and new media partnerships (i.e. CTV via established broadcasters). It is overstated, but the growth acceleration of e-commerce through the pandemic was a boon for retail media. As Europe and Central Asia’s fastest growing channel (+15%) with 6.9% channel share (according to GroupM), it is firmly in the industry spotlight and will be exposed to growing pressure for greater digital channel conformity as it continues to scale."

Esme – "the most significant change has been the knowledge and experience within Retail Media Networks, Brands, Vendors and Agencies. The expectations from brands have (rightly so) grown significantly with more demands for meaningful performance, transparent reporting, more channels and greater expertise and support from Retail Media Networks. The industry is rapidly increasing its ability to meet those demands but with such a vast array of approaches, technologies, and partners to choose from, there are still key challenges that need to be addressed to ensure those brand demands are met and not obscured with the latest shiny development." 

Our industry stubbornly clings to the promise of one-to-one marketing, convinced that it will deliver better results than advertisements that are designed to reach many. Complicating matters further, for the past six years we’ve struggled to achieve hyper-personalised targeting and simultaneously meet privacy regulations, but it isn’t working. 

Cookies / Private Signals, Tomato /Tomahto 

For reasons I can’t quite explain, our industry has reduced GDPR down to a restriction on cookies: Stop using third-party tracking cookies, the thinking goes, and compliance is more or less assured. But that’s following the letter rather than the spirit of the law.

At its core, GDPR says businesses need a legal basis to collect and use a citizen’s data; permission is one of eight bases. The industry is deploying technological workarounds -- replete with impressive mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that they are privacy compliant -- all so we can continue our quest for data-driven one-to-one marketing.

For instance, we collect user data of people who engage with our sites and apps. This is first-party data and that is fine. But then we work with other data companies that have vacuumed up vast troves of user data to create User ID graphs so that we can match users who visited our site to their mobiles, work computers, smart TVs in the family rec room or hashed emails. Who needs tracking cookies?

Or, we’ll take the data we’ve collected, and enter into a data clean room with a partner so we can compare and contrast data for marketing purposes. This tactic assumes that GDPR doesn’t require us to get the citizen’s permission prior to using their data in a clean room in order to develop a joint customer list for a promotion. That assumption is questionable.

But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we must ask: Do such use cases serve humanity’s request for privacy? Or are we acting in ways that will inevitably prompt another round of consumer blowback and regulations?

And while we’re on the topic of honesty, let’s talk about the efficacy of all that invasive one-to-one targeting. Does it really deliver significantly better results?

The Truth About One-to-One Marketing

Prior to joining Digiseg I led the marketing team of a company keen to acquire new customers. I was under intense pressure to tie every Euro I spent back to a customer. We struggled to grow our customer base and finally, out of desperation, I asked for and received money to launch a TV campaign. Guess what? In two months we doubled our customer base.

This isn’t an anti-digital advertising screed. I am a huge fan of digital advertising, and I work for a company that’s in the business of providing data to marketers and agencies so that they can execute and measure both performance and branding campaigns. We just don’t buy into the notion that success can only be achieved via one-to-one marketing.

The truth is, privacy and performance are not mutually exclusive terms. We don’t need to find new cookie-like ways to build awareness and acquire new customers. 

Forget Consumers: Think Household Cohorts

A key to complying with the spirit as well as the letter of the privacy laws -- and to avoid incurring the citizen’s wrath once again -- is to improve on the one-to-many strategy. This, in turn, requires us to replace private signals (e.g. hashed emails, device IDs) with household cohorts. 

Household cohorts are segments of users built on data from national statistics offices, such as the building–, motor-, tax- register or census data. The data provided by these civic sources are verified, scrubbed of all PII data, and very rich. For these reasons, it is often an advantage in scenarios where hyper-targeting results in diminishing returns by continually targeting the same subset of consumers. 

For instance, household cohorts encompass insights such as home type, savings level, education level, presence of children, lifecycle, number of cars, neighbourhood type and tech level. It also provides insights into preferences, such as propensity to travel.

The benefit of these data types is they do a better job in validating a need for a product than audience segments based on tracking cookies. Plenty of people read about advancements in solar panels, but if they rent apartments in high-rise buildings, they’ll never buy one. But a neighbourhood filled with single family homes in a jurisdiction that offers tax incentives for renewables is a great audience segment? That’s a perfect target to drive conversions.

Put another way, these data allow marketers to reach the entire market, and across any channel, without ever tracking a single user. Instead, it drives conversions by targeting an entire market with the right messaging. Think of it as a data-driven strategy for one-to-many advertising, whether that’s a CTV campaign or a mobile one.

This one-to-many approach can apply to every task on the marketer’s to-do list, whether that’s targeting parents for a branding campaign, or driving users with a demonstrated need for your product to your website.

In these contexts, one-to-many advertising not only addresses the limitations of hyper-targeting but also leverages the strength of mass communication to build a stronger, more inclusive brand presence. 

Google has signalled that the end of cookie-based targeting will arrive by the end of year. This is a good time for the industry to implement strategies that respect privacy, rather than pretend to. Let us hope that the deprecation of third-party cookies will usher in a new age, where one-to-many advertising allows us to engage with broader, less invasive advertising techniques that safeguard consumer privacy and still reach large audiences effectively.

Bio: Søren H. Dinesen is the co-founder and CEO of Digiseg. He began his career in the analog world, where he specialised in targeting and measurement in offline marketing. After successfully building and selling this data business, he shifted his focus to digital. In 2015, Dinesen founded Digiseg, seeing an opportunity to apply neighbourhood segmentation techniques to digital advertising. His goal was to develop a privacy-centric targeting and measurement technology that maintains high performance without the need for tracking.

This week marks the launch of a brand new series - ‘Programmatic Perspectives’.

Brought to you by the members of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee, we will share regular blog posts and podcasts that delve into all things programmatic in the digital advertising ecosystem. 

From exploring agency models and audio trends to the post third-party cookie era, AI, and more each of our guests will offer their unique and personal perspectives on the industry’s hottest programmatic topics.  

Explore Our Latest Blog Posts

• Supply Chain Complexities with David Bauckmann, CTO of Impression Media
• Omnichannel FAQ - What it is, What it’s Not.. and How and Why You Should Implement it As Part Of Your Programmatic Strategy

Check Out Our Podcast 

Our new Programmatic Perspectives Podcast lets you get the insights you need on the go. 

Each episode is hosted by Wayne Tassie, Group Director, Integrated Solutions, DoubleVerify, who is the Chair of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee. Wayne speaks to committee members on an array of programmatic subjects so you can get a first-hand perspective into the topics shaping the people and products of programmatic advertising.

The first episode is out now! 

In our flagship episode, Wayne is joined by Rob Georgeson, Head of Programmatic, Performics at Zenith, UK to explore the role of an agency in 2024. Wayne and Rob discuss agency talent, the integrated client model, and what brands want over the next 12 months. They also debate what solutions will win in the post third-party cookie era, with advice to brands on what they need to do to prepare. It’s a must-listen and a great way to kick off this new series. 

Listen to our first episode here. 

So whether you are a programmatic pro or just curious to learn more about the wonderful world of programmatic, Programmatic Perspectives is for you. 

Keep your eyes peeled for more content coming soon!

Please note: Programmatic Perspectives is just that - views from our members, not IAB Europe. We are championing different perspectives from across Europe.