Publishers are constantly seeking new opportunities to increase their ad yield. However, most fail to maximize revenue from Google Ad Manager. A prime example of this is Publisher Provided Signals (PPS) and their first-party data. Publishers often fail to optimize this when offering their inventory for real-time bidding.
First party data is becoming increasingly important for publishers. With declining third-party cookies it is important for publishers to collect first-party data. This data can be collected from the user directly through user interactions, subscriptions, etc. This first party data can be leveraged to have a better understanding of the audience and better ad targeting.
How do Publisher Provided Signals Work?
Google Ad Manager allows publishers to notify advertisers about their audience using first-party data.This results in advertisers offering a premium to display ads to their target audience. These highly targeted ads are more relevant to ther audience resulting in better CTRs and conversions. Publishers need to segment their audience and map data as per IAB taxonomies. This data is passed onto buyers in real-time when bidding .
Publisher can check existing IAB taxonomies and map their first party data accordingly. By mapping data granularly publishers can benefit by securing higher bids for niche audiences. Publishers can also pass on content signals to advertisers notifying if the content is in video format, text or audio format. Other metadata can also be passed over in IAB recommended standards.
Can Publisher Provided Signals be Beneficial?
Publisher can run experiments to see the impact of publisher provided signals on their ad revenue. Metrics like CPM, fill rate, viewability, and CTRs can be tracked. Publishers can also run A/B tests between board and niche categories. For example, running campaigns with audiences categorised under sport vs those specifically categorised under cricket or football. Publishers can evaluate which segmentation boosts their ad yield.
These audiences can also be aligned with certain events. For example tech audience can be aligned for Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. Alternatively, holiday shoppers can be targeted around Christmas and the New Year period. Audiences categorised under sport can also be targeted around major sporting events.
In Google Ad manager (GAM), publishers have complete control over what information is available to the advertiser. So they can choose to have only part of the information available for programmatic ads whereas reveal more signals for PMP deals. This way they can also incentivise advertisers to participate in PMP deals.
Publisher Provided Signals only shares the standardised categories with advertisers and not user IDs. Hence they are GDPR/ CCPA compliant.
Publisher Provided Signals are a win-win for advertisers and publishers. The right relevant ads improve the user experience and have high CTRs, so these improve publisher revenue and advertiser ROI.
