The Data Scraping Threat
State of Digital Publishing
A new publication and community for digital media and publishing professionals, in new media and technology.
Interview with Richard Reeves , Managing Director at the AOP Association of Online Publishers
By?Andrew Kemp, Managing Editor at SODP
The death of the third-party cookie is supposed to benefit publishers, better positioning them to extract greater advertising value from their first-party data.
However, between preparing for the “cookieless future”,?fighting Facebook and Google for compensation over news snippet sharing?and trying to?identify the emergent risks posed by AI, some publishers may not be aware of another potential issue on the horizon.
The UK-based Association of Online Publishers (AOP) printed an open letter in March warning the publishing and advertising industries of the?dangers of content verification vendors’ unauthorized data scraping.
The letter, which was signed by AOP Managing Director Richard Reeves, argues these vendors?— either through packing hidden tags into authorized in-header wrappers or using crawlers — are building “contextual audience segments for their own commercial gain”.
“Nefarious first-party data extraction amounts to theft of publishers’ intellectual property (IP), with negative impacts extending across publishers, advertisers, and agencies,” it states, before adding: “A commitment that the whole industry is united in addressing these concerns will help delay — and ideally prevent — more radical, disruptive publisher action.”
To better understand the AOP’s concerns and the potential dangers to publishers,?State of Digital Publishing (SODP)?reached out to Reeves with some questions. What follows is a lightly edited version of his response.
Ads are an integral aspect of online life. Appearing as banners, video spots and social media feeds/stories, digital ads are everywhere. Ad exchanges play a vital role in the distribution of these ads, and yet, very few people can answer the question: What is an ad exchange??
That is a $600 billion question in 2023, and its value will keep increasing with each passing year. The global eCommerce industry is growing at a rapid clip, with?sales expected to climb to $9.4 trillion by 2026?from $6.5 trillion in 2023. And the?amount of money companies spend on digital ads?is projected to hit almost $680 billion in 2023, a rise of 10.5% year on year.?
At the same time, the global economy continues to?teeter on the brink of a recession.?Slashed marketing budgets are the norm as?at least 30% of advertisers?face increasing pressure to boost ROI with less.
As the stakes keep rising, a working knowledge of ad exchange platforms is essential for any professional or entrepreneur whose business involves online marketing in some form. This article will take a deep dive into the world of ad exchanges and explore how they work, their advantages and the role they fill in the digital advertising landscape.?
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