The Future of Privacy and Personalization with PubNative

PubNative, now part of Verve Group, is a mobile publisher platform and programmatic ad exchange, providing advanced monetization solutions for mobile app developers. Ionut Ciobotaru, PubNative’s founder and chief product officer at Verve Group, stopped by the MMA EMEA’s video podcast, There Is No New Normal, to talk about the changes he sees coming as privacy expectations evolve, IDFA becomes a thing of the past, and COVID-19 continues to change user behavior.

Privacy and personalization

Personalization is the name of the game in digital advertising, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pinpoint users with laser accuracy thanks to privacy regulations and other changes in the ad industry. When it comes to privacy laws such as GDPR, Ionut says, “our CMP is based on the [IAB’s] Transparency and Consent Framework, again with all the specs that come with it.” The team has been working on that for the last two years.

But now Apple is throwing a new wrench into the works for mobile marketers, however Ionut sees a change for the better in the future. He says, “I think advertising is finally becoming what it was supposed to become from the beginning — not a privacy-intrusive tactic, but actually a privacy-friendly approach.”

PubNative is poised to help brands make the change. “We can actually tailor to the needs of the advertisers and help them still find those audiences that they’re already looking for in a privacy-friendly-manner.”

At this point, it’s pretty well agreed that the future of mobile advertising on iOS devices is going to be contextual, but Ionut sees the future of advertising taking two paths:

• Authenticated users — Whether it’s through email or IDFA, Ionut sees a future where publishers work to improve consent flows and the value exchange mechanisms.
• Unauthenticated users — There will continue to be a large number of people who choose not to opt-in and will be more or less fully anonymized. “What we’re trying to achieve there, through context and context signals is to still deliver a relevant and personalized experience as much as possible versus just offering random ads. In the end, they will still get ads, but they will not be the ads they would want to see.”

In some ways, unauthenticated users may even have a poorer user experience due to irrelevant and untailored ads. “On the web, this has been largely solved… the context is richer within news websites — and in other, let’s say, niche publications. On mobile, we’re just at the early stages, but we’re working to be one of the companies at the forefront of all of this.”

To learn more about how PubNative aims to solve these problems, tune in to the entire interview.

Editor’s note: We’re excited to feature Ionut and PubNative on this debut and in-depth video. Upcoming articles will showcase Deconstructing the In-App Bidding Landscape, PubNative’s latest white paper that breaks new ground. It offers in-depth research of the in-app bidding market, an overview and comparison of products existing within the landscape, and exclusive industry contributions and insights. As mobile header bidding rapidly advances, understanding where it started is critical to predict how it will advance and impact advertising in the coming years. We encourage you to download the white paper here and use the internal data and research by PubNative along with data from external resources (BidMachine, Coda, Kayzen, and Verve Group) to shape your strategy.