Coercive consent is the publishers’ ephemeral superpower — Can it deliver good news?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

As widely discussed on social media, Meta is pushing advertisers into its own AI-driven ad optimization program (Advantage+), removing “detailed targeting” capabilities at all levels, including Custom Audiences or Lookalikes. This move is not just about responding to the latest wave of EU regulation (ie., Digital Services Act), given recent FTC actions and US state-level opt-in rules for sensitive data. But it may also deliver some benefits beyond privacy compliance. By the looks of the current market concentration and the identical path chosen by Google (with Performance Max, their own version of the self-driving campaign, pushed front and center), it does not seem like small advertisers can escape the black box.

This poses a very interesting dilemma for the open market. Most publishers I speak to seem allergic to privacy-preserving, cohort-based, or topic-based targeting, instead clinging on to alternate IDs and individual profiling. I am told that their hands are tied by the routines, established processes and reporting expectations of the demand side. I have also been assured that, contrary to incessant lecturing by privacy professionals turned “advertising experts”, contextual advertising is no nirvana — and it is easy to appreciate the challenge it poses for small advertisers with niche audiences and very limited budgets.

But, beyond the very tiring third-party cookie deprecation saga, increased regulatory scrutiny on intermediaries (eg. CNIL taking on Criteo) is pushing everyone into a corner with very few options at hand. Data collaboration across first party data pools seems to be one of them, possibly combining addressability and volume. After all, publishers can now rely on a “Pay or OK” model to boost both cookie acceptance rates (OK) and email/profile repositories (Pay) — see the perfectly timed, mass migration to consent walls happening in Spain as we speak.

Spain’s largest publishers sync’ed their release of brand new “consent walls” shortly after the country’s supervisory authority (AEPD) gave the green light on emulating what now is common practice in Germany, France, or Italy.

In other words, it would seem like we could end up with a very reliable audience pool combining data across ten or twelve major publishers in each market (as all of them enjoy the new “coercive consent” advantage). But given that advertisers cannot enjoy this particular “carte blanche”, and given that a “payment with data” seems to be spitting on the GDPR’s face -and could very well disappear in the time it takes for someone to reach a meaningful court- I wonder:

Would legacy publishers be able to take this window of opportunity to explore future-proof alternatives for once? This would entail:

• Finding enough common ground halfway between contextual and behavioral data to provide targeting and measurement capabilities that set advertisers free of third-party cookies and alternative IDs; and
• Introducing smarter cross-site capabilities rivaling those of the large platforms.

Why can they not embrace something similar to Google’s Privacy Sandbox — Topics API, in particular -, or a fully independent protocol evolving from it, embedding frequency capping or fraud management features (along the lines of the Protected Audience logic) while ensuring that these are not abused for fingerprinting purposes?

Dreaming further: Would the open market ever be able to reduce its dependence -should this be a correct assumption- on larger consumer brands (and their agencies!) so as to finally compete with Google/Meta as a marketing solution for SMEs and performance-driven retailers? Does the general signal loss not present an opportunity for those that never had much?

And, going mushroom level: Just as we now have the ability to run basic web analytics without consent (again, Spain woke up to this opportunity a few days ago), how about setting our websites entirely free of the most annoying banner ever to roam cyberspace? After all, it is mostly Google and Meta that are pushing advertisers into both embedding conversion tracking pixels and uploading first-party data signals to their systems. This guarantees a never ending feedback loop that primarily benefits the giants and seems to run counter to all applicable legal frameworks and platform-specific guidelines (including those stemming from Apple’s dictatorship).

That painful moment when a small advertiser is told (by Google) that only if they track their own visitors will their money be safe. “This is entirely your problem and please do not forget to gather consent — on our terms.”

I believe there is an opportunity for advertisers and independent publishers who want to be set free of insulting consent requests, enjoying metrics that cover 100% of their audiences (vs. 20–30% with the “Reject All” on first layer that is now compulsory) but in turn missing conversion metrics and sacrificing the shared benefits of a feedback loop. Unless such feedback loop is no longer required or exposed as exploitative -of advertisers rather than users.

And then, there is a whole separate dimension that we have not even touched upon: Strong media brands don’t need to blackmail their own readers or revert to distrustful consent walls. A very healthy balance can indeed exist between loyal subscribers and registered free visitors on one hand, and a long tail of advertisers on the other; guaranteeing a smooth, enjoyable reading experience for the former and the highest possible levels of relevance, viewability, and brand safety for the latter. But this is where Alessandro De Zanche takes over 🙂