The Washington Post is trying to go beyond cookie-based ad targeting and match ads to people without being 'creepy'
- Cookie-based ad targeting that doesn't work in a mobile-dominant world is being replaced by people-based advertising.
- The Washington Post is trying to get ahead of the trend with a new ad product, FeedBuilder, that creates multiple versions of an ad and then contextually targets them to people based on what they're reading.
- The tech favors advertisers that already create lots of content on a regular basis, though.
Cookies are still the dominant way of targeting online ads but they're going away because of privacy initiatives like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation that limit the collection of people's data, the growing use of mobile devices that don't support cookies, and consumer aversion to poorly targeted ads.
Advertisers are replacing cookie-based tracking that is tied to a browser and single device with a people-based approach that targets individuals across browsers, devices, and apps. In fact, more than 60% of marketers think they won't have to rely on cookies for most of their digital marketing in the next two years, according to data from advertising cloud Viant Technology.
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The Washington Post is trying to get ahead of the shift with a new ad product it recently started pitching called FeedBuilder. The product uses automation to spit out dozens of versions of an ad and then contextually matches the ads to people based on the subject of the article they're reading on the Post's site.
"We're trying to say, 'OK, the cookie goes away, what's next?'" said Jeff Turner, head of ad product at the Post, which is starting to aggressively take the product to market.
To do the contextual matching, FeedBuilder uses Clavis, a content personalization tool the Post created a few years ago that recommends articles to people based on their reading history. Someone reading a health article might see an ad for a company's health-related product, for example.
Turner said the Post has seen that contextual targeting works. In tests, the Post showed contextually targeted branded content ads to people while they were reading articles in the Apple News app, which limits ad targeting. People who got the targeted ads clicked through at a 20% higher rate than people who didn't get targeted ads, Turner said. FeedBuilder will let the Post do that targeting at scale by creating many versions of the same display ad.
As the Post increasingly relies on subscriptions to drive its revenue, FeedBuilder also was created with readers in mind, knowing readers strongly dislike seeing the same ad over and over.
The Post wants to personalize ads without being 'creepy'
"Our core subscribers don't like that," Turner said. "They do like having contextually aligned ads. It felt personalized without feeling creepy."
The Post is right in line with current trends, as dynamic creative is one of biggest growth areas among advertisers, said Chris Wexler, SVP and executive director of media and analytics at the agency Cramer-Krasselt. Advertisers recognize the need for ads that are privacy-safe and people respond better to ads that are more relevant to them.
"I think that's the reason people hate banners - they're so poorly targeted," he said.
There are catches, though. An advertiser has to have a big enough library of content to take advantage of FeedBuilder, which favors big advertisers that create their own content on a regular basis. Turner is working on solving for that issue. The FeedBuilder ads also are limited to the Post's own site and have to be bought directly.
Turner didn't give a revenue goal for FeedBuilder. Instead, he said he'll measure its success by reducing the ratio of impressions to creative version by at least half so readers will be exposed to more variations of ads.
"We have too many impressions per creative," he said. "I'd prefer they give me two creatives and split those impressions so users are exposed to more creative and we're not just going stale. That's where we're getting burned versus social, where new ads are created all the time. This ties back not just to advertising dollars but our subscriber satisfaction."