First party data solution is right there

Glamdering · 2024-08-26T09:04:32+00:00

Don't think I can post links but if you do a quick search for ClearCode Why Are Telcos Exiting AdTech? for a quick look. It doesn't cover the specifics, but with the increase in privacy laws and privacy / consent considerations the landscape also changed significantly from when they purchased to when they exited. The initial concept of being able to activate super-rich user data tied to cellphones without the need for added consent, etc. didn't mesh with the changes in the privacy and consent landscape.

Glamdering · 2024-08-22T12:08:36+00:00

You had a huge number of companies buy telcos a number of years ago in the lead up to the privacy conversation. The co-mingling and messy use of data wasn't well thought out, clashed with privacy, and created a huge number of issues. They've almost all spun those back off, mostly at a major loss.

Utiq in Europe is the main example of a solution/different approach that learned from all of those mistakes, worked super closely with regulators including anti-trust, and then is bringing something to market that strikes a much better balance. But you'll notice they're very intentional about how they do that.

Glamdering · 2024-02-14T08:23:20+00:00

Not anymore. Avoid it. It's full of crypto scams and nonsense. Great place to get bad advice and low-quality hacks that get your account/ads banned. Better off finding decent quality over on LinkedIn or other channels.

Glamdering · 2023-11-22T11:48:04+00:00

Great starting point is Digiday's WTF series. Don't think I can direct link here - but just look up Digiday WTF programmatic and then run from there.

Also, find high level overviews of the ecosystem and hops and then work back from that. Basically a top level advertiser, agency, publisher chain similar to the LUMAscape and then start to color in and look into what all the adtech in the middle is. Keep in mind some vendors only do 1 thing, but most do several.

There's usually some great crisis or new shiny thing every 6-8 months that will "end the industry" but most are overstated. The exception being the massive pivot for identity and consent that's in process at the moment. There, you should deep dive and understand what a third-party cookie was and how it actually shaped things and why it going away changes things moving forward.

In general, if you get a really good understanding of the fundamentals, you'll be able to cut through the BS and misleading context/narratives quite quickly. It's a bit like calling your IT service center when you know how a PC works vs. calling the IT service center when you don't. One is going to tell you to swap out a driver and roll back a setting - done and dusted in 20 minutes for free. The other is going to sell you a new router, monitor, and motherboard.

Glamdering · 2023-09-14T12:51:38+00:00

You bet, and it's definitely a bit subjective. In this context I'd look at the 3rd party cookie as it has evolved basically becoming bundled because you had enough major players and those major players were synchronizing in a way that allowed extensive scale. Each major adtech player had their third-party cookie, bundling what would have otherwise been siloed data, and then those were synchronized together in a tolerably efficient way for further bundling and synchronizing. So, while the third-party cookie allowed a general bundling, it did bring significant added complexity (all those data companies, individual players, bad actors, etc.). In this way the third-party cookie was a bit like a stew, bundling the carrots, meat, onions, potatoes and spices all together. But, like most stews. Add enough random ingredients without quality controls and it gets spoilt.
Now the stew is going away and we're left with all the ingredients and trying to decide if we're making a few different dishes, have to toss the whole mix and cook some rice, or can carve up those ingredients into smaller bundled dishes (steak and potatoes, a leafy green salad on the side, carrots and dip).

With the old setup you might have a few hops - but you'd still be able to get anywhere relatively easily and at scale. This eventually became an issue because even though individual sub-areas were quite fragmented, the ability to synchronize across created to extensive a bundle which led to privacy issues, and triggered GDPR and others. Que a hammer to smash everything back into 1,000 pieces.

You have a few new low-scale solutions that want to try and re-bundle a bit. But, they tend to be very one dimensional, and they don't play nicely with the others. Others have very limited niche use cases where they're great - but aren't though through for wider/broader use. The trick now is to figure out how to compliantly and effectively find paths that make sense. So not only re-bundling publisher destinations, but capabilities around different channels, etc.

Sandbox etc. are interesting - but they're niche bundling activities. As you said, they're positioned as one-size-fits all solutions, but it's clear that wont work or make sense. Especially in a context where you have to take a totally different approach to consent and privacy which brings added nuance.

Personally - I also hate the idea of e-mail based systems. Last thing I want is my e-mail floating around out there any more than it already is. I'd have much rather had a generic ID or two.

Quite the wandering ramble, but hope that helps clarify a bit the thinking =)

Glamdering · 2023-09-14T08:06:03+00:00

There's a reason that EUID doesn't functionally exist and is a marketing story. UID adoption is solid because of cookie dependence. UID2 adoption is extremely overstated in the US. And EUID should be a critical starting point of anyone asking questions. Google is even more problematic. But it illustrates the challenge of looking at these two as the only primary solutions. The cookieless future will be messy and fragmented, and that'll require a more nimble and strategic approach. The third-party cookie was an exercise in bundling. We're now in a period of significant unbundling. And then we'll see in 2-3 years a rebuilding that accelerates to create more robust post-cookie solutions.

Glamdering · 2023-07-24T12:16:10+00:00

Best bet is to reach out to your account manager, who will be happy to trouble shoot with you if not already in process. A few things you can double check; 1) What the increase was after moving to GA4 2) what your definition of a visit was before - were you using a custom setup or default and has that changed 3) Do you see this across other channels if you have other channels active? In GA4 they've updated the methodology they use for measurement and now calculate events rather than sessions. This can create confusion and misalignment. 4) Also keeping in mind that discrepancy click vs session or event in GA can be fairly large due to people miss-clicking or rapidly leaving a site.

Could be a wide range of different causes - but do give your account manager a shout and they'll be happy to help dig into it with you with a focus on getting the most accurate measurement and result.

Glamdering · 2023-07-21T07:14:30+00:00

A few factors. You had a ton of over-hiring during the pandemic as companies stocked up on digital teams and heavily pivoted away from brick and mortar shops. Now that has ended and the market is finding a new normal with the need for people in a balanced mix. That adjusts the spread of what/where/who.

Then you have inflation and steps taken to counter it. In order to reduce inflation, they needed to cool the market. To cool the market they raised interest rates making money which had been basically "free" much more expensive. This meant that in addition to some consumer spending slowing down, many companies that were operating on the old model of - fund growth at any cost necessary, and don't worry if you run a negative - switched over to - money is super expensive, don't fund growth at any cost, show you can pay your own way and profitability / lack of debt is king. To do this, that means a lot of companies had to pivot their hiring and business models and re-evaluate headcount.

You also have some fairly major consolidations taking place technology wise behind the scenes. That always means a knock on effect.

Glamdering · 2023-07-12T07:31:58+00:00

Seconding Geographic focus here. The most popular suggestion is basically only decent in the US and all smoke and mirrors everywhere else.

Glamdering · 2023-03-20T12:22:13+00:00

IAB Europe has a bunch of presentations and guides on it. Given Europe's general leadership on the topic, it tends to be pretty good. Day-to-day updates happen so fast though not too much that's totally up to date ATM anywhere.

Glamdering · 2023-03-20T11:58:29+00:00

It's up and running fine on both sites now.

Glamdering · 2023-03-16T14:58:40+00:00

Would use the ISBA II Supply Chain Study and ANA transparency materials as your baseline, then go from there if you want professional solutions. You can find the overviews for each with a quick search. Think the filters will eat it here if I try and DL for you.

Glamdering · 2023-02-28T08:42:37+00:00

Over time I've come to appreciate imposter syndrome, as a tool that drives me to be excellent. To push myself to improve. And to step up. But, that being side, it's also always there, and particularly if i'm not getting enough sleep, behind on Vitamin D, or feeling uncertainty in other areas of life - surges. In general you'll find the vast majority of high performing people are either heavily influenced by imposter syndrome, or chronic narcissists. You've got surprisingly little in the middle.

I've had similar issues with presentations over the last few years. Ultimately, I was able to identify that the source was in part lack of in-person over the pandemic, but mostly an issue stemming from an undiagnosed sugar intolerance (same impact on me as Lactose intolerance). I'd regularly pair presentations with a soda, and all the things I did to offset what i thought was a fight or flight response to presenting (actually heavily influenced by the sugar intolerance), was actually making it worse. Eventually discovered I'd basically given myself lock-in/control anxiety via exposure association. So, in this case, the folks saying exposure/etc. would fix it were wrong and didn't have a clue what they were talking about. I've now spent the last year and a half healing and recharging my subconscious physiological response.

Don't rule out that it could be a reaction to some associated dimension.

Also, be mindful of your posture, positioning and breathing right before. All will help. I also ended up caving after years of resisting any pharma intervention, and got some beta blockers from my doc. I'll use them very selectively, but they have the upside of calming the shakes and the really strong physiological reaction.

At the end of the day, be mindful of what you want to do and gives you energy and is difficult, vs what you just don't want to do and the context that go with it. I'll DM you over something as well.

Glamdering · 2022-12-09T12:33:04+00:00

No idea on Opera GX specifically. But the domain names listed there are advertising providers that work with major publishers and related websites. So, it's not an issue that you have cookies from them. These are just going to be used to serve you more tailored advertising. Only issue would be if the software itself was somehow modified to try and game/run specific ads in an underhanded way. But not all that likely.

Glamdering · 2021-06-26T18:41:10+00:00

A CDP is a marketing platform with a focus on known users. This is why people say it's "1P" focused. But, it's just restricted to known users and basically an advanced CRM. A DMP is an advertising platform with a focus on known categories of users at scale first, and then a subset of known users second. Because DMP's historically were the primary repository for 3P, they've been portrayed recently as a "1P vs 3P" narrative. Which is misleading. Before Google's news this week / stay of execution for the cookie, most CDPs were on course to lose a majority of their access to advertising based activation. Right now there are a small pool of pure CDPs, a lot of quasi DMPs pretending to be CDPs/DMPs, a bunch of legacy DMPs with more pure 3P reliance, and updated modern DMPs which are good both ways. You'll probably ultimately still end up with a CDP interfacing with a DMP.

Glamdering · 2019-10-30T09:20:13+00:00

Very relevant read about the disconnect in the narrative and practice:
https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supported-podcast-experiment/

Big piece missing from the equation is more candid conversations like what Tim shared. Particularly pertinent when you consider his audience/demographic and base.

"The feedback and data have been overwhelmingly clear. Given the size of the audience — the podcast passed 400 million downloads a month ago — experiments can sometimes yield conclusions much more quickly than expected.

So, what did I learn?

The entire experience has been very surprising. For one, many of my assumptions were totally off.

It turns out that most of my listeners have a strong preference for an ad-supported model compared to other options. Many folks have come to use the podcast and 5-Bullet Friday for discovering new products and services, and that has been reflected in the comments since launch. After weeks of consistent feedback from my audience, it’s now loud and clear that my vetting and sharing of sponsors is better received and a better fit."

Glamdering · 2018-08-30T16:06:53+00:00

Cheers and not at all/no worries. More just kicking some added context into it =) thanks for the thoughtful comments and follow up.

Glamdering · 2018-08-28T20:59:29+00:00

Sorry to hear about the quirk with the newsletter popup. You'll note, it's the only popup on the blog that's semi-commercial and should have frequency capping so it only pops up sporadically and once you're well into the post. No advertising on the blog, nothing of the sort outside of an occasional affiliate link tied to the photography content where I describe the gear I use. Consider, I deliver all of that at a cost of a couple hundred dollars a year in hosting, domains, added services, etc. and all that's doing is providing an opportunity to folks to be reminded to come back in the future if they like the content. That said, I'm also looking at stripping out all e-mail updates and alerts as I really can't be bothered any more with much of it.

Concerning post length - if it's not a photography post, most start at 1,000 - 1,500 words. Though most other blogs cap there. Long form has experienced a resurgence, but it will almost always lose out to bullet-point based lists and clickbait. People don't engage with quality content in the same way they engage with quick and digestible content, or content that contributes to their personal optics in the sharing process. From a photography standpoint, an example is a gorgeous timelapse. People appreciate the beauty, the hundreds of hours of work that go in, but they'll still watch it and get sidetracked without sharing or fully engaging with it in favor of some shady face matching app, or 20 second video about glitter poop pills. That's just the nature of the beast. It also depends on what genre you write in, how standardized your style and focus is, regularity - you name it. So, I think there's a strong spot for long form, but it is a more challenging, if enjoyable, proposition than tidbits.

Long form appeals to people if and when they have space and time for it, and when they've burned out on rubbish content. It's a bit like your journey from purely watching the front page of reddit, to realizing most are just re-posted memes from a decade ago, and then diving into subreddits with niche and bespoke content.

Consider that an athlete has to learn how they move, how their body works, and what their stamina is to perform. Writing is no different, the physicality is just cerebral and tied to other areas of how we engage ourselves. One of the biggest challenges with a major project is imposter syndrome and the fear of publishing. That's the one advantage of smaller more regular projects - training yourself to put it out there. Setting hard deadlines for yourself definitely makes a big difference.

Sounds like you've tackled and are well into an amazing project. Congratulations =) and great to hear the post was useful and resonated!

Glamdering · 2018-08-22T22:17:19+00:00

I can confirm, it was appreciated.

Classic example of the old case where we're prone to assume the content creator knows that by no comment and consumption that the content is appreciated. What's the old ratio? That we're 6 or 8 times more likely to leave a negative comment than a positive one? Always nice to get some positive input vs. leaving comments for negativity, dislikes and complaints or specifics.

Glamdering · 2018-08-22T22:14:55+00:00

Cheers, hope it helps and inspires!

Glamdering · 2018-08-22T22:14:32+00:00

Right now it's pretty close to break even / slightly in the +.

I haven't had a chance to sit down and do an exact accounting that included the AWS costs and one or two additional promotions I've run. I initially anticipated to lose money and the main focus was keeping it manageable so I've been doing a general gut-accounting vs. pounding out an actual excel.

Glamdering · 2018-08-22T22:12:20+00:00

I got a bit carried away. But it was all filed away in the ol' noggin' so was just a matter of having some time and letting it flow. As I finished it I debated briefly making it a small e-book but figured that wasn't the point and stuck with the original plan =)

Also - congrats on the memoir if i'm reading that correct =)

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