What does your company know about me?

I’ve bought a lot of baby products over the past two years, and I like watching action movies in the evenings. My phone and computer know that I’m usually home during normal business hours, and I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on table saws.

Combining these clues, you might guess I’m a dad with a young toddler, I work from home, and I’m planning to buy some expensive woodworking equipment soon.

There has always been a massive business opportunity for companies that can (a) successfully gather consumer data from different sources, (b) combine the data to build an accurate consumer profile, and (c) use the data to send people targeted ads based on their interests.

In a post-cookie world, the solution to this challenge will likely be “hedged gardens,” where technology platforms, publishers, and brands add their respective slices of consumer data, combine it in a data clean room, and build a more open alternative to the “walled gardens” owned by Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, and other tech giants.

Hedged gardens were a big theme at RampUp 2024, the annual conference organized by the data collaboration platform LiveRamp. We attended the conference, and had great conversations with our partners about the future of privacy-compliant consumer identity—here are our big takeaways:

Privacy and the death of third-party cookies remains top-of-mind for advertisers and the ad tech platforms that serve them. But at RampUp 2024, people seemed confident that the industry would come together to build an alternative to the walled gardens that currently dominate the advertising landscape.

This will require everyone bringing their slices of consumer data, combining them in a data clean room environment, and tying them to an alternative identifier, such as LiveRamp’s RampID. The goal is to build robust, privacy-compliant, anonymized consumer profiles that can achieve accurate ad targeting for cross-device use cases.

Anecdotally, we spoke to publishers at RampUp who said they’ve seen 30- to 100 percent higher CPMs from users who are tied to an alternative identifier.

The brands we talked to seemed more pragmatic about identity—they said they’ll use the identity platform that works the best. They’re happy using a platform that relies on mobile advertising IDs and third-party cookies if it delivers the best results today, even if the identifiers the platform relies on will eventually disappear.

Overall, there was optimism that the ad tech industry would come up with a privacy-compliant solution for alternative IDs that would meet the performance and regulatory benchmarks set today by cookie-based identities. 

And while ad tech platforms rapidly test, refine, and launch their own hedged gardens, advertisers said they are content to take a wait-and-see approach, confident that they would be able to continue targeting consumers based on their interests after the death of the third-party cookie.

The big takeaway? Post-cookie, Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative will be one solution among many—and early tests of hedged gardens suggest that great alternatives exist.

In 1994, the very first banner ad appeared on the internet. Thirty years later, there are billions of digital ads served online every day. More than 80% of them are programmatic display ads.

‘Programmatic’ is a term describing the complex process of computerized, algorithmic ad buying that fuels the digital ecosystem. Programmatic ad technology is the preferred method advertisers use to buy display ads, mobile ads, in-app ads, digital out-of-home ads, audio ads, and connected TV ads.

Advertisers spent an estimated $558 billion on programmatic advertising in 2023. By the year 2026, industry experts expect advertisers to spend $700 billion on programmatic ads.

Source – Statista

Programmatic advertising is growing quickly because it solves significant pain points for both sides of the transaction: Advertisers and content publishers.

Join us for a deep dive into the programmatic advertising ecosystem, how programmatic advertising works, the benefits, latest programmatic trends, and more.

    Want to learn more?

    What is programmatic advertising?

    Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling ad placements in the digital ecosystem. Programmatic media buying connects content publishers and advertisers in real-time auctions for ad space on websites, apps, and any other digital screen where ads are placed.

    Unlike traditional media buying, which involves a lot of complex and time-consuming manual work, programmatic buying enables centralized, automated, algorithm-based bidding on multiple publishers’ sites, so advertisers can win the best ad impressions at the best possible price for their target audience and campaign goals. For publishers, programmatic advertising helps drive website and mobile monetization by filling ad inventory automatically and in real time with the most suitable ads, with far less effort.  

    How does programmatic advertising work?

    Every day, billions of ads are served on desktop, mobile and digital TV screens all over the world. Programmatic advertising automates the complex process of connecting thousands of advertisers and publishers in real-time auctions for available ad space, filling the space and serving ads instantly to the user.

    Programmatic advertising relies on several online systems that connect with one another to make the media buying process happen. Let’s look at those systems and how they work together.

    1. An advertiser is looking to purchase ad space to promote their product or brand, so they turn to a trade desk or programmatic ad agency. These programmatic advertising companies use a demand side platform, or DSP, which automates the bidding and buying process on behalf of the advertiser.
    2. The DSP connects the ad agency to multiple publishers at once, bringing a wide range of options for where the ad might be placed. With the help of a data management platform, or DMP, the DSP analyzes audience data based on a range of parameters, such as geographic area, user behavior, and demographics, to decide which ad placement to bid for, and at what price.
    3. On the publisher side, there is the supply side platform, or SSP. Via this platform, publishers can supply ad inventory for DSPs to bid on. When a user lands on a website, the website sends a request to the SSP, the SSP connects to the DSP, and a micro-auction begins. The DSP bids on behalf of advertisers, using the DMP to decide which ads are best suited to the publisher’s visitor, and the ad placement is filled by the most suitable ad at the highest bid.

    This entire process happens within the seconds it takes for the user’s website page or mobile app to load. For both sides of the transaction, programmatic advertising takes the manual work out of digital media buying and selling, while making it more optimized and efficient. In a complicated and constantly dynamic marketplace, programmatic advertising is a win-win for publishers and advertisers alike.

    In App Advertising Ecosystem

    What are the 4 main types of programmatic advertising?

    Programmatic advertising comes in several variations. Here are the 4 most common types of programmatic advertising used in the industry today:

    Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

    Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic advertising where advertisers compete for ad inventory in auctions conducted in real time. RTB operates with the CPM (cost per mille) model, meaning that advertisers set their bid and pay publishers for the ad space per 1,000 impressions.

    Private Marketplace (PMP)

    Private marketplace, or PMP, is a type of programmatic advertising that takes place in a closed auction, where a set of exclusive advertising partners participate. It provides advertisers with access to unique ad inventory that is not available on open exchanges. PMP enables publishers to tailor their inventory and provide specialty offerings to advertisers, giving them the opportunity to build relationships with advertiser partners.

    Preferred Deals

    A preferred deal is a programmatic buying method where the publisher and advertiser negotiate a price to purchase ad space. The media buyer gets preferential treatment, in that they are offered the opportunity to bid at the agreed-upon price. However, preferred deals are not guaranteed–the publisher does not need to hold the ad space at that price for the advertiser, and the advertiser is not obligated to bid for the space.

    Programmatic Guaranteed

    Programmatic guaranteed is when a publisher and advertiser negotiate the cost and terms of a particular ad inventory, and that inventory is reserved for the specific advertiser at the agreed-upon price.

    What are the most common programmatic ad formats?

    Programmatic advertising is used to buy and sell digital ad space for a wide range of formats and channels. Here is a quick overview of the ad formats that are available programmatically:

    Display ads

    Display ads, or banner ads, are ads that appear on desktop and mobile websites. They typically appear at the top or sides of a web page. Programmatic display is one of the most common types of digital advertising, as it offers an affordable and accessible way to reach large audiences. Despite their widespread adoption across the industry (or perhaps because of), display ads typically have relatively low clickthrough rates.

    Video ads

    Programmatic video advertising is a popular method for buying and selling video ad space, particularly for apps, connected TV and social media. Video is an effective advertising tool, generating higher engagement among audiences than simple display ads.

    For example, a user completes a level on a gaming app and is about to move to the next level. The app publisher might provide a video ad here, during this transition between levels. Advertisers selling a product that is relevant to the user demographic can bid programmatically for this ad space and show a video ad that is likely to pique the user’s curiosity at this prime moment, when the user is enthused and engaged.

    Social ads

    An estimated 62% of the world’s population is on social media. Social programmatic advertising is a powerful tool to reach a vast audience efficiently and target them using their social graph and interests. Advertisers use DSPs to bid programmatically for ad space on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit and more.

    Native ads

    Native ads are designed to fit the form and feel of the web page they appear on. Native ads are less disruptive than display ads, and users tend to “see” them more than other ad types. By partnering with a programmatic trade desk, advertisers can access native ad inventory programmatically, taking advantage of the more advanced targeting options that native ad exchanges typically offer, such as contextual targeting.

    Audio ads

    The digital audio industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Roughly 42% of Americans aged 12+ report they listened to a podcast in the last 30 days, according to a survey from Edison Research. An estimated 90 million Americans—or roughly 1 out of 4 people—now pay for a streaming music subscription, Forbes reports. Advertisers can bid programmatically for digital audio ad space on platforms such as podcasts, music streaming apps and digital radio.

    Digital out-of-home (DOOH)

    Digital-out-of-home advertising includes digital billboards and screens positioned in public spaces. DOOH is an important part of an omnichannel advertising campaign, as it enables brands to reach customers when they are out and about, and not on their phones or computers. With programmatic advertising for DOOH, advertisers can bid automatically for this important ad space at the most effective times and locations.

    In-app programmatic advertising

    In the U.S., people spend an average of 4 hours and 25 minutes a day on their phones, making in-app advertising an attractive option for advertisers. Mobile programmatic advertising works the same way as programmatic advertising on the web, however in-app ads have unique formats and sizing to fit the smaller mobile screen. The main ad formats for in-app advertising include interstitial ads, banner ads, splash ads, rewarded ads, playable ads and rich media ads.

    What are the benefits of programmatic advertising?

    Programmatic advertising has benefits for both advertisers and publishers. Here’s why:

    Reach

    Programmatic advertising connects advertisers with tens of thousands of publishers at once, so the potential audience reach across platforms is far larger. For publishers, the programmatic method makes their ad inventory available to an enormous pool of advertisers, increasing the competition for placements and boosting revenue. This is a good tactic for web and app monetization.

    Omnichannel targeting

    One of the biggest challenges for marketers today is generating audience awareness across several touchpoints, including desktop web, mobile web, apps, digital-out-of-home, and connected TV. Programmatic advertising enables advertisers to bid for optimal placements on all platforms in real time and build an effective multi-channel advertising strategy.

    Automated tasks

    Automation takes most of the legwork out of the online advertising process, making it simpler and easier to manage. More importantly, by eliminating most of the rote tasks of ad bidding, buying and placement, programmatic advertising frees up advertisers to focus their resources on audience research and strategic optimization to get more from their campaigns.

    Real-time results and optimization

    Data transparency is a huge benefit of programmatic ads. By tracking campaign results in real time, advertisers are better positioned to optimize ads effectively and get better results from their campaigns faster. Furthermore, the transparency afforded by programmatic platforms enable advertisers to assess publishers in real time based on ad performance and avoid low-quality and fraudulent placements.

    Better ROI

    Automation, data-based insights, and enhanced optimization capability in real time all add up to higher return on investment for advertisers. Programmatic advertising enables advertisers to keep a finger on the pulse of multiple campaigns running on several platforms in one centralized operation, so they can make optimization decisions faster, and get better return on ad spend. 

    Improve ROI by following programmatic advertising best practices

    By keeping up with programmatic best practices and mastering the latest hacks and tools, advertisers can maximize their campaign potential and ROAS. Let’s look at the programmatic advertising best practices you should follow today:

    Align your goals to ad type and channel

    All digital campaigns should be based on specific goals and KPIs, and this is no different for programmatic ads. To achieve the best possible performance, make sure to define and align the objective of your ad campaign to the programmatic channel and ad type. For example, the campaigns for programmatic display and in-app ads will have very different creatives and KPIs, even as they promote the same product or service.

    Segment your audience

    By grouping your audience into user segments based on their location, online behavior, interests, or marketing funnel stage (awareness, consideration, conversion), it will be easier to target them with programmatic ads that offer the right message at the right time. Explore your web and mobile audiences to understand them better, identify their pain points and segment them accordingly. Then you can use programmatic methods to target and optimize ad campaigns in real time to the best potential segments.

    Use data to drive decisions

    With programmatic, advertisers have access to a broad set of real-time data across all campaigns and channels, to understand which ads are performing best and why. Advertisers should take full advantage of this information to make smart and accurate decisions about campaign targeting and optimization, to get better ROI for their ad spend.

    Test and optimize

    Programmatic advertising is the ideal platform to test and optimize campaigns to drive better performance over time. Use the fast-moving pace of programmatic to your advantage by frequently A/B testing campaigns and optimizing in real time according to the results.

    Use an omnichannel approach

    Programmatic advertising works best with a multi-channel approach, targeting audiences on different channels at different times. By reaching out to audiences across multiple touchpoints and media, such as mobile web, video, apps, out-of-home, connected TV, retargeting, and more, you can access a larger pool of data that can be used to test campaigns and scale them for the best results.

    Programmatic advertising trends for 2024

    The programmatic advertising ecosystem is developing exponentially, supporting scale and performance potential that was unheard of in the early days of RTB auctions. Let’s explore some of the programmatic advertising trends that have the industry buzzing now:

    Contextual signals > cookies

    Digital advertising has traditionally relied on third-party cookies to identify and target suitable audiences. With cookie depreciation on the horizon, this will soon no longer be an option. Programmatic advertising is trending toward contextual targeting of first-party data, in which audiences are grouped according to interests and shown relevant ads. Contextual signals, such as content topics, page categories and lookalike audiences, will be the future of programmatic targeting.

    The rise of omnichannel ads

    The shift towards an omnichannel programmatic advertising strategy is already happening and will only accelerate in the future. Brands are operating in a highly competitive marketplace where grabbing consumer attention is tougher than ever before. Programmatic ad technology enables advertisers to better craft, promote and optimize campaigns across all channels, automatically, and in real time.

    AI in programmatic advertising

    Artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly advancing, and will be increasingly adopted in programmatic advertising to support even better ad targeting and optimization. Predictive AI will enable advertisers to pinpoint high-potential users with better accuracy and serve personalized ad experiences at a more granular level. Combined with the dynamic speed of programmatic advertising, advertisers will ramp up their performance at unprecedented precision and scale.

    Check out our Programmatic Curation Guide for Advertisers and Publishers to learn how machine learning can drive personalization and better campaign performance.

    How to get started with programmatic advertising?

    There are numerous programmatic advertising examples and platforms for web, mobile, DOOH and CTV. Although similar, each has its own features, tools, and processes. Start.io supports mobile programmatic advertising, with more than 500,000 integrated apps and vast global reach of mobile audiences.

    Download the Start.io advertising SDK today to monetize your mobile app.

    If you’re finding yourself single this Valentine’s Day, you’re not alone: Roughly 9 percent of Americans are walking around with at least one dating app installed on their phone, according to a new data analysis from Start.io.

    For this analysis, we studied an anonymized sample of 12.2 million Americans with Android phones and found that a little over 1 million people in the sample had at least 1 dating app installed. Note: This analysis only studied download data and did not study open rates or session length.

    Most people have just one dating app installed, and chances are, that app is Tinder. Here is a chart of how many dating apps people have installed, on average:

    Pie chart showing how many dating apps are on the average American consumer's smartphone. Source: Start.io analysis

    It’s estimated that there are more than 1,500 dating apps in use today, by more than 300 million people worldwide. In the United States, 85 percent of the mobile dating market is owned by just 6 apps: Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Bumble, Badoo, Hinge, and Grindr.

    A bar chart showing the relative market share of America's most popular dating apps, according to a Start.io analysis.

    Several hundred dating apps make up the remaining market share, according to Start.io’s analysis. Note: To estimate approximate market share, we studied an anonymized sample of 934,000 dating app downloads in the United States across 50 states.

    In our analysis, we focused on 19 leading dating apps—a list we compiled by analyzing the 10 most-downloaded dating apps in each state.

    Who uses dating apps?

    Not surprisingly, dating apps are most popular with people aged 25- to 34. People who use dating apps are twice as likely to enjoy consuming sports content than the average American consumer. They also have a lower income than the average American, and are more likely to use transportation apps, such as public transit apps, ridesharing apps, and flight booking apps.

    Dating apps are downloaded more often by men than women. In our data sample, we found that 62 percent of all dating app downloads came from men, while 38 percent came from women.

    About us

    Start.io is an omnichannel advertising platform that delivers more than 300 million ads per day. More than 500,000 mobile apps have installed the Start.io advertising SDK. We process billions of first-party data points each day, which we use to build consumer insights and audience segments for our brand partners.

    Click here to activate the Start.io audience segment Dating App Users in the United States.

    Cookies—or rather, the lack of cookies—loomed large over the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2024 Leadership Meeting, which traditionally marks the official kickoff of the year for the advertising industry. 

    Several of Start.io’s senior leaders attended the Annual Leadership Meeting, which was held in late January in Florida. Here are their big takeaways from the conference. 

    Advertisers aren’t prepared for the end of third-party cookies 

    In early 2024, Google permanently turned off third-party cookies for an estimated 30 million people—roughly equivalent to the population of Texas. The company says it plans to turn off third-party cookies on Chrome for everyone by the end of the year. 

    IAB, which serves as the leading trade association for the advertising industry, has repeatedly warned Google that advertisers aren’t ready for the death of third-party cookies. 

    At the Annual Leadership Meeting, IAB gave Google an early look at a gap analysis report containing dozens of real-world examples from advertisers who had tested Google’s Privacy Sandbox and found it didn’t support critical advertising functions they use today. 

    IAB has since published a 106-page draft of the report and will gather comments on the report until March 22. 

    “In its current form, the Privacy Sandbox may limit the industry’s ability to deliver relevant, effective advertising, placing smaller media companies and brands at a significant competitive disadvantage,” the report reads. “The stringent requirements could throttle their ability to compete, ultimately impacting the industry’s growth.” 

    At IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, Google organized an event focused on Privacy Sandbox and the deprecation of cookies in the browser, and mobile advertising IDs on Android. 

    We attended that event and spoke to Google representatives who assured us that the company is working on a solution that won’t hurt the mobile advertising ecosystem, while supporting users and their private data on Android. 

    Related: Read our thoughts on how Privacy Sandbox will impact Android app developers. 

    AI and ML are rapidly reshaping the ad industry, with unanswered ethical questions 

    Artificial intelligence has already revolutionized how hundreds of millions of digital ads are bought and sold every day. In 2023, artificial intelligence began moving up the creative stack, and we saw early experiments in generative AI capable of creating ads on its own. 

    This remains a huge gray area for the advertising industry. We had thought-provoking conversations with our peers about the ethics around automated content creation and hyper-personalization in ads. 

    As generative AI gets better, it may begin pushing out creatives at ad agencies, particularly at the lower end of the billing range. 

    Artificial intelligence promises to generate personalized ads at scale—delivering retail product recommendations with pinpoint accuracy, or tailoring brand messages to match a consumer’s current mood. This too, remains an ethical gray area. 

    Diversity in ad targeting 

    There is a certain amount of trust that brands place in the hands of the adtech industry, which promises that their ad targeting capabilities will help them reach specific audiences. 

    We attended thought-provoking sessions around diversity and inclusivity, where brands wondered whether they can really reach the audiences they want, or whether adtech companies are manipulating programmatic ad campaign execution around diverse reach. 

    Finally, CTV 

    Connected TV promises to deliver the reach of cable TV with the personalization of digital ads. It seems like every major streaming app has already launched (or plans to launch) a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier, opening the door for millions of new CTV ads. 

    In 2024, brands are no longer happy with the “spray and pray” approach they took with linear TV and want precision targeting. The reality is that measurement, attribution, and targeting remain big hurdles to solve with CTV. 

    What were your big takeaways from IAB ALM 2024? Tag us on LinkedIn and include the hashtag #iabalm 

    TikTok and Instagram are locked in a war for market share in the United States, and TikTok is winning, according to new data this week from Start.io. 

    Start.io studied an anonymized sample of 11 million Americans with Android phones, to estimate the relative market share of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, based on app downloads. Start.io studied total downloads but did not study mobile app open rates or average session length (Read more about the dataset toward the end of this article). 

    TikTok is most popular in Nevada, where the app has been downloaded by an estimated 50 percent of smartphone users. It’s least popular in Delaware, where it’s been downloaded by just 20 percent of people. 

    Both TikTok and Instagram trail Facebook, which has been downloaded by roughly 62 percent of Americans nationwide. 

     

    Top 5 states where TikTok is most popular: 

    State 

    TikTok download rate 

    Instagram download rate 

    Nevada 

    50% 

    32% 

    Kentucky 

    44% 

    31% 

    Mississippi 

    44% 

    32% 

    Alabama 

    44% 

    33% 

    Louisiana 

    44% 

    35% 

     

    Top 5 states where Instagram is most popular: 

    State 

    Instagram download rate 

    TikTok download rate 

    Delaware 

    58% 

    20% 

    Virginia 

    56% 

    26% 

    Oregon 

    52% 

    31% 

    New Jersey 

    51% 

    35% 

    New York 

    49% 

    30% 

     

    In all, TikTok has been downloaded by a larger percentage of the population in 32 states, while Instagram is still leading in 13 states. The two apps are locked in a dead heat in the remaining 5 states.  

    It’s hard to make definitive conclusions about why TikTok is so popular in certain states over others. 

    TikTok is generally stronger in politically conservative states, while Instagram is generally stronger in politically liberal states. 

    In the 10 U.S. states where TikTok is strongest, 7 voted for Donald Trump in the popular vote by double digit margins in the 2020 election (Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee). The remaining 3 states where TikTok is strongest voted for Biden by slim margins (Nevada, New Mexico, and Iowa). 

    In the 10 U.S. states where Instagram is strongest, 9 voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election (Delaware, Virginia, Oregon, New Jersey, New York, District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maryland). The remaining 1 state narrowly voted for Trump (Florida). 

    In an earlier analysis of political affiliation and mobile apps, Start.io found that nearly 44 percent of likely Democrats in the United States had downloaded Instagram, compared to roughly 35 percent of likely Republicans. 

    Outside of politics, the split might simply be geographic: TikTok is most popular in the South and the Midwest, while Instagram is most popular on the East Coast and the West Coast. 

    More on this dataset: Start.io routinely studies representative, anonymized consumer samples using first-party data that it gathers as part of its advertising SDK. In this dataset, Start.io studied 11 million Android users in the United States to build estimates of the relative mobile app download rates of TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.  

    This dataset did not include iOS users, Android users who had opted out of sharing advertising data, or study session lengths or app open rates.  

    For more information about this dataset, or to activate it in your next advertising campaign, check out TikTok users in the United States. 

    Start.io’s mobile advertising SDK is installed on more than 500,000 active mobile apps worldwide and delivers digital ads to more than 2 billion people per month. Start.io gives advertisers powerful audience segmentation tools, and insights to help them build high-performing ad campaigns. 

    Reach out to learn more about Start.io’s audience segmentation and mobile monetization solutions. 

    Google kicked off the new year by forcing an estimated 30 million people to quit cookies for good—at least on the Web.  

    In early January, the company permanently cut off third-party cookies for roughly 1 percent of Google Chrome users. They’d like to turn off cookies on Chrome for all users by the end of the year. 

    This change represents a paradigm shift for the adtech industry, which spent decades building multibillion-dollar businesses on cookies and other advertising identifiers. 

    “For the user, [the death of cookies] is great,” Start.io Senior Vice President of Product & Engineering Andrew Younan said on a recent webinar hosted by AdExchanger. “The adtech industry will need to evolve to continue what they’re doing.” 

    Killing cookies is just the start: Similar privacy-centric policies are coming soon to Android. Within a few years, Google will put up walls that limit third-party access to user data across all Google products. 

    The death of cookies does not mean the death of targeted advertising, Start.io Chief Revenue Officer Ravit Ross said on the webinar. 

    “This is a massive shift for the industry, but it will create new opportunities for growth,” Ross said. 

    At a high level, Google devices and products have traditionally sent troves of consumer data to third-party software platforms, which used that data to build consumer profiles for ad targeting. On Chrome, this was done using third-party cookies, and on Android, it was done using Mobile Advertising IDs, or MAIDs. 

    In the future, consumer data will remain on the consumer’s device and won’t get shared with third-party companies. Instead, when someone lands on a website or opens a mobile app, their browser or mobile phone will share a limited set of the consumer’s interests—for example, hiking, running shoes, and their desire to buy a new family car. 

    Advertisers will use these interests provided by Google, augmented with other data from platforms like Start.io, to deliver relevant ads in real-time. 

    On the webinar, 46 percent of respondents said their companies were equally concerned about the deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs. Nearly half of respondents said they would rate their company’s readiness for this change at between 50 percent and 0 percent. 

    The majority said they planned to use both internal and external solutions to get their companies ready for the privacy shift. 

    A major opportunity lies in the return to publishers investing in first-party data for contextual targeting. For example, asking people to log in to their website or mobile app, and building unique consumer profiles based on the content they consume. 

    Watch the full conversation hosted by AdExchanger here: “2024 Trends and Planning – Introducing an ID-less World. 

    Dzień dobry, Warszawa! 

    Start.io is expanding into Poland. Our new Warsaw location opened recently and is now our seventh site, joining locations in the U.S., Israel, Ukraine, the U.K., China, and India. 

    We’re currently hiring for several technical roles in Warsaw: 

    If you’re interested in joining us at Start.io, check out our full list of open roles now. 

    Poland is home to top universities and leading companies in the adtech, mobile, and gaming industries, and Start.io is expanding into the country to help support the company’s rapid growth. 

    Start.io wants to hire people who like tackling hard technical problems. We get millions of ad requests every second, and successfully deliver hundreds of millions of ads per day. Our ads routinely reach more than 2 billion people worldwide, and our engineers work on a platform that currently handles 2 petabytes of data per month. 

    The Engineering team at Start.io works closely with our Product and Business teams to develop, update, and maintain the infrastructure, platforms, and SDK that keeps the company’s advertising engine running smoothly. Our SDK is directly integrated into more than 500,000 active mobile apps. 

    Artificial intelligence sits at the core of our business and helps power real-time advertising decisions and ad campaign optimization. 

    Our Product and Engineering teams work in full collaboration with Start.io’s Business teams to deliver products that meet rigorous technical requirements and solve real challenges that our customers are facing. 

    Start.io has more than 100 employees, and roughly half work on our Engineering team. The team includes: 

    • Mobile and Web teams 
    • BE, DevOps and Platform teams 
    • Algorithm, Data Science and Data Engineering teams 
    • BI and BA teams 
    • Professional Services team 

    Start.io runs an agile organization that believes in transparency and full collaboration. We minimize bureaucracy and maximize individual ownership. Our model is to own it, build it, ship it, and support it. Many of our team members have built long and happy careers at Start.io, and we welcome you to learn more about our company culture. 

    Zedge is a publicly traded software company (NYSE: ZDGE) that specializes in helping people create, share, and monetize digital content. Its flagship mobile app, Zedge™ Wallpapers & Ringtones, has been downloaded more than 600 million times, and has approximately 30 million monthly active users. 

    Monetization is crucial for the company’s success. In its most recent quarter, Zedge generated $4.9 million in revenue from advertising, an increase of 10 percent over the same time last year. 

    Some of that recent advertising success is due to our work with Zedge. 

    Several months ago, Start.io approached Zedge about integrating the company’s mobile advertising SDK into Zedge™ Wallpapers & Ringtones. In those discussions, we highlighted our platform’s ability to deliver native advertising—an ad format that performs well on mobile, blends seamlessly into an app’s design, and generates an 18 percent increase in purchasing intent in consumers. 

    “For a long time, we had been looking for a solution to monetize native advertising,” said Ignas Danielius, Senior Director of Analytics and Ad Operations at Zedge. “I was very skeptical in the beginning… everybody claims they can monetize native advertising, but very few can.” 

    Danielius built a rigorous and systematic set of tests to understand whether Start.io could deliver on its promises. Satisfied with the results of those tests, Zedge built a custom integration into Start.io’s SDK and watched the volume of native ads increase immediately. 

    Today, Start.io is the #1 provider of native ads on the Zedge™ Wallpapers & Ringtones app. Revenue from native ads in Tier 1 countries (the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK) is up by 14 percent. Start.io is one of the top 5 best-performing ad platforms used by Zedge today. 

    “We’ve been extremely pleased with native advertising performance with Start.io,” said Danielius. “Start.io is the only ad platform we’ve seen in the last 2 or 3 years that has had good performance with native advertising.” 

    Check out our full customer case study here.

    Regulators around the world have steadily pushed for more transparency and control around consumer data. Consumers have a right to know who is collecting data about them, what types of data points are being collected, and what is happening with their information. 

    Earlier this year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an advertising industry group that builds policies and standards for the adtech industry, released Transparency Consent Framework 2.2, which is designed to help advertising platforms comply with the latest guidelines from Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. 

    Start.io’s advertising SDK is now fully compliant with TCF 2.2; here’s what that means for publishers: 

    TCF 2.2 removes the ‘legitimate interest’ loophole for ads and content 

    Previous versions of the IAB’s Transparency Consent Framework had allowed adtech companies and publishers to collect certain types of data without prior consumer consent if the company or publisher believed they had a “legitimate interest” in the data. 

    TCF 2.2 closes this loophole. 

    European regulators allow companies to use “legitimate interest” as a legal defense if they are sued for collecting data without consumer consent. When the language around “legitimate interest” was originally drafted, the idea was that a small number of companies need to collect a small amount of data without prior consent to prevent crime, fraud, or threats to public safety. 

    The problem was that the definition of “legitimate interest” wasn’t clearly defined, so some adtech companies and publishers took that as a sign that they could continue to collect data without implicit consumer consent because it was crucial to their business model. 

    European regulators have since issued guidelines and rulings that say advertising companies and publishers do not have “legitimate interest” in consumer data to serve ads or content and must ask for user consent first. 

    Plain language > legalese 

    Publishers use Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) to remain in compliance with the latest privacy regulations worldwide. Up until recently, CMPs have contained some nebulous language that consumers were finding hard to understand. 

    For example, what does it mean when a publisher asks for permission to “create profiles to personalize content” or “measure advertising performance”? 

    TCF 2.2 now includes user-friendly language and easy-to-understand examples, to help people better understand what they are consenting to. 

    A complete list of the required language and examples can be found here. 

    More information about software vendors 

    Under TCF 2.2, publishers will now be required to tell consumers how many third-party vendors want access to their data, with a per-vendor breakdown of the categories of data being collected, data retention periods and any legitimate interests at stake (where applicable). 

    Withdrawing consent 

    Consumers should be able to easily find a publisher’s CMP, so they can modify or withdraw their consent at any time. 

    The upside for publishers 

    Start.io is committed to helping publishers maximize their advertising revenue. A growing number of advertisers are requiring TCF 2.2 compliance, so updating our SDK now helps our customers continue to access the highest possible CPMs we can offer. 

    Good news: It’s easier than ever to remain in compliance—simply download Start.io SDK 4.11.4 here. 

    About the author 

    Michal Segal is the Director of Product Management at Start.io. She previously served as the Head of Products at Brightcom (NSE: BCG), and in product leadership roles at several earlier adtech companies. 

    Our team just got back from the Future of TV Advertising conference in London, where we had great conversations with brands, advertising agencies, and partners about the future potential (and current challenges) of connected TV. 

    Linear TV advertising is catching up with the sophistication and targeting capabilities of digital advertising. TV is well known for its ability to deliver top-of-the-funnel brand awareness, and now a whole new ecosystem is emerging with the introduction of television’s ad stack. 

     Big takeaways from this conference, from Start.io Chief Marketing Officer, Omri Barnes: 

     Ad-supported CTV is here, and growing 

     First, linear TV is not going anywhere anytime soon. In the U.S., cable TV subscriptions peaked in 2011, when nearly 91 percent of households with TVs were subscribed to a cable package. Today, that number sits at roughly 61 percent, according to Nielsen. 

    Cord-cutters have shifted to subscription video, and full integration of linear TV and connected TV is now on the horizon. 

    The pandemic sparked a massive boost in new subscribers to paid streaming services around the world. Growth in new subscribers has been slower in 2022 and 2023, which has led platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Max, Disney+ and others to introduce cheaper, ad-supported subscription plans. 

     This change has sparked a race in the advertising technology ecosystem to supply CTV providers with digital ads. 

     Ad tech is complex with or without CTV 

     The advertising technology ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past decade: There’s been a global patchwork of new privacy regulations in different countries, the standardization of video and display ads, evolving tracking methodologies, transparency requirements, and the ongoing evolution of devices and operating systems. 

     TV providers joining the ad tech ecosystem means another layer of complexity. Traditional ad tech companies have already solved a lot of the big challenges in CTV ads, but not all: Today, the central missing piece crucial for CTV ad success is tracking and attribution. 

     CTV ads bring different requirements, and the funnel isn’t similar to other devices, but the need is obvious. 

     Brand marketing is performance marketing 

     The traditional distinction between performance marketing and brand marketing is being eliminated. 

     In the past, brand marketing campaigns involved big budgets and splashy ads at the top of the funnel, and had somewhat nebulous measurements of success, such as a brand recognition and recall surveys. Performance marketing typically owned the middle and bottom of the funnel and had more concrete measurements of success. 

     It may take a couple years, but the connectivity of most ad supply sources, including digital out of home (DOOH), CTV, and other innovative ad formats, will give brands the ability to apply concrete, performance marketing measurements throughout the funnel. 

    Brand marketing encompasses a broad scope of activities that—in the new era of advertising—can and should be measured and analyzed constantly. 

     The bottom line: Welcome, connected TV 

     Performance marketing and brand marketing no longer exist, there is only marketing. Both practices will blend into a single, seamless, data-driven approach. 

     With TV ads joining the IP-based advertising ecosystem, the ad tech revolution is complete. Innovation is exponential, so the transition to high-performing, personalized CTV ads will happen much faster than the average consumer thinks.  

    For more info, reach out to us.