Tag: PubMatic

Singapore – The phase-out of third-party cookies by Google is hitting yet another roadblock, as the tech giant announced that the move will most likely be delayed until early 2025. This is the latest cookie deprecation delay from Google, with the phase-out initially intended to roll out back in 2022.

In a blog post in Google’s The Privacy Sandbox page, it stated that they recognise that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers and that they will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem.

“It’s also critical that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4,” Google stated.

The first delay on the Google third-party cookie phase-outs happened by late 2023, then again to late 2024, and now to early 2025.

In light of yet another year of delay of third-party cookie phaseout, MARKETECH APAC reached out to multiple industry leaders in the region to learn more about what does this delay means for the future of a privacy-centric advertising strategy for marketers moving forward, and how brands should continue in their efforts to utilise first-party or zero-party data strategies for their marketing initiatives moving forward.

Genelle Hung, Country Manager for SEA at PubMatic

Adapting advertising technology for a more privacy-centric future is paramount and is an effort worth taking the time to get right. Google’s new timeline does not change our commitment to creating a vibrant ecosystem around Privacy Sandbox as well as other addressability innovation areas like alternative IDs, contextual signals and commerce media. At PubMatic, we are not taking our foot off the gas. We are continuing to test and innovate around Privacy Sandbox initiatives so we can best prepare our publishers and media buyers for an inevitable cookieless future.

Nishanth Raju, Managing Director for Asia at Lotame

Deja vu, Google. It’s really no great surprise that Google has pushed back the third-party cookie deadline again. It’s in an impossible polyamorous relationship where none of its partners (legislators, regulators, industry execs) are satisfied by its commitment. The message for brands and agencies is crystal clear. Do not slow down on divesting your advertising from cookies, as they will be retired at some point. It’s a matter of who controls your fate. Give into waiting on Google, and you’re unfortunately wasting precious time building a solid portfolio of options, whether it’s identity frameworks or data collaboration. 

Dan Richardson, Director of Data & Insights for AUSEA at Yahoo

Google’s new timeline helps the industry continue to test and adapt. Beyond even cookies, non-addressable inventory will only increase and the industry should act now to prepare for these changes. Either way, Yahoo is ready to support advertisers today, with solutions for addressable and non-addressable environments, as well as testing in the Privacy Sandbox.

Gary Cheung, General Manager at NP Digital Hong Kong & Taiwan

From our point of view, the delay comes to no surprise, but the deprecation of cookies will happen eventually, and marketers and advertisers need to prepare for it. This further delay will allow marketers additional time to prepare for the loss of third-party cookies and how we should adopt a first-party-driven data strategy to drive accurate and impactful marketing. 

It is crucial for marketeers and brands to focus towards in maximising the acquisition of 1st-party data. This includes different types of data such as CRM, loyalty data, as well as online behavioural data gathered from digital assets like websites, apps, and media data such as clicks and views.

Bharat Khatri, Chief Digital Officer, Omnicom Media Group Asia Pacific

The cookieless future is not the whole story but one part of where we are headed in a privacy-first world. Effective advertising is powered by a wide variety of signals not just cookies. These traditional signals are bound to deprecate next year or soon due to high privacy concerns.

But there is a bigger issue — our industry is so focused on these declining traditional signals that they are not considering new developments like Google PAIR and The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0. Privacy centricity is the now and the future for our industry. 

Nonetheless, this news does not slow down the comprehensive approach we are taking to help clients stay ahead of the curve. OMG is taking a privacy by design approach with clients and accelerating towards privacy-safe future signals to continue our commitment towards responsible advertising.

Fai-keung Ng, Director of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk

This is a quintessential illustration of why tethering the future of your business to a highly uncertain solution is not advisable. Advertisers ought to persist in their first-party data building endeavours, while publishers must prioritise expanding their base of authenticated users, regardless of Google’s cookie deprecation decision.

It is worth noting that this third-party deprecation delay by Google doesn’t comes as a surprise for many of the industry leaders in Asia-Pacific, as many are optimistic in the alternative strategies they use for a privacy-centric advertising era ahead. Moreover, utilising first-party and zero-party data using various advertising strategies are becoming more and more commonly applied across the industry, with some saying as well that this delay will not slow down their approach for responsible advertising, as they aim to guide their clients to stay ahead of the curve. From a general perspective, this new delay from Google is another indication for many industry leaders to continue evolving towards a future where understanding of users’ privacy is at the heart of their responsible advertising mantra online.

California, USA – Popular sandbox game Roblox has teamed up with PubMatic to offer immersive programmatic video advertising in its platform. The partnership will allow more brands to seamlessly reach Roblox’s global community of over 71 million daily active users, nearly half of them representing the highly coveted Gen Z demographic, while Roblox will gain scaled access to premium brand advertising demand.

With one of the most robust virtual economies in the world, the expansion of Roblox’s advertising business will enable seamless access to this community and allow brands to activate on the platform without creating custom-built content.

Like all advertising on Roblox, programmatic ads must comply with the platform’s Community Standards and Advertising Standards grounded in principles of making advertising safe, transparent, and respectful of people’s privacy while still creating opportunities for the community to innovate, engage and earn. 

This also means Roblox users will know when they are interacting with ad content, and ads will continue to only be served to people ages 13 and up.

Stephanie Latham, VP of global partnerships at Roblox, said, “We are committed to making it easier for brands to foster connections with our highly engaged community on Roblox. Partnering with PubMatic unlocks the opportunity for more advertisers to seamlessly engage this community through preferred content formats, like video, while providing advertiser controls around brand suitability. The ad experience we offer on the platform is built to be immersive instead of disruptive, and true to the Roblox experience that our community of creators, users, and brands know and love.”

Meanwhile, Kyle Dozeman, chief revenue officer for Americas at PubMatic, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with Roblox to deliver a pioneering advertising solution that marries monetization with user experience. Advertising creates significant opportunities for many companies, and it funds and fuels the endless potential of the internet. We look forward to empowering Roblox to maintain full control over its advertising ecosystem while enabling advertisers to reach their target audiences effectively.”

Singapore – PubMatic has announced that Peter Barry will be returning to Australia to serve as its vice president for addressability and commerce media for Asia-Pacific. He was previously based in New York as PubMatic’s global vice president for addressability and commerce.

Barry will report directly to Jason Barnes, chief revenue officer for APAC at PubMatic.

In his new role, he will be responsible for rolling out PubMatic’s commerce media solution, Convert, across the APAC region. Convert provides retailers, brands and advertisers with a unified audience monetisation and acquisition platform to maximise the reach and revenue of commerce media, one of the fastest-growing media channels. 

In addition to this, Barry will be responsible for working with publishers, advertisers, identity vendors and industry bodies to ensure PubMatic’s customers are maximising addressable opportunities across their businesses as signals shift and regulations change.

During Barry’s time in the U.S., he led multiple cross-functional teams, helping PubMatic’s partners to execute against addressability strategies to drive monetisation today, as well as future proof of their business. He helped launch the Convert platform in 2023, opening up a new set of opportunities for PubMatic and its customers. Prior to that, Barry was PubMatic’s regional director for Australia and New Zealand, leading the rollout of the company’s Addressability Suite across the region and working with data and APAC identity partners.

Speaking on his new role, he said, “I am excited to work with PubMatic’s APAC team again to drive the addressability and commerce media businesses across the region. I’ve learnt a lot from my time in the US, and now I’m looking forward to ensuring PubMatic’s customers make the most of both the onsite and offsite opportunities through our Convert product.”

Meanwhile, Barnes commented, “We’re delighted to see Peter return to APAC following his time in New York. His wealth of experience is invaluable and I look forward to seeing how his expertise impacts our ever-expanding commerce media offering in the region.”

Singapore – A new report from PubMatic has revealed that around 70% of APAC marketers are spending on in-app advertising, with 8 in 10 marketers seeing improved brand awareness and are paying off for brands.

At 88%, Singaporean buyers are most likely to buy in-app, while Japanese buyers are doing far less in-app buying, at just 47%. Across countries, performance-focused buyers are more likely to advertise in-app than brand buyers, at 77% and 60% respectively. 

Despite this discrepancy, marketers across regions say that brand awareness is the leading benefit of in-app advertising, regardless of their primary advertising objectives.

In terms of mobile game advertising, the study shows slightly over half of marketers that currently incorporate in-app ads in their marketing strategies also invest in mobile gaming ads. Of the APAC marketers surveyed, 52% have an in-game marketing strategy, with a wide variance of adoption across countries: only 15% of Japanese marketers are spending on in-game ads, versus 77% of marketers in Singapore. 

Moreover, most advertisers who are reluctant to invest in mobile gaming ads cited their primary reason as misalignment with company or brand values, or misalignment with target audiences.

Meanwhile, programmatic was the preferred in-app buying option for 62% of advertisers – reflecting the need for agility through data-driven precision, adaptability, and cost-efficiency – while the remainder transacts directly with publishers. Direct buyers cited “audience targeting precision” as the top reason for how they purchase, followed by “more control over ad placement” and “customisable solutions tailored to specific goals of our brand”.

Lastly, around 86% of in-game advertisers in Singapore and 80% in South Korea plan to increase, or maintain, the same budget for in-game advertising – meaning brand buyers are the biggest revenue opportunities for gaming publishers. Only Japanese marketers are hesitant to go all-in on in-game advertising right now, due to the aforementioned concerns around audience alignment. Marketers also reported the biggest appeal of in-game advertising to be the ability to create positive associations of their brand with mobile gamers.

Lashanne Phang, vice president for mobile at PubMatic, said, “The findings show there are more chances than ever for in-app publishers to attract ad spend from brand buyers looking to invest in mobile gaming. But, in today’s increasingly complex and dynamic landscape, it will be vital to work with a tech partner that can provide transparency, control, flexibility and guidance if they are to unlock the full potential of in-app and in-game advertising and capture incremental dollars from diverse channels and geographies in 2024.”

She added, “When choosing a tech partner, app publishers should look for a company that provides unique demand and effective measurement tools, while offering customised, curated packaging to ensure control over audiences, inventory and data.”

Singapore – PubMatic has announced the appointment of Genelle Hung as its new country manager for Southeast Asia. In her new role, she will be in charge of directing strategy, sales, and operations across the region’s digital advertising supply chain.

Hung will be based in Singapore and will report directly to Jason Barnes, the Asia-Pacific region’s chief revenue officer.

Hung will be in charge of the strategic leadership of the Southeast Asian market at PubMatic. She will work directly with local go-to-market teams as well as global leadership, and she will be essential to continuing relationships with important CTV/OTT and in-app publishers in the area. She will also collaborate with agency holdcos to carry out supply path optimization transactions.

Hung most recently moved to PubMatic from AppLovin, where she spent two years as the head of demand APAC. She was in charge of growing AppLovin’s demand business in Asia through DSPs, programmatic agencies, and brands during her time there. She also led the expansion of AppDiscovery’s operations to meet the demands of non-gaming advertisers.

Speaking about the appointment, Hung expressed, “I’m excited to be joining the PubMatic APAC team at such a pivotal moment for CTV, changing consumer habits, and dynamic new inventory. I’m looking forward to building on the strong relationships I’ve already created across the region, offering high-quality products that meet and exceed clients’ business needs, and ensuring that PubMatic remains a top monetisation and technology partner.” 

Meanwhile, Barnes said, “We’re thrilled to have Genelle joining our APAC team – her previous experience, coupled with PubMatic’s premium products, will ensure we deliver great results for local businesses while serving the needs of stakeholders. Genelle will play a critical role in maintaining our client portfolio, onboarding new business, and helping drive PubMatics’s continued global expansion.”

The original vision was simple: Programmatic technology was introduced to solve challenges of scale and efficiency across the open internet. DSPs arose to facilitate and optimize all aspects of buying, and SSPs were introduced to facilitate and optimize all aspects of selling. We are still operating within this overly simplistic, category-based view of the digital advertising supply chain, and it’s time to put the days of ‘one-size-fits-all’ behind us.

While the current construct has been great for some companies, particularly those operating within a walled garden context that can use this dichotomy structure to validate their control of the entire tech stack, others in the ecosystem should think about whether they have actually benefited from this model. Rethinking the supply chain will create new opportunities for differentiation and value creation, all while better aligning with the needs of publishers and advertisers and creating a more sustainable ecosystem.

Programmatic is now being applied to a growing number of use cases. Buyers and sellers of digital media should no longer be limited to the previously identified set of constraints. They need the ad tech ecosystem to evolve to put their needs where they always should have been—at the center of tech solutions.

It’s time to cast aside the buckets—and the corresponding terminology—we’ve been using for programmatic technology. Rather than thinking about the alphabet soup of company types, such as DSPs, DMPs, CDPs and SSPs, we should instead start thinking in terms of supply chain components, including:

  • Media planning
  • Dynamic bidding
  • Audience ingestion
  • Audience targeting
  • Audience matching
  • Bidder management
  • Outcomes delivery
  • Inventory curation

By shifting to a capabilities versus a business model mindset, we see how the programmatic ecosystem can accommodate a wider array of use cases—a pivot that is long overdue in today’s dynamic digital ecosystem.

Expanding Use Cases, Expanding Capabilities

As programmatic advertising embraces its next evolution—one in which we pivot from delivering on efficiency alone to delivering true customization and added value—the way in which we think about the ad tech stack is going to shift, both in terms of the use cases accommodated by programmatic, as well as how traditional programmatic media buys are executed. Consider:

Open Market Media Buy

In an open market programmatic buy, advertisers aim to reach their target audience for a set CPM. While this typically includes traditional DSP and SSP capabilities, to bid and scale campaigns effectively we are seeing buyers evolve their supply chains amid increased signal loss. As the ecosystem has shifted away from cookies and other identifiers, the buy side has been feeling the impact in terms of audience matching capabilities. As a result, some buyers shifted audience onboarding and targeting to the sell side, where they’re finding better results. Which begs the question: Do our traditional notions of the supply and demand sides of the equation still hold up?

Maximum Monetization

Publishers should also think about their supply chains and how they can best leverage various technical components to achieve their objectives. Depending on a publisher’s demand strategy, their ideal ad stack setup may differ. One CTV publisher might lean on programmatic technology to automate a successful direct IO business, while another might add a wrapper to their supply chain to unify bidding across multiple SSPs and exchanges. All publishers are not created equal, and their supply chains should not be either.

Commerce and Retail Media

Finally, let’s not neglect the immense impact that the growth of commerce and retail media platforms is having on the programmatic industry. These days, retailers might find themselves in the role of an advertiser, a data owner and a media owner, and programmatic ad tech should be equipped to switch hats right alongside the retailer as needed. In other words, success in commerce and retail media requires a consolidated tech offering featuring a complex set of capabilities that have historically existed across multiple company types. As the programmatic ecosystem evolves to address this increasingly important use case, we will likely find that the traditional constructs are suboptimal.

The simple fact is that publishers and advertisers can each have countless different use cases when it comes to their business needs and advertising objectives. They shouldn’t have to shoehorn these needs into a static, one-size-fits-all tech solution. This is 2023. Programmatic has come a long way and should be expected to adapt to the needs of the customers it serves, not the other way around.

Learn more about the new opportunities in the digital supply chain of the future in our new report.

This article is written by Sudipto Das, Vice President, Advertiser Solutions, APAC at PubMatic.

The insight is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series under What’s NEXT 2023-2024. What’s NEXT 2023-2024 is a multi-platform industry initiative which features marketing and industry leaders in APAC sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year.

The programmatic supply chain needs to evolve to accommodate economic pressures, privacy regulations, and the push for greater buyer control of media budgets. To help media buyers across Asia Pacific meet these challenges, PubMatic launched Activate. With a single layer of technology, Activate removes inefficiencies in the programmatic supply chain – including the operational inefficiencies of direct-deal setups – and creates more value for buyers and sellers overall.

We believe the supply chain of the future must provide for the independence, interoperability, control, choice, and transparency that both buyers and sellers require. If the programmatic supply chain were created today — specially for direct deal and private deal opportunities — it would look vastly different. It would be much more efficient if buyers could transact programmatically closer to the inventory source. And that is why we are bringing Activate to the marketplace, to bridge the automation of programmatic with the control of direct.

PubMatic is in a unique position to bring this solution to market because we have well-established sell-side technology that was complemented with our 2022 acquisition of media measurement and reporting platform, Martin. We have now built a layer of technology which brings the publisher and buyer sides together with the same levels of interoperability and flexibility that we build into our entire suite of software solutions.

Activate taps into our entire publisher inventory pool of omnichannel video inventory, including CTV and high-value online video, giving buyers greater control and efficiency with fewer hops. Activate is built for a sustainable and responsible media chain and includes a unified SPO platform, which is designed to bring publishers and buyers closer together. Thanks to fee efficiencies, we anticipate more working media for our publisher customers, which has been a frequent request.

Learn more about how we are building the digital advertising supply chain of the future.

This article is written by Sudipto Das, Vice President, Advertiser Solutions, APAC at PubMatic.

This post is done in partnership with PubMatic.

California – Global adtech company PubMatic has announced the launch of ‘Convert’, a unified self-service advertising platform for commerce media which allows commerce media networks to have a unified single self-service platform for transactions. 

Built on PubMatic’s global cloud infrastructure, Convert empowers commerce media networks with a single, self-service platform that streamlines the complex and fragmented commerce media marketplace by bringing together essential monetization and optimization capabilities across sponsored listings, CTV, video, and display ad formats.  

Convert also aims to ensure transparency in fee and pricing structures along with automation and scalability for commerce media networks and advertisers.

Industry brands, retailers, and advertisers such as IPG Mediabrands, dentsu, Lyft Media, MiQ, and Wallapop have joined PubMatic as initial partners in the development and announcement of Convert.

The new platform complements PubMatic’s existing commerce media capabilities offered via Connect, the omnichannel addressability solution launched in 2022 that enables data access and control on the sell-side, closer to the consumer.

Peter Barry, VP of addressability & commerce media at PubMatic, said, “Data access, monetization, and control are critical for commerce media networks and their advertisers, and PubMatic has a strong history of leadership and innovation in these areas. By making substantial investments in developing customised technology with Convert, we are confident in our ability to continue to drive increased value for our customers.”

Singapore – PubMatic has partnered with on-demand video streaming service iQIYI through the integration of PubMatic’s OpenWrap over the top (OTT) service.

The partnership has been motivated by premium OTT streaming services’ increasing adoption of programmatic strategies. This has allowed them to optimize revenue and improve the overall advertising experience for viewers. Hence, it gained PubMatic’s OpenWrap OTT popularity.

A key feature of OpenWrap OTT and PubMatic’s unified auction solution for OTT and CTV publishers is the expanded advertiser reach, increased revenue, and improved experiences for viewers.

Meanwhile, Frankie Fu, VP of international at iQIYI, expressed excitement about the impressive outcomes of implementing OpenWrap OTT, stating, “We are thrilled with the results we’ve achieved since integrating OpenWrap OTT. We observed an immediate uplift in bid requests and overall programmatic revenue. The PubMatic team collaborated closely with our Southeast Asia and China teams to identify the most effective monetization setup for our platform, ensuring a quick and efficient implementation.”

John Martin, senior director, OpenWrap, at PubMatic, also shared that they have been supportive of iQIYI’s exploration of the programmatic landscape over the years and that they are thrilled to assist them in their role as a flourishing global streaming platform, driving revenue growth through unified programmatic auctions.

The PubMatic and iQIYI International partnership, integrating OpenWrap OTT, marks a significant milestone in advancing programmatic technology for OTT streaming. This collaboration unlocks opportunities for revenue growth, expanded advertiser reach, and an enhanced viewer experience on iQIYI’s global platform.

Australia – Attention measurement and optimisation platform Playground xyz has announced a partnership with global adtech PubMatic. Said partnership aims to allow advertisers to create bespoke, high-attention marketplaces within the sell-side platform.

Playground xyz’s attention intelligence platform (AIP) technology fuses eye tracking panel data with an advanced AI to optimise ‘Attention Time’ which displays how long in seconds an ad is actually looked at across both creative and media in real time. 

“Advertisers are starting to harness the power of measuring and optimizing their campaigns on a quality metric like attention, rather than proxy metrics like viewability. Making this revolutionary metric accessible to customers is a key step to adoption and we are excited to partner with PubMatic, one of the world’s leading ad tech companies, to provide this scalable solution to their clients, ” said Rob Hall, CEO of Playground xyz. 

With the new features, PubMatic’s clients will now be able to bolster their campaigns and adjust ad spend towards the inventory that is securing the highest levels of attention.

 Peter Barry, Vice President of Addressability and Commerce Media for PubMatic says that they see the growing demand for attention-based solutions and are excited to offer Playground xyz’s marketplaces within Pubmatic.   

“Integrating AIP’s Attention Time capabilities is an exciting step forward in allowing the world’s biggest brands to take action on attention,” he added.