In environments that disallow third-party cookies such as Firefox and Safari, monetisation increased more significantly when first-party identifiers were used, according to new research.
With the pending elimination of third-party cookies, it’s going to be imperative that e-commerce providers establish future-proof identity solutions for media publishers and would-be advertisers.
New research by Magnite and Adform has measured monetisation lift based on first-party identifiers, including environments that currently disallow third-party cookies such as Firefox and Safari. Initial results from Q1 2021 show significant lift, with overall eCPMs increasing more than 30 percent, compared with ad requests which did not contain first-party identifiers. The study also showed click-through-rates on Safari impressions doubled, showing an increase in performance for buyers.
Essentially, eCPMs are metrics for measuring an ad’s monetisation performance based on the revenue earned per 1000 ad impressions and is an acronym for ‘effective cost per mille’.
Publishers and media buyers should take encouragement from this in that first-party identifiers are now a viable way forward as usage of third-party cookies is phased out. Buyers, in the absence of a third-party cookie, can and will use first-party identifiers for bidding decisions, which will accelerate the deployment of these first-party solutions.
“We are not surprised at all that we are seeing lift in publisher revenue and buyer outcomes when an ID is present. We have known this for a long time – which is why standardised community identifiers controlled by publishers are such an important part of our strategy. What is most encouraging, however, is how large the lift is in our trials with Adform and how that might motivate publishers to leverage identifiers,” explains Tom Kershaw, Chief Technology Officer at Magnite.
Publisher first-party data linked to these identifiers form a key part of the quest to reinvent the internet’s identity and audience targeting structure. First-party data helps deliver a better user experience and with interest-based data, ads become more relevant and provide inherent value.
“We see really impressive improvements with publishers that pass first-party IDs and even more when they link first party data. The impact is naturally by far most notable on Safari where cookie IDs are not available,” says Jakob Bak, co-founder at Adform.
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