OpenX Releases Survey Results On Importance of First party Data

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OpenX revealed the results of the company’s latest survey, examining how publishers are currently viewing and utilising first-party data. The findings highlight the critical role first party (1P) data will play going forward, with 85 per cent of publishers saying that 1P data will be important to their future revenue.

However, while the vast majority of publishers say that 1P data will be important to their future plans, they were mixed on their ability to effectively use 1P data today. 66 per cent of pubs are currently using 1P data to drive ad revenue, with only 53 per cent saying it is important to their ad revenue today. Only 21 per cent of publishers say it is “very important” to revenue today, yet more than 50 per cent say it will be “very important” going forward.

Many publishers expressed a lack of satisfaction with the current options available for activating their data. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average satisfaction score for 1P data activation solutions was 6.5, and only 7 per cent of respondents were “very satisfied” with current solutions for activating their 1P data.

“Legacy identifiers, such as third party cookies and IDFA, are still on their way out. Publishers have smartly recognised that first party data will fill a large part of the gap ,” said Tom Levesque, VP Product at OpenX. “But there’s a clear need for ad tech vendors to support this transition with better first party solutions for publishers.”

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Other results from the survey include:

Larger publishers are slightly less likely to use 1P data, but more likely to get value from it. Only 63 per cent of publishers with more than 500 million monthly requests say they are using 1P data today, compared to 71 per cent of pubs with less than 500 million. However, publishers with over 500 million monthly requests are 35 per cent more likely to say that 1P significantly impacts their revenue today.

Big and small pubs have different challenges with 1P data. When discussing current challenges, larger pubs are concerned with creating segments, controlling data, and finding interested advertisers, at equal levels. For smaller pubs, there was one issue with 1P data that dwarfed everything else — finding interested advertisers. 82 per cent of smaller pubs say this is one of their top two challenges, compared to 49 per cent of larger pubs.

PMPs are the preferred way to execute with 1P data, yet the open auction is also important. PMPs are the dominant way to sell 1P data, with 80 per cent of respondents saying they use PMPs, yet 48 per cent also said they used open auction to monetise 1P data.

The survey was conducted in July 2021 with 123 respondents across direct publishers, networks and sales houses. 60 per cent of respondents had over 500 million ad requests a month, and the publishers covered desktop (94 per cent of respondents), mobile app (55 per cent) and CTV (18 per cent).