Even as tech companies pour money into the metaverse, space-based connectivity, and more sophisticated virtual assistants, they’ll face more pressure.

The deprecation of the third-party cookie in Chrome will be significantly disruptive for publishers that monetize their sites with advertising. Here’s how web publishers are preparing for a future without third-party cookies.

As the open web grapples with obstacles of scale and interoperability of new identity solutions, advertisers are turning to platforms that have large user bases and reliable stores of first-party data. In a survey conducted in November and December 2021, Advertiser Perceptions found 58% of advertisers and agencies were finding new target audiences through partnerships with Google.

Open Web Faces Greater Threat. As advertisers grow more comfortable tying their ad spending to direct sales or other measurable outcomes, it places more power in the hands of walled gardens—closed environments where users must register and log in using email addresses.

CTV has less clutter than the open web. In Q2, 96% of CTV ads were viewed through completion, per Extreme Reach. The high completion rate reflects CTV’s value exchange where viewers sit through ads because they know they’ll soon be rewarded with a show they want to watch. It makes sense that these video ads shown on a large screen are expensive.

Recent emphasis on upper-funnel display and video ads, as well as the use of demand-side platforms (DSPs) to deliver ads across the open web, points to what’s ahead. WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report provides an overview of the fast-growing retail media advertising opportunity and key retailers driving the market.

What to expect: Cookie-based programmatic targeting of open web display and video ads not only remains a viable strategy, but it’s also getting more powerful with the introduction of first-party retailer data. Amazon DSP continues to grow in importance, while Walmart’s partnership with the Trade Desk goes live in late October to bring another key offering to market.

Retail media platforms’ low-hanging fruits are search and display ads on their owned and operated digital properties—though they can also power advertising on the open web and other digital media. We forecast that US ecommerce channel ad spending will jump by 38.8% by the end of 2020, to $17.37 billion, and it will double to $34.00 billion by 2023.

They are one of the last remaining ways to reliably drive traffic off social media platforms, via a swipe-up feature that opens a web link directly within the Story. Not every social media platform offers this feature, but most do, and these links play an integral role in driving leads, conversions, and social commerce transactions.

Open exchange includes public RTB auctions open to all buyers and sellers; also called an open auction or open marketplace. Preferred deals include upfront commitments to inventory price but not inventory amount between one buyer and one seller; also called private access or first right of refusal.

Prediction No 3: Privacy Concerns Will Push More Dollars—Not Fewer—Into the Walled Gardens as the Open Web Scrambles to Solve Identity. What it means for marketers: Rollout of regulation and ongoing browser crackdowns will force marketers toward sellers capable of navigating limitations on ad targeting and measurement—even as the open web scrambles to come together.

As to what that innovation is precisely, only time will tell, but experts who spoke with us for this report agreed that there is a heightened industry dialogue around how open-web publishers can find solutions.

In 2019, 82.5% of mobile ad spending went to in-app ads, while 17.5% went to web ads. In part, that reflects the outsize impact of in-stream advertising on YouTube, which is often on the web. But it also reflects that many apps open web browsers for content. For instance, Facebook’s app will often open web browsers for news stories or shopping sites.

That’s primarily on the open web today but is destined to transition to ad-supported over-the-top (OTT) video, giving them a major opportunity to tap TV ad budgets. Eventually, these platforms will power digital in-store media as well. Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart have the inside track on these massive opportunities, and in 2021 their formidable positions and momentum will become apparent.

Open web display advertising more typically goes through demand-side platforms (DSPs) to target high-intent and high-propensity audiences based on various demographic and behavioral signals. More of these ad buys today are being powered by Amazon. “What’s unique about Amazon compared with any other display advertising platform is the shopper data,” Masters said.

The ad tech companies working on UID 2.0, a single sign-on solution, have been open about these challenges.

With Olo Pay, customers ordering from restaurants’ proprietary digital platforms (web and mobile) can pay using cards and mobile wallets and can save their payment details for faster future checkouts. Later this year, the feature will expand to offer customers one-click ordering at any restaurant in the Olo Pay network.

The news: Search engines DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Lilo, and Qwant are calling on EU legislators to end Google’s “hoarding of default positions” on web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers, per Insider. “Google would not have become the overall market gatekeeper they are today without years of locking up these defaults,” the rivals said in an open letter to the EU.

This need opens up opportunities for crypto-specialist regtechs like Coinfirm, Chainalysis, Notabene, and CipherTrace—and gives larger regtechs an avenue for differentiation, like ComplyAdvantage’s recent partnership with Elliptic.

This means most programmatic video transactions are done outside open exchanges. In a Q4 2021 survey of 127 sell-side respondents by PubMatic and Advertiser Perceptions, it was estimated that open markets generate just 28% of all programmatic digital video ad revenues.