Within digital media channels, probably the longest-standing gap in measurement information lies with the walled gardens—a group that includes Google, Facebook, a host of other walled social platforms, and Amazon. Some in the industry are also talking more of walled gardens—or attempts to build them—in the connected TV (CTV) or over-the-top (OTT) space.

The leg up for Amazon is exclusivity: Amazon is the gatekeeper to a city-sized walled garden of data that includes not just viewership metrics, but also online shopping habits, Alexa data, and more. By holding these insights close to its chest, Amazon can attract major advertising partners who will have exclusive access to a wealth of user data.

The hope is the partnership will give publishers more viable alternatives to the walled gardens of Facebook and Google, especially as the latter moves to deprecate third-party cookies by the end of 2023. Connexity’s retail clients that want to diversify their channel mix will have even more options.

The perceived attention to security has helped both to build Apple’s reputation and to justify its walled garden. Continued security exploits, especially those that lead to serious human rights abuses, could tarnish its reputation as well as make its ecosystem fair game to would-be hackers.

Jonathan Adams, executive director and managing partner at Wavemaker, joins eMarketer co-founder and Insider Intelligence chief evangelist Geoff Ramsey in a conversation about the health of the ad ecosystem amid unprecedented disruption. Among the many topics they cover are the balance between subscription- and ad-supported video and the role of walled gardens.

But programmatic accessibility for CTV is growing via methods such as self-serve platforms run by streaming services, which are increasingly being viewed as something like walled gardens. The next note in this series will discuss programmatic transaction methods, walled gardens and how they fit into the programmatic landscape—and what’s left over for the open internet.

Garden Walls. Within digital media channels, probably the longest-standing gap in measurement information lies with the walled gardens—a group that includes Google, Facebook, a host of other walled social platforms, and Amazon. Some in the industry are also talking more of walled gardens—or attempts to build them—in the connected TV (CTV) or over-the-top (OTT) space.

Ad blocking and avoidance have their most immediate effects on publishers that miss out on ad revenues they would otherwise have received from serving content to ad blocking users. Ad avoidance is just one of the reasons the average non-walled-garden publisher is struggling with ad-based monetization, and alternative revenue strategies have been gaining importance in recent years.

“Every retailer has to look at creating their own walled garden,” Jaconi of Button said. “That means creating an identity structure that is unimpacted by Google or Apple privacy changes. It means connecting with consumers and getting them to say, ‘I want you to communicate with me through authentic channels that we’re consenting to give you.”.

Walled gardens including Google, Facebook, other social platforms, and Amazon will continue to offer microtargeting options based on their first-party data plus advertiser first-party data.

Advertisers can only tap into this trove of information if they commit to a campaign on a Roku or Amazon device or on another “walled garden” platform like YouTube. But the data isn’t available for the agency’s planning purposes.

Walled gardens. October 2020 research from DemandLab and Ascend2 found that 44% of marketing professionals worldwide said social media marketing was among the most difficult digital marketing channels to attribute sales revenues to. Validating results and understanding methodologies.

Again, a significant share of spending in this category is direct spending at walled-garden social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. YouTube ad revenues also skew mobile, albeit less heavily. As with static display, programmatic has mostly saturated video advertising on mobile and desktop devices.

As consumers become more difficult to track in other channels, we expect ad dollars will flow to walled gardens like Facebook that offer authenticated, logged-in users. In 2021, Facebook’s US ad revenues (including Instagram) will reach $40.76 billion, up 21.8% over 2020, we estimate. It will take in 23.8% of total digital ad spending, up from 23.5% in 2020.

This favors walled gardens—including all major social platforms—because their measurement pixels enable cookieless attribution measurement. The pixel isn’t only about measurement; it’s about maintaining that link to campaign-exposed users. “The pixel can identify whether individuals have shown an interest in that product previously,” Snap's Pang said.

Exclusivity arrangements with merchants have been banned; underpricing to gain market share is in the process of being outlawed; Tencent and Alibaba properties are being forced to welcome each other’s presence in their previously walled-off gardens; AliPay and WeChat Pay are going to have to play nicer with each other (as well as with the Chinese government’s new digital currency); and Alibaba’s unique

Disparate identity spaces and other market issues, like the prevalence of walled gardens, were the most commonly cited barrier to in-house identification. Advertisers aren’t the only ones trying to identify users, either.

While the walled gardens will thrive in a cookie-less world, the open web, including many prominent B2B publishers, is innovating now to solve for identity resolution and hopefully before cookie fidelity makes its final exit.

Article: Inside walled gardens: The long-standing challenge of ad measurement and attribution.

In the short term, the ability of large, resource-rich companies such as the walled gardens to more readily comply with the regulation will serve to ease ad buyers’ initial concerns.

The restriction of third-party data may have the unintended consequence of creating incentives for publishers to merge and create walled gardens. “You're going to get mergers and acquisitions solely on the basis of expanding the first-party data set that brings with it,” said Danny Sepulveda, senior vice president for policy and advocacy at demand-side platform MediaMath.

Compounding this problem is that platforms are fortifying their walled gardens through exclusive partnerships with commerce and data services. Tan told us that brands in China want more openness in the digital ecosystem and greater say in what that openness should look like.

Through positive brand experiences, the walled gardens have cracked the code to generating identifiable user data. As others continue to build up their own walls to compete with these walled gardens, advertisers need to work with responsible and neutral identity resolution partners who can connect the dots behind those walls.