In this Real Time Banter webinar, LiveIntent SVP of global marketing, Kerel Cooper, and VP of marketing, Nick Dujnic, speak with Erik Requidan and Justin Hansen, co-Founders of Media Tradecraft, about using agile innovation to prepare for the cookie apocalypse.
Insights from Erik Requidan and Justin Hansen
Media Tradecraft works with publishers to build custom ad strategies, increase revenue, and take advantage of the latest ad technologies. They’re full-service partners for publishers without a dedicated sales team or direct connection to buyers, and consultants to large media companies who need an expert opinion.
Naturally, Requidan and Hansen spend a lot of time preparing for the death of the third-party cookie.
“We’re all talking about this countdown and shot clock that’s out there,” Requidan says. “There’s never enough hours in the day, but we love it. We absolutely love the hard work.”
Requidan recently drew attention for his AdExchanger article, “Ugly Delicious Advertising,” inspired by restaurateur David Chang.
“I was trying to explain in an easy way what we’re all going through with the depreciation of the third-party cookie, which so many businesses within the ecosystem rely on,” he says. “It can be intimidating and make you bury your head in the sand. I wanted to connect with audiences and make it a conversation for everyone, not just specialists.”
To start preparing for the cookie apocalypse, Hansen recommends thinking about what type of publisher you are.
“Do you have a lot of first-party data? Are you a really large publisher that can utilize some of that? Are you a publisher with a lot of loyal audiences and big email lists? In some cases, publishers have loyal audiences but never built an email strategy. This could be the time to start thinking about that and planning.”
Meanwhile, Requidan advises publishers to pay attention to technology that’s already available to them.
“A lot of innovation over the past six or seven years came from small- and medium-sized publishers. [They did this] to drive the testing that’s required and not have such a large company with a different process of making decisions.”
Publishers should also take comfort in the fact that they’ve been here before. They’ve tested and prepared for shifts in the landscape, and they can do it again with careful planning.
“We did it with RTB. We did it with containers and wrappers. We did it with header bidding. We did it with PMPs,” Requidan says. “Although this process isn’t exactly the same, if we can break it down into easy chunks, that will be a very good starting point.”
- Create a game plan. “Split it into manageable stepping stones, and put goals and dates to them,” Hansen says. “Such as, ‘I want to be able to get this tested by this date.’ This is one of those rare scenarios where we have a date. There’s a point we’re all looking at.”
- Decide who’s going to lead. “Who’s going to drive this?” Requidan says. “For many, it falls on the shoulders of the operations teams who are used to consistent challenges.”
- Break down silos. “Everyone needs to come together internally to help solve this problem and build testing in this new environment,” Hansen says.
- Select the right partners. “Partner with folks that really know what they’re doing and work with good, existing technologies that are already a few steps ahead,” Requidan says. “And partnering up doesn’t just mean working with a service provider. Also talk to other publishers and people in the community to be able to understand what’s happening. We need to make this part of the dialogue.”
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