Ad Spend During Holidays — What Publishers Need to Know?
People wait for months for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and once they arrive, everyone is ready with a shopping list. This is the time when publishers yield the highest revenue from affiliate sales. Here’s how some publishers performed during the shopping season:
BuzzFeed: The publisher runs a gift guide section on its site to help the readers buy the right product. This year, BuzzFeed produced 200% more content for the section and saw its revenue grow by an incredible 575%. But the publisher started publishing the content 6 weeks earlier than it did last year.
Vox Media: Vox saw 120% YoY growth in this season but the major part of its revenue came from its evergreen articles.
Verizon Media Group: After heavy investments in its commercial content, Verizon Media reaped its benefits with a 105% increase in revenue and a 200% increase in gross merchandise volume.
Wired: Condé Nast’s Wired saw the festive season from a different perspective. It saw people’s willingness to spend money as an opportunity to sell subscriptions. As a result, Black Friday and Cyber Monday became the year’s second and the third best days for its subscription business. It used to display ads and contextual marketing to push its $5 a year subscription plan.
Ad Spend Surges 80% in the Gaming Industry
November also saw the launch of the next-gen gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft. These launches were followed by Sony’s $15 million ad spend to promote the PS5 and Microsoft’s expenditure of around $5 million for the Xbox. Nintendo increased its ad spend by 138% in the same month.
When there are new consoles in the hands of gamers, all they want to do is try new games. So, the game publishers are also advertising heavily to sell their games. Even the mobile app market witnessed a 23% increase in ad spend due to the gaming fever induced by the console launch. All this commotion helped the video game industry to reach an 80% surge in ad spend.
Takeaway:
Q4 brings you many opportunities to increase your revenue. It is up to you how you leverage the situation. We have created the seasonality guide for publishers, you can download it so that you are better prepared for the next holiday season. You can also read about the four opportunities to drive more revenue during Black Friday.
Other Important Adtech Updates from Last Week
Privacy Laws hit Google and Amazon
French regulator SINIL has fined Google and Amazon for placing cookies in users’ devices without taking their consent. Google has been fined 100 million euros whereas Amazon has to pay 35 million euros. Both the companies run French versions of their websites for the country’s users. Both of them failed to clarify how they’ll be using the user data. At the same time, they couldn’t provide the user with any means to refuse the use of cookies.
The companies argued that SINIL has no right to impose the sanction as their European headquarters were located in Ireland and Luxembourg. But the regulatory body has rejected the argument. The companies have three months to change the information banners on their sites. If they fail to comply, they’ll have to pay 100,000 euros per day until the rectifications are not made.
Takeaway:
The governments around the world are becoming more and more strict regarding their privacy laws. The big tech companies like Google and Amazon are paying fines now, but they also have the majority of their users signed-in to their platforms. It is easier for them to tackle the laws because they have a highly loyal user base. But, publishers should see these events as warning signs for themselves. Make sure you are complying with the privacy laws to avoid legal complications.
More Privacy Complaints Filed Against Google and IAB
After the implementation of GDPR, data protection authorities in Europe started receiving complaints against the adtech industry’s way of utilizing the users’ information. There were complaints against the RTB process that it’s a breach of privacy as it makes the user data available to many bidders for targeted ads. Google and IAB represent ad tech as their methods, tech, and frameworks are used by most of the industry. That’s why these complaints were filed against them.
Now, another batch of fresh complaints is being filed against Google and IAB. They argue that behavioral ads are harmful and unlawful. The consortium that is coordinating these complaints is requesting a joint investigation against IAB and Google, all across Europe. The main purpose of the complaints is to maintain pressure on the authorities from various countries in Europe because the complainers are unhappy with the slow speed of the GDPR authorities working against the ad tech.
Still, the list goes on. Numerous updates are happening around the adtech industry every day. However, If you’re a publisher who wants to stay updated with it, Signup for our Adtech Weekly newsletter to get the most important updates of an entire week straight to your inbox.
Originally published at https://headerbidding.co on December 14, 2020.
