Cookies are crumbling—but you don’t have to. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework (ATT) is here, and marketers everywhere can’t help but worry about what this means for their targeting and measurement capabilities.
While the digital identity landscape is evolving, and we’re all experiencing some level of disruption, not everything is beyond our control. Prior to the recent evolution of digital keys, we found a way to focus on more stable, persistent, long-lasting identifiers—relying on our unique listener ID—as well as a setup that gives a greater degree of autonomy.
By working closely with advertisers, agencies and third parties in the space, here are some of the strategies we’ve employed to preserve personalized experiences.
1. Maximize your first-party data
If you’re a media owner, you’re probably already hard at work making the most of your first-party data. Understanding and amplifying your first-party assets is key. But is mere understanding enough to really blow out your own offerings? Are you clear on declared, observed, contextual and inferred signals? Do you know how to speak to your consumer leveraging these data points?
As identifiers change, and with privacy concerns top of mind, contextual targeting will play an increasingly important role. Think about these offerings in terms of real-time visual and audio adjacency, and how they can help you discover historical patterns of consumption.
2. Enable marketer data activation
I work particularly close with marketers to help them onboard their own data sets—and over the past six years, this progression has been fascinating to watch. We’ve partnered with marketers across all types of accounts, assisting them to develop strategies to leverage the data that’s most precious to their exact business: the high value customer, the newly acquired customer, even the lapsed user. We’ve witnessed steady growth of this most personalized approach and have recently seen this hit a major uptick across our properties.
There are a couple factors at play here: improved technology and data sets that have previously been too small but have finally scaled. We know from our client conversations that the changing currency of identifiers has reduced reliance on third-party data and, instead, enabled authentic conversations with core consumers.
3. Earn the login through good user experience
During the pandemic, the consumption of streaming music and non-music audio content boomed. For those grappling with the decision of whether or not to institute a login, users will log in if you provide a good user experience. The degree to which that login fulfills that promise of a personalized and curated experience will further encourage positive consumer response.
Publishers can consider methods of incentivization, like rewards for providing consumer information, while clearly communicating to the user as to how that information will be used. Of course, there’s also the option of single sign-on (SSO) to make the process smoother. You’ll need to ensure the consumer feels there’s proper value exchange relative to the time and information they provide. But in the end, it comes down to three things: workflow, value and trust.
3 key takeaways
Take a consumer-centric approach: We believe that what’s good for the listener is good for the advertiser. To hold listener experience and consumer trust at the forefront means you must be privacy-forward as well. We’re fortunate in that we have a logged-in listener base, which allows us to provide a music and podcast listening experience that’s highly personalized and offers extensive listener feedback.
Before panicking, look at the data: In preparation for Apple’s IDFA tracking changes, we ran some experiments that showed our initial IDFA opt-in rates are far higher than feared percentages circulating in the trades. Since tracking enforcement, we’ve been thrilled to see IDFA opt-in rates reflect those strong initial results.
Evolve your data solutions: We sit on a wealth of first-party data. We’ve always had strong proprietary offerings, but we’ve significantly increased these offerings to meet the needs of our advertisers amid identity and privacy concerns. We’re excited to be building more segmentation, creating more robust contextual offerings and utilizing our extensive podcast data signals as well. We encourage you to explore these tactics to future-proof your data solutions.
For years, we’ve been future-proofing our capabilities to align with the new norm. As a result, we are in a strong position to help advertisers navigate the future, while continuing to preserve the integrity of our consumer experience and respecting user privacy.
