Prebid

Prebid Cookieless Future Webinar Recap

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On March 5th, Prebid hosted “The State of Cookie Deprecation” webinar, aimed at providing market findings and outlining the future of digital advertising in a post-cookie world. The session brought together industry experts to share insights, strategies, and innovative solutions designed to navigate this change effectively. If you missed it, we have everything summarized in this article and you can access the recording here.

The Panelists

Jeffrey Wieland (Prebid Identity PMC Chair & Principal Technical Product Manager Magnite)

Hillary Slattery & Miguel Morales (IAB Tech Lab)

Matthew Whaley (Prebid Board Member & CSO Freestar)

David Dabbs (Epsilon)

Patrick McCann (Prebid Js Chair & Board Member, SVP Research at Raptive)

The State of A Cookieless Future

Jeffrey Wieland covered the topic of the upcoming cookieless scenario with Google’s timeline for cookie deprecation, current findings, and what Prebid is doing to help the industry adapt.

The cookieless future is uncertain until the CMA’s review is finalized, hence Jeff emphasized the importance of persistent testing. This will benefit not only the testers but also the entire ecosystem as it provides more data and feedback for Google. 

To continue, Jeff shared a few figures about the current cookie stage:

  • Across all web browsers, 40% is already cookieless. 
  • On Mobile in-app, 73% of Apple requests already withhold Device ID. Google will implement similar limitations for Android devices.

From these numbers, we can see that cookie deprecation is not necessarily a new challenge to our industry. Since 2018, Prebid has launched a robust set of alternatives to prepare and adapt. We now support RTD modules: EIDs, SDAs, and Contextuals (they are all compliant and can ensure privacy). This is to say that besides Google’s Privacy Sandbox, there are many other tools we can use to be ready for the cookieless future. Playwire evaluated different tools here.

Prebid’s Identity PMC has a few solutions coming to assist the industry:

IAB Tech Lab Use Case Analysis

The “Privacy Sandbox – Fit Gap Analysis for Digital Advertising” use case analysis was co-led by Hillary Slattery and Miguel Morales. At the webinar, they shared the findings and observations to provide a technical understanding of Privacy Sandbox’s performance.

This study has 3 main goals:

  • To give the ad tech industry a frame of reference against how things work today
  • Create a call to action for the industry to start testing, and last
  • Provide the Sandbox team with feedback on key operational challenges with using PAAPIs

The scope of the study

The IAB Tech Lab Privacy Sandbox Task Force, which includes senior leaders from over 65 companies, evaluated 44 use cases in technicality and business impacts. They were gathered across 5 pillars of advertising: Audience creation and management, Auction mechanics, Measurement and Attribution, Creative delivery, and Interoperability.

The 44 use cases were classified into 5 categories:

  • Supported (3 cases): Parity with existing capabilities, even after full removal of temporary features.
  • Temporarily Supported (9 cases): Planned removal of current functionality or temporary work-arounds. Implementers should proceed with the expectation that the use case may not be supported or be degraded once the mechanism is removed and achieving the use case may not be possible in the long term.
  • Degraded (7 cases): Some support exists, but missing a significant amount of current functionality such as timeliness, integrity of data, or unrestricted access.
  • Impractical (2 cases): Technically possible, but so difficult to implement that only the most well-resourced companies are expected to be able to accomplish.
  • Not Supported (23 cases):
    • Use cases that can not be accomplished in Privacy Sandbox, either by design or technical inability
    • Use cases that rely on the ‘forDebuggingOnly’ features.
    • Use cases considered to be simultaneously Impractical and Temporarily Supported.
    • Use cases that could only theoretically be fulfilled via undocumented features, or hacks that are not compatible with the design goals of Privacy Sandbox (for example; passing data out of APIs via iFrame post messages).

Hillary reinforced that cookies are definitely going away, and everyone in the digital advertising world should have a post-cookie strategy, whether it involves the use of PAAPI or not. Publishers are highly recommended to closely monitor their revenue and persistently test to find their most optimal setup. Buyers should also monitor their reporting, this is not a problem of just one side. 

Again, it was emphasized that testing is the best way to navigate through this time. The more data we have, the more feedback we can give to Google to better their product.

Some tools to help with testing:

Hillary also encouraged people to get involved by joining the IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Task Force (contact techlab@iabtechlab.com) and sharing feedback on the study (support@iabtechlab.com).

Global Perspective

Matthew Whaley continued by sharing a global publisher perspective and how PAAPI works with regulations, including GDPR.

This chart shows the usage of other browsers besides Chrome in different geos and on different devices, proving that while PAAPI is important, it’s certainly not the only option. 

Matt expressed his firm belief in finding more sustainable ways to tackle attribution using better-quality data instead of collecting more data. 

He acknowledged that even if PAAPI was a perfect replacement for third-party cookies, it’s still only part of the market. Therefore, we should take care of user privacy while focusing on:

  • Industry-owned framework/technology, like OpenRTB
  • End-to-end industry input
  • Interoperability of ID solutions
  • Transparency
  • Level playing field
  • Not being controlled by a browser

To conclude, Matt emphasized that we, as a community can, and should, come together to create a cross-browser product that benefits the whole ecosystem and is manageable by the community. 

Buy-Side Perspective

David Dabbs from Epsilon covered the perspectives from the Buy side and alternatives to PAAPI and SharedID.

Epsilon’s recap of the facilitated testing showed how Chrome and GAM are configured. The observations were the availability of some EIDS in the cookie-suppressed group was reduced. However, there was no loss of bid opportunities for SharedID, Publink (an Epsilon’s authenticated offering). This means that publishers providing SharedID continue to have their inventory monetized.

Epsilon also observed its DSP’s demand and inventory to compare the deliveries of Publishers with SharedID and those without.

David concluded that Epsilon bids more often, bids higher and serves more impressions to publishers with SharedID compared to publishers that do not have SharedID.

Publisher Perspective

Patrick McCann shared the PAAPI test results from a test conducted by Raptive to provide publisher perspectives on the matter.

Raptive observed the monetization data since the early days of cookie deprecation, and the findings match with other data published in the industry.

Besides, Raptive also monitored the recovery rate of Privacy Sandbox:

There are hopes that, during the 8-week testing period (beginning of April – end of May), many floodgates will open towards the PAAPI revenue recovery. That said, Patrick admitted it’d be challenging as we need 50% improvement of Mode B treatment over Mode B control to get back to where we were initially.

Another interesting finding is Label 4 and Label 5 have negative effects on the SSPs that have the most PAAPI volume (AdX), resulting in lower revenue for publishers.

One phenomenon that Raptive pointed out was latency. Patrick provided figures showing that PAAPI adds significant latency to the auction, which is concerning. 

How does this happen? 

The current workflow is Prebid auctions > GAM > PAAPI.

It looks like in the middle of the process, GAM awkwardly runs an auction that wasn’t called until Prebid auction is done AND after GAM display slot has been called.

This happens presumably because GAM requests a feature that Chrome builds to hide the ad server’s winning price from Publishers. 

WP – a leading Polish publisher – has constructed a diagram demonstrating a better way to do this, which reduces latency from 1.5s to 50ms.

Following this workflow, publishers could see a 95% reduction in PAAPI delay. There is also a possibility to interoperate with GAM if the Prebid creative resolves the PAAPI auction

We are still waiting for more test result data to publish more about this.

Closing Thoughts

Mike Racic (Prebid’s President) concluded the presentation with the assurance that Prebid will continuously update the industry on an ongoing basis. As we are just at the beginning of cookie deprecation, Mike encouraged everyone to stay informed and contribute by sharing testing results and feedback. This is how the industry can adapt successfully to this major change.

Questions & Answers

  1. Would you support legislation that bans personalized ads, removing the first-party/behavioural data advantage of the walled gardens? Would this level the playing field?
    A: From Prebid’s perspective, we are not against or for any legislation. From Publishers’ perspective, it is fine to use first-party data to create more relevant ads. According to research conducted by IAB US, consumers prefer relevant ads and they see the benefits of ads that serve the consumers.
  2. Can you clarify, the conflict with PAAPI only affects the 1% of Chrome traffic where cookies have been deprecated?
    A: We see the latency issues associated with PAAPI. The solution is avoiding the current workflow.
  3. Is the fledge module support a temporary solution that eventually won’t be supported by Prebid?
    Does GAM priortize bids from protected audience auctions vs. a bid / ad that is of the same equal value sent via a prebid JS wrapper?
    A: No, it’s not a temporary solution. And we haven’t seen anything prioritized so far.
  4. What are your views on usefulness of clean rooms such as Ads Data Hub in trying to replace some of the capabilities of 3P cookies?
    A: Clean rooms are essential tools we can use. Each person has their own way of using them, so they can be useful or not depending on how they are used. Prebid supports integration with Clean rooms, however, it’s up to the Publishers to take action.
    Could be useful to check out IAB Tech Lab’s Data Clean Rooms Guidance as well.
  5. Anyone want to touch on the video implications?
    A: We have 2 popular formats: instream and outstream. If you have no content, then embedded videos are supported out of the box. You just need a Javascript Player associated with your Creatives. In the case of preroll, the demo from Privacy Sandbox shows a post message from the PAAPI creative to a player on top. There’s another solution proposed by the GAM team where they send out a link to the content for a macro to fill out. Essentially, none of this work has been implemented by anyone. We are still months away from seeing results. The Privacy Sandbox team is leaning in on the Video front (Hillary’s comment).
  6. How can publishers avoid the latency by a technical standpoint if we have PAAPI enabled for Prebid partners right now?
    A: This is not possible as of now.
  7. How far along are the publishers/networks with integrating PAAPI? Last I heard from a call with a team behind PAAPI was that barely any publishers have integrated it. Do you have any take on that?
    A: We have seen small numbers. There’s a lot of publishers trying to test. However, due to the time it takes, their progress isn’t comparable to each other. If you are a GAM pub, you should have access to reporting.
  8. Do you feel, given what you’ve seen to date, that we will be able to generate test results that will be sufficient for the CMA/industry to make the decision about whether 3p cookie deprecation can move forward?
    A: Yes. The learning from testing will help the industry decide.
  9. Have you seen similar comparison data on mobile apps side – to understand the impact of GAID deprecation?
    A: Not as of now. All data we’ve observed are from webs.
  10. Would it be worthwhile to focus on implementing Prebid Server?
    A: That depends on your business. However, the more we lean towards privacy, the more you should consider whether it’s beneficial for you to run server or client side or both.
  11. Is there a glossary on Prebid.org where all the newest Acronyms related to Cookie Deprecation are defined?
    A: We’re working on it at the moment. Hopefully it will be ready within H1 this year.
    You can always check out IAB Tech Lab’s Glossary as well.
  12. Is there a Prebid cookbook for publishers wishing to participate in PAAPI testing that gives them steps for setting things up?
    A: Check out Prebid’s doc for FledgeForGPT.
    Chrome team has also published:
    Publisher Guide: How to activate Protected Audience and Topics on your sites.
    Sequential auction setup with header bidding and multi-seller Protected Audience auction.
  13. Is GAM currently the only way to leverage PAAPI server side, or does the Prebid PAAPI module only support client-side bidders?
    A: Prebid Server adapter can be used as it was one of the first to support PAAPI.

Recap Provided By: Thuy Ho (Relevant Digital)

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