New OpenX Publisher Survey Reveals Importance of First Party Data in Publisher’s Future Plans

85 percent of publishers feel that 1P data will be significant to future revenue

OpenX revealed the results of the company’s latest survey, examining how publishers are currently viewing and utilizing first party data. The findings highlight the critical role first party (1P) data will play going forward, with 85 percent of publishers saying that 1P data will be important to their future revenue.

However, while the vast majority of publishers say that 1P data will be important to their future plans, they were mixed on their ability to effectively use 1P data today. 66 percent of pubs are currently using 1P data to drive ad revenue, with only 53 percent saying it is important to their ad revenue today. Only 21 percent of publishers say it is “very important” to revenue today, yet more than 50 percent say it will be “very important” going forward.

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Many publishers expressed a lack of satisfaction with the current options available for activating their data. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average satisfaction score for 1P data activation solutions was 6.5, and only 7 percent of respondents were “very satisfied” with current solutions for activating their 1P data.

“Legacy identifiers, such as third party cookies and IDFA, are still on their way out. Publishers have smartly recognized that first party data will fill a large part of the gap ,” said Tom Levesque, VP Product at OpenX. “But there’s a clear need for ad tech vendors to support this transition with better first party solutions for publishers. ”

Other results from the survey include:

• Larger publishers are slightly less likely to use 1P data, but more likely to get value from it. Only 63 percent of publishers with more than 500M monthly requests say they are using 1P data today, compared to 71 percent of pubs with less than 500M. However, publishers with over 500M monthly requests are 35 percent more likely to say that 1P significantly impacts their revenue today.
• Big and small pubs have different challenges with 1P data. When discussing current challenges, larger pubs are concerned with creating segments, controlling data, and finding interested advertisers, at equal levels. For smaller pubs, there was one issue with 1P data that dwarfed everything else — finding interested advertisers. 82 percent of smaller pubs say this is one of their top two challenges, compared to 49 percent of larger pubs.
• PMPs are the preferred way to execute with 1P data, yet the open auction is also important. PMPs are the dominant way to sell 1P data, with 80 percent of respondents saying they use PMPs, yet 48 percent also said they used open auction to monetize 1P data.

The survey was conducted in July 2021 with 123 respondents across direct publishers, networks and sales houses. 60 percent of respondents had over 500M ad requests a month, and the publishers covered desktop (94 percent of respondents), mobile app (55 percent) and CTV (18 percent).

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