Diary Entry from Cannes Lions 2019: Why Everyone Was Talking About ‘Connectivity’

By Chris Hogg On Jun 28, 2019

Consumers are more discerning than ever about sharing their data. According to a DoubleVerify study released at Cannes Lions, 71% of consumers share less data with brands today than they did a year ago. Everything from fake news to data scandals from walled gardens like Facebook have compelled audiences to become savvier, smarter and stingier about providing data online. As a result, companies like Apple, Mozilla and Google are prioritizing privacy controls for their browsers.

At Cannes Lions, this is something every marketer and publisher was talking about both on-stage and behind closed doors. How do we navigate a more conservative landscape? In response to that, I heard a lot of Cannes attendees talking about data ‘Connectivity.’ With third-party cookies under pressure, it’s critical for companies – whether they be marketers or publishers — to not only lock-down their strategies for collecting and organizing omnichannel first-party data, but also to figure out how to share that data across partners and platforms. How can marketers can share data with publishers, publishers share data with marketers and publishers share data with other publishers. Connectivity maximizes the value of your data, as the sharing and collection of it becomes more challenging.

Connectivity also applies to audience-based TV-buying and targeting, which is an exciting new opportunity. At Cannes, P&G’s March Pritchard spoke about creating more of a cross-channel identity. The industry wants to be able to reach TV audiences on digital, matching IDs across devices, channels, and platforms. That’s the future.

What’s happening to third-party data?

Google’s recent announcement that it’ll change how Chrome handles cookies was a centerpiece of Cannes. Everyone was talking about it – and from what I could tell, it has created some real confusion about the impact on advertisers and AdTech platforms, particularly around the creation, selling and buying of third-party data.

One of the biggest points of confusion is the difference between a third-party cookie and third-party data. A third-party cookie is a cookie placed on a device by a website from a domain other than the one a user is visiting, whereas third-party data typically refers to data that didn’t originate with the buyer or seller. Its origin is with a third-party – hence, the name. Third-party data includes demographic, interest, or intent data, and depending on the source, there are many ways third-party data is acquired and used by marketers. It might have originated in an offline consumer data file that through a partner like LiveRamp. It could be related to the collection of common consumer actions on publisher sites like commenting on an article or sharing it on social.

Depending on what that third-party data is and where it’s coming from, more aggressive treatment of third-party cookies by the Chrome browser may or may not have a material effect on the scale of third-party data. Also, third-party data can be associated with MAIDs and OTT device IDs, and in those cases, the data would not be affected by changes to treatment of third-party cookies.

Transparency’s impact on Data Quality

The demand for transparency continues to affect every aspect of Digital Marketing right now. It dominated every discussion at Cannes, with the launch of the Global Alliance for Reliable Media a key part of that. As a data solutions company, we’re also seeing calls for transparency shape conversations around Data Quality and Accuracy.

According to a recent Forrester study, more than two-thirds of marketers are concerned over data quality. As the importance of audience data grows, sophisticated marketers are becoming more interested in the quality and accuracy of data to ensure they optimize their ad spend. This was a major focus among the partners and customers at Cannes Lions. As a result, we’re seeing marketers move away from the shortcuts that solely helped them achieve scale as those solutions have been found to undermine quality. These tactics include cookie-stuffing where users with online behavior only tangentially relevant to a brand are being used to expand the types of data that “fit” into a certain segment.

Another issue is the “mis-characterization” of data which happens when audience segments are incorrectly identified or labeled as interpretations can vary. Marketers are opting, instead, to focus on precision over scale. This brings us back to first-party data, which is known for its quality but not its scale.