Local Media Consortium NewsPassID Pilot Program Shows 90% Uplift in Revenue in Most Cookieless Environments

New white paper outlines positive impact of initiative to help publishers develop new consumer and advertising monetization strategies

The Local Media Consortium (LMC), a strategic alliance of local media companies, announced the results from its NewsPassID pilot program, an initiative to help publishers build new consumer and advertising monetization strategies, create more transparency in the digital advertising supply chain, address consumer privacy concerns and mitigate the impact of digital platform changes.

“As the local news industry prepares for the elimination of the third-party cookie in 2023, NewsPassID provides a promising new path for generating revenue in a privacy compliant way,” said Fran Wills, CEO of the LMC. “Using NewsPassID, publishers can seize the opportunity to enhance the value of their content and audiences in the digital landscape, have greater control of their data and own and optimize their programmatic integrations.”

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The LMC and digital media and advertising technology veteran Scott Cunningham launched NewsNext in 2021, a strategic initiative to redefine local media’s standing in the digital ecosystem, improve its sustainability and create a more privacy compliant, scalable way to connect advertisers with consumers. Based on insights from NewsNext’s advertiser and publisher working groups, the LMC launched NewsPassID, an ad network and federated login solution that optimizes local media first-party data and ad inventory in programmatic channels. A new white paper released today, details findings from a pilot program that launched in June 2021 with four LMC members. The paper summarizes issues the working groups addressed, discusses the impact of the pilot program, and lays out next steps for 2022.

“NewsPassID provides a scalable way for local media to reestablish the value of their audiences, reposition their standing in the online ecosystem and accelerate the growth of their digital businesses,” said Chris Loretto, executive vice president revenue and chief digital officer for Media News Group. “We are really encouraged by these positive results and look forward to deployment for all LMC members.”

The NewsPassID pilot delivered very positive results for participants including:

• 90% uplift in revenue in most cookieless environments
• 45%-50% revenue uplift in environments that still support cookies
• 15%-25% increase in volume of ad inventory sold in Google Chrome environments

In addition to these results, the NewsNext working groups tested multiple identifiers across a variety of distribution channels to understand their impact while working to overcome challenges of the overly complex setup of programmatic integrations. The findings from the efforts paved a path for local media companies to optimize their onboarding of NewsPassID.

Based on the pilot findings, NewsPassID will focus on a few key areas in 2022, including:

• Minimizing publisher first party data and content leakage
• Optimizing the publisher’s consumer funnel and value exchange
• Maximizing all programmatic distribution channels including CTV
• Scaling the NewsPassID network to meet advertiser demand

“As we look to the next year, transparency in the supply chain and use of privacy enhancing technologies are the main focus across distribution channels for NewsPassID,” said Scott Cunningham. “We have created a solid foundation and look forward to providing that new front door of packaged local journalism inventory for national marketers and buyers.”

Third party cookie deprecation presents a unique opportunity for local media and advertisers alike to derive more value from digital advertising. NewsNext and NewsPassID demonstrate that there is a sustainable alternative for targeting audiences and building advertising revenue with first-party data in a privacy-compliant and scalable way. In this new ecosystem, brands and agencies will have more of their digital ad dollars go toward working media instead of intermediaries. Additionally, local media will have greater control of their data and own and optimize their programmatic integrations.

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