What is GDPR and How Will It Impact Online Advertising

Developed by the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force on May 25, 2018. This new set of regulations are designed to protect and empower the data privacy of all EU citizens. Addressing the consumer's concerns about data privacy and security, GDPR improves how much control an individual has over his/her personal data. Under GDPR, businesses are required to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, even if it doesn’t primarily target Europeans. If a business tracks the behaviour or manages data of an EU resident, it is required to be compliant with GDPR. These regulations are majorly going to impact the online advertising ecosystem. Some of the prominent sections of the bill that relate to digital marketers and PPC'ers are:

•      Personal data of a user can only be used after an express consent; and companies won't be able to hide these requests within legal terms

•      The “Right to Forgotten” and “Right of Data Portability” comes handy for a consumer; he/she can easily opt out of their data being used

•      Safe and secure administrative record

•      Reporting any regulatory breach

Online advertising is an open and vibrant space consisting of digital publishers, advertisers, their partners, and consumers. Advertisers create relevant and engaging advertisement to reach out to the consumer, who in turn helps independent publishers monetise their content and creativity. This further allows publishers to offer the content to billions of consumers, free of charge. The consumer at the front end remains unaware about what goes behind the scenes. The targeted and relevant advertisement that's been driving the digital marketplace is enabled through the collection and use of personal data. It becomes important that the personal data that is being retrieved from a consumer is used in a safe and transparent way, so that the user has a firm control over his/her data. This is the  concern that is being addressed by the EU with GDPR.

How GDPR will Impact Online Advertising

Prior to GDPR, advertisers and publishers have been targeting consumers by using their personal information derived by mining, or understanding their online behaviour. This requires involvement of dozens of vendors. Today, after the development of GDPR, there's been a contraction of the number of vendors that a publisher and an advertiser are actually allowed to be using. Some other noticeable impacts of GDPR on online advertising are:

•      New Opportunities in Native Marketing: Native advertising uses paid ads that are in sync with the look, feel and function of the editorial flow of the page. Native ads are often seen on social media feeds; majorly on Facebook and Twitter.

•      Thoughtful Targeting and Publishing of Content: Quality lead generation and putting in more thought to publish native content will be the aim of marketers and salesperson.

•      More Visibility to Content Recommendation Platforms: GDPR will benefit the content recommendation platforms, like Taboola, TripleLift and Nativo, to name a few. Businesses that want to target a niche audience that's beyond their capabilities, can rely on the above mentioned platforms to help them get good results.

•      Boom in the Influencer Marketing: After GDPR, user-generated advertising will see a significant rise in the online market. The trust of today's shoppers and advertisers on the consumer-centric content compels them to make a purchase. This sounds more cost-effective for advertisers, thus avoiding the noise that multiple intermediaries otherwise generate.

While GDPR might seem adversarial, it is the path forward for the much-needed consumer-centric advertising that does not revolve around poor quality tracking and irrelevant ads. Moreover, GDPR will give an individual the control over his personal data that should have always been there.

How Audience Guaranteed deals work via DoubleClick Bid Manager aka DBM

Here are the steps illustrating the ways buyer audience targeting is applied and forecasted for PG deals:

1. The publisher sends the proposal for buyer’s acceptance.
2. The buyer hits “Propose Changes” in their UI, and clicks into the line items in the campaign. Here, a new section for “Audience list” is displayed, where they can choose the lists they’d liketo apply to the line item.
3. Once done, the buyer “Sends Proposal” back to the publisher
4. The publisher will see the proposal as “In Review”. When the publisher clicks into the line items, they will see “Buyer has targeted/excluded audience lists” in the targeting section  but will not be able to see any information about the lists that were applied by the buyer.
5. The publisher can now run a forecast to determine how much inventory they have for the buyer’s targeting.
• DFP has real time access to the buyer audience lists (both during forecasting and serving). So, you can run a forecast to determine how much inventory the deal has for the buyer’s targeting and book the impressions according to the availability (for forecasting, DFP takes into account historical data and existing overlapping reservations for the future time frame of the campaign).
6. Then, the publisher selects ‘Request Acceptance’ to finalize the proposal terms with the buyer.
7. The buyer selects ‘Accept’ (in their UI) on the proposal.
8. The proposal in the DFP UI moves to the ‘Finalized’ state, and the corresponding DFP order and line items will be created in DFP’s ‘Delivery’ tab.

You can refer to these articles (article , article) which give a comprehensive insight around the audience targeting in PG.