Innovation in digital advertising is essential for internet freedom

A free and fair media has always depended on advertising. In the past, this meant television and newspapers. These days, online news sources have eclipsed their traditional rivals and must now be considered as a central plank of the fourth estate. This is particularly true for younger generations: 50 per cent of 22–45-year-olds don’t watch any conventional television. Among adults, 32 per cent read a printed newspaper; by contrast, nine out of 10 of the 16–24-year-old cohort follow news stories online.

In order to fulfil their essential social function, these news sources need to be sustainable as organisations, which means favouring one of two business models. Either they offer a paid-for repeat subscription, or they adopt a digital advertising revenue model, which enables news providers to operate without a paywall. As Geoffroy Martin, COO of adtech leader Ogury, says: “Online advertising should not be seen as a necessary evil. It guarantees a free internet for all, which today can be achieved in a virtuous manner.”

The post-GDPR landscape

Martin’s point about new, “virtuous” options open to digital advertisers is key to understanding the sector’s future. Following the widespread introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and technological shifts in the form of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and Google’s Topics, the cookies-led era of personalised advertising is drawing to a close, leaving behind it an industry in huge flux, yet one with great potential for innovation.

The need for a new paradigm is clear: in the UK in 2021, average mobile usage had reached four hours a day, up from three hours in 2019. If brands want to reach their audience, this is where they have to be. And, thanks to recent innovations, it is possible to create efficient online advertising that respects user privacy and prioritises reader experience. As Martin notes: “Efficient online advertising today is a combination of respecting user privacy and respecting user experience. As well as moving on from cookies, there needs to be formal innovation in the industry – shifting away from intrusive pop-ups to more seamless advertising.”

A harmonious reading experience

Creating this seamless experience is essential for publishers who understand that their ultimate goal is to build audience loyalty and retain readers. To do this they need advertising formats that respect the user's browsing experience, blend harmoniously into the page they are viewing and can be easily closed if they wish. As Hasan Ramadan, Head of Digital Advertising at EuroNews, puts it: “Finding the right balance between monetisation and user experience is pivotal for a publisher like us. Ogury helped us diversify our ad formats' portfolio by using video formats that are fully on-screen, ephemeral and non-intrusive. With the ability to achieve the attention metrics advertisers demand, these formats allow us to generate incremental revenue while respecting the mobile user experience. This is key to building audience loyalty and audience retention.”

Giving readers choice and control over their reading experience is just as important for advertisers, who don’t want their brands to be associated with irritating, invasive formats. By contrast, the new non-intrusive formats create a virtuous circle: formats that are engaging to readers generate higher performance for advertisers. Ogury’s proprietary ad formats work in this spirit, as they respect the user’s navigation while guaranteeing genuine measurable attention for the brands. As Geoffroy Martin notes: “Nobody likes being interrupted in the middle of a movie to watch an ad. However, it’s not an issue if the ad is displayed between the weather forecast and prime-time news. This is how online ads should be considered, as well.”

Capturing genuine attention

These kinds of innovations are necessary not simply to make the reading experience less fractured but also to make the adverts more effective. There’s a lot at stake: digital ad spend is set to reach $35.54bn in the UK in 2022. One of the major advantages offered by digital advertising, compared with traditional media, is its capacity to measure the attention generated by any given campaign. What this reveals is that a huge amount of money is not being spent productively: readers skip over ads between paragraphs – a recent study based on users' eye movements indicates that traditional mobile display formats are viewed for under two seconds – and $10bn is estimated to have been lost owing to ads that are played partially or off-screen.

As Jonathan Harrison, Digital Strategy and Transformation Lead at media agency the7stars, explains, there’s no point in investing heavily in creative content if it’s displayed in formats that don’t capture the user’s attention. “Creatives are definitely important, but first they need to stand a chance of being seen,” he says. “This explains why attention is becoming an increasingly important topic in our industry. From the very beginning, we were attracted by Ogury's unique approach to digital advertising, which is mindful of consumers’ privacy and their advertising experience. This approach – in favour of a more respectful and sustainable advertising experience – is key at a time when consumers are over-solicited on their mobiles.”

As they invest more and more in online advertising linked with branding and awareness campaigns, marketing executives are demanding greater efficiency and accountability. Accordingly, the mission for adtech companies is to provide advertisers with granular analysis of their performances while still respecting user data and navigation. As Martin of Ogury says: “The future of online advertising relies on smart and non-intrusive formats, targeted in a way that fully respects the user’s privacy and is measured with the right metrics.”

These kinds of engaging yet non-intrusive formats don’t require cookies but do generate attention. They illustrate how, even on a device as intimate as a smartphone, privacy and user experience can go hand in hand.