testAuthor: Dstillery

Does Google’s cookie retirement timeline matter anymore? 

Google delays cookie retirement… again.

This week, Google announced that it would once again delay its retirement of third-party cookies from the Chrome browser. Originally planned for 1Q 2022, Google had shifted the timeline to 4Q 2023 last June. Now, it is targeting
2H 2024.

Why the delay?

The reason Google gave is that its own post-cookie solutions, known as the Privacy Sandbox, will not be ready in time to provide the industry with a viable alternative to cookies by 4Q 2023 – a requirement for regulators focused on Google’s market power.

A further delay is not wholly unexpected. In fact, it has been consensus for some time in the programmatic ad industry that Google would not meet its timeline, and many believe that cookies will live on indefinitely.

But the industry momentum behind new targeting technologies is not exclusively about Google’s plans for cookies. Indeed, that is only the most visible element of a bigger, more fundamental industry movement towards privacy-safe digital advertising technologies, a movement that is unlikely to abate.

What does this mean for advertisers today?

That does not mean that we think advertisers ought to stop using cookies. Indeed, our point of view has been that advertisers should use that technology for as long as it is available, if it is delivering value for them.

It does mean, though, that we believe that advertisers should also be leveraging — or at a minimum, testing —the new technologies that the privacy wave has inspired. Among those technologies, there may be something better than cookie-based solutions that brands should be using today instead of or in addition to them.

Cookieless targeting is available now.

At Dstillery, we are super-proud of our cookieless targeting solution, which we call ID-free Custom AI™. The patented technology uses aggregate behaviors of consented users (from, say, a panel) to make predictions about what ad inventory is likely to convert for a specific brand. The accuracy of those predictions is on par with the accuracy of our high-performing user-based audiences, despite having no user histories and no ID in the bid request. And all of this at the scale that advertisers need.

ID-free has had a strong reception from the market and has unlocked a wave of innovation and growth at Dstillery. We have developed an ID-free targeting solution for the healthcare industry, which we call Custom Patient Targeting, that delivers privacy-compliant but highly accurate, scaled digital targeting to healthcare brands. We have launched targeting in new forms beyond user-based audiences, including custom bidding algos and Deal-IDs. And we have seen intense initial interest in ID-free from advertisers in Europe, where user targeting is constrained by GDPR.

Whatever Google’s timeline, Dstillery is well positioned today with the combination of best-in-class ID-based audience targeting products and easy-to-activate ID-free solutions that provide scale, performance, and precision in a privacy-safe way. Those solutions are available for activation here and now, and drive better performance than the most widely used cookie-based audiences.

The wave of privacy-inspired innovation that is underway will keep on rolling, regardless of whether cookie retirement happens or not. Advertisers would do well to ride that wave.

Contextual targeting vs. behavioral targeting

Updated: November 7, 2024

In the noisy digital world, ad relevance is crucial to reaching your target audience. Digital ads need to be approached carefully so as not to disrupt your potential customers’ online experiences. And with third-party cookie retirement on the horizon, digital marketers should evaluate new cookieless advertising strategies to ensure their ads are being seen by the right people, at the right time.

Contextual and behavioral targeting are two techniques that you should be testing now. Neither requires cookies, both are privacy-safe, and when implemented correctly, these can be highly effective for reaching your target audiences.

What is contextual targeting? 

Contextual targeting is a form of digital advertising that places display ads based on a website’s content. We’ve all seen them. It’s the reason why you’re served a meal kit delivery ad while browsing a recipe website, or a bridal gown ad on a wedding planning blog. Contextual targeting is the digital form of running a printed ASICS ad in Runner’s World magazine. The process matches display ads to relevant websites based on keywords, topics, and context.

What is behavioral targeting?

While contextual targeting relies on keywords and topics, behavioral targeting is based on a user’s online behaviors. By analyzing online browsing habits – i.e. sites visited, search queries, purchase behavior – behavioral targeting leverages user data to create a more personalized experience. 

Timely and effective advertising requires a deep understanding of your audience. Behavioral targeting does just that by going deeper than website content.

Dstillery’s cookieless behavioral targeting solution

To get ahead of the retirement of third-party cookies, we created a privacy-by-design, behavioral targeting solution called ID-free®. Instead of reading the words on a page or scraping content, our behavioral solution picks up on other signals that reflect brand interest by using AI optimization toward a client’s first-party data. Unlike standard behavioral targeting, ID-free takes advantage of predictive behavioral signals without tracking your audience. ID-free evaluates individual impression opportunities to provide intelligent decisioning without compromising anonymity, resulting in better performance that scales.

ID-free Custom AI behavioral targeting solution compared to contextual targeting.

As long as first-party data is available, ID-free audiences can be implemented in your next campaign. Whether you’re looking for a behavioral targeting solution or want to future-proof your ad campaigns, now’s the time to test. Contact us today to learn more.

FAQ: Deal IDs

A brief inquiry into the newest way to activate Dstillery audiences.

1. What is a Deal ID?

A Deal ID is a packaging of ad-supported inventory that allows buyers access to unique or specialized inventory.  This can take many forms such as private deals, programmatic guarantees, or open deals. Publishers or supply side players can identify relevant opportunities and apply a unique deal ID on top of the impression opportunity. Buyers then implement these IDs within the targeting items in the DSP and will only buy against impressions that have the Deal ID present on the bid request.

2. Is the bidding process different than the current ID-free process?

We use the same bidding algorithm process that we apply within the DSP but instead of decisioning on each bid request that gets received, it works higher up the chain at the supply side to make the same evaluations and will only apply a Deal ID to the most desired impressions.

3. Who does Dstillery leverage for Deal IDs?

Currently, we are leveraging the Microsoft Curate supply exchange to create our ID-free Deal IDs.

4. Can the Deal IDs only be used on Microsoft Curate?

While these are created using the Microsoft Curate supply exchange, the Deals can be activated on any leading DSP.

5. Is a Deal ID the same as a Private Marketplace (PMP)?

A PMP and a Deal ID are not exactly the same thing.  A PMP is a package of usually premium direct sold inventory set up privately for a buyer.  PMPs leverage Deal IDs as the mechanism for a DSP to identify and buy against a specific PMP on behalf of the PMP buyer.  Only the buyer who works with the PMP creator will have access to the Deal ID to input into their platform.

6. What formats/environments are supported?

Deals can be created for Display, Video, and Native. Each format would have its own set of deals.

7. Will this change how Dstillery customers interact with the ID-free audience?

Yes. With a direct API integration, the client sends Dstillery ad group/line item IDs.  We then take those IDs and place domain, time, dma targeting to the separate targeting sections on their behalf.  With Deal IDs, we will create the model and associated Deal IDs which we will then send to the client.  They will then target these Deal IDs themselves within the platform in the way that they are used to with other types of PMPs/Deal IDs.

Deal ID vs. API - Comparison Chart

8. What types of audiences can deals be created for?

Deals aren’t restricted so the same audiences can be built as with standard ID-free via API. Custom AI, Pre-built, Custom-built can all be turned into Deals.

9. How many Deal IDs are created per audience?

Custom AI will be 8 deals which can be targeted together or separately within the DSP and Prebuilt audiences will have 1.

10. How do I get started?

To learn more, please reach out to your Account Executive or email contact@dstillery.com.

A+ strategies for education marketing

For education marketing, 2022 is less about finding new marketing tools and more about optimizing existing campaigns to adapt to the changing digital landscape. This year, education marketers have invested more in expanding reach than any year before due to factors like social media marketing, crowdsourcing, and micro-influencer marketing. Even more exciting is that almost everyone is targeting the same demographic: Gen Z. Whether it’s running enrollment-based marketing campaigns or conquesting new students, there has never been a better time to be in education marketing.  And, with 36% of campuses seeing a fall in campus visit requests, universities and other higher education institutions are adopting digital marketing to enhance their student recruitment.

Appealing to Gen Z

Not only was higher education marketing conquesting Gen Z, but they were also adapting to Gen Z students in lockdown. They leverage videos, post photos, and share relevant written content to help students make informed decisions. 20% of the Gen Z students said that YouTube videos play a significant role in their enrollment decision. It has been said that connecting with Gen Z can be difficult if not approached correctly. Gen Zers have also been accused of having a short attention span, not checking emails, or distrusting brands. While all of these are valid criticisms, they are also the most logged-on generation EVER and are willing to become vocal advocates for anything that they deem valid. 

Education Marketing without Cookies

In 2020, Google announced its plan for the retirement of third-party cookies and has since moved the timing to late 2023. However, one thing that didn’t go unnoticed was Google ending the production of their annual search terms report. This report was a key source of data that helped digital marketers across industries optimize campaigns, queries, and keywords. Shortly after in 2021, Facebook and Apple made it harder to target users with cookie-based ads. With worldwide digital ad spending expected to rise to $441.12 billion in 2022 (making up 58.7% of total media spending), it becomes more important than ever to ensure that campaign scale and reach are as precise as possible. As we inch closer to a cookieless future for digital targeting, education marketers can benefit from utilizing Dstillery’s ID-free targeting solutions to help replace the loss of scale and reach in their campaigns. 

Research also revealed that a typical educational institution spends 11% of its annual revenue on education marketing and digital marketing activities. With that in mind, it’s best to focus on precise and ready-to-scale solutions to drive brand growth. Combining your digital marketing due diligence with expanding the subject matter of your digital presence is a sure-fire way to attract not only parents of students but the students themselves. To be an institution now is about more than name recognition; it’s about being compelling, showing that you have a perspective, and are an attractive place to continue education. 

Sail away – Summer travel is back and so is traveler data

Whether you are taking a short vacation to the cabin or shipping off with the whole family off to a Hawaiian beach, this summer is already proving to be explosive in terms of increased travel. Do you ever wonder how much data plays into travel marketing? We do, but of course we do, we’re an audience solutions and data science company. Travel marketing is set to accelerate by 36% in 2022. Travel ad spend is set to grow at six times the normal rate of other industry advertising spend, with more growth expected in key markets such as the UK, US, and Germany.

In the past two years, travel and traveler data have changed dramatically across the globe. The ways people are engaging with the world around them are shifting too, leading to exciting new ways to look at the habits and intentions of citizens everywhere. 43% of travelers claim they enjoy experiences more than things. That’s incredible! It comes as no surprise that over the last few years of on-and-off lockdowns, people are looking forward to reinvigorating their lives with new, exciting moments. What is equally interesting is that those who are traveling have others’ – and the planet’s – well-being in mind as well, with 72% of people who travel believing in “sustainable traveling methods.”

Shifting Trends

These shifts in traveler sensibilities can lead marketers to hedge solid bets on focusing campaigns on digital and physical customer experiences. Using traveler data to create and deliver informed consumer-centric activities will help travelers feel as though they are living their lives to the fullest. In addition, it creates an emotional connection between travel aficionados and travel marketers. Travelers have a moment in time that they can tie back to their experiences with your brand that, in return, makes each consumer feel like they are the center of the marketing strategy itself. This physical-to-digital throughline has prompted a major shift to digital ad spend. Travel brands alone have increased their digital advertising spend from 63% in 2020 to 70% in 2023, driven by the rise of travel apps and digital concierge services.

At the end of the day, before the journey begins, travel data is one of the richest areas within which marketers can work. It’s filled with opportunities and exciting new territory. From resurging budgets to a heavier focus on consumer experience, there has never been a better time to get to know your customer. Summer travel is near pre-pandemic levels, and most travelers plan to spend at least as much as they did on their 2019 vacations. Summer travel in 2022 will be shaped by the continuing surge of remote work, interest in private rentals, excitement and relaxing of flight, and the expectation of flexibility.

Contextual Targeting 101

With Google planning to retire third-party cookie tracking in 2023, marketers everywhere are searching for the next best way to show the most relevant ads to users. How do they reach specific people at the right time? Between behavioral and contextual targeting, marketers need a more flexible way to think about “the right time.”

What Is Contextual Targeting?

Contextual targeting is defined as showing an advertisement directly related to the website content being viewed. For example, if a user reads an article titled “10 Best Electric Vehicles,” a Tesla display ad might show on the page. Another example might be if a user reads about ways to save time, and meal delivery subscription ads are shown. Contextual targeting uses data from website analysis to determine the topics, keywords, and image information (among other details) to determine what a web page is about. Based on the data, the ad servers know what ads to place on that individual page.

What is Context Switching and Why Does it Matter?

As attention spans decrease and the average consumer engages with multiple pieces of content at a time, context switching is essential for marketers to consider. Context switching is moving from one task to another, and it comes with some serious negative side effects. Thanks to cognitive flexibility, humans are able to easily and quickly move from topic to topic. While it seems great to multi-task, context switching eats into focused time.

This movement from one state to another used to be powered by third-party cookie tracking. But with the depreciation of cookies, there is still the question of showing the right ad at the right time. Does this moment of a shifted context matter? Should ad servers still show a relevant ad? For example, attention residue shows that even as a user has moved on, their brain is still thinking about the top 10 best electric vehicles — even if they’re now reading an article on SportsCenter.

The Right Ad at the Right Time

Finding the optimal moment is critical. And as movement and behavior online continually change, the right moment for the right ad might continue to shift. We’re primed at all different times to get a nudge about a topic we were previously researching thanks to the flexible human brain.

At Dstillery, we help clients maximize the value of customer data and transform the way they connect with their audiences. To help prepare for the retirement of third-party cookies, we’ve launched a new cookieless targeting solution that isn’t contextual.

If you’re interested in learning more, visit dstillery.com/go-cookieless.

Programmatic 101

What is Programmatic Buying?

Programmatic ad buying is the use of different pieces of software to buy digital advertising. Many are familiar with the traditional method, which is made up of requests for proposals and negotiation. Programmatic buying uses sophisticated advertising algorithms to buy and sell online advertising display space to buyers and traders across the globe.

Programmatic trading uses traffic data and online display targeting to drive impressions at scale, resulting in a better ROI for marketers. By leveraging machine learning and AI, programmatic ad buying is more efficient, automating many menial and mundane tasks. Programmatic advertising also offers simple ways to reach a desired segment. You can reach your target audience and maximize any ad budget through behavioral, contextual, or geotargeting. Overall, programmatic advertising can yield excellent results for brands of any size, from small to global, so it has quickly become a fundamental part of many brand’s marketing stack.

Programmatic Advertising Terminology

SSP: Supply-side platforms (SSPs) are used by website publishers to manage, sell, and optimize available ad space on their websites or apps. Some popular SSPs are Google Ad Manager, OpenX, Pubmatic, and Magnite.

DSP: Demand-side platforms (DSPs) enable media buyers to automate the purchase of digital ad space from a marketplace. Programmatic DSPs include Google DV 360, The Trade Desk, and Amazon.

Ad Exchanges: Ad exchanges are digital marketplaces where marketers and publishers can buy and sell ad space. These marketplaces allow SSPs to sell ad inventory on behalf of website publishers and DSPs to bid on it.

RTB: Real-time bidding (RTB) is an automated digital auction process of buying and selling ad space on an impression basis through real-time auctions or at a fixed price.

Programmatic vs. Display: In the context of programmatic advertising, programmatic is a method of purchasing and placing ads via automation. Display is the form of the ad itself (video, image, text, etc.) and where the ad appears.

Using DSPs

Before seeking a DSP, it’s best to take a moment to understand your brand goals, KPIs, and your creative approach. After your marketing team has figured out the formula and metrics for success, it’s time to find a DSP. DSP selection should be based on several factors like budget, ease of use, targeting capabilities, and reach. Once you match your KPIs to a DSP, you can begin bidding in real-time. 

After you select your target audience segment, you define your budget and upload your ad / creative onto the platform. Once bidding begins, you will have the option to buy impressions based on segment criteria. The auction happens in real-time once a bid is selected. The winning bid will purchase the space, and the ad will move to the publisher’s website. This all happens within milliseconds from click to placement.

Once your campaign is live, your DSP has various optimization tools. Keeping a close eye on your campaign data is key to helping you and your team make adjustments to enhance your ad performance. 

Why Start Using Programmatic Advertising?

While you can’t automate your way to success, you can strategically optimize your ad dollars to reach your campaign goals. If you want to be a successful trader, you have to understand your audience and prospects. There’s a big human component to trading that requires buyers of digital ad space to have their finger on the pulse of who they are as a brand, product, or service. 

Through programmatic trading, digital advertisers know where their ads are placed, who views them, and how the ads are performing — all on one platform. That said, it’s on the marketing wizards of today, tomorrow, and the future to use their instincts and data to become the marketing master that their brand needs.

Questions? Contact us.

How brand identity is measured in a cookieless future

As marketers everywhere heard the news that Google was sunsetting third-party cookies in late 2023, we asked ourselves, “How will we measure attribution in a cookieless future?”

Historically, marketing value has been tough to track. The advent of cookies and behavioral signals finally gave the industry a firm way to measure message impact and attributed success across multiple channels. Cookies have allowed marketers to personalize user experiences, recommend products, and increase sales, but a global emphasis on privacy and security means behavioral tracking as we know it is changing.

Removing Cookies Affects a Majority of Internet Users

The majority of internet users are on Chrome — 68.1% on desktop and 61.5% on mobile. This is why Google’s decision to double down on user privacy was met with panic across ad tech. However, Tech giants like Apple and Facebook (or Meta) are also strengthening the walls around their user data. This offers marketers a true glimpse into a very private future internet landscape. Meta even provides a specific glimpse into its privacy progress report in a constantly updated platform.

Cookies allow brands to track at scale, while historical measurement tools inherently offer smaller, user-based audiences. The end of widespread, third-party tracking lets brands realign with their traditional positioning and value.

Establishing Brand Positioning and Value in a Cookieless Future

For years, marketers have relied on third-party cookie data to tell them who their audience is — from ages to locations. Gone were the days of focus groups, one on one interviews, and benchmark studies. Suddenly, we had more data at our fingertips than we ever could have dreamed of.

As Al Ries and Jack Trout’s classic marketing text Positioning, the Battle for your Mind explains, brand positioning is the place it occupies in the prospect’s mind. With the retirement of cookies, it begs the question: Did we ever need all of this data to tell us who our customers are? Is it sufficient and even more authentic to simply know audience size and that the product is loved? Can we not simply build brand positioning as we once did?

The Future of Attribution in a More Private World

Looking to a cookieless future, experts encourage a shift to a wider range of data sources and technology to discover consumer interests and maintain cost-effectiveness, according to Marketing Week.

Dstillery’s ID-free Custom AI™️ solution is designed to do just that. With our privacy-by-design behavioral targeting solution, the sunset of cookies becomes less frightening and more of an opportunity to innovate.

As marketers are challenged over the next few years to shift their attribution models, we’ll all be challenged to polish up KPIs and brand measurement standards. We must continue revamping our strategies for a privacy-centric world.

FAQ: Custom Patient Targeting

A new cookieless way to reach your patients, powered by Dstillery’s ID-free technology.

1. What is Custom Patient Targeting?

Custom Patient Targeting is a new privacy-safe patient targeting solution designed for healthcare brands. It offers the precision and customization you need to drive your best patient outcomes. It doesn’t rely on user-based targeting, ensuring compliance with all laws, policies, and guidelines from HIPAA, NAI and DSPs. Using AI-powered predictive modeling, we build a just-for-your-condition targeting model that bids on individual impressions based on aggregated patient behavior.

2. How is it precise?

Every single potential impression ad-supported internet is scored and ranked based on its likelihood of targeting your desired patient. This level of granular targeting is unheard of in healthcare.

3. How is it custom?

Custom Patient Targeting starts with your desired seed dataset, enriches it with our AI-powered understanding of every website on the internet, and creates a model tailored to your specific condition and your patient outcome goals.

4. How is it compliant?

Because Custom Patient Targeting doesn’t rely on user-based targeting, we can ensure compliance with all laws, policies, and guidelines.

5. What seed data can I use?

We recommend seeding with your brand’s first-party data for the most precise results. This can be data from your brand’s web pages or segments from a data management platform. If that’s unavailable, we recommend using your brand’s keywords, including product names, symptoms, and co-morbidities. We are in active discussions with leading healthcare data providers to use their real-world evidence (RWE) datasets, allowing brands to use ICD-10 codes to seed models.

6. How do you collect health data?

Our core dataset consists of healthcare-specific websites and keywords from opted-in devices. When combined with non-healthcare-specific event-level data, we find that these signals allow us to more fully see patients’ journeys, resulting in more accurate and robust models. We are in active discussions with leading RWE data providers rooted in payer and claims data to enhance the models. We will work with beta partners to test these incremental datasets in Q2-Q3 2022.

7. How do you target in a HIPPA-compliant way?

Dstillery’s healthcare targeting methodology doesn’t involve the creation of any health-related profiles. It uses a built-in de-identification to ensure that the data isn’t considered Protected Health Information under HIPAA. It also meets the requirements of the NAI sensitive data guidance by utilizing data minimization techniques that minimize the risk of inadvertently identifying a data subject.

8. How are you able to understand the patient journey without user tracking?

Custom Patient Targeting is powered by AI that identifies and learns the patterns of how, when, and from where anonymous opt-in devices browse the web. These behavioral patterns help the AI predict how anonymous patients browse the web.

9. What is the Map of the Internet?

The Map of the Internet (MOTI) is built by a type of AI called a neural network. It constantly analyzes hundreds of millions of anonymous digital journey patterns and learns the behavioral signals underlying any web visit to build the map. It then takes your seed and extends the patterns detected to all websites. The output is a model that scores and ranks every potential impression on the ad-supported internet and predicts the best patient impressions for your condition.

10. How is it different from contextual, condition, endemic, and traditional behavioral targeting?

Custom Patient Targeting is categorized as predictive behavioral targeting, not any of the following.

  • Contextual: Contextual scrapes words on web pages in an attempt to infer patient behavior. Custom Patient Targeting doesn’t rely solely on keywords (although they can be a helpful dataset). Instead, it predicts patient behavior with AI.
  • Condition: Condition targeting reaches broad demographic groups assumed to be indicative of certain conditions, targeting 10% of the population or more. Custom Patient Targeting can be seeded with demographics, but precisely targets patients based on behavior, not demographics.
  • Endemic: Endemic targeting reaches patients on healthcare-related websites only, while Custom Patient Targeting reaches patients at scale across the entire ad-supported internet.
  • Traditional Behavioral: Traditional behavioral uses third-party cookies to track users. In contrast, Custom Patient Targeting analyzes behavioral signals from millions of anonymous digital journeys to predict the impressions most likely to be your patient without user tracking.

11. Is this affected by cookie deprecation?

Because Custom Patient Targeting doesn’t rely on user tracking, like third-party cookies, it isn’t affected by cookie deprecation.

12. How is it priced?

We’ve priced Custom Patient Targeting to be on par with or less than traditional cookie-based behavioral targeting products. It’s priced at 20% of media, so if you’re clearing $2.00 inventory, it will be about a $0.40 eCPM.

13. How do I get started?

  • Sign targeting agreements
  • Provide targeting API access
  • Select seeds and outcomes
  • Dstillery builds and deploys custom model to campaign

To learn more, please reach out to contact@dstillery.com.

Accessibility statement

Dstillery strives to ensure that its digital services are accessible to people with disabilities. Dstillery has invested significant resources to help ensure access for all users, including people with disabilities, with the strong belief that every person has the right to live with dignity, equality, comfort and independence.

Digital accessibility is not just a target we aim to achieve, but an ongoing commitment that we carry in every aspect of our digital service delivery. We recognize that this requires continuous monitoring, improvement, and adaptation. In the sections below, we elaborate on the various efforts that have been undertaken to address our progress in ensuring digital accessibility for all.

A key element of our accessibility initiative is our engagement with a third-party accessibility consulting organization UserWay to help bring the website into conformance. We use industry standard accessibility methods and tools to accomplish this, in accordance with the relevant version of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) the internet’s main international standards-setting organization.

dstillery.com makes available the UserWay Website Accessibility Widget that is powered by a dedicated accessibility server.

The Widget offers user-triggered enhancements that allow visitors to improve the accessibility of the site. These features will, when selected, increase font size, pause animations, change color contrast, and more. People can choose combinations that suit their needs, as per WCAG Level AAA.

The site has enabled Automated Remediation Technology (ART) for all visitors, whether they use assistive technology or not. ART does not detect Assistive Technology usage; rather, it improves accessibility for all site visitors regardless of ability by deploying remediation capabilities such as (not a complete list):

  • Images and other non-text elements have alternative text associated with them when required;
  • Keyboard navigation is improved with aids such as focus indication and skip links;

Please Contact Us

We are here to assist you and make your experience as smooth and inclusive as possible. If you encounter any digital accessibility issues with our products or services, or need information related to digital accessibility, we want to hear from you! Also, we appreciate and welcome feedback, and we are always ready to embrace suggestions for enhancing our digital accessibility efforts.

Contact Information:

We take accessibility seriously and will get back to you shortly.