The past year in ad tech was a whirlwind. For some, the overwhelming bad news in digital media and ad tech tainted revenue and metrics, but the inventiveness of the industry is keeping things afloat.
It would be easy to focus on the turbulence that ravaged the industry. General ad spend left ad and rev op professionals wondering how they would make a profit each quarter, and privacy regulations and impending cookie depreciation forced publishers and advertisers to overhaul their businesses completely.
2022 was also a year full of innovation in the ecosystem. Ad tech professionals did not let curveballs hinder them from getting the job done. Some experimented with Web3 capabilities to give more power to the consumer, diversify revenue with NFTs and take a dive into the metaverse. Others created workarounds for the cookie loss and lost IDs. And finally, the great CTV migration and ventures into podcasting helped boost some ad spend.
The list of alternative solutions could go on and on. One thing for sure; this year taught us that when push comes to shove, the ad tech industry is always ready to make the necessary adjustments to keep driving revenue.
To round out the year, we present AdMonsters’ top articles of 2022.
10 Hispanic/Latin American Professionals Doing Big Things in Ad Tech
Every year from September 15th through October 15th, we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month to pay tribute to Hispanic Americans and LatinX nationwide, especially those whose achievements and contributions making a daily mark on society.
During HHM, we recognize those who inspire others to succeed; representation is everything. In advertising technology specifically, very few Hispanic/Latinx people are running the show.
From Dennis Colón, Founder and Head of Product & Strategy Media Division at Jiffy.ai to Victoria de Leon, Director of Content Marketing at LiveIntent, here are some Hispanic/Latinx professionals to look out for in the ad tech industry. Read more
Web3: Future of the Internet and Digital Advertising or Off Chute Experiment?
We delved into the mystery of Web3 with the help of Luke Mulks, VP of business operations at Brave Software, and John Roa, CEO at Caden.
Change is inevitable, especially in the ad tech space which is constantly developing new systems to improve itself. A new wave of experimental ideas is washing over the ad tech industry that many believe will ultimately impact the open web.
Web3 proposes to remedy the dominance of the triopoly and abuse of consumer data. It will give power back to consumers to own their own data and allow publishers to create stronger relationships with them. Read more
Publisher RevOps Lessons From the Navy Seals
Erik Requidan, CEO and founder at Media Craft, outlined how rev ops teams could transform into the best of the best using examples from the Navy Seals. Many media organizations aren’t as nimble and resilient as they thought they were. It’s not for lack of desire or even preparedness. It’s because they’ve never had to adapt quite this quickly. Many also find that their leadership culture has yet to age well, which may not be what they need to survive an uncertain future.
To brave the days ahead, successful publishers must have high-functioning, multi-disciplinary teams and revenue operations leadership to match.
Revenue ops can look to the best of the best — elite organizations like the Navy SEALs — to learn important lessons for survival, and ultimately, success. Read more
No Cookies? No Problem: LiveRamp ATS Is the New Plug for Pubs
Travis Clinger, SVP, Addressability & Ecosystem at LiveRamp shared the ad tech company’s solution for cookie depreciation – LiveRamp’s ATS. ATS allows publishers to match authenticated user data with LiveRamp’s pseudonymous identifier, RampIDs, in real-time, enabling advertising without relying on third-party cookies or device-based identifiers. Advertisers can leverage RampIDs and unlock premium inventory, additional reach across cookieless browsers, including Safari and Firefox, and improve their marketing via people-based audience targeting, frequency capping, and more. Read more
Let’s Get Serious About Automating the Last of AdOps Tedious Tasks
Writer Susie Stulz gave a rundown on automation in AdOps, the good, the bad and the ugly. Attrition is still a stubborn challenge for publishers and agencies that rely on their ad operations (AdOps) teams to keep their campaigns going.
This is a serious issue given the high cost of recruiting, hiring, and training campaign traffickers. It’s a situation that begs the question: What can we do to make these jobs more attractive so experienced team members stay longer? Read more
Best Practices For Monetizing CTV Ad Pods
Peter Ackerman, Director of Product Marketing at Unruly provided his two cents on how ad tech can work out the kinks in the CTV ad space. Consumers are shifting to connected TV (CTV) in droves, and CTV ad spend is skyrocketing in tandem. According to eMarketer, spending will reach $34.49 billion by 2025.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been all smooth sailing for pubs. Besieged by a crude cast of characters — fragmentation, fraud, frequency, and let’s not forget, measurement — publishers need better control of their inventory to grow monetization. Read more
Why Advertisers Are Giving DOOH Another Look: Q&A With Yahoo’s Stephanie Gutnik
Stephanie Gutnik, global head of Digital Out Of Home at Yahoo, detailed how ad tech can utilize the DOOH sector. As pandemic restrictions lift, consumers are finally getting the chance to explore beyond their homes.
And those in the DOOH sector are breathing a sigh of relief as people return to offices, grocery stores, airports, gas stations, and other locations that haven’t seen much foot traffic lately. Read more
The Great Migration to CTV and What It Means for Ad Ops — A 2022 Update
The surge in CTV ad spend was one of the biggest highlights of the year and John Osborn, C-founder and CMO at Turnstil, provided data and insight on the booming trend.
In an October article Osborn listed existing, new, and soon-to-launch streaming services showing how they fit into the OTT ecosystem. Then, Covid-19 arrived, and the migration that might have taken years took months.
Since then, due to the dramatic growth of CTV subscriptions and CTV ad spending within the larger definition of OTT. Now 53% of video viewing on all devices, according to eMarketer InsiderIntelligence is on CTVs. This updated article provides an update on CTV growth, a revised roster of CTV players, and what it means for Ad Ops. Read more
Are You Prepared to Thrive in a Cookieless World?
To round up the countdown, we leave you with a very important inquiry, “Is your business ready to thrive in a post-cookie world?”
When Google postponed killing off third-party cookies, it gave advertisers and publishers some breathing room. But that doesn’t mean that the advertising ecosystem is now completely challenge-free.
Data, privacy, and trust are top of mind for the entire advertising ecosystem. These areas will have major implications as the ad tech industry seeks unified identity solutions to solve for a cookieless future. Read more