2020 has been a tough year so far, to say the least, and with this outbreak upon us it seems that the worst is not yet behind us. As a company, we firmly believe that in times of crisis, such as this, we have a shared responsibility and should all do our part to overcome the threats before us. Since COVID-19 became an international pandemic, we’ve taken every precaution to make sure we don’t contribute to its spread and have been dedicating efforts to support our communities in any way we can. With this message, we aim to share how our organization has responded to the situation and hopefully influence our affiliates to participate as well.
News
The coronavirus (or COVID-19) has now become a global threat and has thrown whole nations out of their typical daily lives. While some countries like China and Italy have suffered a significantly harder hit than others, the repercussions of the outbreak are starting to ripple throughout the whole world. Although we’re yet to see how events will unfold in the months to come, it is certain that if things progress the digital advertising industry will not be out of the impact area. Here are our early predictions and analysis of the situation from a publisher’s point of view.
In the most recent years, we’ve seen GDPR, Header bidding, ads.txt, and many other trends hit the digital advertising industry by storm, forcing Publishers to change their strategy for not only compliance with the law but also with adapting to new technology, to continue to maintain and increase ad revenue for their content. With the advertising industry constantly evolving and adapting as new technology and regulations come into play, here are some top trends in programmatic advertising for 2020.
Nowadays the digital publishing industry is taking users’ consent more seriously. With the enforcement of GDPR, ePrivacy Directive and, CCPA online businesses had to readjust the way data from internet users is collected, used and stored. It became highly advisable (and in some cases obligatory) for online businesses to adopt a system that is notifying the web consumers and requiring their consent for collecting their data during their visit. This is where a CMP (a.k.a Consent Management Platform) comes to the rescue, especially for large scale digital properties with high volumes of traffic, where the adoption of a far more structured approach is required.
Firefox blocks third-party tracking cookies by default to allow users to have more control over the information they are willing to share across the web. Since 3 September 2019, Enhanced Tracking Protection is automatically turned on by default for all users around the globe as part of the ‘Standard’ setting in the Firefox browser and will block known “third-party tracking cookies” as per the Disconnect list. Firefox’s statement: “We first enabled this default feature for new users in June 2019. As part of this journey, we rigorously tested, refined, and ultimately landed on a new approach to anti-tracking that is core to delivering on our promise of privacy and security as central aspects of your Firefox experience.”
A couple of weeks ago, Google rolled out another significant update affecting the first page of search results. The update happened quickly, 100% globally and from now on webpages with featured snippets will not appear twice on the first page. So, what does all this mean for digital publishers?
On the 13th of Jan, Google announced that it’s rolling out a core algorithm update. By the end of the week, the update will settle and SEOs and webmasters will be able to fully understand if and how their web properties have been affected.
In the last few months, Google has released several algorithm updates and we are reading a lot on the topic lately. Most of us are trying to figure out how it will affect our day-to-day work. What its reflection will be on the digital advertising industry and mainly, how it will impact publishers and their website traffic, consequentially their revenue. Well, don’t worry, it is not as crazy as it looks. We will try to summarize and simplify it in the next few paragraphs.
This March was eventful for PubGalaxy, especially for our Demand Partnerships Manager, Pavel Mitev. He got on a trip around North America to meet with a few of our demand partners, namely OpenX, IndexExchange and DistrictM. In a global world where everything happens over the Internet, meeting people in-person makes all the difference for building lasting relationships. Pavel’s first stop was Pasadena where he got see the OpenX HQ and exchange views on industry trends and developments. They talked about PubGalaxy’s priorities for 2019 and potential partnership opportunities.
Page speed will become a ranking factor this July, as just recently announced by Google. They are calling it “The Speed Update” and it will change how your website ranks on mobile searches. Content is king, some say, but it seems that speed will become a very important factor for all publishers in the digital space.