Publishers have long been wary of ad-tech firms undermining their profits through unnecessary fees and incorrect classification.
Of late, publishers have been frustrated by another ad-tech business model: the scraping of data from their websites, which ad-tech companies package into contextual segments that advertisers can use to target.
The practice is not new, but it is causing fresh consternation from publishers anxiously preparing for the deprecation of third-party cookies, which is slated for next year, four publishing industry sources told Adweek. And given the rapid rise of generative AI, publishers are on higher alert than ever to third parties scraping their content.
In lieu of cookies, publishers are investing in alternative signals like contextual data to monetize their audiences. As a result, publishers claim third-party ad-tech firms’ packaging and selling of this data as an intellectual property infringement. While it is tricky to quantify the exact impact on revenue, publishing sources voiced fears of buyers choosing ad-tech firm’s contextual segments, which tend to cover more of the open web, unlike publishers’ bespoke offerings, at a time when publisher’s revenue is already under threat from economic headwinds.
“There are hundreds of intermediaries who are classifying publisher intellectual property and then are taking it back to market as their own data and using it to compete for ad dollars against the publisher,” said Danny Spears, chief operating officer of Ozone, a publisher advertising platform for titled like The Guardian, Reach Plc. and The Telegraph.
Last week, the U.K. trade body the Association of Online Publishers wrote an open letter outlining the issue and “calling time on publisher IP theft” by content-verification firms for their sale of contextual audience segments built on publisher data. The organization, whose members include the BBC, Condé Nast Digital and The Guardian, called on ad buyers to hold ad-tech firms accountable.
Despite the emotive language and strong accusations, the acrimony so far between publishers and content-verification firms has mostly amounted to a war of words. Publishers, facing layoffs and softening ad revenue, are spread too thin to rise to this particular challenge. Plus, their leverage with ad-tech firms to stop a practice that has been going on for years is limited.