On the flip side, the open web has allowed advertisers more transparency, scale, and constant diversification which has proven to be effective. However, this has not translated to increased spend, as the open web continues to lag when compared to the walled garden giants.
Advertisers continue to look towards easy activation channels like walled gardens for turnkey marketing solutions, even as they are increasingly becoming less effective to marketers.
A survey conducted by OpenX and The Harris Poll highlighted those consumers trust advertising in walled gardens less than the open web, and their time in walled gardens is decreasing due to lack of relevant content. “The open web is also where people turn for “high-quality content,” and 74% of people say they trust the articles on news sites or apps more than what they read (or see linked to) on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.”
The battle of perfecting the balance between the two continues but what if there was a third solution. Enter the hedged garden.
The “hedged garden” is a new industry concept where a network of publishers work together to activate first-party data sets across multiple partners at scale. These publishers are known to have large amounts of first-party consumer data that run their business but are not big enough on their own. Visually speaking, as described by LUMA (a leading investment bank focused on digital media and marketing) at their Digital Media Summit earlier this year, hedges are not as tall as walls, and they’re more permeable. This idea is key for the success of the hedged gardens. Auren Hoffmen (former CEO of LiveRamp) stated, “The more connected a data set is to other data elements, the more valuable it is” leading one to believe there is a large opportunity in the hedged garden space if executed effectively.
As the ad-tech ecosystem continues to evolve towards a hedged garden solution, the next natural question is: How does Experian get involved? Good news! We already are a key ingredient of this type of solution within the TV landscape. Below is an example outlining how our current client in America, NBCUniversal, utilises Experian data.
- Experian Organises NBCUniversal’s data and provides a Unique Identifier: Through a myriad of different services, Experian works with their clients to clean up and enhance their data elements, and then household them by tying each identifier into an Experian unique ID for each partner.
- NBCUniversal enriches their data through ConsumerView: NBCUniversal license the full ConsumerView file, allowing for them to develop insights and audiences based on a full list of attributes provided within their ConsumerView segment set.
- Working with NBCUniversal to activate audiences across the Ecosystem: NBCUniversal work directly with Experian to help execute their audiences across the full digital and TV ecosystem. Experian activates these audiences by matching partner IDs (Ex. NBCU ID 123 = DIRECTV ID ABC)
- It is this approach using synthetic IDs to match up client’s data in a manner that is key to us continuing to build strong partnerships within the fast-growing ecosystem.
This is just one example of how Experian has been able to help our client navigate using their data effectively across the ecosystem. From there we are using our key learnings from the TV industry to help support other hedged garden verticals.
Are hedged gardens the new future of advertising?
Have we finally found the perfect bridge between the classic walled garden solution and the open web? We’re “hedging” our bets – our vote is “YES” but only time will tell.
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