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Google Meta Data Deep Dive

Advertiser distrust in platforms’ data is increasing marketplace competition

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By Chris Sutcliffe, Senior reporter

May 9, 2023 | 7 min read

Trust between advertisers and platforms is predicated on accuracy and honesty. With numerous examples of that trust being breached, to what extent does that trust still exist? We take a look as part of The Drum’s latest Deep Dive, The New Data & Privacy Playbook.

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A lack of transparency around measurements has impacted trust between marketers and platforms / Adobe Stock

For a very long time, the relationship between Meta and advertisers was overshadowed by controversy. The revelations in 2018 that Meta’s primary platform Facebook had been knowingly overstating video metrics to its publisher partners have long damaged the relationship between the two.

Later documents deployed in class action cases against the platform owner would also state that the company was deliberately inflating the ‘potential reach’ of its advertising tools.

Given that those tools underpin advertisers’ decisions, this has been widely reported as having impacted the trust between the supply and demand sides of digital marketing.

The issue of measurement accuracy

The reliability of media metrics provided by major publishers is a key issue in the debate.

Birk Cooper is chief marketing office at Fetch. He argues: “It’s not necessarily a question of mistrust, but rather a question of measurement rigor and declining platform performance. Measurement has become a key issue, as advertisers are losing signal, and many are relying on purely return on ad spend or modeled lift. This has led to concerns about the accuracy of the metrics provided by these platforms. At the same time, declining platform performance is shining a light on the combination of issues with weaker targeting and already weak measurement. This has left many questioning the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns on these platforms.”

As a result of that lack of certainty, the World Federation of Advertisers has reported that trust in the platforms’ propensity to deliver accurate reports is low. That, in addition to the changes to how data is gathered and processed, has created a lack of surety in the advertising chain.

Speaking of customers’ own approach to trust surrounding data in 2021, Meta’s EMEA director of global customer marketing Carrie Timms said: “You’ve all heard the saying, ‘Trust the process’. To marketers heading into 2022 and beyond, I would say let’s change that up to, ‘Trust is the process’. It’s a process that will bring value to our brands, to our customers and to society in years to come.”

Some advertising specialists note that, while platforms are typically opaque when it comes to actually sharing metrics, it is in their best interest to provide as accurate a set of measures as possible. The argument is that, in order to attract and retain advertising spend, it is in the platforms’ interest to provide accurate measurements.

Jon Kagan, a search expert, states: “So this has to instill the belief in an advertiser that just because the platform wants your money doesn’t mean they don’t want to grow you profitably. With that in mind, just because you can’t see everything pre or post of a launch doesn’t mean it is wrong. It does mean they operate with a bit of a black box though.”

Trust and transparency go together

The lack of transparency and trust are bundled together as one issue for marketers, according to Richard Chapman, social data director at Ogilvy UK. As he puts it: “Since the whole Cambridge Analytica stuff, API access has been throttled in some cases. So it’s harder than ever to kind of get, you know, access to Instagram data. Facebook has always been a pretty closed book for us anyway. But it’s harder and harder to get publicly active, publicly accessible data that we can kind of use to kind of draw inferences from."

For the biggest platforms, that diminished trust has come at the worst possible time, as changes in data policy have provided advertisers and other platforms with a newfound advantage in their own first- or zero-party data capabilities. It‘s putting top platforms like Meta at a disadvantage and creating new opportunities for new players to eat up ad spend.

“This loss of trust has fueled the rise of alternative advertising platforms as advertisers look for new ways to reach consumers and achieve their business objectives,” says Cooper. “We’re already in the next phase of digital advertising, with brands increasingly shifting marketing spend to consumer engagement platforms powered by first-and zero-party data.”

As a result of that, the major platforms’ future as absolute owners of the digital advertising space is far from a sure thing. In April, Google parent Alphabet reported that Google’s digital ad revenue declined – albeit less than 1% from the same period last year.

While the company blamed competition and AI for the decline, it is unclear to what extent those issues can be separated from the overall problem of trust.

For marketers, the challenge remains in balancing the need for platforms’ reach with the perceived lack of transparency around measurements.

To read more from The Drum’s latest Deep Dive, where we’ll be demystifying data & privacy for marketers in 2023, head over to our special hub.

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