In an era where digital privacy concerns are reshaping the advertising landscape, highfivve, a spin-off of gutefrage.net GmbH, one of the largest German publishers, has unveiled compelling evidence of the impact of cookieless advertising on revenue. Through an extensive A/B test on Pubstack’s platform, the partnership has provided concrete data demonstrating how the lack of identifiers affects Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM).
The study, conducted from December 9th to February 7th, meticulously analysed ad performance across the gutefrage.net loggedin and loggedout traffic. By segmenting participants into four groups—from normal ad setups to those devoid of contextual signals or identifiers — the test revealed differences in advertiser bid rates and bid CPMs. The test environment was on Safari and Firefox, because these browsers already do not support 3rd party cookies. The browser Chrome was not part of the test.
Groups Explanation:
The A/B test underscored significant disparities in bid rates across the participant groups. Specifically, Groups 2 and 3, which lacked identifiers or both identifiers and contextual signals, experienced substantially lower bidding rates than Groups 0 and 1, which had access to more comprehensive data. This trend was particularly pronounced among Safari browser users, where the lack of data led to a marked decrease in bidding activity.
Despite the overall reduction in bids, the average bid CPM for Groups 2 and 3 showed a noticeable increase. This phenomenon suggests a mixed effect, where the absence of lower-value bids resulted in a higher average bid value. Such a trend indicates that while fewer bids were placed, those reflected a higher valuation of available impressions.
Among the various browsers, Safari users were the most adversely affected, witnessing a dramatic decrease in bid rates, far exceeding the declines observed on other browsers such as Firefox. On Firefox we saw bid rate reductions ranging from -25% to -50%, underscoring the substantial influence of browser type on advertising dynamics in a cookieless context.
The study also highlighted varied reactions from bidders in response to the cookieless environment. While some bidders maintained their bidding behaviour unchanged, others adjusted differently:
a) A subset of bidders reduced their bid rate without altering their bid CPM, indicating a selective bidding strategy without full data.
b) Two bidders were noted to decrease in both bid rate and bid CPM, reflecting a conservative response to the reduced data availability.
c) Interestingly, another group of bidders decreased their bid rate yet increased their bid CPM, potentially due to a strategic shift towards valuing fewer but higher-quality impressions, especially noticeable among Chrome users.
Key finding:
The comprehensive A/B testing conducted on Pubstack’s platform by highfivve revealed that reducing data availability to advertisers—via removing identifiers and contextual signals—significantly impacts bid rates, with a pronounced effect on Safari users. This finding underscores the high-value advertisers place on such data for bid placement decisions. Furthermore, the observed variability in bid CPM and the differential impacts across websites and browsers underscore the complexity of advertising performance in a cookieless world, highlighting the intricate interplay of browser type, ad unit specifics, and advertiser behaviour.
Martin Pichler, Chief Sales Officer at gutefrage.net & highfivve, comments, “In cooperation with our parent company gutefrage.net, one of the leading German publishers, we successfully conducted a cookieless A/B test and analyzed it in detail with the help of Pubstack. We are delighted to observe the affirmative influence of identity solutions on cookieless inventory. Anticipating a growing trend, we foresee the demand side increasingly embracing identity solutions and, as a next step, contextual signals throughout 2024 to effectively bridge the existing gap in a cookieless world.”
Loïc Sfiligoi, Co-founder and CEO of Pubstack, remarks, “Pubstack’s role in facilitating this crucial A/B test underscores our commitment to empowering publishers in the cookieless era. Our platform provided the robust infrastructure needed for our customers to explore and understand the intricate dynamics of advertising revenue without traditional identifiers, highlighting our dedication to innovation and data-driven solutions in ad management.”
Pubstack is an Ad Management platform for web publishers created in 2018. The company, based in Paris, has earned the trust of over 100 premium European publishers.
As an innovator in Ad Management, Pubstack empowers publishers' monetisation teams through a data-driven approach to building, maintaining, optimising, and monitoring high-performing ad stacks. Thanks to its powerful technology, they can confidently build highly efficient ad setups – faster than ever before –to boost their ad revenue and make data-based decisions about their ad stack.
Pubstack works with some of the best online media companies in the world – including Le Monde, The Independent, United Internet Media, IQ Digital, Quarter Media, Vinted, Webedia, and many more – to ensure they can maintain high inventory quality, make more revenue and deliver exceptional content. For more information, visit www.pubstack.io
highfivve is a programmatic advertising specialising in smart monetisation for publishers. The Munich-based company was founded in 2019 as a spin-off of gutefrage.net GmbH, one of the largest German publishers. highfivve leverages the knowledge previously acquired through the marketing of gutefrage to support other publishers in monetising their content.
With its portfolio, highfivve reaches over 40 million unique users per month. The marketing approach of highfivve is based on the principle that the entire reach of a publisher can be successfully and efficiently monetised programmatically. Its formula for success lies in smart monetisation and a programmatic-first approach. In addition to the holistic AdStack and exclusive access to global demand, highfivve utilises an in-house developed high-tech yield engine based on machine learning algorithms.
The business is led by Philipp Graf Montgelas (CEO) and Martin Pichler (CSO) from its headquarters in Munich.
For more information, visit https://highfivve.com/de/
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