Monaco, known as the playground of the rich and famous, was the location of Digiday Publishing Summit Europe 2018. Despite being a virtual ghost town in February, hundreds of Europe’s leading publishers gathered to discuss hot industry topics and the latest trends. Here are a few of my takeaways from attending the event.
GDPR – What will happen?
GDPR was the hottest topic of the summit. Even though it goes into effect in May, there is still a level of uncertainty on how GDPR will impact publishers. One of the main questions asked throughout the summit was, “What actually constitutes as personal identifiable information?” While some publishers and tech partners are currently testing new universal consent mechanisms, for the majority of publishers GDPR is a waiting game.
Competition for the Duopoly
Publishers have relied heavily on Facebook and Google for both revenue and audience purposes. To help alleviate this issue, we’re seeing other social platforms stepping up to partner with publishers. During the summit, platforms including Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn discussed their publisher strategies for 2018. Twitter, specifically was called out as driving referral traffic for publishers.
Coming together to combat fraud
Fraud remains a hot topic for both the buy and sell-side. Advertisers continue to seek quality and safe environments to spend, while publishers continue to battle issues such as domain spoofing. Digital collaboration is needed to help drive transparency; the introduction of Ads.txt is helping to push this initiative. In order to create a safe environment for advertising technology, we must continue to support safety initiatives.
As always, Digiday produced a great event. Learning how brands and publishers implement new safety practices (including bringing on safety teams) was extremely refreshing. Overall, Digiday Publishing Summit Europe provided an amazing opportunity for the industry to connect and prepare for a successful 2018.
