The Top 6 Ad Tech Trends for 2022 and beyond – Part 1

One of our most important tasks at Yieldlove is to keep a close eye on the ad tech market and making sure to analyze and anticipate any developments that might become relevant to us and to our clients. With the year well on its way, we would like to dedicate some time to share our outlook on what we consider to be the most important topics our industry will be dealing with in the next few months (and probably even years) with a two part blog post special. This is part one. Part two will follow next week, so stay tuned!

These are the key issues that the ad tech industry will be dealing with in 2022 and 2023:

• Server Side vs. Client Side Bidding
• Post Cookie Initiatives
• Contextual Targeting
• Video Advertising
• Data Privacy
• Page Speed

And we aren’t just reading the proverbial tea leaves here. These topics are already being worked on with a high amount of attention at Yieldlove. To find out more, have a look below as we delve deeper into the list’s first three items for part 1.

Server Side vs. Client Side Bidding

Let’s get things started with the topic of Server Side vs. Client Side bidding. As you might be aware, header bidding is traditionally a technology that is implemented on the client side and takes place within the user’s browser. This, however, is slowly changing to a server side process. While server side bidding is already deeply integrated into the AMP and app environment, we are expecting a gradual, overall shift away from client side bidding.

But this is not a binary decision. While server side bidding does have several advantages, increased speed being one of them, we don’t foresee this shift happening within the next 3 to 5 years. The demand side simply is not prepared to make this change as the necessary technology is not in place yet.

What we will see, however, and what we are actively working on and testing, is a hybrid system to fill the gap, while the industry as a whole is in this transitional phase. We are already making sure that our setup from technology to reporting and billing will be compatible with client side as well as server side bidding.

Post Cookie Initiatives

The so-called “Cookie Apocalypse” might be on hiatus while Google is getting its ducks in a row, but their pivot from FLoC to Topics is only delaying the inevitable. With Apple and Firefox leading the charge against the cookie, now is the time to look at solutions that are already available.

At Yieldlove we have done so extensively. We have been testing and working with a wide variety of post cookie solution providers including, but not limited to, ID.5, netID, Shared ID, Criteo ID, Panorama ID and LiveRamp ID.

While all of these are technologically sound, the jury is still out on which of these providers will stand the test of time. We will have to wait and see what the demand side, the advertisers, will consider to be the most relevant solution or solutions, as in all likelihood more than one ID solution provider will be used. But thanks to our extensive forays into the post cookie world, we are well prepared to keep your inventory accessible to all demand partners once the time has finally come for the 3rd party cookie.

Contextual Targeting

While Contextual Targeting is closely related to the previous topic, we still think it should be mentioned as a separate item.

On the face of it, contextual targeting is nothing new. It actually stems from the early days of online advertising in which websites or sections of them were put into categories such as finances or travel. Advertisers could then manually book ad space and be reasonably confident that they could reach an audience looking for content of the respective category.

In principle, this approach has stayed relevant to this day – but only for IO campaigns. It has remained impossible to do this completely automated along the entire value chain of advertisers, i.e. DSPs, SSPs and publishers. A lot of effort within the industry is going into solving this. We are also very much interested in the solutions that are already in various stages of development and have run several tests so that we are well prepared once the final puzzle pieces are in place.

And this marks the end of part 1 of our blog post special. Stay tuned for part 2, which will be published next week! If you have any questions or comments in the meantime, be sure to let us know. You can always reach out to us via LinkedIn or email.