As the year comes to a close, we’d like to take a quick look back on the hottest topics of 2023 as reflected by our most popular blog posts. Some common themes that we heard about from agencies and brands, industry analysts and experts, and various conference speakers throughout the year included cookieless targeting techniques, budget allocation, attribution, and campaign optimization.

The ad tech industry is always full of surprises. Read on to see how our list of top 5 blog posts aligns with your key takeaways from 2023, and how they can help you strategically plan for 2024.

5. Case Study Sessions: Niche Targeting

In fifth place, we have the first of three case study sessions from 2023. This post covers three examples of AdDaptive’s targeting success, highlighting the goals, solutions, and results of each campaign. Read the full post to learn how AdDaptive’s technology can reach even the most niche audience segments at scale.

Case Study Sessions: Reaching Niche Audiences in Hospitality, Aerospace, and Animal Health

4. Allocating Ad Spend Appropriately with Analytics

Our fourth most popular blog post focused on budget allocation decisions in the ever-expanding digital advertising space. Finding the ideal media mix can make or break a campaign, especially amid times of economic uncertainty, and this blog post covers how to find that “sweet spot” of media type combinations for each campaign. Out of our top 5 posts, this post had the longest average time on page for the year.

Allocating Ad Spend Appropriately with Analytics

3. Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit May 2023 Recap

Coming in at number three is our recap of Digiday’s Programmatic Marketing Summit, which took place in Palm Springs, CA back in May. AdDaptive was a proud sponsor of the event, along with three other Digiday conferences throughout the year. Discover the key industry news, trends, and updates discussed at the conference in the full blog post linked below.

Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit May 2023 Recap

2. Flexible and AdDapt-Able

The runner-up post for 2023, Flexible and AdDapt-Able, had the highest percentage of unique users among the top 5 posts. The blog post focuses on the flexibility that AdDaptive offers to our advertising partners in the form of no long-term commitments,
the ability to run several types of campaigns simultaneously, and real-time optimization and recommendations so you can adjust your campaigns to fit your needs at each and every step.

Flexible and AdDapt-Able

1. Expert Optimization: Prepping Your Campaign

And finally, AdDaptive’s most popular blog post for
the year was the first post in our five part Expert Optimization series, featuring campaign optimization insights directly from our advertising and analytics experts. 

This post alone accounted for over 10% of AdDaptive’s blog post views in 2023. Jump into the first part of our Expert Optimization series through the link below.

Expert Optimization: Prepping Your Campaign

Thank you to our trusted advertising partners and dedicated employees for making 2023 a success, we look forward to further accomplishments in 2024 and beyond. In the meantime, visit our blog for more case study sessions, the full Expert Optimization series, and much more!

Ready to speak with a digital advertising expert? Book a meeting below.

The final industry conference for 2023 was Digiday’s Programmatic Marketing Summit, which took place December 4-6 in New Orleans, LA. AdDaptive sponsored the event once again – our fourth Digiday conference for the year following the two Media Buying Summits in March and October and another Programmatic Marketing Summit back in May. 

The Programmatic Marketing Summit brings industry professionals from across the country to one central location to connect with fellow marketing leaders and build trusted relationships. During the various presentations, town halls, one-on-one meetings, dinners, and more, attendees discussed the various pain points, challenges, opportunities, and new solutions advertisers are currently facing. 

Attribution was a hot topic again at December’s conference; in fact, attribution has been a keyword at all four of the Digiday events in 2023. Another main topic of discussion was the removal of cookies from Google quickly approaching in 2024, and the various available alternatives to cookies. AdDaptive’s own VP of Sales, Ted McNulty, hosted a presentation at the end of the first day on one such alternative: validated offline data. Read on for a synopsis of these three key topics.

Attribution

This conference’s challenge board revealed that attribution still remains top-of-mind for many industry experts and professionals. With the ever-changing landscape of digital advertising,
accurate attribution moving forward is a big question. And furthermore, as attribution methods continue to shift, how will advertisers apply these changes in attribution learnings to future campaigns?

How will attribution work in the cookieless environment of 2024 and beyond? The answer depends upon the ad tech being put to use. Accurate attribution and transparent reporting go hand-in-hand to elevate campaign success, both
in anticipation of and in response to the looming cookie depreciation. Relying on cookies to monitor engagement levels, allocate budgets, and prove ROAS is no longer feasible.

Going Cookieless

Agencies are feeling increasing pressure to find alternative solutions to those technologies which rely on cookies. The Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit revealed that many decision-makers in the industry still aren’t ready for the removal of the third-party cookie. Industry executives rated the preparedness of the industry for next year’s cookie depreciation around a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-10, and predict that some major steps still need to be taken in preparation of their full removal. 

There are a few options that are currently available from major ad tech providers that avoid reliance on cookies, but many of them are still in beta testing or first-round trials. AdDaptive’s cookieless solutions, on the other hand, have been in use and proven successful for the last decade. Our VP of Sales, Ted McNulty, went into more detail regarding the benefits of working with validated offline data in his presentation on December 4th.

Validated Offline Data

The main benefit of using validated offline data – from SEC filings and business registration data, to census data, building permits, and beyond – is the overall accuracy. While cookies attempt to guess information about an individual based upon their browsing history, offline data is factual and provided by the company itself. 

As McNulty further explained at the conference, targeting unique digital identifiers rather than using cookies allows for accurate targeting and scalability, regardless of how niche the intended audience may be.

“The harder your audience is to reach, the more valuable AdDaptive’s platform becomes” – Ted McNulty, VP of Sales at AdDaptive Intelligence

Over the last decade AdDaptive has worked with over 500 agencies to launch tens of thousands of campaigns, none of which have relied on third-party cookies. What makes AdDaptive different is our ability to connect validated offline data to online identifiers, to avoid wasted impressions and produce positive business outcomes for our clients.

Trust in AdDaptive’s future-proof technology to improve the accuracy, scalability, and transparency of your campaigns.

Ready to speak with a digital advertising expert? Book a meeting below.