Adello event in Zurich: Data transparency - local data as an opportunity

Opening of the event on Bahnhofstrasse (Photos: zVg).

The event, which was attended by around 50 people, was opened by Adello CEO Sandor Laczko. In his keynote speech, he took a digression into politics to show how data is taking on an increasingly important role in shaping democratic systems. Using Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and Cambridge Analytica as examples, he traced the changes in politics and showed the massive impact that the messy use of data can have on the value of companies. This is precisely why today's cause and call for comprehensible and legally secure collection, processing and sharing of data is important, he said. This transparency is necessary to create trust and sustainable "Programmatic Advertising".

Sandor Laczko, Managing Director of Adello Switzerland, talks about political systems and data models.

Roland Ehrler, Managing Director of the Swiss Association of Advertisers (SWA), then addressed the audience via video. He sees transparency as a prerequisite for advertising. However, the market is facing major challenges. If these could not be solved, politics would have to intervene. He presented the SWA's Global Media Charter, which would stand for security and transparency in the digital advertising market. Roland Ehrler's core statements were zero tolerance towards adfraud. He hoped for certified tools or conventions for measurement. Adfraud must be combated at all levels. Viewability must also be ensured.

The presentation adopted by the ANA that only 58 cents of $1 advertising money would reach the publisher was vivid and impressive. This was no different in Switzerland and had to change. Transparency was important, namely who would deliver what for what.

He presented the charter, which was distributed as a handout, to eight points, concluding with a positive message to those present that opportunities would arise in collaboration and initiatives with associations such as the IAB and events such as the Adello trade event. He would represent the strong voice of the advertising clients.

SWA Director Roland Ehrler was several hundred kilometers west of Zurich and had a video feed sent to him.

IAB Managing Director Roger Baur briefly presented the topics on which the IAB is focusing: Smdh, viewability/visibility, data protection and transparency.

An important point was the Code of Conduct, which the IAB had developed in cooperation beyond the Swiss border in the DACH region. The providers would voluntarily submit to the Code of Conduct. He also explained how the Code of Conduct had definitely developed clout. Should an advertiser and their agency suspect a provider of a violation, the agency in question would be analyzed in cooperation with the renowned law firm Fischer and the IAB and, if necessary, reported.

He pointed out how an accepted solution had been found with the publishers in Austria. In Switzerland, this had not been achieved, but from 2020 average viewability values would be displayed for all major publishers in Switzerland, in order to provide a point of reference. Ads.txt is also another approach.

Since new people had been elected in Europe in the IAB, the initiatives would have to be explained again and unfortunately we would have to wait for Europe. However, he assumed that logins were an important solution.

IAB Switzerland Managing Director Roger Bauer explains the association's initiatives.

Nele Dagefoerde, Head of Product at GeoCTRL, presented the relevance of data in the physical world. By way of introduction, she outlined the key trends in retail and data. For example, how user data sensitivity would increase and already 11 percent of users tracked by her company had Do-Not-Track enabled. Explicit consent would therefore increase quality and at the same time lead to desired advertising.

In several use cases, she vividly demonstrated how local data had advantages over the big U.S. providers, especially in terms of relevance, trust, and business success.

Physical data is the driver of business success across all industries, he said, and the data visibility and quality of local data will provide the foundation.

Nele Dagefoerde, Head of Product Marketing at GeoCTRL was flown in from Kiel.

Jan Morlock, Head of Data Science at Adello, spoke about how Data Science would work and demonstrated this with illustrative examples. Machine learning (artificial intelligence) is ultimately a craft and not the "black box" it is often thought to be. The first example illustrated in a comprehensible way how Data Science could recognize the gender of users. In this way, not only the 5 percent recognized by Exchanges, but also up to 75 percent of users can be precisely classified by gender according to the method used. He caused a smile with his list of the ten apps with the strongest identifiers of gender characteristics. Examples of viewability prediction and fraud prevention methodologies concluded his competent presentation. Data science is not a black box, but a comprehensible craft.

Jan Morlock, Head of Data Science at Adello.

Finally, Thomas Gresch and Patrick Rademacher of the Swiss Login Alliance took to the podium. They took turns introducing the topic by explaining the strategic considerations that had led to this joint step. Especially the increasing restriction on cookies as an identification feature had spoken in favor of a login alliance. The focus was not only on advantages for the advertising market, but also on better products for readers. Ultimately, the aim was to re-establish 1:1 contact with consumers as in the past. In Europe, two approaches would be pursued, on the one hand login alliances, on the other hand tracking alliances, which would primarily use cookie matching and would only aim at improving the advertising market. Since the advertising market would only represent a part of the added value, they had clearly decided on a login alliance, which has been live for two weeks.

Mark Forster, Founder Adello, Thomas Gresch, Group CTO Tamedia, and Patrick Rademacher, Senior Manager Strategy Ringier (from left).

Patrick Rademacher showed the steps and implementation and emphasized that it is an open alliance, which has now started with around 20 publishers. From Q1/2020, French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino should also go live, which would then bring the number of publishers to around 30. The fact that the Login Alliance would also combat fraud was also emphasized. The foreign model of the Login Alliance would offer great opportunities for services and content. It is not possible to achieve a 100 percent user base with Login, but they are trying to get as close as possible. The challenge is ultimately to link added value to Login. This is up to each individual publisher.
Single sign-on would then also be available from Q4/2020. It was important for the two to emphasize that the login alliance was only a joint authentication, it was not data sharing.

Sandor Laczko closed the evening with a Q&A session with the panel. Tamedia and Ringier were positive about the development with several tens of thousands of newly registered users each. The subsequent aperitif was followed by a lively discussion about the opportunities for the Swiss advertising market.