Author Archives: Rakuten Marketing

Publisher Spotlight: Syte and the future of visual search

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Syte Logo

Syte is an AI visual search company whose aim is to create an easily accessible shopping experience for consumers. We recently caught up with Eliana Atia, Marketing Manager at Syte, to find out more about how their technology works and what to expect from the future of visual search.

Syte uses AI to provide retailers with a visual search camera button, allowing users to make the visual world shoppable. Can you tell us a bit more about your technology?

With Syte’s visual search camera button, shoppers can search by taking a photo or uploading one from their camera roll and receiving instant results on visually similar or exact items from within the retailers’ inventory.  In addition to making any image of inspiration into an easily accessible shopping experience, Syte empowers shoppers by allowing them to search without knowing the correct terminology for the styles they love and have the ease of shopping multiple pieces from one photo.

With online retail being one of the fastest growing industries in the world, online retailers need to embrace new technologies to keep pace. What do you think visual search means for the online retail industry and how does it add value?

Syte enables immediate AI with strong ROI, providing retailers with a visual search camera button that is seamlessly integrated within 24 hours – allowing users to make the visual world shoppable. Millennials and Generation Z are on their phones 6-10 hours a day and within this time 60% is spent on social media, consuming hundreds of images daily. Visual search allows retailers to connect customer inspiration from social media back to their ecommerce store. Due to Amazon’s effect on retail it has become extremely pertinent for brands to create a lasting awareness among their shoppers.

Following on from this, how does visual search help publishers to monetise their content?

Syte helps publishers monetise visual assets by allowing every image featured on online publications to become a shoppable experience. Readers can see an item of interest on a featured photo and instantly receive live shoppable options – providing a dynamic, multi-faceted experience for all readers. Additionally, Syte’s technology eliminates the need to manually tag items with affiliate links.

Do you have any recent case studies of your success working with retailers?

Glossy wrote a great feature on our work with retailer Boohoo which can be viewed here.

You’ve recently partnered with our publisher Intu. Can you tell us a bit more about this development?

Intu has been a real pleasure to work with. They are a very innovative company, constantly thinking about their customers. Our partnership originally started by providing them with our API. Intu designed their own UX/UI for the ‘shop similar’ feature – which is doing really well and looks amazing. Since then, our partnership has grown to include more features like our visual search camera button. Be sure to view the article they wrote about our camera button.

Are there any exciting developments in the pipeline for Syte that you’d like to share?

One of the things that makes Syte unique is that we are constantly innovating and developing new products. One of our new offerings includes a reverse Instagram search which allows you to find outfit inspiration by uploading an image and receiving a shuffle of Instagram influencers wearing similar outfits. A fun interactive way to complete your look.

Finally, what can advertisers expect to learn in your talk at Symposium London next month?

Our Co-Founder & CMO’s presentation will focus on Millennials and Generation Z,  their needs, and how visual search fulfills their natural course of action. Soon they will expect to be able to upload an image on every retailers’ website and find what they are searching for.

Get Ready for Symposium London Next Week!

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Symposium London 2018

We’re so excited for Symposium London on the 18th April which is set to be our biggest event to date! With the event just next Wednesday, we wanted to share some highlights for this year’s event to ensure all attendees come away with useful insights and plenty of new connections to boot.

Meeting scheduler & networking community

Pathable is a tool for you to schedule meetings with attendees, connect, discuss, check updates, and oversee the agenda for Symposium London 2018. If you did not receive your invitation to join the community, please email events@mail.rakuten.com. Download the App in iOS or Android: Search for “Rakuten Marketing Events”

Inspire your programmatic strategy

As part of our DealMaker sessions, we’re giving you the opportunity to meet two of our most innovative display partners – Bitposter (out-of-home media) and SpotX (video) to showcase new mediums that can be traded programmatically at the Programmatic Hub. Book your meeting now through Pathable to schedule time with the experts.

Learn from the brands themselves

In our new Advertiser Innovation Session at 1:50pm, you’ll be able to hear first-hand from two of our brands about how they are transforming their campaigns to drive results in an increasingly competitive market.

Preparing for GDPR

With the GDPR regulation coming into force next month, we know this is a topic which is likely to be high in your agenda. To help you prepare, we have a designated GDPR session with our VP of Client Success who will take you through our approach and what this means for our advertisers. Additionally, our GDPR team will be on hand during our DealMaker sessions to answer any questions you might have. To prepare for this session, you may be interested in downloading our latest whitepaper: Defining the GDPR Impact on Digital Advertising.

Discover new publishers

At 3pm, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from four of our emerging, non-traditional publishers – Syte, Dealmoon, RevLifter and re3engage who can help diversify your affiliate revenue. In addition, make sure you take advantage of Pathable, our event networking app in order to start booking your meetings with our extensive network of publishers!

We look forward to seeing you on 18 April!

A Special Thank You To Our Sponsors!

Symposium London Sponsors

 

The Programmatic Hub at Symposium London 2018

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Programmatic Hub

Symposium London on April 18 at The Brewery is officially sold out and is set to be our biggest event to date! With less than a week to go, we wanted to let you know about one of our most anticipated additions: the Programmatic Hub.

Making its Symposium London debut at this year’s event, the Programmatic Hub will no doubt inspire your digital marketing strategy. As part of our DealMaker sessions, you will have the opportunity to meet our Senior Product Manager, Olu Gomes and two of our most innovative display partners – Bitposter and SpotX. Together they will showcase the new mediums that can be traded programmatically.

Drop in on the day or, to avoid disappointment, schedule your meeting with the experts now through Pathable, our networking and event app.

With 97% out-of-home (OOH) media owners selling their inventory via Bitposter, the company is the leading automated platform for trading OOH advertising programmatically.

With best-in-class technology purpose-built for video, SpotX is the top advertising platform for premium brand-safe video content across desktop, mobile and connected TV devices globally.

Through our partnerships and our fully-managed, consultative approach, the mass-market audiences of traditional advertising channels (now accessed programmatically) are easier to get to than ever before. If you are overwhelmed by the strategy choices and struggling to see how to scale your programmatic investment to maximise your ROI while reaching large-scale audiences, come visit our Programmatic Hub at Symposium London 2018. We’ve devised a step-by-step data-driven methodology, to take you from micro to macro audience segments and levels of campaign complexity. Through a considered leveraging of data sources and optimisation learnings you can successfully launch tactics within innovative models such as out-of-home (OOH) media and programmatic TV.

Maximise your networking opportunities: register with Pathable and start booking meetings ahead of Symposium London 2018!

James Chandler: Understanding the past in order to create a better future

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James Chandler

Ahead of Symposium London next week, we caught up with one of our keynote speakers, James Chandler who is CMO at the IAB UK. James told us all about what to expect from his talk at the event as well as what his thoughts are for the future of digital advertising.

Can you tell us a bit more about what we can expect to hear from you at Symposium?

To give some background, here at IAB UK, we think about two things. The first being what needs to be sorted out today – that includes viewability, brand safety measurement, and of course GDPR. The second is looking towards the future and what it means for both brands and advertisers. The future is complex and always changing – there will never be one version of the future.

In my keynote at Symposium London, I will be looking at these two concepts, to identify how we can prepare for the future by looking at what’s worked and failed in the past, and what we never thought would happen. These thoughts will help us understand in which directions the industry might go and there are a lot of learnings to be taken from that.

Can you give us an example of a past learning which marketers should take on board for the coming year?

An important lesson to think about as we create the future is the concept of ‘failing fast’. The future can be a well-travelled path in terms of taking a look at past failures and improving on it. There could be 20 new, shiny things to try – but really, only one or two might make sense to your business. Agencies can be a helpful resource as they can help to pick the most opportune risk to take as they have a perfect mix of generalist (who know lots about your business) and specialists (who know lots about trends, technology and behaviours). Looking back at things that have failed in the past can help us to appreciate where we are now.

What do you think are the biggest opportunities for the year ahead?

I believe this year is the year of voice. There have been so many smart devices created in the recent years and we are probably only using about 1% of what these devices are capable of. For example, most use their Google Home/Amazon Echo as a glorified radio when in fact they have the capacity for so much more. With this new outlet of voice we will need to think entirely differently about advertising because it will now go far beyond the legacy of image and sound. We will need to start considering what will happen when the screens go away and start appearing in different places, perhaps on a car dashboard or on the side of a refrigerator.

2018 is set to be a year of challenges for marketers. What do you think will be the biggest challenges and how should marketers respond?

Looking at the anticipated challenges for 2018 it is nearly impossible to not touch on GDPR. Consent has become paramount and implementing strategies to adhere to the regulations is imperative.

The second challenge is brand safety. Critically, advertisers have the control and choice on where their ads appear online.  Their own brand values can often dictate this.  If you want premium, high quality, very ‘safe’ environments – you can buy those online.  If you want to reach as many people as possible, you can do that too.  Often, it’s hard to do both together. There is of course a grey area somewhere in the middle, but one option must be chosen over the other and it is important to note that one is not necessarily worse than the other – it’s just a matter of preference.

Moving onto trends, one of our recent studies showed that 59% of marketers expressed video as a form of content they are most likely to invest in this year. Where do you think video is heading?

Our own ad spend study every six in partnership with PwC shows the overwhelming growth of mobile and video. When we are talking about digital now we are essentially talking about video. The general message is that if you are not in video, get in video.

What would you say is the most effective space for storytelling at the moment and how do you predict this will change?

Video, absolutely. The amazing “Long and the Short of It” from the IPA stands the test of time and says that emotional stories do far greater than rational stories and the best way to tell stories is via video. It’s important to keep in mind when it comes to new platforms for storytelling that we can’t just use the same stuff as before. We have to rethink, okay where’s it going and what’s the story that I can tell. It might be a two second story in vertical or it might be a 30 second more traditional one but regardless we have to think about the context first.

Don’t miss James Chandler’s keynote at 10:15 – 11:00 at Symposium London. Don’t have a ticket yet? You can register here.

Whitepaper: Defining the GDPR Impact on Digital Advertising

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Read our New Whitepaper:
Defining the GDPR Impact on Digital Advertising

GDPR Impact Whitepaper

Rakuten Marketing has published a new whitepaper that outlines the UK compliance framework for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This data-rich resource titled Defining the GDPR Impact on Digital Advertising provides information and expert insights on the following topics:

  • The impact the GDPR will have on UK advertisers and publishers
  • The foundation that advertisers and publishers need to understand to be compliant with the GDPR
  • Ways the European Citizens are responding to the new legislation
  • Action brands need to take to become GDPR-compliant by the May 25 deadline
  • The benefits of gathering consent for GDPR-compliant brands
  • How to support the delivery of more consumer-friendly ads and online marketing experiences
  • The resulting impact to advertisers, publisher and consumers

Through this whitepaper, advertisers and publishers will gain valuable information on the GDPR to help achieve compliance and market success. Click here to download the full whitepaper and be sure to stay tuned for more GDPR communications in the future.

 

Publisher Spotlight: RevLifter – helping retailers boost revenue through personalised incentives

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RevLifter logo

RevLifter is an AI Marketing Technology service that helps online retailers take control of promotions delivery to deliver incremental value. We recently caught up with Simon Bird, Co-Founder at RevLifter, to find out more about what makes their platform unique and a true benefit to advertisers.

Could you tell us a bit more about your platform and why you’re unique and innovative?

RevLifter is a groundbreaking technology that is changing the way retailers think about how tactical discounting can work in the affiliate channel, and improve incrementality.

Our platform allows e-commerce groups to deploy personalised deals and voucher codes by responding to consumer behaviour. Things like the items in their basket, location, customer status (new or existing) can help to shape an incentive which feeds directly into a retailer’s unique goals.

Everything happens in real time, on the retailer’s owned properties, which means we can show deals that facilitate with up-selling and cross-selling prior to the user checking out.

No other solution can execute this process in the way that we do; using AI to match consumers with deals and ensuring the retailer owns the conversation and experience. With that, we believe RevLifter is truly unique.

How does RevLifter work with advertisers in the affiliate space and how does your platform benefit them?

We build retailers their very own, fully branded discount hub or add dynamic content to existing retailer voucher code pages. This is aimed at capturing search traffic in Google for a retailer’s branded and discount terms, e.g. “*retailer name* vouchers”.

We can also show personalised deals at the basket in the form of smart touts, overlays and inlays, which encourage a consumer to buy more products. RevLifter helps retailers decide when to show a specific deal by applying scenario-based rules, geared around what our technology can glean from the customer’s basket.

As well as looking into the product type, these rules can trigger deals based on signals like new or existing customers, IP addresses and lifetime value. We can also supply incentives based on other factors, such as the upcoming weather in a consumer’s area; a vital consideration for those in the fashion and travel sectors.

Many retailers are using RevLifter to help with their up-selling and cross-selling, which provides obvious benefits in driving revenue and specific customer targeting.

Do you have any recent case studies of your success working with advertisers?

Despite only launching this year, we’ve witnessed some great results from the technology which have only solidified what we thought it could do for our users.

Compared with their old methods of incentivisation, advertisers that are working with RevLifter have typically enjoyed a 30% lift in conversion rates and a 20% increase in average order values. These stats do change based on the types and timings of discounts, though, and everyone has a different way of using our tech.

We’ve already onboarded some huge names in the global e-commerce world and we look forward to more joining us in the coming months.

Are there any exciting developments in the pipeline for RevLifter that you’d like to share?

This year represents our launch onto the global e-commerce and performance marketing scenes, so a lot of the focus has been on showcasing all of the hard work we’ve put into making RevLifter a groundbreaking solution.

In that time we’ve secured some big brands and received a nomination for the Industry Disruptor prize at the 2018 Performance Marketing Awards. Our team has years of experience in the digital marketing space and even we’ve been surprised about how well it’s all been received.

Looking ahead we are developing lots of new features, like a messaging tout that will enable customers to “unlock or reveal” a special offer, complete with time prompts to instil a sense of encouragement.

We are also working on enhancing our deal pages through new machine learning algorithms, which will deliver the best outcome every time by self-learning. Aside from these, you’ll just have to wait and see…

Finally, what can advertisers expect to learn in your talk at Symposium London next month?

I’ve been part of the performance marketing industry for over 15 years and privy to a lot of the conversations around discounting and a need for innovation within this area.

Naturally, I’ll be talking about how performance marketing as an industry can challenge traditional thinking around incrementality, deal design, data sharing and other matters. I’ll also be explaining ways of improving the value exchange between all parties in the affiliate industry, including the customers that power it.

Easter Shopping Trends and Sales Tips for 2018

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Easter image

When you think of Easter, you’re probably more likely to think of chocolate eggs, bunnies and chicks than shopping. However, given that it’s the longest bank holiday in the British calendar, it has fast become the second largest spending annual holiday event for UK consumers after Christmas. This year, we predict in-store and online shopping will rise further this year due to the Easter weekend falling on the national payday weekend meaning that households are likely to have some discretionary spending budget available. According to Springboard Retail Intelligence, footfall over the coming weekend could be 2.4% higher than in Easter 2017 with online shopping following on from consumers’ visits to bricks and mortar stores, where they will have chosen the goods they want to purchase.

In the UK, most people have Friday and Monday off work which is a huge boost to British retailers and businesses. Comparing the four-day Easter Weekend from 2016 to 2017, the number of sales placed through our UK network increased by an average of 39% with a 48% increase on Easter Sunday itself. This data highlights how the Easter bank holiday is presenting a significant opportunity for retailers to generate sales.

In light of this, we’ve pulled together some more insights from our network data to help shape your campaigns around Easter time:

Easter is Changeable

Don’t forget that Easter falls on a different weekend every year which will no doubt have an impact on your campaigns. This year, Easter falls at the end of March on payday weekend which is three weeks earlier than it did last year. Therefore, ensure you are optimising any offers for the Easter bank holiday and payday weekends. Also, avoid the obvious pitfalls of not comparing like-for-like periods when analysing past performance for the Easter period.

Global Differences

If you’re planning any international campaigns, remember that Easter is celebrated differently across the globe and the UK is one of the only countries who have two bank holidays.

In France, Good Friday is not a bank holiday and is a normal working day.

For the US market, Easter is not an official bank holiday and therefore is not necessarily a good time to promote an offer. Furthermore, if you decide to promote an offer, the US market tends to use the term ‘Spring’ rather than ‘Easter’.

Mobile is becoming increasingly dominant

Over the Easter period in 2017, we saw mobile driving 28.5% of sales which is an 8.5% increase from 2017. Desktop is still the dominant device, driving 55% of sales which indicates a majority of consumers aren’t making impulsive purchases on the fly. However, with purchases from mobile increasing, marketers should ensure that their promotions and communications engage with mobile device users, especially those showing retail intent.

Treat yourself

Our data also revealed us that the most orders came from the high-end and luxury vertical which drove 35% of sales – followed closely by apparel and accessories, driving 29% of sales. Looking at this data, we can assume that consumers are taking advantage of any bank holiday deals and the new spring season to make an investment in luxury purchases for the warmer season ahead. With Easter falling payday weekend this year, we would predict purchases from these verticals to increase further in 2018.

Price-savvy shoppers

In terms of publishers driving the most sales, cashback and loyalty websites generated 28% of sales followed by voucher sites (24%) and shopping sites (19%) This again highlights how shoppers during the Easter weekend are increasingly price-savvy and are taking advantage of their time off to browse around for the best deals and gain inspiration for purchases

Diving into this data highlights how the Easter bank holiday is fast becoming a peak for generating sales in the UK – especially for consumers looking to treat themselves to fashion and luxury purchases for the spring/summer season. Therefore, advertisers and publishers alike should focus on pushing out these types of offers to entice consumers to purchase during this key period.

GiftSwipe by Cadouu: Tinder meets Pinterest – the ultimate fashion and product discovery app backed by machine learning

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Giftswipe by Cadouu

GiftSwipe is a cutting-edge technology that feeds the user with daily inspiration on the go. In the words of Nora Stolz, Founder & CEO: “We make it fun to discover new products, easy for you to recommend cool stuff to friends and quickly build a wishlist to keep track of your favourite items.” You can try it out for yourself here: giftswipe.cadouu.com

We caught up with Nora to find out more about GiftSwipe and how they can add value to advertisers:

Can you tell us a bit more about GiftSwipe?

GiftSwipe emerged out of Cadouu almost by coincidence. I founded Cadouu in 2016 with the aim to build the world’s first global gifting platform, combining ecommerce, social networking and payment in a novel way. Our focus is on group gifts, which is the most rapidly growing gifting behaviour in the Millennial segment – one large gift in the name of everyone instead of many small token items.

As we were running group gift campaigns, we noticed that people really needed a wishlist feature. So, my CTO Vasco Conde and I sat together and developed a feature that allows users to curate a wishlist on the go.

This feature is called ‘GiftSwipe’ and it is a cutting-edge technology that changes the way people browse, keep track of favourite items and shop new products outright. It is intuitive, fun and collaborative. Users can curate their wishlist, see what their friends like, and recommend products to friends. It is like marrying the technologies of Tinder and Pinterest and feeding it with the most beautifully curated products and services from our advertisers. Every product comes with a ‘buy now’ button that links to the advertiser so the user can purchase instantly.

What makes you different to other gifting websites?

GiftSwipe is a mobile discovery engine backed by machine learning. It is the first of its kind and uses content-based and collaborative filtering to make product recommendations based on user groups and preferences.

We are also able to provide exceptional data insights on consumer preferences and consumer clusters to our advertisers. These insights are quite unique and rarely available for brands and often not consistent for retailers. The value GiftSwipe brings to the B2B market, buyers, strategist or new brands is huge. We understand exactly what products users like, what their individual style and preferences are and how they change over time. We can analyse this data by geolocation, gender, age, categories, brands, price range, date, marketing channels and much more. This data is giving us the opportunity to know the appeal of certain products to groups of users. In addition, brands can work with us for market research prior to product launches and we can recommend who the target audience is based on user insights.

What kind of advertisers are you looking to partner with and what value can you provide?

We are looking for brand and retail advertisers in the lifestyle, fashion, tech, travel and design verticals that will endorse our cutting-edge technology solution ‘GiftSwipe’ to their existing customers. The more varied brands that are on our platform, the better the algorithms work and the better the data insights for the individual brand. We value high-quality brands with aspirational products and mobile online stores with high-quality photos and a consistent data feed.

GiftSwipe by Cadouu

Do you have any recent case studies of your success working with advertisers?

Yes, some advertisers have a fantastic, complete and consistent product feed which means we can feature these products more on GiftSwipe. Others advertiser sends us a custom feed with the products to be featured, an option that we make available for an additional fee.

What is in store for Cadouu in 2018 and beyond?

Our development team is very busy building new features, and the strategy and business development team are onboarding new advertisers in Europe and North America, and we have just launched the first independent brand collaborations – exciting times!

Watch this space and of course try it for yourself here: giftswipe.cadouu.com

To find out more about partnering with Cadouu please contact Nora directly here or use the SID 3473554 in the Advertiser Dashboard.

Publisher Spotlight: By Discount Codes

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By Discount Codes is a fast-growing savings hub providing consumers with discount codes for over 1,500 brands. We caught up with the marketing team from By Discount Codes to find out more about their platform and how they can add value to advertisers:

Can you tell us a bit more about By Discount Codes and how the platform works?

By Discount Codes was developed in order to take the stress out of shopping. We understand that consumers are often on the hunt for products and services that offer the most value for money – often having to compromise on the quality or pay a premium. In order to solve this problem, we developed a platform to allow consumers to access discount codes from more than 1,500 brands in order to buy the products they love at discounted prices. The site is also supported by a money saving blog, with content written by industry experts.

What makes you different to other vouchers sites?

By Discount Codes is not just limited to providing voucher codes. Our founders believed that there was a gap in the market for an online space where consumers can access content to help them save money and shop confidently. Therefore, our site includes detailed information on the brands we are working with such as policies, company information, shopping tips and style guides, so the consumer has everything they need in one place to make an informed purchase. Our vision is to become a digital encyclopaedia for shoppers in order to save time and money.

How can you partner with advertisers and what value does By Discount Codes provide?

We analyse our customers’ behaviour in order to provide advertisers with a strategic brand strategy to increase traffic to their website and help them to promote their products and services. To find out more, please contact us via the online form on our website.

Do you have any recent case studies of your success working with advertisers?

Aside from providing discount codes to consumers, we are continuously looking for ways to help our advertisers with their business. Through SEO and social media, we work to ensure their products and services are reaching the right target audience. We’ve recently been working with BuyAGift and helping them to reach their target audience through exclusive codes with No.1 Lounges and 7Liverpool. We also create dedicated banners to increase brand awareness of the brand and our discount codes.

What is in store for By Discount Codes in 2018 and beyond?

We are a customer-centric company and our prime objective is to make shopping easy, stress-free and cost-effective for consumers. Our aim is to add 5000 more advertisers to our platform with voucher codes updated on a daily basis to improve the user experience. Alongside our content hub, this will help provide the best possible shopping experience for our users.

If you’d like to find out more about By Discount Codes, please contact their marketing team at affiliate@bydiscountcodes.co.uk.

 

Defining Consent in a Post-GDPR World and Why You Should Use It

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GDPR

Please note: The information and opinions within this content are for information purposes only. They are not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice, and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances.

As marketers all know, GDPR is changing the game when it comes to the collection and use of end user data from EU consumers. We’ve collected some insights from our compliance and legal team at Rakuten Marketing to help increase awareness and knowledge behind the purpose of GDPR and how best to move forward with gaining and processing EU consumer data.

1. Why the GDPR was created

To start off, it’s important to remember why the GDPR was created in the first place. That way organisations can align themselves with the goals and standards of the regulation. As stated in our Introduction to the GDPR post, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission implemented this regulation with the intention to give consumers more control and visibility of how their personal data is collected and used.

On May 25, 2018, the GDPR goes into effect and all organisations worldwide collecting and processing personal data from EU consumers must be in compliance. To put it simply, the GDPR is set to increase transparency between companies and the consumers they’re collecting data from. Through GDPR, industry leaders can advocate for a consistent consumer experience and improve consumer sentiments about online advertising.

2. Why choose consent

For a business to collect and process personal data on an EU consumer, it must be based on either consent, contract, legitimate interest, or legal obligation/public interest. We at Rakuten Marketing recommend that publishers and advertisers gain consent for two reasons:

  1. It will give advertisers and publishers deeper insights into the user-journey and customer behaviour.
  2. To prepare for future EU legislation which is likely to mean that legitimate interest will not be a viable option from 2019 onwards.

As a marketer, it’s essential to remember what the purpose of marketing is all about…the consumer. Consumers want ads that are relevant to them, whether they realise it completely or not. According to a Zogby Analytics survey, American consumers assign a value of about $1,200 per year to the assortment of services that advertising gives them. This demonstrates that consumers really do value advertising. In addition, our Save the Web data has revealed that they prefer it to be personalised to their interests and needs (65% of surveyed global consumers stated so).

By tailoring ads to consumer interests and needs, ads can be created that are beneficial and align with consumer values and desires rather than delivering ads that are irrelevant, which will increase the overall consumer online experience. A step in being able to create these kinds of ads is through consumers consenting to have their data processed. The data gained through consent enables richer, deeper data than what would be collected just through legitimate interest. With this fuller data, you can bring value to a consumer through advertising that is tailored and beneficial, just as our insights have shown consumers prefer it to be. Consent also allows publishers and brands to leverage data to customise and personalise the shopping experience for their customers. Furthermore, most brands and publishers don’t solely operate in an affiliate channel, but rather leverage a multi-channel approach (display, video, social) for monetisation of their sites. Having a unified approach allows the consumer to have a more seamless experience. Improved experiences will result in higher performances for advertisers, publishers and brands.

3. A more transparent “consent”

Pre-GDPR, the inconsistent interpretation of “consent” has made it possible for advertisers and publishers to create what is known as an “ambiguous cookie banner.” Some examples of the ambiguity behind these cookie banners are:

  • Banners being buried out of sight from a consumer (bottom of the page)
  • Banners containing font sizes and/or colouring that makes it difficult for consumers to read (grey background, black font)
  • Consent being completely implied – meaning as soon as a consumer lands on the website, before ever doing anything, the company would already be collecting the consumer’s data
  • Furthermore, notice of this collection of data wouldn’t be made knowledgeable to the consumer until after the fact, in the form of one of the above examples of an ambiguous cookie banner

All of these factors contribute to an ambiguous form of consent that will be eliminated post-GDPR. In giving consumers more control and transparency of their data, the GDPR will redefine what is required to get consent. Businesses will now need to gain clear and comprehensive, unambiguous consent from a consumer before processing any data, and this “unambiguous consent” will be defined by Article 4(11) GDPR, which states:

“’consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.”

In other words, the GDPR will end the ambiguity of what gaining consent has entailed by requiring banners to be clearly viewable and requiring a consumer to undoubtedly signify their agreement to have their data processed. Although some interpret this new law to be “the end of cookies as we know it,” what it really means is requiring businesses to take a more sophisticated approach in gaining and processing data than what has been happening in the past.

4. The Rakuten Marketing Commitment

As stated previously, we at Rakuten Marketing are recommending that our publishers and advertisers gain consent. However, we are also differentiating ourselves by using a consistent methodology across all channels. By doing this, we are committed to creating connected and consistent consumer experiences when moving from one channel to the next. This consistent collection methodology will enable us to gain quality data and deliver relevant and helpful ads that give consumers positive experiences with brands and their advertisements or placements. This dedication will result in higher performance for our advertisers and publishers.