Three of Australia’s largest digital publishers – Fairfax Media, News Corp Australia and Nine – have come together to explore the creation of what they have called an “anonymised digital identity co-operative”.
The plan would be to offer marketers the chance to more effectively target their audiences at scale across all three publishers using authenticated user IDs. The technology would enable the publishers to track individual users across the day who use different devices.
The three publishers would leverage the combined identity assets of each of these major content publishers, across a combined audience reach of more than 15 million Australians (Nielsen Consumer & MediaView).
Following an initial planning and consultation stage, the new co-operative is hoping to launch in the first half of 2018.
“Fairfax is pleased to be supporting this initiative, which we believe will streamline the way marketers can leverage a depth of quality data from content publishers to maximise results from advertising,” said Chris Janz, Fairfax Media managing director of Australian Metro Publishing.
“Collaboration between publishers aimed at providing advertisers the opportunity to move beyond cookies and target identities just makes sense,” said Nicole Sheffield, News Corp Australia’s chief digital officer. “As Australian content creators it’s incumbent on us more than ever to ensure our audiences, data, content and now identity are being properly harnessed for marketers by Australians.”
“This co-operative will allow Fairfax, News and Nine to deliver addressable advertising to consumers with even greater scale using our combined identity in brand-safe environments,” said Michael Stephenson, Nine’s Chief Sales Officer. “This combination of Australian publishers will offer a real alternative to the global players for our advertisers and agency partners. At present the three parties have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the development and launch of the co-operative in 2018.”
Photo: Chris Janz, Nicole Sheffield and Michael Stephenson at Wednesday’s announcement.