PILOT First-Party Data Direct-to-Consumer Accelerator Report

Privacy changes affecting digital advertising will have a significant impact on broadcasters. This report, released February 22, 2023, details an industry collaborative, led by PILOT – NAB’s innovation arm – to develop first party data strategies to mitigate broadcasters’ revenue loss and ensure stations can leverage audiences while ensuring privacy protections. The digital advertising industry is moving away from third-party cookies based on changing user expectations and global regulations.

This could create a $2.1 billion loss in annual digital revenue for the broadcast industry. Without question, this is the highest priority for digital leaders at broadcast companies. PILOT has been working with these leaders to mitigate that loss while expanding first-party relationships with listeners and viewers.

An important takeaway is that broadcasters should already be focused on assessing, implementing and leveraging first-party data as a tool for mitigating the loss of third-party data revenue and cultivating an ongoing, direct relationship with viewers, listeners and users. In addition to ensuring appropriate privacy protections and helping to shield against revenue losses, first-party data is far more reliable and usable than third-party data. The recommendation for those who have not yet begun this work is to prioritize it immediately.

PILOT, with support from the Google News Initiative, created an accelerator program focused on direct-to-consumer strategies to help broadcasters leverage audiences that have largely remained anonymous, while also ensuring privacy protections. The program consisted of ongoing broadcaster education and design and testing of broadcast strategies. It was structured to facilitate dialog and share ideas among the broadcast industry. This report is the result of this collaboration. All findings, use cases, examples, learnings and suggestions based on the work and output of the nine participating companies representing business, technology and audience engagement areas.

All information and recommendations contained in this report are from PILOT and the participating broadcasters independent from Google.

The PILOT First-Party Data Direct-to-Consumer Accelerator Report was published on February 22, 2023