Adweek investigated the impact of data privacy policies on ad spend with NewtonX

Developments in the privacy landscape, such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, are affecting the efficacy of ad spend on social media platforms. In order to understand how this might benefit publishers, Adweek partnered with NewtonX to survey digital advertising decision-makers and to investigate where they will prioritize ad spend.

The challenge of demystifying the effects of privacy and brand safety concerns on advertising budgets

As users are given more control over their data sharing and privacy options through initiatives such as Apple’s ATT privacy framework, the ability to effectively advertise on social media platforms has become increasingly difficult. With privacy prompts becoming mandated, users have more power than ever before to opt out of targeted and personalized advertising. This in turn means that measurement and attribution of ads on social media platforms is more restricted. The social media giant Meta announced that it expected a $10 billion dollar revenue headwind in 2022 due to Apple’s new privacy options alone. 

Publishers have speculated that these privacy changes would trigger marketers to reallocate some portion of ad spend from platforms to publishers. Adweek wanted to examine these anecdotal insights. To do so, Adweek required reliable data that would validate or debunk speculation that publishing would ultimately benefit from the changing digital landscape. This quality of data would need to be sourced from advertising experts with firsthand knowledge of how agencies and brands plan to allocate digital ad budgets.

NewtonX’s end-to-end research consulting services delivered verified survey results that uncovered future ad spend trends

Knowing that it needed to capture valuable and meaningful insights for its reporting, Adweek chose NewtonX to craft a survey for marketing decision-makers. NewtonX worked closely with Adweek to define the optimal target audiences within the marketing industry, develop questions, and host the survey. In just 5 days, NewtonX leveraged the NewtonX Graph to custom recruit and survey 80 verified agency and brand-side advertisers who decide on digital advertising spend and allocation. 

As part of our end-to-end research consulting services, NewtonX delivered a topline report that took the survey findings and translated them into meaningful insights. Our insights team identified how overall spend will change in the coming year, how budgets will be allocated between platforms and publishers, and how big these shifts in spend may be.

Using NewtonX insights, Adweek shared its findings on the fate of publishers’ share of ad spend with its 2.7M+ readers

Fueled by high-quality survey data from marketing decision-makers, Adweek published an informative article: “As the Platforms Stumble, Some Publishers See Increased Ad Spend.” The article detailed that user privacy changes would perhaps not benefit publishers to the extent they were hoping—at least not yet—but still signals that publishers are gaining a more competitive footing against platforms in the market. Only slightly more ad budget overall is being allocated to platforms in the coming year; this near-flat growth is a noteworthy change from the decade of exponential growth platforms experienced before privacy changes.

By partnering with NewtonX to find the most relevant minds and insights, Adweek was able to report on publishers’ anecdotal insights with concrete, trustworthy data. This quality reporting further cements Adweek’s leadership and reliability in the brand marketing space.  This partnership between Adweek and NewtonX guarantees that Adweek’s readers have access to valuable insights and content backed by verified data.