How Czech Publisher Exchange is creating the standard for ad targeting in the Czech online market

As publishers across the world continue to test and operationalize new standards for ad targeting and identity, Magnite is providing the programmatic infrastructure, tools and technology to deliver those. Online media specialist Czech Publisher Exchange (CPEx) is leading the way for the delivery of such standards in the Czech market, supported by Magnite, so we spoke to CPEx Managing Director, Lukas Smol, to find out more.

Tell us about the Czech Publisher Exchange

The Czech Publisher Exchange (CPEx) is an association of leading Czech online media houses that includes CPEx members such as Mafra, Vltava Labe Media, Economia, Czech News Center, and CPEx network partners that provide further scale. As a result, we serve approximately 85% of Czech internet users across many of the largest publishers with ads from leading brands, leveraging RTB technology to serve relevant ads across multiple verticals through multiple channels including in-stream and out-stream video.

According to Statista, the Czech digital ad spend was approximately $1.3bn in 2022 – with over 80% being spent programmatically – and will grow to just over $2bn by 2027.

How is CPEx working with Magnite?

We’ve been working with Magnite for almost 10 years as one of our closest and most important technological collaborators. Magnite is deployed across all our media via various types of integration, helping us monetize both banners and video ad inventory. In the past 2 years we’ve also started using Magnite’s Demand Manager product with some of our top publishers.

More recently Magnite supported us on the continued roll out of our unique deterministic ID solution – the Czech Ad ID.

What is the Czech ID, why has it been such a key development, and how have Magnite been supporting the initiative?

In an effort to create a standard for ad targeting and identity on the Czech online market, Czech Ad ID was created as a joint project of CPEx and Czech-based web platform Seznam.cz, supported by Magnite and others. It is a safe, stable and privacy friendly deterministic ID that allows cross-domain and cross-device identification of logged-in users.

In April and May 2022, we at CPEx together with Media Group MAFRA, agency GroupM and technology providers Adform and Magnite carried out the first production test of Czech Ad ID on the domestic market. 

The goal of the test was to evaluate the usefulness of Czech Ad ID in a cookieless environment. For that purpose, we set up two sets of campaigns in Magnite and Adform targeted at Safari and Firefox browsers, which are essentially without 3rd party cookies. Both campaigns targeted identifiable users and had identical settings in terms of ad formats, domains, price floors, budgets and frequency. The only difference between them was that Campaign A received Czech Ad ID as an identifier in the bidstream, whereas Campaign B did not.

The test proved a range of positive impacts of the Czech ID including 3.7 times as many paid impressions (vs no Czech ID), an approximate 80 times increase in bid response rate, and nearly 47 times higher render rates. Download the full case study showcasing these positive impacts here.

Looking towards 2023, what does CPEx see as the key challenges and opportunities and how will Magnite help solve these?

The main goal for us is to finalize preparations for the deprecation of 3rd party cookies. We plan to further increase the scale and adoption of Czech Ad ID and also keep leveraging 3rd party probabilistic identity solutions, such as ID5. We also plan to improve tools for contextual targeting and passing of publisher 1st party data at scale (e.g. based on the IAB Seller Defined Audiences standard). In all these areas, we see Magnite as an irreplaceable collaborator.