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European Publishers Council

Facilitator: Phil Eligio

Slides

Minutes (including discussions that were not audio-recorded)

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Transcript

Okay, so thank you everyone for joining the session today.

I'm very, very glad that you're here.

Today's session is a shared space for learning.

I'll be sharing a presentation about The European Publishers Council.

Council's just released position paper, but it's also a time for us as people to ask questions, discuss the findings and give feedback on the work.

I know that it hasn't been provided as pre-reading the paper in its entirety, but there will be information from the presentation today, perhaps that we could discuss during the Q and a session of this, this session here today, in order for this to work I also asked that if we have one person speaking at a time, if you would like to use the raise hand function in zoom, I will try to make sure there is time to, for everyone to contribute through that.

And I, in general, I would last like to ask if questions, if possible, could be saved towards the end where we will have time to, to cover that, following the session, I will also share a link to the PDF version of today's slide deck to help if anyone wants to access that, or you can email me directly at the email address, phil.eligio@epceurope.eu to access that.

Or if you have any other questions that we're not able to address today, discard notes has been mentioned will be covered in the ECP channel.

And yeah, so the rest of the presentation is the presentation and then the Q and a.

So we'll get into it .

Again, Thank you for your time.

And the opportunity is to share this work with you.

Today we're going to be discussing a summary view of the EPC, or the European Publishers Council positioning paper on the future of audience addressability, identity and privacy, and the impact on the digital publishing business.

With this, the EPC and its constituent members welcome the opportunity to engage in a deeper dialogue with the industry around solutions to audience addressability, with the impending retirement of third party cookies, increasing changes in browser technology to enhance user privacy and the shifting nature of understanding audiences across platforms.

Publishers do see the urgent need for comment and action.

We believe that publishers voice must be at the forefront of any major developments in audience addressability.

And today we will be discussing the key findings from the paper.

And yeah, as I said, the paper in its entirety has been made available, as of today.

And it's available the EPC website at epceurope.eu Before I forget, or begin and get into the details of the paper.

I just wanted to take a bit of time to talk about who the EPC is and what it is we do.

So we are a high-level group of Europe's leading media organizations, which are active across news media, television, radio, digital marketplaces, and other categories.

We've run a unique business center sector that is driven by the values of integrity, independence, and press freedom.

Publishers generally, sorry.

Publish produce professionally edited, high quality and high value content, reaching audiences, vast audience audiences, and enriching reader's lives.

And we are dedicated to investing in and to the bring unique content to entertain, inform, question and challenge.

Let me just, sorry.

I've just lost my point here.

Okay.

So on this slide, you will see just a selection of the logos from some of the EPCs members.

Our members represent some of the largest publishing groups across Europe and the world with audiences spanning across many countries and languages.

So a little bit more about the paper.

The reason for being is that it's been formulated to give the publishers a clear and strong voice into this wider discussion around solutions for audience addressability, identity and privacy.

It is also provided as a reference point for publishing just in general, the broader industry, as well as regulatory bodies to help ensure everyone is able to understand, publish your thoughts and needs in the space.

The process involved with our own investigation with members of their EPC, through interviews and questionnaires and other techniques, trying to identify key themes that emerge across the group as, as, as key areas of focus and concern.

And then this process, through this process, this was further refined and then recommendations arrived, have arisen from this process and, and being prioritized for attention.

So, one thing that I did want to stress about this piece of work and this process is that it's predominantly around the implications of the future business models for digital publishers.

So there's a lot of work that, that has existed and exists today.

Talking about a publisher business of today, the focus has been of this work, looking more into the future of business models, as far as we can see.

There is no crystal ball that exists that says, okay, this is what publishers publishing business looks like in five years, but through a summary set of work across the publishers, we've tried to determine, okay, this is the general direction of travel.

And these are the key pieces that need to be considered or addressed.

As we work through solutions in this space.

So, through the process, we did see a number of areas of shared concern.

More details on these areas can be found in the paper, but and overall, there were nine areas that, that are discussed in the in the paper in full.

And I do strongly encourage after the session, looking into the paper and having a read through this in more detail.

And we sent this out as a start of a discussion to go into that further.

So, what I wanted to focus a little bit more on today is a couple of the areas that are relevant to the group, and I think a warrant particular focus.

Now, one of the areas was that there was a need, there is a need for a solution for an effective, fair, transparent, and privacy centric identifier.

This is needed to enable publisher advertising revenue models today, but also to facilitate, diversify publisher business models of the future.

And also to take into account the value of first party data, respecting the user's right to privacy and something that is flexible enough to represent the diversity of publishing businesses today and into the future.

The second area to highlight here is that there needs to be consideration paid to solutions that are overseen by a neutral entity.

That's an entity that does not have a undue influence from dominant platforms and other advertising technology players.

The EPC and its publishers believes that no solution should be advanced that further promotes an unequal distribution of power and influence in the industry towards, in particular, the dominant platforms.

So those are the, those are the, the two key areas.

And I'm sure there's some discussion to be had around that, but across the nine here, the nine areas that we identified, there were some takeaways that I'd like to share with you now, and then we can always have discussion about that today or in the future.

So the first one being that we need to ensure that there are is a viable solution to audience addressability that is agreed upon and adopted from a publisher's perspective, it needs to be something that is simple, transparent, and enables the value drivers that, that are relevant, at least for our industry and our business models.

There needs to be a rigorous protection of user privacy through, through whatever solution or set of of solutions that is developed, that is important to us.

It is something that should include a clear dialogue around privacy, how data is used, and the reason for the use of personal data and advertising.

I touched on this before, but it's very, very important that it is something that must have a neutral and balanced governance structure.

There should be accountability on the use of the data.

So generally speaking, that is important.

What came out of the work is that this also needs to be something that is there to redress monopoly positions of dominant platforms.

And the last point is really something that we encourage is that is regular engagement with publishers.

And we do understand that this is a shared responsibility.

There is a desire to have more feedback and, and discussion with publishers, but it is also incumbent on publishers individually and as a group to make the time and have a more meaningful engagement with the industry as a whole and people who are developing a solution.

So this is us also saying that we, we are here for this discussion.

It's not a sort of dipping in, and then maybe running out of time, our teams are small, but we are making definitely making a, an effort to put this time towards something that we believe is not, not only important for our businesses today, but definitely into the future.

In conclusion, European publishers look forward to continuing a productive discussion with standards groups, regulatory bodies, technology providers, and other interested groups to ensure the long-term viability of the thriving digital publishing ecosystem.

The publishers voice should be one of the primary considerations in any evolution in this space.

And we are available to engage in conversation to drive forward initiatives that ensure that we, there are positive outcomes for publishers and our users.

So with that, I thank you for your time, but the presentation component of our session today, definitely inviting further questions and comment during the Q and a component of today's session.

But if we aren't able to cover that today, or if you think of something that you want, you have as a question or feedback to raise to us all or want to have a further discussion, please do get in touch with us.

That's not actually my correct email address.

It's phil.eligio@epceurope.eu And, and I will be able to follow that up with you in due course.

I also recommend going to the EPC website at epceurope.eu and downloading the full publisher positioning paper today and, and having a read through it.

And we're really, really keen to have that conversation and, and discussion with you in the industry.

So with that, that, that is the end of the presentation component.