As the digital advertising business scrambles to create new solutions that are a match for their outgoing cookie-driven equivalents, Exit Bee CEO Pavlos Linos talks contextual, mobile and finding the right micro-moment to start a conversation.

Q: The process of disengaging from third-party cookies is well underway now, with contextual an important part of a lot of brands’ plans. Are you seeing encouraging innovation in cookieless targeting?

A: This is an interesting question because you can approach it from a lot of different angles. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, it makes sense that advertisers are going back to contextual targeting. Somehow they need to find a way to reach their audience.

Right now, I’d say we’re in an experimentation phase where the industry is trying to imagine what the cookieless world is going to be like. Each company, or alliance, is trying to come up with their own way or tech for the post-third-party-cookie era.

We’re seeing different approaches and a trial-and-error cycle. Google, for example, announced Floc and a few months later they moved away from Floc and announced Topics. Overall, I think that we’ll see a lot of different efforts in the next two to three years and at some point, one way will be adopted at a greater scale.

I am bullish on cookieless targeting, because the technology has evolved a lot, and with the help of machine learning and AI, targeting the right users without being creepy seems absolutely do-able.

Q: Any kind of targeting is obviously only as good as the ad you then serve. Is traditional display advertising equal to the task, or do publishers need better formats?

A: Traditional display advertising is definitely underperforming. I believe there are multiple reasons why this is happening and it’s probably leading to a vicious circle. On one hand, you have declining revenues for publishers, which leads to more ads on every page, which then leads to a worse user experience and ad-blocker adoption, which then leads to lower performance that leads back to the declining revenues. Add banner blindness to the above and the situation becomes even worse.

I know it’s easier said than done, but I think publishers should always experiment with different formats and solutions in an effort to find the right balance between monetisation and user experience.

I also think that publishers should educate the audience about the value exchange. Free content comes at a cost and this cost is a few ads on the page. I think the majority of users are ok with a respectful number of ads on the page that do not interrupt them, and do not create a terrible on-site experience.

Q: Where does mobile fit into the broader digital plan for the brands you encounter? Are they using it in evolving ways?

A: Obviously we’re living in a mobile-first world and I think that most advertisers think this way when they’re working on their marketing plans and campaigns. What I see is that a lot of brands are jumping on trends maybe without realising why. We should advertise on TikTok! Why? Because everyone else says so…

My approach has always been to experiment with everything and trust the data. If it makes sense for your business, double down on mobile advertising. If not, that’s still fine. Go where your audience is.

A good example of that is bookings at luxury hotels where 78.5% of their revenue comes from desktop and just 10.2% from mobile. Similarly, the conversion rate on desktop is 1.85% compared to just 0.19% on mobile.

Q: What’s in the pipeline for Exit Bee? You’ve focused on serving ads in the micro-moment when people decide to leave a website. What other micro-moments are there to be explored?

A: Our objective at Exit Bee is to answer the question, “When are you more likely to engage with something that you haven’t planned for?” – because engaging with ads is never something you plan on doing at some point in your day.

Imagine you’re out for lunch with your friends and I’m a stranger that wants to talk to you. Trying to do that while you’re talking to your friends is a very hard task. I’d have to somehow get your attention shifted from your friends to me and then on top of that I’d have to convince you to stop talking to your friends so you can talk to me. What are my chances? Not good…

Now imagine your friends leaving and you staying for a bit to pack your things, etc. I now see that you’re alone, I come and ask you if I could take a couple of minutes of your time to ask you something. What happens at that moment? Your attention is available, I’m not interrupting anything and you’re more likely to respond. This is my opportunity.

So you can think of micro-moments as any time you’re between “journeys”; any time you’re jumping from one thing to another. And that’s what Exit Bee tries to identify. Leaving a website is an obvious micro-moment and the main one we’re using right now, but there are others – like switching tabs or apps, putting your phone down, lifting it up, trying to decide what to read next. There are plenty of micro-moments in all of our lives.

Exit Bee was set up to reimagine advertising. Founded in 2018 in Greece and 2019 in the UK, it was launched to offer an alternative to interruptive banners, pop-ups, and other standard digital display formats.

Using pattern recognition and machine learning, Exit Bee can determine when an individual has come to the end of an online journey and is most likely to be receptive to creative and impactful advertising messages - delivering impactful and contextually relevant display ads in these critical ‘micro-moments’; brief periods of time during which users’ attention becomes available.

Exit Bee display ads have been proven to deliver up to 30 times increased engagement, alongside 100% share of voice and over 85% viewability; offering a versatile, highly effective display ad opportunity for brands, and a new revenue opportunity for publishers.

Clients span sectors across both B2B and B2C markets: from Adobe and Dell, to BMW and VW, Sky and Vodafone, Coca Cola and Red Bull; all focused on delivering powerful campaigns in spontaneous moments between online journeys and revolutionising display advertising, for brands and audiences alike

Also Published in: InPublishing