There is a newfound resentment among publishers about ad-tech firms selling data scraped from their websites, packaged into contextual segments that advertisers use to target their audiences.

Although the practice is not new, Adweek reported today that it is sounding the alarm among publishers preparing for the deprecation of third-party cookies, according to several industry sources. The rapid rise of generative AI has also increased publishers' attention to third parties scraping their content.

🍪 It’s The Deprecation of Cookies’ Fault
As the cookiepocalypse nears, site owners are investing in alternative signals like contextual data to monetize their audiences. Consequently, publishers claim that third-party ad-tech firms are violating their intellectual property by packaging and selling this data.

Sources expressed concerns that buyers might choose contextual segments from these firms, rather than publishers' bespoke offerings, at a time when their revenue is already under threat from economic headwinds.

In response, the UK trade body Association of Online Publishers wrote an open letter urging ad buyers to hold ad-tech companies accountable.

🤔 Why Now?
The report noted that publishers are becoming increasingly frustrated with contextual scraping because the practice has only been recently adopted by content-verification companies that were previously seen as allies in the fight against invalid traffic and brand safety threats.

According to Adweek, the Association of Online Publishers has set up meetings with Integral Ad Science to ask whether it would be possible to uncouple the contextual targeting function from its web crawler. The company recently said it would look into re-engineering the product to allow unbundling, but it was unlikely.