Guardian Light: getting ads to audiences that others can’t reach

Access all? Customise? Reject all? Consent options for cookie banners have become more complex since GDPR came into effect in 2018. For the most part, these pop ups give you two or three options, including a route to “reject all”. Until recently, any user who rejected all on the Guardian would not see digital display advertising.

With a rise in the number of people using ad blockers, and legislation pushing product development towards giving privacy and control back to users, research suggests that the number of people who choose to “reject all” now runs at 30% of consumers on the open web.

The Guardian relies on advertising, in part, to fund our journalism, so it is essential that we can run campaigns that reach the biggest audience possible on our site. Over the past year we have tested a brand new ad solution called Guardian Light. The first ad solution of its kind to be launched by a publisher in the UK, Guardian Light uses technology from Opt Out Advertising to deliver ads to readers without using third party or first party cookies, tracking or auction technology.

With Guardian Light, we now have the ability to serve ads without the need for cookies or personalised ad consent, meaning that brands can now reach privacy-aware users for the first time in years.

For example, with this new product we can now serve an ad for a food brand alongside our recipes section or deliver a premium takeover featuring native high-impact formats. Guardian Light means we can show the right ad to the right reader - even if they have “rejected all”, and without needing any personal information about the reader.

Guardian Light can be combined with other Guardian Advertising solutions to deliver a holistic campaign that reaches all audiences engaged with Guardian journalism. While other news brands and walled gardens struggle to serve advertising to those who reject all, Guardian Light enables the Guardian to increase its addressable audience of engaged readers across the globe with a premium, cookieless ad solution.

The way online advertising is delivered is changing. At the Guardian we want to embrace that change with new technologies that respect our readers’ choices, deliver a great user experience, while putting the very best ad creatives next to our award-winning journalism. And crucially, do so in a way that delivers on our advertisers’ objectives. Early test results show that Guardian Light delivers excellent viewability scores and click through rates.

If you’d like to find out more about how Guardian Light can fit into your media plan, get in touch at advertising.enquiries@theguardian.com.