Programmatic Advertising: Google's Data Is Even More Free Than Free! 💵💵
What if a free audience segment could do more than save you a data fee? What if it could actually help you buy media more cheaply? 🤨 That's the intriguing advantage I see in Google's audience targeting.
Google's audience data: the mystery goes deeper
A little while ago, we published an investigation with Open Garden into the remarkable capabilities of Google's audience segments. We were trying to understand the ingredients behind Google's targeting recipe. 🪄
But there was one important point we had underestimated. Google's audience data is not just available without a separate segment fee. Under certain buying conditions, it may also help reduce the media cost of reaching an audience.
The three ways audience targeting can inflate a CPM
When a Media Trader activates a third-party audience segment, there are three different cost effects to consider.
1. The data fee 🏷️
The most obvious is the direct price of the segment. If a data provider charges €0.80 CPM, that cost sits alongside the media buying cost (the exact billing and reporting treatment depends on the platform and agreement).
2. Pacing pressure ⏱️
The smaller and harder-to-find an audience is, the fewer eligible impressions the DSP can bid on. If the campaign must still spend its budget and deliver on time, its algorithm may need to bid more aggressively for those scarce opportunities. That can push the media CPM up (although the outcome also depends on auctions, bidding strategy and supply).
3. Cookie-dependent reach 🍪
Many third-party marketplace segments have historically relied on cookie identifiers. That can exclude impressions in browsers where those identifiers are unavailable, reducing the eligible supply. In our observations, cookieless inventory can sometimes be substantially cheaper — around half the price in the comparison discussed here (not a universal market benchmark).
The key point is that a segment's sticker price is not its entire economic cost. It can also change which impressions the DSP can buy and how aggressively it must bid.
How Google's segments appear to soften all three costs
Google's own audience segments in DV360 have three striking characteristics:
- Data price: many Google-provided audience segments carry no separately charged data CPM — effectively €0.00 in the context described here.
- Audience elasticity: their scale and the way Google models audience membership may help maintain delivery without forcing the same degree of pacing-driven bid inflation. See our earlier discussion of audience elasticity.
- Cookieless delivery: Google audience targeting can reach eligible impressions in environments without conventional third-party cookies. Media Traders can investigate this by breaking down DV360 delivery by browser (delivery does not, on its own, reveal which identity or modelling signals were used).
That is why I describe Google's data as “even more free than free”: removing the explicit fee is only one part of the potential advantage.
The real comparison is total campaign cost, not just data CPM
| Cost dimension | Conventional cookie-based third-party segment | Google audience segment (in the scenario discussed) |
|---|---|---|
| Direct segment fee | Can include a data CPM (e.g. €0.80) | May be €0.00 |
| Audience scale and pacing | Small reach may intensify bidding pressure | Broad or elastic reach may ease pressure |
| Cookieless supply | Can be restricted if cookie-dependent | Can deliver in additional eligible browser environments |
| Overall outcome | Depends on data value, match rate and auctions | Potentially cheaper, but not guaranteed |
These are mechanisms to investigate, not a controlled test proving that Google always produces lower CPMs or better business outcomes. A paid segment can still be worth every cent if it delivers genuinely incremental results.
An uneven playing field for publishers and independent data providers?
Imagine being a French Open Web publisher trying to monetise your first-party audience data. You have to fund data collection, consent management, segmentation and commercial distribution. Meanwhile, a buyer can activate certain Google segments without an explicit data charge and potentially with broader addressable reach.
That's a tough competitive proposition. The question is not whether publishers' data has value — it absolutely can. It is whether they can package and distribute that value with enough scale, addressability and efficiency to compete.
For more context, read our analysis of where Google gets its audience data and how value is shared across programmatic advertising.
Three ways the Open Web could narrow the gap
1. Reconsider segment pricing 🏷️
Not every data provider can afford to price segments at €0.00. But more competitive data CPMs — judged against measurable incremental value — can make independent audiences easier to activate.
2. Build more elastic audiences ⏱️
Publishers and data providers could develop intelligent expansion mechanisms that preserve relevance while increasing eligible reach. The bigger the footprint — through a DSP integration or a publisher alliance, for example — the greater the potential to ease pacing pressure (provided expansion quality is monitored).
3. Make audiences usable beyond third-party cookies 🍪
Distributing segments directly into DSPs could improve compatibility with Open Auction buying and supported alternative IDs such as First-ID, Utiq, ID5 and LiveRamp. Actual activation depends on each DSP, identity integration and the applicable consent or other lawful basis; cookieless does not automatically mean consentless.
The ambition should be straightforward: make quality French publisher data as easy to buy, measure and optimise as possible, without surrendering the value it creates.
GreyFox Ads: defending the value of the quality French Open Web
At GreyFox Ads, we believe quality Open Web inventory can deliver genuine effectiveness for advertisers. Our programmatic Master Deals aim to simplify activation for Media Traders while filtering supply and prioritising quality inventory.
We also provide curation consultancy to help programmatic sales houses and trading desks address these challenges.
Want to make your programmatic audience buying more effective?
Let's discuss data costs, cookieless reach, quality French publisher inventory and transparent programmatic curation.
Further reading: Our Open Garden investigation · Google audience elasticity.
Original LinkedIn post: Read the original GreyFox Ads post.