If an alternative identifier is present in the bidstream, and no one transacts on it, does it make a sound?
The availability of alt IDs in open auctions has steadily increased, but demand has yet to catch up with supply.
“A lot of DSPs are listening, but not decisioning on the back of open IDs yet,” said Matt Davies, director of solutions consulting at BidSwitch, speaking during an identity-focused virtual event hosted by ID5 last week.
Blame the status quo, yo
Demand is lagging for a few reasons, one of which rhymes with schmookies.
Between 70% and 80% of Chrome web traffic is still cookied, according to BidSwitch’s data, which significantly decreases the urgency to buy on alt IDs. Janky as it may be, the status quo is still chugging along.
“When Google said cookies were going away in Chrome, everyone forgot about everything else,” said Jamie Penkethman, head of identity, data and measurement product marketing at Equativ.
Publishers, advertisers and their partners, meanwhile, associated alternative IDs with the amorphous future, something to deal with at some later point.
“And that is absolutely the wrong way of thinking,” Penkethman said.
ID Par-tee
Nevertheless, alternative ID adoption has continued apace.
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Universal ID coverage has “grown quite substantially” in bid requests, Davies said, citing BidSwitch data from January.
Between 35% and 40% of web traffic across Chrome, Safari and Firefox in open auctions has an alt ID associated with it, and some bid requests contain multiple IDs – which is a good thing, said Lisa Abousaleh, VP of publisher and distribution partnerships at ID5.
ID5 obviously has a vested interest in pushing adoption of its own ID5 identifier. But when the economy thrives, everyone benefits.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about maximizing addressability, right?” Abousaleh said.
And it’s not as if we’ll end up with “just one ID to rule them all,” Davies said, or with a single replacement for third-party cookies.
Different IDs are valuable for different reasons. One might have more scale in a certain browser, for example, while another may have less volume but a niche channel focus.
“A lot of people are, like, ‘Which ID should I use? Which one should I choose?’” Penkethman said. “But it’s not about choosing one; it’s about finding ways to use all of them in conjunction with cookies.”
Not that any of this matters unless buyers and sellers experiment with alternative solutions pronto.
“Start testing now,” Abousaleh said. “Don’t wait for cookies to completely go away.”
🙏 Thanks for reading! I’m flying to Florida next week to visit my mother and here’s hoping I get to sit next to this little guy on the plane. As always, feel free to drop me a line at allison@adexchanger.com with any comments or feedback.
