The identity solution space is fragmented, with around 20 or more solutions with at least some scale in the market.
But only a small handful of those will still be standing within the next five years, according to ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche.
And Roche intends ID5 to be one of them.
On Tuesday, the company announced $20 million in Series B funding, bringing its total to roughly $27 million since 2021.
The round was led by TransUnion and Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4S Ventures, with participation from existing investors, including Progress Ventures, Seventure Partners, 360 Capital Partners, Axio and Aperiam Ventures.
No longer ‘preaching in the desert’
Raising this round was a heck of a lot easier than closing its Series A three years ago, Roche told AdExchanger.
Back then, it was hard enough convincing potential clients and investors to take the problem of signal loss seriously, let alone selling them on the solution.
“It was like preaching in the desert,” Roche said, which was “kind of lonely, actually.”
Now, the market has changed. Although there’s still some heel-dragging in the industry, it’s hard to argue that the end of third-party cookies isn’t finally getting a little real.
And publishers are testing and using more alternative IDs (alternatives to third-party cookies, that is).
According to ID5, nearly 50% of online ad transactions involve an ID5 identifier. Per Sincera, an impartial source, as of earlier this year the ID5 ID was deployed on more than 66,000 websites, which outranked Lotame’s Panorama ID, the Prebid SharedID, Criteo, 33Across and Unified ID 2.0.
These providers are all direct competitors, but they’re also classic ad tech frenemies. Most of their IDs are interoperable with each other.
ID5, for example, has direct partnerships with TransUnion, The Trade Desk and Lotame. TransUnion is even an investor now and getting a spot on ID5’s board.
“We’re not exclusive from each other and there are only so many scaled alternative IDs out there,” Roche said. “The market will only end up with a few – say between three and five – so it makes sense to work together and be on sites together.”
And further consolidation – plus collaboration – in the identity market will spur more publisher adoption.
“The dust is really starting to settle,” Roche said.
ID5’s ambition is to eventually reach around 90% market penetration, which Roche believes is achievable as the company signs new publisher partners in markets outside the US and Europe, including Brazil, Australia and India.
The growth plan
In addition to geographic expansion, ID5 will use the new funding for R&D and engineering – “you can never have enough engineers and data scientists,” Roche said – but also to hire sales and customer support.
“We’re growing fast, but we need to manage growth,” he said, “which means not just finding clients but making sure you can onboard them and deliver services to them.”
The product road map, meanwhile, will focus on solutions that help publishers monetize without cookies – obviously – but there are also other things happening in the world beyond the end of third-party cookies. (Really??)
Identity is an important topic across TV, mobile and audio, for example.
“The digital advertising space is so much broader than just dealing with third-party cookie deprecation,” Roche said.
