As third-party cookies and device IDs get phased out or harder to come by, interoperability between alternative IDs could prevent a fragmented mess of proprietary post-cookie solutions.
That’s the hope, anyway.
On Monday, The Trade Desk (TTD) announced a new data partnership with ID5 that covers two key areas.
First, ID5 is integrating its ID graph of data from European publishers into TTD’s Identity Alliance. Second, European publishers that have partnered with ID5 can now more easily apply EUID to enable targeting of logged-in, consented traffic. EUID is a version of The Trade Desk’s UID2 identifier designed to try and comply with Europe’s GDPR privacy law.
The companies believe this partnership could incentivize wider adoption of cookieless targeting, measurement and attribution, said Mathieu Roche, CEO and co-founder of ID5.
“The difficulty with cookieless is that you need everyone – publishers, technology companies, brands and agencies – aligned to a new currency,” Roche said.
Combined ID graph
The ID5 integration adds increased addressability for European campaigns, given its wide adoption among European publishers, said Steve Martin, TTD’s VP of data partnerships for EMEA and APAC.
Currently, ID5 is integrated with about 35,000 websites in Europe, and, on average, 40% of European bid requests have an ID5 identifier attached, according to the company.
Advertisers will now be able to apply ID5’s identifier to any campaign running through TTD’s demand-side platform by turning on its Identity Alliance feature.
Identity Alliance combines all the various ID graphs that have partnered with TTD – including LiveRamp, Oracle, Tapad, TTD-owned Adbrain, emetriq and ID5 – into a single graph alongside TTD’s UID2 and EUID.
Advertisers can turn on Identity Alliance when they’re setting up their campaigns in The Trade Desk, which charges an additional fee to advertisers using the data enrichment option. It extends cross-device reach into non-addressable environments, such as Safari, Firefox, CTV, mobile apps without device IDs and, eventually Chrome.
The combined ID graph also enables measurement and attribution without the use of third-party cookies, Martin said. And it facilitates more effective retargeting and frequency capping because advertisers can more easily tie impressions to individual devices.
EUID support
In addition to adding ID5 to the Identity Alliance, the partnership also sets the stage for increased adoption of TTD’s EUID in Europe. Any European publisher with an ID5 integration now has the option to use EUID to target consented logged-in users.
Much like UID2, its non-European counterpart, EUID converts email addresses and other data provided by logged-in users into anonymized identifiers that can be targeted programmatically.
That’s important because ID5’s probabilistic ID does not use data from logged-in users to generate its own identifiers, instead using an algorithm that predicts whether signals such as IP address, page URL or web browser are likely to represent a specific device.
Adding EUID allows ID5’s European publisher partners to monetize their consented email traffic in addition to impressions that are not associated with an email login (the latter of which are covered by ID5).
Being able to tie an impression to a specific device makes that impression more valuable, Martin said. Advertisers, in theory, are willing to bid at a higher CPM to win these impressions, which means more revenue for publishers.
Because ad prices on Safari are typically less than half (or even just a third) of CPMs for traffic in environments that support cookies, like Chrome, this integration theoretically gives publishers the chance to generate two to three times more revenue from their cookieless traffic, Roche said.
Next steps
While ID5 and TTD’s integration focuses on the European market, both companies envision that the partnership will likely expand to other markets going forward.
The plan is to lean on this partnership to bring more addressability to emerging media channels such as CTV, gaming and digital audio, although, for now, ID5 is mostly deployed in browsers.
“We’re starting to deploy in TV and mobile apps,” Roche said, “but the footprint is not as strong,” because fewer TV and mobile partners have signed up.
And, in case you were wondering, ID5 is not concerned about increased attention from regulators as a result of partnering with TTD.
“We need more regulatory scrutiny in the industry in general,” Roche said. “I welcome regulatory scrutiny, and I think we’ve done everything we need to be able to pass with flying colors.”
