In digital advertising, every new tool promises to be an “easy button.” Too bad there isn’t one for IP address matching.
While APIs help make campaign setup and measurement simpler than ever, the messy reality of IP address matching exposes how shaky the foundations of digital targeting still are.
On this week’s episode of The Big Story, we spotlight API-based self-serve platforms from Roku and Comcast and the Price Discovery and Provisioning API (PDP API) – a deal-enforcing tool developed by The Trade Desk – alongside a new industry study exposing the unreliability of IP addresses for targeting and measurement.
The study, commissioned by CIMM and Go Addressable and conducted by data verification startup Truthset, found that IP-to-email linkages are accurate only 16% of the time, while IP-to-postal matches are at 13%.
There are also big differences in accuracy between providers, proof that the industry needs to get serious about standardization and rethink its scale-obsessed mindset. The incentives are out of whack. Data sets are so messy, in part, because providers are prioritizing quantity over quality to satisfy buyers.
But it is possible to have nice things.
APIs have long been the backbone of software systems, supporting digital advertising’s daily workflows and helping different parts of the ecosystem communicate and share data.
As AdExchanger Associate Editor Victoria McNally puts it: “It’s basically just a way for two different platforms to talk to one another.”
And we need that in ad tech, says Senior Editor James Hercher. More than 90% of deal ID campaigns never achieve scale, because handshake agreements and email threads don’t translate into enforceable, standardized commitments – a gap that TTD’s new PDP API aims to address.
“In programmatic, we think of ourselves as meritocratic [with] data and automation,” Hercher says, “but it’s definitely still just people pulling the levers.”
