Marta Herrero – product operation manager at Zeotap in this article talks about how Universal IDs can collaboratively solve the industry challenge of identity resolution in a third party cookieless environment.
Who would have thought being 25 years old was considered over the hill?
Yet the digital ad industry is now 25—and is definitely showing its wrinkles. The foundation on which the industry was built upon is woefully outdated. You’ve guessed it — I’m talking about the cookie.
The industry has evolved on many different fronts. For example, in the early days, Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA) came along as valuable alternatives to CPMs which only measured views. Later, the appearance of viewability as a measure; the sophistication of ad fraud; the introduction of Unique AdID for mobile devices; and many other developments started to reshape the industry.
However, the ecosystem has maintained the same antiquated technology (i.e. the stale cookie) — despite its known inefficiencies.
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Which Cookie Language Do You Speak?
To understand the digital cookie, it’s important to know that cookies can only be read by the domain that sets it in the browser. This inefficiency is perhaps the cookie’s greatest flaw because it requires us to constantly “cookie sync.â€
Imagine a world in which every person speaks a different language. In the real world, of course, there are language differences. I say “hola,†you might say “bonjour,†and she might say “hello.†But extrapolate that to billions of languages unique to each person — and it’s not rocket science that we’d need to create a common language.
This language example perfectly encapsulates the challenge the industry has had with cookies. Each ad tech player defines its success on how many other cookies they can translate into their own cookie— i.e. cookie syncing.
What we need is trafficking collaboration that combines a) different players performing cookie-syncs more efficiently b) reliance on the browser to govern cookie syncing alongside the elimination of unnecessary bandwidth consumption and costs for every single request, and d) the elimination of inaccuracies in finding different devices belonging to the same user.
What Changes Are Coming to Digital Advertising?
As a product operations manager, the main changes I’m seeing across the board are:
- Third-party cookies limitations: Safari and Firefox only allow first-party cookies, and Chrome will do so starting in 2022. These developments mean that the browser cookie has to be written by the domain where the user is browsing from.
- Abundance of Gen Z users: Digital natives are a lot more savvy when it comes to cookies. They are much more critical and are a lot more selective when it comes to giving consent.
- Increased pressure for channels: Publishers bear all the heavy work of cookie-syncing and are much more selective with whom they offer their collaboration to.
- Legal limitations: GDPR and CCPA are forcing the industry to come up with a better, unique and anonymous identification of the user, transforming an industry to become more “consumer-focused†in which the user experience leads the way.
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Pros and Cons of Universal IDs
Universal IDs present an opportunity for the ecosystem to solve an industry challenge by building a unique ID that can be traded across the ecosystem without the need for additional syncing. They represent a personal static, exchangeable, and interoperable identifier for each user, taking into account their multiple devices.
There are quite a few companies that offer their own identifier or universal ID solution. There were not as many in 2019, but Google’s announcement has caused the rise of more solutions from companies like Criteo, DigiTrust, Liveramp, The Trade Desk, and ID5.
The advantages of a unique identifier include:
- Improved web loading: This means reduced latency as the number of pixels required to overcome the limitations of cookies will disappear.
- Longer user identification: Let’s stop talking about active and inactive cookies, which are largely dependent, mere intuitions — or in some cases – how often a cookie was deleted in a browser.
- Multi-device knowledge: Universal IDs work in an omnichannel manner by definition, and will continue adding new channels such as SmartTVs, wearables and smart cars.
- Increase in accuracy and match rates: The previous points together will translate into a much more reliable user identification or match rates. As publishers and tech vendors build on their scale to better recognize the same user across players, campaigns will yield much better results and a greater amount of inventory sold.
The use of a Universal ID also brings challenges such as:
- Implementation: This will require more effort from different departments within an organization. This may hinder efforts to speed up implementation before the cookie gets phased out.
- Getting the influencers on board: It’s not only publishers who need to get the solution up and running —even if they need to spearhead it (so that others follow). Technology platforms such as DSP, SSP, and data providers have to get on board as well to ensure its operability across the ecosystem.
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Are Single Logins Coming Next?
Looking even further into the future, we should talk about single logins. The login remains the gold identity standard— as it is stable over time and works across devices.
A Unique Login in the market would be ideal and would allow the complete adoption of a Universal ID. Of course, this concept would require agreement in the industry across different competitors — never an easy feat.
However, a single login would give better coverage to the idea of Universal IDs while fully focusing on the consumer experience. Of course, it would require user comfort with a single login across all of their devices. Why not harmonize the technology that this Unique Login offers with a neutral company that has no interests other than what’s best for the industry?
The only thing we know for a fact is that these future changes offer us the possibility of building an advertising industry focused on the consumer —created by all parties involved including consumers, publishers, advertisers, and tech platforms. The Universal ID is a great place to start.