2024 marked a significant year. AI became integral to our workflows, commerce and retail media networks soared, and Google did not deprecate cookies. Amidst these changes, ID bridging emerged as a hot topic, raising questions around identity reliability and transparency, which necessitated industry-wide standards. We believe the latest IAB OpenRTB specifications, produced in conjunction with supply and demand-side partners, set up the advertising industry for more transparent and effective practices.
So, what exactly is ID bridging?
As signals, like third-party cookies, fade, ID bridging emerged as a way for the supply-side to offer addressability to the demand-side. ID bridging is the supply-side practice of connecting the dots between available signals, that were generated in a way that is not the expected default behavior, to understand a user’s identity and communicate it to prospective buyers. It enables the supply-side to extend user identification beyond the scope of one browser or device.
Imagine you visit a popular sports website on your laptop using Chrome. Later, you use the same device to visit the same sports website, but this time, on Safari. By using identity resolution tools, a supply-side partner can infer that both visits are likely from the same user and communicate with them as such.
ID bridging is not inherently a bad thing. However, the practice has sparked debate, as buyers want full transparency into the use of a deterministic identifier versus an inferred one. This complicates measurement and frequency capping for the demand-side. Before OpenRTB 2.6, ID bridging led to misattribution as the demand-side could not attribute ad exposures, which had been served to a bridged ID, to a conversion, which had an ID different from the ad exposure.
OpenRTB 2.6 sets us up for a more transparent future
In 2010, the IAB, along with supply and demand-side partners, formed a consortium known as the Real-Time Bidding Project for companies interested in an open protocol for the automated trading of digital media. The OpenRTB specifications they produced became that protocol, adapting with the evolution of the industry.
The latest evolution, OpenRTB 2.6, sets out standards that strive to ensure transparency in real-time bidding, mandating how the supply-side should use certain fields to more transparently provide data when inferring users’ identities.
What’s new in OpenRTB 2.6?
Here are the technical specifications for the industry to be more transparent when inferring users’ identities:
- Primary ID field: This existing field now can only contain the “buyeruid,” an identifier mutually recognized and agreed upon by both buyer and seller for a given environment. For web environments, the default is a cookie ID, while for app activity, it is a mobile advertising ID (MAID), passed directly from an application downloaded on a device. This approach ensures demand-side partners understand the ID’s source.
- Enhanced identifier (EID) field: The EID field, designated for alternative IDs, now accommodates all other IDs. The EID field now has additional parameters that provide buyers transparency into how the ID was created and sourced, which you can see in the visual below:
Using the above framework, a publisher who wants to send a cross-environment identifier that likely belongs to the same user would declare the ID as “mm=5,” while listing the potential third-party identity resolution partner under the “matcher” field, which the visual below depicts. This additional metadata gives the demand-side the insights they need to evaluate the reliability of each ID.
“These updates to OpenRTB add essential clarity about where user and device IDs come from, helping buyers see exactly how an ID was created and who put it into the bidstream. It’s a big step toward greater transparency and trust in the ecosystem. We’re excited to see companies already adopting these updates and can’t wait to see the industry fully embrace them by 2025.”
Hillary Slattery, Sr. Director, Programmatic, Product Management, IAB Tech Lab
Experian will continue supporting transparency
As authenticated signals decrease due to cookie deprecation and other consumer privacy measures, we will continue to see a rise in inferred identifiers. Experian’s industry-leading Digital Graph has long supported both authenticated and inferred identifiers, providing the ecosystem with connections that are accurate, scalable, and addressable. Experian will continue to support the industry with its identity resolution products and is supportive of the IAB’s efforts to bring transparency to the industry around the usage of identity signals.
Supply and demand-side benefits of adopting the new parameters in OpenRTB 2.6
- Partner collaboration: Clarity between what can be in the Primary ID field versus the EID field provides clear standards and transparency between buyers and sellers.
- Identity resolution: The supply side has an industry-approved way to bring in inferred IDs while the demand side can evaluate these IDs, expanding addressability.
- Reducing risk: With accurate metadata available in the EID field, demand-side partners can evaluate who is doing the match and make informed decisions on whether they want to act on that ID.
Next steps for the supply and demand-sides to consider
For supply-side and demand-side partners looking to utilize OpenRTB 2.6 to its full potential, here are some recommended steps:
For the supply-side:
- Follow IAB Specs and provide feedback: Ensure you understand and are following transparent practices. Ask questions on how to correctly implement the specifications.
- Vet identity partners: Choose partners who deliver the most trusted and accurate identifiers in the market.
- Be proactive: Have conversations with your partners to discuss how you plan to follow the latest specs, which identity partners you work with, and explain how you plan to provide additional signals to help buyers make better decisions.
We are beginning to see SSPs adopt this new protocol, including Sonobi and Yieldmo.
“The OpenRTB 2.6 specifications are a critical step forward in ensuring transparency and trust in programmatic advertising. By aligning with these standards, we empower our partners with the tools needed to navigate a cookieless future and drive measurable results.”
Michael Connolly, CEO, Sonobi
These additions to the OpenRTB protocol further imbue bidding transactions with transparency which will foster greater trust between partners. Moreover, the data now available is not only actionable, but auditable should a problem arise. Buyers can choose, or not, to trust an identifier based on the inserter, the provider and the method used to derive the ID. While debates within the IAB Tech Lab were spirited at times, they ultimately drove a collaborative process that shaped a solution designed to work effectively across the ecosystem.”
Mark McEachran, SVP of Product Management, Yieldmo
For the demand side:
- Evaluation: Use the EID metadata to assess all the IDs in the EID field, looking closely at the identity vendors’ reliability. Select partners who meet high standards of data clarity and accuracy.
- Collaboration: Establish open communication with supply-side partners and tech partners to ensure they follow the best practices in line with OpenRTB 2.6 guidelines and that there’s a shared understanding of the mutually agreed upon identifiers.
- Provide feedback: As OpenRTB 2.6 adoption grows, consistent feedback from demand-side partners will help the IAB refine these standards.
Moving forward with reliable data and data transparency
As the AdTech industry moves toward a cookieless reality, OpenRTB 2.6 signifies a substantial step toward a sustainable, transparent programmatic ecosystem. With proactive adoption by supply- and demand-side partners, the future of programmatic advertising will be driven by trust and transparency.
Experian, our partners, and our clients know the benefits of our Digital Graph and its support of both authenticated and inferred signals. We believe that if the supply-side abides by the OpenRTB 2.6 specifications and the demand-side uses and analyzes this data, the programmatic exchange will operate more fairly and deliver more reach.
Latest posts
Everyone knows that it’s important for businesses to have a clearly defined brand. In the modern world, the personal brand has become just as important, and many professionals are trying to build up their public reputation, expertise and industry authority. In the digital age, there are many different methods and channels you can use to build your personal brand, but some are more efficient than others. According to Forbes Agency Council, here are some of the most effective ways to develop an authentic personal brand.1. Give More Than You Receive Whatever you do, always aim at giving more than you receive. When you build your network, try to bring value to each new person that you meet. When you get featured in some media, see what you can do for them in return. This is the best strategy because actions speak louder than words. People will remember you for what you are, not what your website is. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS 2. Define What You Stand For, Then Align Your Actions Define your mission. What is your purpose? What do you want to accomplish, and what is your key message? Once you have answers to those questions, use that mission as a guiding North Star to consistently reinforce your personal brand every day. This will come across in how you lead, how you interact with employees and peers, how you communicate, and how you give back to the community. - Preethy Vaidyanathan, Tapad 3. Develop A Creative Positioning Statement It’s all about positioning your company. You need to have creative positioning statements about who you are and what your company is doing to benefit its clients. Clients want resolutions to their problems, and that’s where you come to the rescue. It’s either sold or ignored. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO. 4. Speak At An Event Becoming a keynote speaker gives you access to the things you need to elevate your brand: influencer status, large audiences and media profile. But access doesn’t equal attention. While speaking gives you the platform, you need to have something compelling to say. You’ll need a differentiated message, unique presentation style and a great agent to make this strategy successful. - Andrew Au, Intercept Group 5. Focus On A Specific Audience The most effective way to build your personal brand is to create content specifically for a very specific group of people. Create relevant content that details solutions to the unique needs of this audience so that it spreads quickly due to its hyper-relevance. This creates authority and credibility for your personal brand and helps you stand out as being the most relevant expert in your field. - Adam Guild, Placepull 6. Be Ruthlessly Consistent Developing a personal brand requires ruthless consistency in your subject matter and how you present yourself to the world. I go back to the early days of marketing blogs. In those days, some bloggers were all over the map with content. The ones who were consistent with their audience and their goals are the ones who had staying power. They became the authors, speakers and consultants. - Scott Baradell, Idea Grove 7. Follow Through Just like a traditional brand, the quality of your offering helps to build your brand. If you are clear on what you can and cannot deliver and always follow through on your word, your personal brand reputation will precede you and will be lifted by the recommendations of others. - Kieley Taylor, GroupM 8. Build A Solid Reputation “Personal brand” is just a new-age name for reputation. Doing your job exceptionally well, going above and beyond, treating people with respect and kindness, having a point of view—essentially any action that builds a solid professional reputation does the very same for your personal brand. - Jess Cook, TMV Group 9. Define Your Voice Establish your unique voice and personal point of view and stick to it in all you do and all you say. Personal brands must be consistent and have consistency in messaging, attitude and behavior. Express your personal brand through comments on articles, at significant events and important platforms where it can best showcase and support your personal point of view and brand persona. - Pat Fiore, FIORE 10. Create And Share Video Content Video is hard for many people. That’s why it can be your competitive advantage if you do it. Video allows you to be seen, heard and felt emotionally in a way that no other medium can. You may say, “That’s not for me” and that’s fine, but good luck competing with those who embrace it. Barriers to video are so low that building a personal brand without it seems as if you are hiding something. - A. Lee Judge, Content Monsta 11. Share Your Point of View In Everything You Do There are a finite number of topics that make for interesting discussion in our industry, so having a point of view and sharing it through crafted content is vital for building your personal brand. You don’t have to be controversial, necessarily, but considering themes and topics and providing honest commentary that demonstrates experience is the quickest way to build your reputation. - David Harrison, EVINS 12. Stay True To You The most effective way to build your personal brand is to be true to who you are. If you are wildly creative and outgoing, show that in your branding! Don’t hold back in your content; post that crazy Instagram picture that shows the world how you think. If you are conservative, then own that. This passion for who you really are—and what your company really is—authentically shines through. – Katy Boos, Remix Marketing Inc. Contact us today!
OpenAudience™ will provide marketers the ability to easily plan and buy advertising for every digitally addressable consumer across the open web LOS ANGELES, May 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — For the past decade, the most effective way to advertise in digital media has been on Facebook and Google. Marketers in the U.S. now spend two-thirds of all digital ad spend on the "walled gardens", despite the fact that they receive less than 36 percent of total consumer time spent online. According to eMarketer, addressing this massive asymmetry in advertising – where tens of billions of dollars are over allocated to the walled gardens – is the top concern of marketers in 2019. While programmatic technology has become the primary monetization system for the open web, it has lacked the simplicity and efficacy of walled gardens. Today, OpenX is changing that paradigm by bringing true people-based marketing to the open web for the first time with the introduction of OpenAudience. OpenAudience will provide marketers and publishers with an unprecedented, unified level of knowledge about consumer audiences – through a platform built on privacy by design principles that brings the efficiency and efficacy of walled garden advertising to the open web. OpenAudience is powered by a comprehensive proprietary data asset and supplemented by integrated partnerships with recognized leaders in data and identity like LiveRamp, Tapad, a part of Experian, and more. For marketers, OpenAudience will provide the ability to plan and buy people-based marketing campaigns that combine the impact and ease of use of Facebook advertising with the scale of the open web. OpenAudience is currently in active partner testing with multiple marketers in the U.S., including Fortune 500 financial service and consumer personal care companies, along with one of America's largest online entertainment outlets, and will be generally available to the broader market in Q3 of 2019. For publishers, OpenAudience will deliver user-based knowledge that empowers them to value and sell advertising with unparalleled precision. With the ability to automatically place consumers into high-value audience segments drawn from the more than 240M U.S. Monthly Active Users OpenX reaches across the open web, OpenAudience allows publishers to maximize revenue like never before. "OpenAudience is a natural evolution of programmatic advertising, combining the unified knowledge of people-based audiences with the transactional power of programmatic to create a planning, buying and advertising experience that is unlike anything else in the market today," said Todd Parsons, chief product officer at OpenX. "No exchange in the market today has enabled a unified view of publisher audiences," said Travis Clinger, vice president of strategic initiatives, LiveRamp. "Now, OpenX is democratizing identity across all publishers on the open web, helping marketers to plan and buy audiences the way they do inside walled gardens. We are thrilled to be a key component of OpenAudience." "OpenAudience is an ambitious move into people-based marketing, offering marketers an unprecedented walled garden-like experience on the open web," said Chris Feo, senior vice president of global data licensing and strategic partnerships at Tapad. "As a fellow pioneer in the industry, Tapad is proud that OpenX chose to leverage The Tapad Graph™ to allow marketers and publishers in North America access to our leading digital identity resolution insights across devices." For more information, or to request a place in the private testing phase of OpenAudience, visit: http://www.openx.com, or contact your OpenX account representative today. About OpenX Nobody understands the open web better than OpenX. As the world's largest independent advertising exchange, OpenX makes the efficient people-based marketing buying experience of the walled gardens available to all marketers across the open web. OpenX works with more than 30,000 advertisers across every screen and device, reaching nearly one billion consumers – including a quarter billion unique consumers in the US – and processing more than one trillion transactions globally each day. To date, OpenX has helped deliver more than $3 billion in total monetization to publishers. That's the Power of Open™. Contact us today!
Tom Rolph, VP EMEA at Tapad, part of Experian, says that ad-sponsored streaming services can be successful if they can deliver a higher quality viewer experience than other streaming services. Last week, Hulu, the streaming service acquired by Fox and now owned 60 per cent by Disney, announced it will be regularising its ad loads. The streaming service will be bringing ad breaks down to 90 seconds in an effort to deliver a better viewer experience. This is a positive move from Hulu and one which other ad-supported streaming services should follow in order to be successful in a competitive market. Previously ad breaks on Hulu could vary wildly, from 180 seconds to 240 seconds, due to existing deals with its three owners: Disney, Comcast and AT&T. Over in the UK, we haven’t suffered from quite as inconsistent an approach as in the US, but there is still viewer frustration with the ad experience on ITV Hub and All4, where the problem tends to be over exposure of the same ad. Therefore, this move to standardise ad break lengths for streaming platforms is one that should be embraced on both sides of the pond. An important shift in this space will be to limit the number of ads during each show, but have better ad targeting to minimise repetitive advertising and increase the ROI of ad spend. All of which can be accomplished by investing in identity resolution products that can support CTV devices. Last year Ofcom found that in the UK subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon and NOW TV have risen above those to traditional pay TV services. With Netflix and Amazon both ad-free and NOW TV only a limited ad funded model, it’s clear that there is a growing appetite for ad-free viewing models. A fact that is only further supported when you consider the role of the BBC and BBC iPlayer. But the picture isn’t entirely negative for ad-funded models. There is demand for great content on ad-funded services in the UK, with ITV Hub boasting over 1bn requests and 540m hours of TV watched. The ITV Hub mobile app has also been downloaded on over 27m devices across the country – with over 22m people now registered to ITV Hub database, including more than half of Britain’s 16-24 year olds. However, to continue to attract and retain younger viewers, the experience will have to improve. There are several areas where ad-supported streaming providers need to improve in order to remain top players in this space: Ad experienceAs explored above, both volume and repetition of ads can be a turn off for viewers, but with Brits already spending a total of £303.16m every month on TV streaming services, according to Finder.com, there is potential for free, ad-funded models to flourish as people hit a limit on what they are willing to spend. There are already signs of improvement with the ad experience, with ITV just signing a deal with Amobee to allow for addressable ads on ITV Hub, while Sky’s AdSmart technology remains best in class and has now crossed over the pond to be used by Comcast stablemate NBC. Server reliabilityA cursory search finds little evidence of ongoing reliability problems with Netflix, but much evidence of problems with ITV Hub and All4, which are both prone to crashing. To compete with bigger players with massive server farms, server capacity needs to be tackled. This is especially true when it comes to live events, where many people will recall ITV Hub’s famous fails during the World Cup. While even some of the larger players have had similar streaming issues (for example, Amazon’s move into live sports streaming when they had to pull UK streaming of the US Open Tennis due to user complaints), viewing experience should be prioritised as the space gets increasingly competitive. Getting the content rightAmazon and Netflix have huge content budgets, but UK broadcasters remain strong in this regard, Channel 4 has enjoyed viewing figures of 7.5m for the Great British Bake Off, while ITV pulled in 13.7m for I’m A Celebrity. By building on UK-specific content that speaks to UK audiences, ad-supported streaming services can continue to pull in more viewers. Mobile accessMore and more Brits are choosing to watch TV content on their smartphone or tablet, according to UKOM-approved comScore data. In fact, 6.5m adults visited the BBC iPlayer app to watch video on either a smartphone or tablet, edging out Netflix which attracted 5.8m Getting the experience right on mobile, with the option to download content so it can be viewed in areas of low or no signal, is key.If UK ad-supported TV stations can crack these key areas for their Connected TV offering then they will be set up to succeed and offer a true home-grown alternative to the US streaming giants. Full article here. Contact us today!