Stakeholders across the programmatic advertising ecosystem are busy looking for solutions to solve the problem of third-party cookie deprecation – but the ideal way to replace the third-party piece of the identity pie is far from clear. Publishers worry that without the strong ID resolution that third-party cookies provided, their ability to monetize audiences will be set back. Operating without cookies, or a suitable alternative, means brands and agencies will be flying blind – they won’t know exactly who those audiences are. And targeting against their own data sets will get harder.
But selecting a suitable alternative to the cookie is not without its challenges. More programmatic vendors who promise ID resolution are cropping up, and nobody has the clairvoyance to know which ones will gain traction and be viable for the long haul. As such, much uncertainty exists about which identity partner to choose.
A smart first move for publishers is to select partners that align with their strategies for digital identity resolution and consumer privacy and start experimenting with different vendors, their platforms and ID resolution systems.
Experimentation is a key step in the post-cookie identity resolution path. Solutions like PubMatic’s Identity Hub can help guide publishers and advertisers along the path to the addressable future.
Identity Hub is a turnkey solution with a short set-up cycle – helping publishers easily deploy and use leading independent identity solutions such as those from LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, ID5 and Criteo. PubMatic cuts out the development cycles and makes the contract process easier, meaning publishers can get started simply and quickly.
As publishers experiment with sending new IDs, buyers can start to direct spend their way – promising potential CPM lift for publishers alongside a performance lift for advertisers.
Think of the identity resolution issue as a pie. Slices are being taken away, and we need to find other slices to replace them or publishers and ad buyers will go hungry. There is not a single slice to make up for cookies, but the new tools and identity solutions can help put back some slices, and maybe even fill up the whole pie.
Originally published in Brand Equity
