Brief:
- Verizon Media today introduced an audience identity option that does not depend on third-party cookies to help online marketers improve the targeting of marketing campaigns among various devices. The company’s ConnectID has first-party information for more than 900 million customers worldwide who use its different online properties such as Yahoo, AOL, and TechCrunch, per an announcement.
- Verizon Media captures 200 billion data signals from those customers to produce an identity chart that is deterministic, implying that it’s based upon first-party data. The company collects that info from omnichannel touchpoints that include internet search and its owned-and-operated sites, apps, and email.
- Verizon Media likewise announced numerous partnerships with information providers such as Acxiom, Equifax, Neustar, Throtle, and TransUnion as part of the ConnectID rollout, while Newsweek is utilizing ConnectID for ad targeting on its site. ConnectID is now available in the U.S., Asia-Pacific and chooses Latin American markets, per the statement.
Insight:
Verizon Media’s rollout of ConnectID is another indication of how the digital media industry will address ad targeting as innovation businesses like Google and Apple take actions to restrict audience tracking since of growing customer issues about data personal privacy. Verizon Media has valuable first-party info about the online activities of hundreds of millions of customers who utilize its numerous services. Not just does the business have countless telephone, mobile, broadband, and cable clients, however, it is various digital media channels like AOL and Yahoo have millions of user accounts worldwide. As customers engage with its various services, Verizon Media intends to supply audience targeting on a large scale with ConnectID.
Verizon Media is among a growing variety of businesses that are developing audience identification options that do not require third-party cookies, which are information files that websites put on internet browsers to aid with the retargeting of advertisements. The expansion of such offerings possibly establishes a tough environment for brands as they attempt to browse the brand-new options.
Demand-side platform The Trade Desk developed Unified ID 2.0 to measure audiences among advertising channels consisting of streaming TV, browsers, mobile, audio, TELEVISION apps, and gadgets with a single ID. Information management platform Lotame in October presented Panorama ID, which utilizes deterministic audience data consisting of customer IDs, emails, and publicly readily available web details to track customers, and lets them decide out in real-time amongst every digital touchpoint, according to the company.
The efforts by these companies became more vital after Google in January said it would end assistance for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser by early 2022 unless the media and marketing industries developed other tracking approaches. Google’s web browser is an essential pathway to the web for billions of customers, having an international market share of 68% on a home computer and 61% on mobile gadgets, according to Statcounter.
Apple began obstructing third-party cookies in its Safari internet browser by default this year after giving customers more control of their usage for the previous several years. The business contributed to the pressure to find an alternative tracking technique by announcing it would require app developers to get opt-in approval from its clients to access the Identifier for Marketers (IDFA), a randomized number Apple appoints to each of its devices. The business this year delayed a plan to impose the App Tracking Openness (ATT) feature amidst criticism from advertisers, publishers, and advertisement tech companies. Over half (56%) of online marketers stated they anticipate an unfavorable result from Apple’s privacy modification, per a research study by AppsFlyer.
Facebook, which doesn’t require IDFA to track people who log into its own apps, slammed Apple’s strategy by declaring it would injure smaller sized businesses that utilize IDFA to target customers through its Facebook Audience Network. In response to criticism from a group of 8 civil and human rights companies that wrote an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Prepare about its decision to postpone ATP, the business criticized Facebook for collecting “as much data as possible throughout both first and third party products to develop and monetize in-depth profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to broaden to include more of their products,” 9to5Mac reported.
Since Facebook, Google, and Amazon are among the “walled gardens” that collect huge chests of first-party information about customers, they can offer targeted marketing without the need for third-party cookies or device identifiers. Critics have stated this difference gives them an unreasonable advantage compared with other websites that sell marketing. Without a replacement for third-party cookies, an approximated $32 billion to $39 billion in ad spending will shift from the open web by 2025, the Interactive Marketing Bureau (IAB) anticipated in February.
Verizon Media is providing ConnectID as the business seeks more advertisers and publishers to use its programmatic platforms to buy and offer digital ad placements. The company is promoting its full-stack marketing innovation option with a demand-side platform (DSP) for media purchasers and a sell-side platform (SSP) for material providers like Newsweek that are wanting to maximize the worth of their advertising stocks. The complete stack provides buyers and sellers a single swimming pool to match quotes and deals for enhanced transparency, transactions, and audience insights with no third-party integrations, according to the business.
