23 October 2024
Third-party cookies and device identifiers have historically been pivotal for targeting specific users in digital advertising. However, with the rising privacy concerns, these practices have come under scrutiny, prompting tighter measures to protect user information. Broadcasters and advertisers consequently face huge signal loss and ID fragmentation, creating even more complications in how internet users are identified and targeted with ads.
Long before going cookieless became a hot topic, we wanted to develop an ID management solution that adapts to ID fragmentation and allows monetisation at scale — while protecting user information. That’s where our smart ID Hub comes in.
This is the smart ID Hub
The smart ID Hub tackles the problem of ID fragmentation by leveraging multiple IDs and orchestrating them into levels and hierarchies — rather than simply merging them — allowing the use of both specific identifiers and multiple ID types. This offers broadcasters and publishers maximum flexibility and serves as the backbone for effective monetisation and reporting in a cookieless environment.
Supporting multiple identifiers
Alternative identifiers differ in scale, persistence, cross-site recognition, and quality. These identifiers can come from various sources such as broadcasters and publishers (first-party IDs), smartclip, or third-party vendors. In the case of the latter, publishers can also transfer third-party vendor IDs to be forwarded to DSPs for programmatic monetisation.
To effectively track users across devices, the smart ID Hub organises its supported internal and external identifiers into three distinct levels and processes each ID according to its specific characteristics and intended use cases. The three supported ID levels include:
- Household level: IDs that gather and identify multiple devices within one household.
- User account level: IDs tied to specific user accounts at the broadcaster or publisher level.
- User level: IDs that are connected to individual users, including device-specific IDs.
The household level and the user level can hold multiple Identifiers that are orchestrated by hierarchies. This allows us to manage multiple IDs within the same level. When an ad request contains more than one ID at the same level, the ad server follows the predefined hierarchy to select the highest-ranking ID as the leading ID. The leading ID is then leveraged to enable dedicated features. Broadcasters can customise campaign settings based on ID type, influencing how the ad server behaves. This smart ID orchestration enables frequency intelligence across Connected TV, Addressable TV, and digital advertising, reducing ad waste and improving campaign effectiveness. When it comes to onboarding valuable first-party data assets — whether from publishers themselves or external sources — smartx offers maximum flexibility. Our multiple ID lookup feature allows publishers to seamlessly connect all incoming IDs with their inventories, ensuring efficient data integration.
Introducing the probabilistic ID
The probabilistic ID is an alternative ID generated by smartx to identify users and deliver relevant ads when no other identifiers are available. By nature, probabilistic IDs are not as accurate as deterministic IDs. However, they are privacy safe and come with scale— enabling advertising features such as frequency capping. Probabilistic ID-based frequency capping is key to solving one of the internet’s major sustainability issues — overexposure to the same ads.
ID-based features
Flexible ID management and orchestration enabled by the smart ID Hub are the foundation for enhancing our ID-related products and features such as:
- Frequency Capping
- Forecasting accuracy
- Unique user counting
- Cross-device graph
- Onboarding first-party data
The smart ID Hub offers enhanced user identification options, enabling more effective ad delivery, detailed frequency monitoring, accurate forecasting, comprehensive reporting, flexible data onboarding, and advanced ID-based targeting solutions. While alternative IDs, combined with first-party data will play a major role in delivering relevant ads as users go cookieless, we acknowledge their limitations.
While the smart ID Hub focuses on managing ID fragmentation and leveraging multiple IDs for various ID-related use cases, we recognise the strong demand for innovative contextual targeting solutions that operate entirely without relying on IDs. Our smartx platform enables the flexible ingestion and activation of contextual data, and we also support IAB Seller-Defined Audiences. Additionally, we offer a wide range of privacy-centric products — such as our GDPR Cockpit and Vegan Ads — that not only meet but exceed GDPR and TCF requirements, allowing publishers to monetise their inventories without sharing personal data with downstream partners. This ensures a privacy-safe approach to monetising the growing volume of opt-out inventory.
Want to learn more? Get in touch.
Frank Plähn is the Vice President of Audience Products at smartclip. In his role, he leads the development of cutting-edge privacy and identity-related technology, including the smart ID Hub, contextual targeting solutions, and other privacy-centric products. His work focuses on creating alternative IDs and privacy-first solutions that empower European broadcasters and publishers to maximise revenue, while addressing the ever-evolving needs of advertisers. Since joining smartclip in 2023, Frank has brought more than fifteen years of experience, having previously worked with leading advertising and technology companies like Crossplan and major audio broadcasters such as REGIOCAST.
Frank Plähn
VP Audience Products
