Category: In the News

At the beginning of 2021, Digiday asked 116 publishers to identify all the ways they were preparing for the end of third-party cookies by selecting from a list. Digiday asked its panel the same question again in July 2021 and got 126 responses. 

While the respondents — and the exact number of them — in each sample was not identical over time, their composition was similar; in both samples, Digiday received at least 30 responses from publishers that generated less than $10 million in revenue per year, 30 responses from publishers that generated between $10 million and $50 million, and 30 responses from publishers that generate more than $50 million per year. 



On the whole, publishers appear to be a lot less worried about the impact that third-party cookie deprecation will have on their businesses. Just six months ago, close to 60% of survey respondents said they were worried about how the end of third-party cookies would affect their ability to target and measure ads, and close to half of respondents said they thought the loss of third-party cookies would hurt their businesses.

The changed timeline may also explain why so many publishers still aren’t actively preparing for the end of third-party cookies. A third of respondents to the third-quarter survey said they weren’t actively preparing for the end of third-party cookies, and that number is close to flat compared to where it was in the first quarter. 

Today, less than half of respondents said they were worried about those things, and many of the tactics that publishers said they were using appear to have been temporarily abandoned. 

In addition to the extended deadline, publishers are also balancing their future plans with their present opportunities. With digital ad spending still rebounding, publishers’ direct ad sales are healthier than they’ve been in a year: The share of publishers that said direct-sold advertising is now at least a “large” portion of their revenues is up 25 percentage points from where it was one year ago. 

And it comes only a month after Omnicom Media Group formally endorsed UID 2.0 in a bid to spur more industry adoption and move the issue of new identifier solutions forward. This news comes after major publishers, including The New York Times, have said they won’t experiment with identity technologies, including UID 2.0.

What exactly is a closed operator? In short, it’s a company that can use UID 2.0 within its own data ecosystem, employing first-party data that never leaves its walls. That sounds a lot like a walled garden, but both The Trade Desk and IPG’s Kumar insist that’s not the case.

Any company signing up as a closed operator is “going to house [UID 2.0] inside their own infrastructure, to generate their own version of it without going outside their walls,” said Bill Michels, general manager of product at The Trade Desk. “The tool will talk back to the main system, so as we make updates it will automatically be refreshed.” 

Added Kumar: “It allows me to tie an identifier to first-party data, and that data doesn’t have to leave my system. In all other cases, you have to take your data and get that ingested into an external system, especially a closed system. But here, I’m not allowing the first-party data to leave my walls.

Kinesso and Axciom clients get a UID identifier, without giving up their own first-party data, which means those clients aren’t “compromising” their own data security, Kumar said.

Part of the growing appeal of UID 2.0 is the universality of participation in its development and management but its ability to get used within the privacy-compliant walls of each company using it. In some ways, UID’s rollout isn’t terribly unlike a car rental company.

Michels explained how its development involves three main participant groups: 

Administrator: the holder of the keys, which ensures users agree to abide by a set of rules. Currently, The Trade Desk is the sole administrator, but Michels said the company is looking to see who else will take on that role. 

Operator: there can be any number of them — IPG is currently its first closed operator. They have a distributed version of the API that allows a UID participant to generate the identifier info. This makes them like a combination of the rental customer and the car being rented.

Compliance management: essentially the police who make sure participants (operators) are abiding by this set of rules, such as not sharing IDs outside their data systems, or joining directly identifiable information with browser behavior. 

“It’s a fabric, everyone can stitch this into any other ID they’re using,” said Michels. “The success of UID 2.0 doesn’t come at the expense of any other third-party identifiers. They can all work together.”

Why then haven’t that many major publishers signed on to UID 2.0 yet? Kumar said he thinks they’ll show up once there’s more demand — and likened the situation to 10 years ago when programmatic was in its infancy and only had access to remnant inventory.

Michels noted that The Trade Desk is focused on signing up publishers in the connected TV space, with AMC Networks, Fubo and Tube already secured. “We think the value exchange between consumer and publisher there is great and explicit, which is why they need” UID, he added.