Cookieless user identity solution

A brief trailer

of our client’s quest to refresh ad canons

Starring ad vendor

The protagonist is a major ad startup vendor, focusing on leveraging the AI and data-driven approach to help a brand’s voice stand out from the competition and increase audience reach and ads’ relevance, which becomes notably challenging with the phase-out of cookies.

Featuring partners

So, who are the interested AdTech parties?
The company organizes and optimizes mutually profitable collaborations between premium publishers and brands across diverse industries.

Special effects

The distinctive edge for squeezing the full potential of advertising budgets will come from leveraging rich media.

Our client’s hypothesis is that the strategic use of rich media ads, replete with advanced features such as animation and interactivity, is pivotal in setting brands apart and meeting customer expectations for both informative and visually captivating ads.

This, in turn, is expected to boost the CPM while maintaining the same level of eCPA.

Applause after the credits from all parties

Everyone engaging with rich media ads stands to gain in various ways:

The audience experiences more engaging and interactive ads.
Content owners get comprehensive reports with deep insights into the audience’s behavior, extending to the specific preferences of individual users, thus facilitating the creation of user groups based on shared interests.
Premium publishers generate more revenue from ad inventory spaces.

Rising action: Technical obstacles in the client’s way

Had the client seamlessly executed their vision, this page wouldn’t exist. However, they approached us with two technical challenges they were struggling to solve.

Part 1. Integration into the existing AdTech ecosystem

Our client:

“We understand the publisher’s goal to monetize all ad spaces, but we have quite a selective approach.
We are not inclined to acquire every available impression. Our strategy is focused on discernment rather than sheer volume. Moreover, we are not intending to resell traffic to third-party demand partners. Our emphasis lies in strategic and targeted acquisition, ensuring the quality and relevance of impressions.”

Oxagile’s AdTech specialist:

“Taking into account publishers’ concerns and our client’s goals, we’ve crafted two possible integration scenarios that make sure everyone’s interests are in sync:

Header bidding adapter, with a module that enables access to the global context or per-page contextual signals.
Direct integration through Google Ad Manager, which allows for the execution of directly sold campaigns by specifying the exact quantity or percentage of impressions to be delivered.”

Part 2. Verifying user identity in the cookieless era

With the removal of cookies being a current focal concern within the AdTech community, Oxagile has already started implementing solutions that help overcome audience addressability and segmentation constraints. Consequently, we found a way to effectively meet our client’s specific requests for:

Determining user identity

The client’s mobile-first strategy calls for cookie-free solutions to grasp user preferences and create personalized interactions.

Maintaining user traceability

Keeping track of users accurately across different sites is essential for making sure targeting efforts stay on point.

Preserving frequency capping

Avoiding bombarding the same users with repetitive advertisements ensures ad visibility but eliminates user fatigue.

The resolution: Cookieless user identity solution filling the users’ data void

Weaving a comprehensive user account from various data threads

Finding an all-encompassing solution that rivals the precision of cookies seems elusive (yet). However, by integrating a set of approaches, much like assembling LEGO pieces, we can form a robust framework for maintaining data integrity and improving user traceability. Minus little toe injuries from spare parts, of course. Here’s how this concept works in practice:

Functioning as a holistic identity solution, it collects information about a user, their anonymized ID, and connections with other users across all available databases.
It consolidates this data, revealing the user’s visited websites, associated tags and keywords, interactions with articles, and potential insights that can be derived.

The crux of this solution revolves around three pivotal principles:

Embracing a cookieless paradigm

Implementing robust anonymization

Adapting seamlessly to scalability demands

Approaches to enhance targeting and bidding mechanisms

Anonymized first-party data

Data that users share with the publisher when they log in, such as their email address, is an accurate and stable foundation for user identification.
Allows providing more targeted and relevant advertisements for logged-in users, who are often considered more valuable due to their engagement and commitment to the platform.
Enables cross-site and cross-device publisher-scoped frequency capping.

Probabilistic identity

Unifies various data points for precise user identification: browser user agent, device IP address, installed fonts, screen resolution, TLS session ID, etc.
Avoids explicit identifiers.
Relies on statistical probabilities and patterns to connect anonymous data with known users exhibiting similar behaviors.

Third-party deterministic identity

Utilizing confirmed identifiers, such as email addresses or phone numbers, that are provided by third-party sources enables publishers to securely recognize users across diverse platforms and environments.
Empowers advertisers and publishers to enhance the precision of targeting and campaign measurement.

Putting user privacy first and maximizing solution flexibility

“It's crucial to emphasize our solution's adherence to both existing privacy laws and newly established regulations aimed at safeguarding user data. Consequently, our approach primarily involves the utilization of anonymized user data, the integration of hashed emails, and the implementation of a robust privacy-compliant framework.
Furthermore, it's worth underscoring that our solution operates as a versatile toolkit. The accuracy, precision, and effectiveness of our overall matching and prediction system are intricately linked to the number of elements the client incorporates to gather data for the analysis.”

Is it the Grand Finale of the solution yet?

Currently, the user identity solution project is underway, with the focus being on designing a scalable, resilient architecture.

We are also actively working on an additional feature integrated with the solution — a contextual advertising module, capable of analyzing the content and context of a web page.

Here we consider two possible uses of it:

If the publisher already has defined audiences

This tool will empower them to pass contextual parameters (information about the content) to either Google Publisher Tag or Prebid configuration for more precise ad targeting.

If the publisher lacks specified categories

They can take advantage of the tool’s functionality that collects keywords and category meta tags and extracts keywords from URLs, or employ a script that scans pages and, utilizing machine learning algorithms, creates an advanced taxonomy for more effective contextual targeting on a publisher’s website.

As we persist in developing and enhancing the solution, we are observing a genuine interest from publishers in the valuable insights it is set to deliver. And, more importantly, clear indicators demonstrate that the solution will make the removal of cookies nearly unnoticeable for our client in terms of the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.