A healthy identity ecosystem that works for buyers and sellers needs both consistency and transparency. Easier said than done, and balancing both takes an immense amount of collaboration to make happen.
“We need to support flexibility and standardization at the same time,” explained FreeWheel’s Larry Allen, alongside a panel of data and technology luminaries across publishers and data partners, including Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Porter, TransUnion’s Brad Danaher, Paramount’s Travis Scoles and Experian’s Chris Feo. Read on for more of the conversation moderated by OpenAP’s Ed Davis.
A well-oiled machine is not built overnight, and several steps are required before we will collectively consider the audience identity and data problem conquered. But the first step is leaning in and collaborating on making the needed connections and standards that allow data to flow. “There’s a technology problem and a data problem. The technology problem is about making all these connections. We’re a big believer in initiatives like this, in connecting partners who put the pipes in place,” said Danaher. That tech piece has to come before the data problem, he explained.
“Open Identity…allows us all to work together and agree on the protocol for any particular brand. I believe in what we are doing here with OpenAP because it creates those standards for how we map to households.” - David Porter
Collaborating on the standards and processes, “the pipes” as they were often described among our panelists, allows for the flexibility that is crucial to success in an ideal identity ecosystem. “Our ethos for the past five plus years is ‘how can we normalize data and standardize the signal that we have so that our customers and our partners can build product and services on top of it?’” explained Feo.
“Ultimately the people who have the money will always have the control. Control belongs with the buyside.” - Travis Scoles
Not only does more consistency and transparency benefit the advanced advertising industry as a whole–including the data providers and publishers represented on the panel–it is a specific ask of the buyside. The need for marketers to have a better understanding of audiences, including if and where they are being reached, is the catalyst for this effort that is changing the video advertising ecosystem for good. “When we think about how we move into the future and how we define our investment strategy, it’s not about defining for our buyers what their audience is, it’s about having the most amount of information on our side so when they want to define the audience on their terms and in our environment, we can support that at the best scale with the most fidelity possible,” stated Scoles.