The New York Times says it won’t use identity tech like Unified ID 2.0

By Kate Kaye

As other publishers kick the tires on identity technologies designed to replace third-party cookies, The New York Times is ruling them out. In a conversation with Digiday, the publisher’s svp of products Allison Murphy said the publication does not plan to use identity technologies, including Unified ID 2.0, an industry-wide, open-source tool in development.

“We’re going to see things like Unified ID 2.0 try to gain traction, but I’m not sure how successful they’ll be and they are not a priority for us right now,” said Murphy, who described The Times as a “subscription-first publication” that is not interested in cookie-replacing tech. She added, “We don’t look favorably on solutions that in the end are still about a lot of data transfer about individuals’ online behavior in ways they don’t understand.”

Now that third-party cookies are becoming extinct, companies including The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, BritePool and large data consultancies and brokers including Epsilon and Neustar offer these so-called alternate identifiers, some of which use email addresses or other personal information to create encrypted identity signals that can be used to track people across the web and target and measure advertising in programmatic ad systems. While suppliers of these technologies suggest they are built using data generated with people’s consent, others question those “privacy-first” claims.

The Times has options for generating revenue other publishers can only dream of. With its foundation of 7.5 million digital and print subscribers, it has a wealth of first-party data derived from direct connections with those people. In addition to pursuing ad offerings that take advantage of that first-party data such as through ads sold directly to advertisers rather than through exchange intermediaries, Murphy said the publisher is interested in exploring more contextual ad targeting offerings.

Risky for The Times

When Scott Bender, global head of client strategy at digital consultancy Prohaska Consulting heard that The New York Times does not plan to use alternate identifiers, he told Digiday, “I was caught off guard, I was surprised.” Indeed, The Washington Post — another large news publisher with a strong subscriber base compared to most other newspaper publishers — has publicly committed to implementing Unified ID 2.0, otherwise known as UID 2.0.

“We are integrating UID 2.0,” Jarrod Dicker, VP of commercial technology for The Post and its ad tech arm Zeus, told Digiday in March. “We’re interested in being early and being able to drive the conversation around [alternate identity technologies including UID 2.0],” he said at the time, adding, “but we’re also not endorsing particular solutions.”

A flat-out “no” to alternate IDs could be risky for The Times, said Bender, who generally supports publishers testing such technologies. Despite the publisher’s relatively large subscriber base and other first-party data, The Times may not be able to charge as much money for ad impressions that are not tied to an identity, he said. Additionally, if a significant segment of The Times’ audience consists of people who are neither subscribers nor registered users, then not …read more

Source:: Digiday