Media Briefing: Why universal ID maintenance is becoming ‘a big consideration’ among publishers

By Tim Peterson

This week’s Media Briefing looks at how publishers are sorting out the maintenance required to support cookie-replacing universal IDs — and to avoid the revenue losses and privacy penalties they risk with faulty connections.

ID upkeep
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ID upkeep

The key hits:

Universal IDs are subject to technical issues inhibiting the passing of consent signals needed for publishers to use people’s email addresses in order to serve targeted ads.
The issues can cause publishers to leave revenue on the table or expose them to privacy violations.
Some ad tech firms provide tools for publishers to monitor universal IDs’ performance.
But, the necessity and urgency of any maintenance is a factor in publishers’ willingness to support the cookie alternatives.

As publishers assess which universal IDs to support, their primary concern is which cookie-replacing identifiers advertisers plan to adopt. But another consideration is the maintenance work required to ensure these IDs are functioning properly on their sites so that publishers don’t risk sacrificing revenue or running afoul of privacy regulators.

“In order for any of this to work, having that maintenance be at the forefront is really crucial. There is no ‘set it and forget it’ mentality,” said Kate Calabrese, svp of media solutions at Penske Media Corp.’s SHE Media.

Cents and sensitivities

Salon experienced firsthand the upkeep that universal IDs require when it recently observed an issue with its implementation of ID5’s universal ID. “For much of August, we had not been passing the consent signal to them in time and straight up were not getting the value of the integration,” said Salon chief revenue officer Justin Wohl.

As with other technologies powering publishers’ sites, the technology around universal IDs can be delicate. “From a technical perspective, they’re all very sensitive,” said Brett Goverman, associate vp of data strategy at PMC. Minor tweaks made to seemingly unrelated code on a publisher’s site can inhibit a publisher passing to an ID provider the consent signals that state whether a site visitor has or has not given the publisher permission to use their personal information, such as their email address, for purposes such as targeting them with ads.

“It’s all connected. You never know what you’re going to break,” said Scott Messer, svp of media at Leaf Group. “Some of it is explicit, and some of it is waiting for this other thing now or something fired too early or fired too late. It’s just one thing that adds to the complexity of what we’re doing.”

This is not necessarily a minor imposition.

Like a leaky pipe in a person’s home, when left unattended the issue can drain a publisher of advertising revenue if consent is not acknowledged and lucrative targeted ads cannot be served. Even worse, a flood of consent signals mistakenly marked affirmative could alarm privacy watchers and alert regulators, such as the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s …read more

Source:: Digiday