“Publishers must double down on privacy-first identity solutions.” Tamir Shub of IntentIQ

We spoke to Tamir Shub, VP of business development, IntentIQ, about the importance of privacy-first identity solutions, and the power of first-party data to publishers.

Why is identity so important to the sell side?

Identity is a critical component of publishers’ monetisation strategies and a key input in determining how effectively they can package and sell their inventory. Identity should be precise, accurate, and scalable and, without that, publishers will struggle to provide advertisers with the target audiences they are looking for. With an effective identity solution, there are more available impressions, better segmentation, and increased competition for desirable audiences, all of which drive revenue growth.

What is the role of identity in monetisation efforts?

As mentioned, identity plays a key role in determining how effectively publishers can package and sell their inventory. The better the identity solution, the more advertisers can learn about their potential target audiences and the higher the fill rates and the CPM's. When publishers enrich bid requests with identity signals (ie “bid enhancement”), there is more information available to advertisers and they can bid with more confidence, increasing the value of each impression. Alternative ID’s like Intent IQ’s provide both publishers and, in turn, advertisers, with more visibility into the entirety of the audience, maximising monetisation opportunities even when traditional identifiers are unavailable.

How can publishers use identity to better curate their inventory and maximise yield?

When publishers use more effective identity solutions—and can identify more of their hard to reach audiences—they can create more targeted audience segments and, in turn, drive higher CPMs. With Intent IQ”s alternative ID solution, for example, publishers have more intelligence about their audiences and can build more detailed audience segments; enable cross-device attribution and enhance the availability and desirability of PMP’s—all of which improve yield and monetisation. Additionally, Intent IQ offers publishers the ability to offer audience extensions outside of a publisher’s own properties, curating those audiences for the publisher as well.

How can publishers maintain a competitive edge in an advertising ecosystem increasingly dominated by walled gardens?

Walled gardens (ie Google, Meta, Amazon) present challenges to the open advertising ecosystem given their massive first-party data advantages. However, other publishers can still compete by leveraging independent identity solutions and deploying their first party data to provide better transparency to both the buy and sell sides. By adopting innovative identity solutions, publishers can use first-party data-driven solutions to create more attractive offerings for advertisers and optimise outcomes.

What makes Intent IQ unique in the ad tech industry, and how does our technology help publishers and advertisers succeed in a cookieless world?

IIQ provides effective identity solutions for both the buy and sell sides. It is the only company that has proven that its bid enhancement solutions for publishers also provide advertisers with better campaign performance. While industry reports have suggested that alternative ID’s are not effective, Intent IQ has proven otherwise, sharing case studies of buy side success. 

Intent IQ’s proprietary 4-layer device graph, along with first-party ID clustering technology, provides a unique value proposition with a suite of identity solutions–offering privacy-first identity solutions that enable enhanced addressability for publishers and increased demand from advertisers.

On the sell side, our bid enhancement offerings provide comprehensive and distributed identity technology across devices and platforms. For the buy side, we help advertisers leverage first-party data for more persistent and scalable audience recognition. Our solutions are more precise and accurate because they are updated more frequently and are of higher fidelity–ensuring better matches between publishers and advertisers and driving enhanced performance across the board.

What are the biggest challenges publishers face today when it comes to audience addressability, revenue diversification, and advertiser demand? Tell us a bit more about your success with Fandom.

Publishers are faced with a number of challenges due to increasing privacy regulations and more restricted access to audiences across platforms and devices—resulting in escalating signal loss across the marketplace. Accordingly, publishers must figure out ways to ensure advertisers can still reach their audiences wherever they are. Alternative ID’s help solve this problem by providing another avenue to reach them—delivering scalable and targeted audiences for advertisers while preserving revenue for publishers. Our partnership with Fandom is a great example of how effective identity solutions can be for both the buy and sell sides. Together, we have driven revenue lifts of 55-140% across their suite of sites, notably with the hard-to-reach iOS users contributing 79% of the cookieless audience and driving a 26% increase in CPMs and 58% increase in fill rates.

What challenges are unique to the UK market, and how can publishers adapt to them?

The UK market has even stricter privacy regulations as a result of stringent GDPR enforcement, higher cookieless traffic volumes from Safari and Firefox users, and a growing shift toward mobile and CTV platforms—which include harder to reach audiences. As a result, UK publishers must double down on privacy-first identity solutions that comply with regulations but are still scalable and provide a viable path to monetisation. 

What is your final recommendation or key takeaway for publishers?

I encourage publishers to experiment with various alternative IDs, particularly those prioritising privacy and offering seamless performance measurement. Conducting A/B tests is the most effective approach to evaluate their impact.

When testing an identity solution, publishers should establish clear KPIs and expectations. Key factors to consider include the business model (CPM or revenue share), level of support, integration flexibility, and other critical operational elements.