In the past, advertising was something of a “hit and hope” process. Advertisers would only be able to put out a single message, and then to broad audiences. With no ability to verify audiences, brands simply had to cross their fingers and hope that the right people happened to be listening, reading, or watching. With digital advertising, however, it has become increasingly possible to find and engage exactly the right audiences with exactly the right content. This is largely thanks to a technical process known as identity resolution.
Once, identity resolution was achieved using invasive tracking cookies. These followed people around the internet, spying on the sites and apps they visited and using this data to build advertising profiles. Today, however, identity resolution is increasingly privacy-first. It must comply with global privacy laws and meet consumer expectations for brands to protect their personal data.
Here, we look at how telco-verified IDs work. These are a particularly innovative approach to identity resolution that promise to improve the performance of campaigns while also embedding privacy at the core of the digital advertising ecosystem. But first, let’s dive into the broader topic of ID resolution.
What is identity resolution?
Identity resolution is the foundation of digital advertising. Real-time identity resolution enables brands to recognise and connect consumer interactions across devices and channels. Bringing together disparate identifiers such as first-party data and privacy-first IDs in a 360-degree view of a user, ID resolution helps advertisers reach the right audiences and retarget returning visitors.
According to analysis from Market Intelo, the adoption of identity resolution solutions is increasing because of the rapid expansion of digital advertising ecosystems and growing consumer demand for personalised marketing. Its analysis suggests that the market for ID resolution solutions will grow from $2.1 billion in 2024 to $7.8 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 15.2%.
How does identity resolution work?
With invasive tracking cookies falling out of favour, a wide range of new solutions have emerged to enable the effective resolution of identity.
One approach is to use highly accurate deterministic data. However, some deterministic datasets lack the scale needed for effective mass targeting, such as publisher specific authentication. Walled gardens use authenticated logins or hashed emails for ID resolution, but do not extend beyond their own domains.
Other approaches to consumer identity resolution involve probabilistic techniques, such as pattern and signal analysis. Because they use statistical models and inferred signals, matches are based on likelihood alone. This increases the risk of false positives or missed connections.
Unified approaches to identity resolution combine both deterministic and probabilistic techniques. Combining the solutions may help alleviate some of their respective limitations, but it does not solve them. What’s needed is a scalable approach on that uses deterministic data alone to enable identity resolution for ad targeting. This is where telco-verified IDs come into play.
Telco-verified IDs: using verified signals to improve match confidence
Telco-verified IDs are an innovative approach to cookieless identity resolution that are privacy-first by design.
Telcos are ideal ID resolution partners. They have trusted relationships with subscribers and are also highly secure, with user data protected behind a heavily defended perimeter. They also have unbeatable visibility. Only telcos can verify an identity across all a subscriber’s connected devices including phones, laptops, set-top boxes, CTVs and smart speakers, and related platforms such as streaming sites. Finally, telcos can enable scale, sitting as they do at the heart of every digital transaction.
When it comes to identity resolution, telcos can use their data to securely verify audiences for content publishers. The starting point is a deterministic, first-party ID that sits on the publisher or brand’s website. Patented adtech technology from Novatiq then matches the consented IDs with obfuscated, deterministic, first-party subscriber information derived from telco networks. The consented publisher and brand IDs are linked for the same user and returned to the specific publisher or brand so they can identify returning users without breaching their privacy.
In effect, the telco joins the dots, verifying users without identifying individuals, and enabling advertisers to build complete and accurate audience profiles.
Powering more effective ID resolution for the open web
Telco-verified IDs offer a highly effective real-time identity resolution solution. They comply with regulatory obligations and user expectations around privacy while offering a completely deterministic, and therefore completely accurate, approach to resolving identities. What’s more, with Novatiq’s platform the solution is interoperable, so brands and publishers can use telco-verified IDs alongside other IDs if they so choose. Technology innovations like these are making ID resolution more effective than ever. That’s good news for brands, publishers, and consumers alike.
