Digital advertisers are caught between the complexities of ID-based targeting and the limitations of contextual targeting.

Since the gradual decline of third-party cookies, the alternative ID space has seen a race between various providers working to establish scale dominance. However, despite all their efforts, the root cause issues remain unaddressed: mass consumer opt-outs to tracking and tightening privacy regulations that have limited scale and purpose of alternative identifiers.

Then there’s contextual targeting, which ticks the privacy box but offers only a surface-level view of consumer activities and interests. Vendors have significantly enhanced their contextual offerings with machine learning, but anonymised content consumption patterns still don’t reveal the vital “who” behind the audience.

Neither contextual nor ID-based targeting captures the behaviours, passions, and purchase intent that transform data points into real audience segments brands can connect with authentically. But that doesn’t mean advertisers are out of options.

Rishi Bedi

In the red corner: ID-based targeting

The rapid expansion of the alternative ID market has left digital advertisers overwhelmed as the cookie free-for-all gives way to a fragmented landscape. Unlike third-party cookies (which, for all their flaws, had the benefit of not being “owned” by a single entity) alternative IDs operate in silos, with vendors and platforms prioritising their own proprietary solutions. Advertisers hoping to achieve scale are left juggling multiple solutions at once.

This burdens brands with additional costs and........

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