The year 2019 is almost upon us. ExchangeWire have invited hundreds of thought leaders to share their thoughts on what next year will hold, across a range of topics. The topic of identity management has been brought to the fore in numerous guises in 2018: from omnichannel marketing, to GDPR, unique IDs, to navigating user identity and measurement through walled gardens. Experts share their views on what will constitute 'identity' in 2019, and whether there will be a surge in the use of first- and second-party data among marketers and publishers.
Reorientation towards single customer identities
"However, businesses with infrequent consumer interactions, but with high value in recognising the consumer, will find this re-orientation hard. This group includes brick-and-mortar retailers, travel companies, and automotive companies. In comparison, those with a high frequency of consumer interactions across digital-only channels will find it much easier. Crucially, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. As a result, we're likely to see brands increasingly turning to third-party data partners to increase customer recognition rates or creating second-party partnerships with likeminded businesses to solve this problem."
Nicholas McCarthy, Senior Vice President of Data Solutions, Merkle EMEA
'Bring Your Own Data'
Shared ID initiatives will overtake the quest for the single ID
"In 2018, the industry realised that Google and Facebook's dominance over digital advertising was based on their ability to identify users. In 2019, the premium publishers and independent ad tech platforms will fight back by adopting shared ID solutions to improve user identification. The continued speed of innovation in the industry (the 2018 Lumascape features hundreds of companies operating in the digital advertising space), the growth of programmatic trading, and the development of 'pub tech' solutions, based on server-side header bidding, are only some of the forces driving this evolution.
"The industry will realise that the adoption of a 'single ID' is an impossible dream and will converge towards a handful of initiatives built around existing ad tech platforms or neutral infrastructure providers. 'Shared ID' initiatives will become more tightly integrated with each other, providing a significant improvement over the existing situation, where hundreds of proprietary IDs create too much friction. As a consequence, publishers will benefit from increased monetisation capabilities and brands will gain better audience engagement."
Mathieu Roche, founder & CEO, ID5
Data interoperability between brands & vendors
"As a result, there will be a focus on the interoperability of data between brands and their vendors. This driving force will cause the need to centralise on a standard for communicating identifiers as well as identities. This will not be intra-browser; this will be a new method of syncing that will take full advantage of the shift to server side."
Keith Petri, Chief Strategy Officer, Screen6
Success will come from less reliance on cookies & device IDs
"Marketers and ad tech alike need to continue to reduce reliance on user-based targeting strategies where possible, especially when macro, location, and contextual data can fuel incredible insights and campaigns."
Evangelos Sideras, Joint Managing Director UK, MiQ