Privacy regulations and industry standards are evolving rapidly, and Optable is built to keep publishers aligned every step of the way. With Optable’s latest update, honoring user consent across regions becomes simpler.

Optable’s Real-Time APIs now support the IAB’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) and the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) privacy strings from Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). 

By integrating with TCF and GPP privacy signals in real-time, Optable APIs can dynamically adjust data processing activities based on the consent status provided and the publisher’s configuration. If valid privacy strings are present or if a user is detected in a region like the EU or Quebec, the APIs will enforce the configured consent requirements.

This update underscores Optable's commitment to providing tools that enable responsible data handling and help businesses build trust with their audiences by respecting their privacy choices.

‍

Why It Matters

Developed by IAB Europe, TCF helps the ad industry follow privacy laws like the GDPR in the EU. GPP expands on this, addressing laws in California’s CPRA, Colorado’s CPA, Quebec’s Law 25, and other regions—all in a single standard format. 

As privacy rules grow more complex, many publishers and advertisers have built their own ways to handle consent. GPP simplifies this with a unified approach that reduces legal risk and makes operations easier.

‍

‍

Optable’s Role

Optable is a contributor to Project Rearc, the IAB Tech Lab initiative focused on modernizing industry standards, including those related to privacy and identity. Our Co-founder and CPO, Bosko Milekic, joined the IAB Tech Lab Board of Directors in 2024, helping guide these efforts. Supporting GPP is part of our commitment to advancing interoperability and privacy compliance.

Beyond GPP, we’re also actively involved in several ongoing Tech Lab initiatives aimed at improving privacy, transparency, and interoperability across the ecosystem. This includes the Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) working group, where we help define new privacy-safe methods for data collaboration; the development of the PAIR clean room protocol, which we co-authored; and support for evolving standards such as OpenRTB 2.6 ID provenance, Trusted Server, and RTB Containerization.

‍

What’s New for Optable Users

In the Optable platform, you can now set up API restrictions based on specific consent purposes defined by the IAB. This gives you full control over when data can be read or written, based on what your users have agreed to. By supporting GPP and TCF strings in Optable Real-Time APIs, we help our partners reduce legal risk and operational complexity, without compromising on flexibility or compliance. 

Talk to our experts today and learn more about how Optable enables responsible consent management.

‍

I had the privilege of speaking last week at ID5 On The Road: NYC, a gathering of industry leaders focused on the future of identity, privacy, and performance in advertising. The conversations were candid and thought-provoking, reflecting a shared understanding: the industry is being reshaped, and we all have a role to play in building what comes next.

Here are the three most important themes I walked away with:

1. Privacy Is the Baseline, Not a Bonus

The era of loosely regulated adtech is behind us. Today, privacy is not a competitive differentiator—it’s table stakes. And yet, many in the industry are still treating it like a box to check rather than a design principle.

In her remarks, Hillary Slattery, Director of Programmatic at the IAB Tech Lab, said it best: we need to “avoid the ick.” That means building privacy-safe solutions that put consumer rights and transparency at the center. It’s no longer optional—regulation is enforcing it, and user trust demands it.

Another phrase that stuck with me: “Trust but verify.” While there are more tools than ever to manage consent and uphold consumer data preferences, the burden doesn’t stop at selecting a vendor. It’s on each of us to implement, test, and continuously verify that privacy systems are functioning as promised.

Publishers in particular hold a critical responsibility here. They are the custodians of user relationships and are uniquely positioned to safeguard consumer choice at the point of engagement.

2. Identity Is the New Infrastructure Layer

The fragmentation caused by privacy regulations and deprecation of legacy signals has only reinforced the importance of robust identity solutions. Identity is no longer just a tactical lever—it’s become foundational to campaign execution, measurement, and accountability.

There’s a clear acceleration in the adoption of identity graphs, but the message from the stage was clear: scrutinize what’s under the hood. If a solution suddenly returns 35 identifiers, something may be misaligned. Too much noise in identity can dilute performance and create more confusion than clarity.

That’s why efforts like the IAB Tech Lab’s provenance documentation are so promising—they’re bringing standardization, transparency, and consistency to how identity solutions are sourced, matched, and validated. In a landscape built on trust, this level of accountability is non-negotiable.

3. The Buyside Is Rewriting the Playbook

One of the most compelling shifts I observed at the event is the emergence of a BYOA: Bring Your Own Audience approach to targeting & campaign execution. This was evident particularly agencies—who are no longer content to rent identity and targeting infrastructure from external technology partners.

Instead, a “build vs. buy” mindset is taking hold. Agencies are investing in in-house identity graphs enriched with their own first-party data and user attributes. Rather than relying on a patchwork of vendor solutions, they’re designing bespoke systems that offer tighter control, improved efficiency, and better integration with their measurement frameworks.

This Bring Your Own Audience (BYOA) approach is transforming the role of publishers as well. To remain competitive, media owners must be able to meet buyers where they are—whether that means improved identity match rates, support for clean room environments, or delivering higher-performing inventory in both programmatic and direct channels.

Measurement also took center stage. It’s not just about reaching the right person; it’s about proving that the interaction led to a meaningful outcome. Buyers are increasingly demanding that media partners deliver both addressability and attributable performance.

Final Thought

Speaking at ID5 On The Road: NYC was a welcome opportunity to connect with peers navigating the same complex terrain. While the challenges in front of us are significant, the momentum toward a more trustworthy, transparent, and consumer-centric adtech ecosystem is undeniable.

What’s clear is that the future will be shaped by those who lead with integrity, adapt with intention, and put the consumer first—every step of the way.

At Optable, we understand that seamless audience activation is critical for publishers looking to maximize their data’s value. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce Sync for Audiences, the next evolution of our audience export functionality, but designed to eliminate manual exports and ensure that your audiences remain continuously available across all key destinations.

With Sync, publishers gain full control over their first-party and third-party data distribution, allowing them to activate audiences across multiple platforms without the headache of managing expiration timelines or scheduling exports. This automation not only saves time but also enhances revenue opportunities by ensuring audiences are always primed for activation.

A Streamlined Sync Experience

• A new Sync tab provides a centralized view of all active syncs, destinations, and schedules, giving publishers full transparency and control.
• Automated audience availability means once a sync is configured, it continuously updates without requiring manual intervention.
• Batch-processed syncs with automatic retries ensure that audiences remain available even in the event of temporary failures, improving reliability.

‍

New Destinations to Maximize Monetization

Sync now integrates with several powerful new platforms, allowing publishers to extend audience reach and boost monetization opportunities.

‍

The Trade Desk (TTD) Data Provider

A major highlight of this release is our integration with The Trade Desk, a leading demand-side platform (DSP). With Sync, publishers can now package and monetize their first-party data directly in TTD’s data provider marketplace.

Why it matters:

• Publishers can license and monetize their data directly with advertisers, increasing revenue potential.
• Unlike basic data listings, Sync enables publishers to curate, structure, and segment their data before pushing it to TTD, ensuring high-value audience activation.

‍

PubMatic

By syncing directly with PubMatic, publishers can seamlessly register audience segments for private marketplace deals (PMPs) and direct sales opportunities.

Why it matters:

• Automates daily syncs, eliminating operational overhead.
• Supports multiple ID types, including mobile IDs and cookie IDs, ensuring flexibility in audience activation.

‍

Microsoft Curate

With the new Microsoft Curate integration, publishers can distribute curated audience segments for PMP deals and direct advertiser activation.

Why it matters:

• Automatically applies cross-device matching, increasing audience addressability and reach.
• Publishers can enrich audience segments with third-party data, optimizing monetization strategies beyond traditional audience syncs.

‍

Sync Benefits

• Set it and forget it: Configure each destination once, and Optable automates ongoing syncs; no need to manage schedules or expiration timelines.
• Batch-based reliability: Syncing is processed in bulk rather than per audience, reducing failure rates and ensuring uninterrupted activation.
• Full visibility & tracking: Optable Sync provides complete transparency, allowing publishers to monitor sync status by audience, by destination, and across sync history.

‍

What’s Next?

We’re not stopping here. In Q2, we’re adding integrations with Index Exchange, OpenX, Magnite, and FreeWheel, expanding the scope of seamless audience activation even further.

With Optable's audience sync, publishers can now effortlessly scale audience activation across walled gardens, DSPs, SSPs, and data storage solutions, without the risk of fragmented, manual processes. Get ready to unlock new monetization opportunities and take control of your audience strategy like never before!

Want to learn more about how Optable can support your audience activation? Get in touch with us today.

We’re excited to introduce Optable Insights, a new collection of data visualizations starting with Identity Insights and Audience Insights to provide deeper visibility into your ID graph over time and audience relationships.

Identity Insights

‍

Graph Overview: Real Time Intelligence on Your ID Graph

As signal-loss continues to impact addressability, maintaining a robust identity strategy is crucial as your business navigates this evolving landscape. Optable's new Graph Overview is now a centralized command center to track changes and trends in your ID Graph over time.

Benefits:

• Monitor ID Graph evolution to adapt to changing audience behaviors and data signals.
• Ensure alignment with first party data strategies by tracking shifts in ID types.
• Identify seasonal content trends, like how holiday related content drives traffic spikes across different segments.

‍

USE CASE SPOTLIGHT

Thanksgiving Traffic Surge for Recipe Publishers

During Thanksgiving, recipe websites experience a surge in traffic as users search for holiday meal inspiration. Graph Overview can help track and capitalize on this seasonal trend by offering insights into:

• Increased Addressable Traffic – Higher user visits lead to an expanded pool of addressable profiles.
• Growth in Identifiers – More logged in users and cross device engagement across email, mobile, and web.
• Audience Expansion Opportunities – Identify and retarget engaged holiday cooks for future campaigns.
• Monetization Insights – Leverage traffic spikes to attract food, grocery, and kitchenware advertisers.

‍

Graph Traits: Explore Deeper Trait Analytics

Understanding what defines your audience is key to engagement and monetization. Graph Traits provides a dedicated space to analyze the count, coverage, and index of key traits within your ID Graph over time.

Benefits:

• Gain deeper insight into audience demographics and behaviors to inform content strategies.
• Identify key attributes that correlate with higher engagement and subscription conversions.

‍

Audience Insights

Audience Overview: A Unified View of Audience Performance

For publishers managing multiple audience segments, the Audience Overview page simplifies insights by providing a consolidated view of your audience size and ID trends. No more toggling between audience reports, Audience Overview now delivers these valuable insights all in one place.

Audience Overlap: Unlock High Value Audience Connections

Maximizing audience monetization means identifying high value audience relationships. With Audience Overlap Insights, you can instantly discover audiences that share a 20%+ overlap, along with key metrics including total audience sizes, overlap size, and overlap percentage.

‍

Benefits:

• Enhance ad targeting by identifying highly correlated audiences for premium inventory.
• Boost reader retention by personalizing content recommendations based on overlapping interests.
• Maximize monetization by building composite audiences for direct sales or programmatic deals.

‍

Ready to unlock the insights hidden in your data? Schedule your demo today.

‍

Maintaining Direct Sales in the Privacy-First Era

The advertising landscape is rapidly evolving, with privacy concerns reshaping how we approach direct sales. As we navigate this new terrain, it's crucial to understand the impact of cookie deprecation and explore innovative solutions to maintain the effectiveness of direct campaigns.

At the heart of this challenge lies the critical need for a comprehensive identity solution that can bridge the gap between user privacy and effective revenue optimization. An identity graph and it's data spine serve as the cornerstone of this solution, underpinning the essential requirements for monetization across a publisher's diverse revenue channels. This powerful tool not only supports direct sales efforts but also enhances programmatic advertising, subscription models, and other revenue streams.

As we delve into the intricacies of maintaining direct sales in the age of privacy, it becomes clear that a well-implemented identity graph is not just a technological asset—it's a strategic imperative for publishers looking to thrive in an increasingly privacy-centric digital ecosystem.

‍

The Virtuous Cycle of Sales

Direct sales in advertising rely on a data-driven virtuous cycle that encompasses several key phases:

1. Pre-campaign: Audience insights, planning, packaging, and pricing
2. Mid-campaign: Targeting, frequency capping, optimization, and audience extension
3. Post-campaign: Measurement, attribution, and wrap reports

‍

‍

These phases are interconnected, with insights from each stage informing the others and driving renewals and upsells.

The cookie collapse threatens to break the upsell cycle by hampering a publisher's ability to use audience and insights.

‍

We can further break down the 3 Sales Phases into several supporting tactics:

The Challenge of the Cookie Collapse

The impending loss of third-party cookies significantly impacts various tactics across all phases of direct sales. This disruption threatens to break the virtuous cycle that has long been the backbone of successful advertising campaigns.

Each Tactic of Sales Phases are uniquely challenged by cookie deprecation.

Embracing New Solutions

Buyers today have largely the same requirements, if not more stringent ones, compared to pre-cookiepocalypse when it comes to placing reservation based buys with publishers directly.

To overcome these challenges, publishers and ad tech vendors must adapt and innovate. If you want to compete for direct sales, you can no longer rely on yesterday's technology.

Here are key strategies to consider:

1. Stack your Data Stacks

The world is moving towards "composable everything," as the distinctions of SaaS tools blur amidst growth and market opportunity recalibration. The "standalones" are dead, and long live the interoperable solutions that make your stack come to life.

At the heart of this all lives a data spine.

A data spine serves as the central support structure within a larger ID graph. It provides crucial linkages between different identifiers, forming the foundation for a more comprehensive understanding of individuals.

Here we see how the Data Spine sits within the larger ID Graph. It is the supporting structure of making identity usable, but it does not carry the essential metadata that comprises the larger ID Graph or User Graph.

Here is a handy chart of why you would want an independent Data Spine. Remember that many systems include a Data Spine but the typical customer does not interact with it or support it. Having access to and controlling the data spine gives several unique advantages:

2. Leverage Your Advantages

Publishers should focus on:

• Regaining control over the three phases of direct campaigns: publishers must employ technologies that allow them to continue servicing direct clients.
• Recoupling data and media for sales: Publishers should lean into the proximity of their data and media to provide more complete solutions to buyers. Licensing standalone data is hard, but buyers can be more flexible when buying media.
• Using seed audiences to inform extrapolations and create deeper insights: upsells depend on it. To create the loop effect of the sales process (see above), you must reuse campaign insights and audiences to upsell/renew clients into the next campaign.

It is worth a read of the IAB Tech Lab 's ID-less Solutions Guidance (in Public Comment mode at time of publishing) for a deeper look at how different ID-less solutions can bolster various sales phases and tactics.

‍

3. Build Bridges and Trust

Reconnect the dots in the fragmented data landscape

• Develop proprietary measurement systems (h/t Brand Metrics)
• Host suitability solutions in-house (h/t WaPo, Reuters, ProNews and more)
• Find common ground with partners (IDs, CPMs, attribution and more)
• Utilize ID spines and clean rooms for secure collaboration

‍

3a. Explore Alternative Collaboration Methods

Many publishers think that they can't orchestrate or participate in data collaboration (clean rooms), but there are actual several ways to overcome this.

Here are the most common reasons why publishers don't, won't or can't participate in data collaboration:

‍

I want publishers to strongly consider the use of alternative IDs when it comes to clean rooms and data collaboration. This does not just have to be with 1:1 identifiers like email, but it is very important to consider the buyside expectations when planning for collaboration.

Yes, HEM Matching, and even probabilistic IDs, may be controversial here-- especially if you are not disclosing (or worse, misrepresenting) your methods. However, disclosure and clear communication will provide those bridges and trust that are essential.

‍

Conclusion

As we enter this new era of privacy-first advertising, publishers and ad tech vendors must adapt their strategies to maintain the effectiveness of direct sales. By embracing data spines, leveraging first-party data advantages, and exploring new collaboration methods, we can continue to deliver value to advertisers while respecting user privacy.

The future of direct sales lies in our ability to innovate and find common ground in a rapidly changing landscape. Let's rise to the challenge and (re)shape the future of advertising together.

‍

Overview

With the continuing loss of third-party signals, contextual targeting is becoming a popular alternative to ID-based solutions for delivering targeted advertising. It involves classifying web pages, as well as video and audio content, based on content categories and sentiment using keywords, titles, and meta tags. The classifications are then used to build audiences for targeting or suppression campaigns and, oftentimes, to curate deals to make inventory more attractive.

Oracle's Grapeshot, a widely adopted contextual product, recently announced the sunset of its entire portfolio. With little time to plan, publishers and marketers have quickly sought replacement solutions. While there are plenty of data providers in the market who can provide contextual categorization through natural language processing (NLP) or other methods, one of the biggest challenges publishers face is integrating this data, normalizing it, and making it actionable through simple audience-building UI and integration with activation end-points.

Optable can help publishers recreate audiences at scale with minimal revenue loss. This guide will show you how to use our platform to manage third-party contextual solutions. Our customers can then use our platform and tools to build audiences from contextual signals.

‍

Identity resolution and ID graphs have become critical components for publishers aiming to optimize their data management strategies. However, building and maintaining an effective ID graph comes with its own set of challenges. This blog post will explore three common challenges that heads of data at publishing companies face and offer practical solutions on how to overcome them.

Challenge 1: Adding New Data Sources

The Problem

Adding new data sources to your ID graph can be a difficult and time-consuming task. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) often lack flexibility when it comes to ingesting new data, especially from on-site sources. Additionally, second-party data typically requires extensive cleansing and normalization before it becomes usable, further complicating the process.

The Solution

Partner with technology providers that offer managed services and expertise in data onboarding, cleaning, and normalization. Seek out consultative partners who can help you integrate and test second-party data effectively. These partners should provide tailored approaches to your data ecosystem, ensuring that your ID graph meets the specific needs of various departments within your organization.

Challenge 2: Maximizing Usability

The Problem

Making your ID graph usable for different use cases is another common challenge. Graphs may need to take different shapes depending on the use case, and different identifiers require various rules for normalization and linking. Additionally, some IDs may need special treatment during the normalization process, and adjusting relationships between IDs can be cumbersome. Determining the right approach can be costly as your engineering teams have to spend lots of time testing and learning custom solutions.

The Solution

Work with platforms that offer flexible tools for graph building and shaping. These platforms should make it easy to ingest new data sources through their SDK or your cloud storage. Look for solutions that allow you to easily change how graphs are structured to suit different use cases. This flexibility will maximize addressability for advertising and ensure that your graph remains useful across various organizational functions, such as subscription marketing automation or evaluating audience lifetime value.

Challenge 3: Adding New Integrations for Activation

The Problem

Effective orchestration of your ID graph requires seamless integration with multiple endpoints for ad activation, marketing automation, and internal business intelligence. Data warehouses-only solutions aren't well equipped for this as they typically require multiple steps for data to leave the warehouse before being used in another system. Establishing these connections can be complicated and time-consuming, making it difficult to act on your data promptly.

The Solution

Utilize an audience management platform that offers purpose-built connections to activation endpoints for various publisher use cases, including advertising, marketing, and business intelligence. The key here is the availability and speed of custom integrations. Platforms that can quickly establish these connections will enable you to leverage your ID graph more effectively, ensuring that you can act on your data in real-time.

Conclusion

Building and maintaining an ID graph is essential for modern publishers, but it doesn't come without its challenges. By focusing on platforms that offer flexible data ingestion, partnering with consultative experts for data onboarding, and using audience management platforms with purpose built-tools and quick integration capabilities, you can overcome these common hurdles.

Ready to optimize your ID graph? Book a call with our expert team today to explore how we can help you streamline your data management and boost your publishing efforts.

‍In our previous article, we explored the concept of purpose-built identity solutions and the new pivotal role of ID graphs. As we dive deeper into the nuances of identity solutions, it's crucial to understand ‘ID Bridging’ and its impact on extending both direct and programmatic revenue streams. 

As we shift away from reliance on cookies & third-party identifiers publishers need comprehensive and scalable solutions that help them link, or ‘bridge’, their first and second party data sets as well as create interoperability with their demand partners and other activation channels. The most important dynamic here is that publishers maintain control and transparency so that these practices are in line with their advertisers and demand partners standards.

"ID Bridging is an important capability in our tool set as we continue to enter a world where free & widespread identifiers are less accessible & usable across our ecosystem. Being able to bridge together IDs from our various internal datasets as well as work with second parties ultimately helps to make cookieless environments more addressable to our advertising partners." said Paul Bannister, CSO of Raptive. "Working with Optable has helped us to scale and refine this practice across our large network of sites. Their ability to work as a true SaaS provider and give us the controls we need across various sources of identity helps us to both test and optimize our addressability and work closely with our demand partners so that we are doing this in a way that is acceptable to their standards."

‍

Understanding Addressability Evolution and the Role of ID Bridging

The ad tech system was engineered to provide marketers with rich datasets to target audiences with paid advertising, having made ‘Identity’ and ‘Addressability' synonymous for a decade. However, trends in data privacy are moving us away from third-party cookies and app-based identifiers.

Now, publishers face a challenge with these shifts due to lack of investment in understanding their audience data. They must pivot as linking user identity and addressability becomes increasingly difficult. Many publishers find that they lack the data science and engineering expertise to build & scale high quality and reliable identity graphs without the help of specialized platforms. To keep their data-driven ad products in line with these changes publishers are reviving concepts like contextual advertising and introducing new ones like identity cohorts and enriched audiences. As a result, traditional ad products are evolving, and publishers need to reassess their Data Management platforms and tech stack to maximize growth in both direct and programmatic monetization channels.

Amid signal loss in the programmatic market, ID Bridging was introduced to maintain addressability. It is the privacy-safe process publishers use to match their first-party audience identity signals with static signals from second parties to grow their understanding of their audiences. This subset of identity resolution is key as digital advertising heavily relies on these signals. 

‍

How is ID Bridging used for programmatic advertising?

A major trend in the response to the aforementioned changes in addressability and the need of linking identities is the creation and adoption of Alternative IDs. In programmatic advertising, an ‘Alternative ID’ refers to any identifier other than third-party cookies that is used to track and target users across websites and devices. Many different ‘Alternative ID’ projects have come about in recent years and many of them vary greatly depending on the companies behind them and the geographical regions they operate in (due to variation in privacy laws).

Some of the major ones include The Trade Desk's UID 2.0 project, ID5, and LiveRamp's RampID, but there are many more, and they continue to pop up in new and different commercialized forms as companies respond to the changing market. As a result, publishers are finding ways to use ID Bridging to actually enrich the bid requests they are sending to programmatic advertising platforms with Alternative IDs via a process called Bid Enrichment. 

‍

This process helps publishers increase the chances of an ad buying platform finding their inventory to be addressable and, therefore, maximizes their “ad yields.” By working with a first party DMP, publishers can not only implement this solution, but they can also test and optimize different identifiers. Some legacy programmatic data providers have offered other methods of doing Bid Enrichment by loading all possible Alternative IDs within their tags; however, this has limitations for non-web channels, creates latency across web pages, and does not allow for insights and optimization into what Alternative IDs are providing the best yield.

It is important to note that the IAB Tech Lab is working on new standards to support these changes. These standards will help give better guidance to publishers on how to best implement ID Bridging and Bid Enrichment, as well as to Marketers on the best practices for measuring success when their Publisher partners and ad-buying platforms are using these solutions.

‍

How can ID Bridging help improve directly sold inventory?

Beyond programmatic advertising, ID Bridging also plays a critical role in enhancing directly sold inventory. By increasing addressability, ID Bridging helps media owners and publishers grow revenue from the inventory they directly sell to advertisers.

The addressable advertising ecosystem is likely to continue to be in flux in the near future, given ongoing regulation in the US, Canada and other markets. Going forward, it is incredibly crucial for publishers to invest in a first-party DMP that can support addressable advertising in the many forms it will take. This means investing in a DMP that natively supports first-party ID Graphing and enables Bid Enrichment via Alternative Identifiers.

Integrating second-party data providers into the data strategy can be a big leap. By working with identity and data providers, publishers and media owners can grow authenticated users and enrich the existing data with additional traits and attributes, leading to a more detailed understanding of their audience. 

Besides deeper insights, enhanced data also gives the data teams more power when it comes to creating and leveraging audience segments. As a result, publishers can boost revenue from direct-sold campaigns by offering advertisers access to more defined and valuable audiences. Ultimately, partnering with second-party data providers not only improves audience insights but also drives better ad performance.

‍

Optable Enables Transparent ID Bridging

The impact of linking identifiers on a publisher's ad business depends on how providers use the IDs. If handled responsibly, ID bridging can enhance ad inventory value and bring revenue. Yet, if providers prioritize short-term gains by adding undisclosed identifiers, it can lead to ID spoofing and challenges with their advertising partners. Industry standards and working groups, such as IAB Tech Lab, are continuing to give guidance on ID Bridging practices to ensure ecosystem integrity. Optable, as a member, proactively develops and complies with these standards.

At Optable we work under a SaaS model, prioritizing transparency with our clients to ensure that agreed-upon identifiers are used in ID Bridging. This approach provides publishers with visibility, control, and the ability to test & optimize different ID providers & datasets to determine the most effective solution for their inventory. On our platform, teams can complete their dataset with identifiers including Universal ID 2.0, Criteo ID and Ramp ID and leverage hashed data from providers such as Experian, True Data, and ID5.   

Reach out to us at info@optable.co to learn more about how you can increase addressability & grow revenue using Optable’s Audience Management Platform.

We continue to spotlight our clients, showcasing how they navigate data management and their advertising strategies. The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian publisher, is at the forefront of adopting secure and innovative advertising practices. In this second part of our interview series, we spoke with Soleil Adler, Data Optimization Manager, about their successful campaign with VIA Rail. This conversation highlights the importance of a well-structured data strategy and the ongoing pursuit of excellence to achieve results that exceed expectations. If you missed the first interview, you can read it or watch it here.

Discover all four perspectives on the successful partnership around data collaboration between publisher the Globe and Mail, advertiser VIA Rail, agency Omnicom Media Group and tech provider Optable in the AdExchanger article.

‍

What were your objectives for the VIA Rail campaign, and what were your partner’s goals?

The objective was to determine if using The Globe and Mail’s data enriched with a client's first-party data would outperform solely using The Globe’s data. VIA Rail’s campaign goal was to generate awareness and encourage planning for the next trip with VIA Rail.

Could you give us an overview of the campaign: what audiences did your companies match?

We matched all the Globe and Mail readers with three separate VIA Rail audiences: Lapsed Travelers, Mid-Week Travelers, and Travelers from the Last 3 Years to gather insights and then create a look-alike.

What tactics did you use to test the Clean Room matching with the advertiser?

We conducted an ABC test. For tactic A, we targeted on-site content focused on inventory using audience insights from the match. For tactic B, we created a lookalike audience based on the last three-year Travelers audience match. Tactic C served as our control, targeting The Globe’s domestic traveler audience.

How did you use insights on audiences derived from the match with VIA Rail?

Once we identified travelers who had purchased tickets within the last three years through our platform, we matched them with all of the Globe readers and gathered insights from this match. The insights revealed that travelers were highly interested in the Personal Finance, Business Opinion, and Investing sections. Therefore, we targeted our inventory towards those sections.

Why did you opt for the look-alike model for this campaign? What steps did you take to build augmented audiences using Optable’s prospecting technology?

We created a look-alike audience to reach potential new customers with similar interests in domestic travel. We achieved this by matching the audience to Optable’s prospecting Clean Room and assessing the model probability to ensure efficient scale and attribute, and then activating it.

How does The Globe and Mail plan to leverage the success of this campaign to attract more advertisers?

With VIA Rail, we have seen a 3.4 times increase in reach. We are continuing to use these tactics in new campaigns and conducting frequent data matches to improve our data strategy as we move forward. One thing we are focusing on is matching ad exposure with ticket sales to determine the contribution and identify who purchased the ticket after being exposed to the ad on The Globe. We are also working on another use case where we are creating a suppression segment to specifically avoid targeting existing ticket purchasers.

‍

The Globe and Mail's strategic approach to data collaboration and Clean Room technology highlights the transformative potential of these tools in digital advertising. By integrating advanced data solutions, focusing on meaningful metrics, and leveraging successful case studies like the VIA Rail campaign, they continue to innovate and lead in the realm of data-driven advertising.

‍