In today's fragmented digital landscape, publishers are grappling with a complex web of audience interactions. A single user might read an article on your website, listen to a related podcast in a mobile app, and watch a show on their CTV, often while remaining anonymous across interactions. As more and more ecosystems claw back identifiers and other signals available, the urgency for publishers to build a robust audience strategy anchored in first-party data has never been greater. The cornerstone of this strategy is the "golden record", a single, persistent, and unified view of each and every visitor.

However, this is a challenging feat for most media owners that often operate within a highly complex data landscape. This isn’t just about data consolidation; it's about building a foundation for deeper personalization, creating durable audience segments, and maximizing ad revenues. For both enterprise and mid-market publishers, mastering the golden record is key to unlocking true audience intelligence and driving sustainable growth.

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The publisher-specific challenge: navigating a sea of fragments

Publishers are uniquely positioned to benefit from deep audience understanding, yet they also face unique challenges in building these comprehensive profiles. Unlike other businesses that may rely more heavily on simple deterministic data, publishers must navigate a more complex environment:

• Different Domains: A user may interact with a parent company's news site and a subsidiary's lifestyle blog. Without a unifying strategy, these appear as two separate individuals.
• Multiple Business Units: Data from your subscriptions team, advertising operations, and events department often live in separate systems, preventing a holistic view.
• Various Channels and Devices: The modern user journey is a complex web of touchpoints across desktops, smartphones, tablets, and CTVs. Linking these activities to a single person is a primary hurdle.
• High Volume of Anonymous Traffic: Publishers typically see a significant proportion of anonymous users, often more than 90% of their traffic. This limits deterministic identity matching and requires a more sophisticated approach.

This fragmentation not only leads to disjointed user experiences but for a publisher poses significant challenges to understanding total reach. Achieving total reach is difficult, particularly due to the complexity introduced by evolving activation strategies and these fragmented datasets. Accurate forecasting is crucial, as it directly impacts a publisher’s ability to enhance partnerships with advertisers and maximize revenue opportunities across their entire ad stack.

To effectively overcome these challenges, you need a comprehensive strategy anchored by robust identity resolution and consolidated golden records; unifying fragmented visitor data and transforming anonymous interactions into actionable audience intelligence.

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Building your golden record

Creating a golden record is a strategic process that requires clarity, a commitment to privacy, and the right technical approach.

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1. Clearly define your objectives

Start by setting clear goals tailored to your specific team and strategic priorities. Are you aiming to enhance subscriber conversion, increase precision in ad targeting, maximize advertising revenues, or strengthen reader loyalty? Your chosen objectives will shape every aspect of your data strategy, from the insights you generate to the technologies you implement. It's important to recognize that other teams such as Marketing often pursue distinct goals compared to direct sales teams, requiring specialized insights and integrations. While sales teams leverage golden records to transition from selling generic inventory to selling highly targeted, valuable audiences, Marketing teams may utilize the same golden records differently, like focusing instead on insights that drive customer engagement, brand perception, and long-term loyalty. Ultimately, your golden record isn't merely defensive protection against signal loss; it’s a dynamic tool driving revenue growth across diverse organizational objectives.

2. Prioritize privacy, compliance, and consent

In an era of GDPR and CCPA, transparently managing user consent is non-negotiable. Building trust is paramount. According to Accenture, 62% of consumers prefer transparency regarding how their data is used, which significantly impacts trust and retention. Implementing a robust privacy framework and integrating with the right consent management platform will ensure consent signals are accurately captured, respected, and honored at every touchpoint.

But consent management isn't solely about legal compliance; it's also about establishing and strengthening trust with advertisers. Central to this trust is ID provenance which clearly traces the origins and validity associated with each identifier. Leveraging identifiers rooted in deterministic data, supported by clear provenance, provides advertisers with assurance and confidence in audience accuracy, enabling them to trust the quality and precision of their targeted campaigns. This isn't merely about avoiding risk, it's a strategic advantage that fosters long-term, trusted relationships with both consumers and advertisers.

3. Adopt a Hybrid Approach to Identity Resolution

Given the unique challenges publishers face, a hybrid approach blending deterministic and probabilistic matching is essential:

• Deterministic Matching: This is ideal for your authenticated, known users (e.g., subscribers, registered members). It relies on precise, user-provided data like hashed email addresses and user IDs to create a strong foundation for a profile.
• Probabilistic Matching: Crucial for resolving the identities of anonymous visitors, this method employs predictive modeling and statistical inference. It uses signals like device type, IP address, and browsing behavior to link activities that likely belong to the same person, turning unknown visitors into addressable audience members.

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Technical best practices and key concepts

With a clear strategy, the focus shifts to execution. Implementing technical best practices ensures your golden record is accurate, scalable, and actionable.

The identity graph that adapts to your needs

The output of identity resolution is your identity graph, a dynamic database mapping all available identifiers (both deterministic and probabilistic) and attributes back to individual golden records. More than just a static repository, a flexible identity graph adapts its structure to meet varying business objectives, data sources, and use cases. This adaptability ensures your identity graph isn't constrained by a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach, but instead evolves continuously to serve precise, goal-oriented applications, enabling robust golden records and accurate user traceability.

Unified identity management and real-time integrations

Invest in a robust identity management solution capable of integrating identifiers in real-time across devices, sessions, and platforms. Real-time capabilities are essential for instantly applying insights to user interactions, whether for content personalization or targeted advertising.

Data quality, survivorship, and consistency

When merging data from multiple sources, conflicts are inevitable. This is where survivorship, or the process of defining rules to determine which attribute "wins", becomes critical. Publishers need flexible control to prioritize data from the most trusted sources or based on the most recent activity. Consistent data cleansing and normalization are equally vital. Effective data quality practices can increase analytics effectiveness by up to 30%. [Accenture]

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Creating durable, trusted audience segments

With a clean and comprehensive golden record for every visitor, publishers can move beyond simplistic segmentation. You can create durable, trusted audience segments that are not reliant on fleeting third-party cookies. These segments are built on rich, first-party data, allowing for highly specific and valuable targeting.

Imagine creating segments like:

• "Loyal readers who also listen to our finance podcast and have attended a virtual event."
• "Anonymous users who have read three articles about technology on a mobile device in the past week."
• "Subscribers who are at risk of churning, based on declining engagement across all channels."

These actionable insights allow for precise content personalization, targeted advertising campaigns, and effective subscription models.

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Activation: Powering Direct Sales with First-Party Insights

A golden record isn't just a defensive asset for a cookieless world; it's a powerful engine for revenue growth. One of the most immediate and impactful ways to activate this data is by empowering your direct sales team to shift from selling inventory to selling audiences.

This marks a fundamental change in the sales motion. Instead of responding to RFPs with generic "run-of-site" impressions, the sales team can proactively build data-driven narratives and bespoke targeting solutions for advertisers. With a rich, unified view of the audience, your sales team can:

• Create custom, high-value segments: Imagine an auto brand wants to reach "affluent users in the Northeast who have read three or more car reviews in the last 30 days." A golden record makes building and activating this segment trivial. Sales can work directly with advertisers to co-create these highly specific, premium audiences that command higher CPMs.
• Tell a data-driven story: Sales is longer limited to talking about reach and demographics. They can present advertisers with compelling insights, such as, "We have an audience of 150,000 users who show a strong affinity for sustainable investing and also read our travel content, making them a perfect fit for your eco-tourism campaign."
• Deliver superior campaign performance: By targeting campaigns based on rich behavioral data like content affinity, media format preference, and purchase intent signals, publishers can deliver far better results for advertisers, strengthening partnerships and encouraging repeat business.

This direct-sold approach, powered by first-party data, allows publishers to take control of their revenue strategy, build stronger advertiser relationships, and command the premium prices their unique audiences deserve.

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Practical expectations: the myth of the perfect record

It's important to set realistic expectations. Don’t try chasing the unrealistic goal of a perfect, singular customer record for every single user. Data is fluid, and peoples' behaviors change. Instead, publishers should aim for actionable, continuously refined insights. The goal is progress, not perfection.

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A note on CDPs: Why most fall short for publisher monetization

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have become central to the modern data stack, and for good reason. They excel at unifying known customer data. However, publishers often discover significant shortcomings when relying on standard CDPs, particularly in monetization scenarios.

Many legacy CDPs were designed primarily for retail businesses, where the main objective is managing an authenticated customer's journey from email campaigns through to purchases. This approach, often termed a "first-party architecture," unifies data around a known identifier such as an email address.

This model breaks down in the publisher ecosystem. Even for authenticated users, a conventional CDP struggles due to the fragmented nature of media consumption. For instance, if a premium subscriber logs into your website but accesses your Connected TV (CTV) app anonymously, a basic CDP typically perceives these sessions as separate individuals. Its identity graph lacks the sophistication required to link authenticated web sessions with anonymous CTV sessions of the same user. Consequently, publishers cannot reliably apply subscription benefits, such as an ad-free experience, or effectively manage ad frequency across multiple touchpoints of a single, valuable subscriber.

This problem becomes even more pronounced because a majority of publisher traffic remains anonymous. A standard CDP often lacks the advanced probabilistic identity graph capabilities needed to convert anonymous traffic into addressable audiences. Without robust tools to connect fragmented anonymous signals across various devices and sessions into cohesive, persistent profiles, publishers are unable to leverage the bulk of their audience data effectively. This creates a critical gap between subscription marketing efforts and advertising strategies.

For publishers, the ultimate goal extends beyond merely unifying customer data. They need to build addressable audiences at scale. Achieving this demands a solution specifically engineered to handle the complexities of media monetization across all user states, both known and anonymous.

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Real-world business value

A successful golden record initiative will deliver measurable business value. By overcoming the challenges of fragmentation and implementing best practices, you can achieve non-trival returns:

• Enhanced Ad Revenue: Precise segmentation and improved targeting can lead to a ~10% increase in ad revenue. [LaPresse]
• Improved Subscriber Acquisition and Retention: Publishers who deliver personalized content experiences through unified audience profiles see up to a 29% reduction in subscriber churn. [SOURCE]
• Increased Revenue and ROI: Companies that use first-party data for key marketing functions can achieve up to a 2.9X revenue uplift and a 1.5X increase in cost savings. [SOURCE]
• Improved Cost Efficiency: Linking first-party data sources can improve cost efficiency by 1.5 times. For customer acquisition, a clear strategy can lead to a 25% reduction in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). [SOURCE]
• Enhanced Customer Retention: Improving customer retention by just 2% can have the same financial impact as cutting costs by 10%, highlighting the value of personalized experiences driven by unified data. [SOURCE]

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Moving forward

Despite the inherent complexities, building a golden record tailored to a publisher's unique environment provides a clear competitive advantage. It cuts through the noise of fragmented data to provide a clear, actionable, and unified view of your audience. By focusing on data unification, identity resolution, and building durable audience segments, you have the power to create more relevant experiences, drive revenue with partners, and build stronger, more resilient relationships with your visitors. Ultimately, those who successfully master their first-party data will excel in the increasingly personalized, audience-driven future of publishing.

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How Optable can help

Optable simplifies the complexities publishers face when building golden records. With advanced capabilities in deterministic matching, real-time integration, and robust privacy management, Optable enables publishers to quickly unify fragmented audience data, turn anonymous traffic into addressable audiences, and enhance personalization and monetization opportunities.

Ready to build a stronger, smarter visitor profile? Contact Optable today and discover how our solutions can accelerate your path to an actionable golden record.

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It’s easy to understand why some publishers feel like pressing pause on cookieless data strategies.

Browser deprecation timelines continue to shift, regulatory enforcement remains inconsistent and let’s be honest: a significant portion of ad spend still flows toward third-party cookie-based campaigns. With technology and operations budgets tighter than ever, the temptation to delay innovation is real.

Yet despite this lingering dependence on cookies, the cookieless future is already here: in the U.S., over 40% of web traffic now comes from browsers like Safari and Firefox that block third-party cookies by default. That means publishers that aren’t testing cookieless solutions are already missing a sizable portion of their potential audience. And it’s not just cookies. Increasingly, other shared signals such as IP addresses and mobile ad IDs (MAIDS) are becoming difficult to use without the reconfiguring of monetization systems and workflows.

While publishers overwhelmingly recognize the importance of monetizing first-party data, many haven’t fully committed to the infrastructure that makes this possible. That hesitation, while understandable, could end up costing them. Amid this uncertainty, one thing remains true: publishers who invest in cookieless, privacy-centric strategies today will be the ones positioned to win tomorrow.

Cookieless Isn’t a Burden. It’s a Business Advantage

Privacy regulations, signal loss and growing consumer expectations have transformed addressability. There’s growing pressure to fill the revenue gap left by declining third-party data. First-party data, and the ability to activate it securely, is the new currency.

But strategy alone isn’t enough. Success depends on execution: scalable identity frameworks, interoperable clean rooms, and clear consent signals.

Identity graphs, in particular, are emerging as a foundational layer of the cookieless future. According to Digiday and Optable’s 2025 State of Audience Data Monetization report, 78% of publishers are either already using or are in the process of building their own identity graph. Only 7% say they have no plans to implement one. This momentum signals a clear recognition: publishers need better tools to unify user data across devices and channels if they want to improve targeting, personalization and monetization outcomes.

By owning and managing identity frameworks, publishers can reduce reliance on third-party solutions, future-proof their addressability and maintain stronger advertiser relationships in a post-cookie world.

NBCUniversal’s Audience Insights Hub and Roku’s Data Cloud Collaboration Suite are prime examples of how media companies are helping advertisers meet growing demands for privacy-safe, data-driven campaigns in the CTV space. Both enable partners to activate and measure campaigns using robust first-party data without compromising user privacy. By investing in clean rooms and identity solutions, these publishers are not only staying compliant but also enhancing their ability to deliver measurable results, growing advertiser trust and unlocking new revenue opportunities.

Data Collaboration Creates Innovation In Advertising

Clean rooms are where cookieless strategy meets business impact, offering a new way for publishers to collaborate without compromising trust. A  clean room enables secure, privacy-safe collaboration with advertisers and partners, ensuring first-party data never changes hands directly. As advertisers grow more reliant on first-party signals and increasingly skeptical of intermediaries, clean rooms offer a scalable future-proof solution.

Early adopters are already seeing results. Top-performing publishers with clean room strategies in place report faster deal cycles, more direct demand, and stronger advertiser relationships.

For example, The Globe and Mail, used its Sophi platform to match data with advertisers in a privacy-safe way, resulting inimproved targeting accuracy and increased revenue.

Similarly, Dotdash Meredith, a major digital publisher, uses  AWS Clean Rooms to combine its own audience insights with Amazon Ads data, boosting campaign performance and advertiser confidence without exposing raw data. .

The Weather Company has also used clean room partnerships to enhance CTV targeting and measurement, driving closed-loop attribution and unlocking new revenue across streaming formats.

From Caution to Competitive Edge

Cookieless transformation doesn’t have to mean massive overhauls. Start by identifying high-value data segments and running test collaborations in a clean room environment. Build repeatable processes. Partner with vendors that offer interoperability and transparency. Treat privacy and compliance as part of your value proposition, not just a cost center.

Privacy, trust, and data activation aren’t in conflict. They’re the new trifecta of sustainable audience monetization. Clean rooms, and the broader privacy-safe, cookieless infrastructure that supports them, aren’t optional extras. They’re foundational to a publisher’s long-term ability to grow audience value and build direct advertiser relationships.

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Original Publication: Admonsters.

Digital advertising is in the midst of a fundamental reset. Signal loss and tightening privacy regulations are reshaping how media companies handle their audience data and work with advertisers.

In response, a growing number of publishers are investing in centralized data infrastructure designed to make their first-party audiences actionable, secure, and scalable across channels. These investments allow publishers to transform oftentimes fragmented data signals into high-value segments, enable smarter monetization strategies, and maintain full control.

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Owning data is not enough

Unity, one of the world’s largest gaming platforms, offers a strong example of how publishers can level up their approach to identity & audience activation through their recently launched Audience Hub powered by Optable. With over 3 billion gamers interacting across different environments, Unity had a robust volume of gamer data, but needed a way to unlock its full potential for buyers.

Gaming companies are rich in player engagement and behavioral signals, but turning that into addressable, monetizable audiences in a privacy-safe way isn’t straightforward. Common challenges include:

• Siloed data across platforms
  Player data is collected across console, PC, and mobile, but rarely unified into a single view.
• ‍Fragmented identity
  Users interact across games, apps, and devices, making it difficult to resolve identity and connect sessions.
• ‍Enrichment complexity
  ‍Adding demographic or behavioral attributes often requires manual, custom integrations with third-party data providers.
• ‍Collaboration & activation limitations
  Without interoperable infrastructure thats supports data collaboration it's hard to meet advertiser needs & activate consistent, high-performing segments across mobile, in-game, and CTV channels.

The solution is not just better tech—it is a strategic shift toward publisher-owned infrastructure.

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Building Unity’s Audience Hub with Optable

Unity partnered with Optable to build a privacy-first audience hub, bringing structure and flexibility to their large data ecosystem. Here’s what that looked like in practice:

• Unified their first-party data into one audience mesh in Optable, enabling a consolidated view & seamless activation.
• Enriched audiences by integrating data from Experian through Optable, adding more depth.
• Then, segmenting audiences into high-intent groups aligned to advertiser needs.
• Collaborating with brand advertisers via Optable’s clean rooms to enable more use cases in a privacy-safe way.
• Purpose-built integrations to activate audiences across mobile, web, and CTV for improved reach and performance.

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This approach gives Unity the agility to serve advertisers with relevant, high-performing audiences while maintaining control over their data and avoiding third-party audience providers. 

Initial testing with advertising partners revealed a 102.6% increase in CTR and a 103.6% uplift in engagement, demonstrating the Audience Hub's ability to reach relevant audiences and match them with media inventory.

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What it takes to build a monetization-ready audience strategy

Unity’s approach is replicable and increasingly necessary. Publishers can begin building their own audience monetization strategy by following these steps:

1. Unify siloed data: Bring together authenticated user data, contextual signals, and behavioral insights into a single place.

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2. Enrich your identity graph: Combine your first-party data with trusted third-party signals to enhance scale and precision.

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3. Build custom audiences: Design audience segments that reflect your most valuable users and align with advertiser needs.

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4. Activate across revenue-driving channels: Push segments directly into DSPs, ad servers, or clean rooms for collaborative activation.

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5. Scale brand collaborations: Match, prospect, and activate across partners, no matter where your data lives.

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As the advertising ecosystem continues to change there is an opportunity for innovative, forward-thinking companies to harness the power of their first-party data and grow their business. By investing in cutting-edge technology companies can enable smarter advertising products, build strong partnerships with their advertisers and enhance their audience experience.

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Whether you’re in gaming, news, or entertainment, the path forward is the same: unify, enrich, segment, activate, and repeat. Talk to our experts today to understand which tools and audience strategy are right for you. 

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The original article was published on AdExchanger on June, 4th.

Earlier this year, at a Signal Shift event in NYC, the IAB Tech Lab officially announced a new open-source initiative designed to shift more digital advertising operations server-side, “providing publishers on the open web with privacy-first control over their monetization that is independent of browser APIs and signal loss.”

The unveiling of Trusted Server, an early proof of concept that the IAB Tech Lab opened up for industry collaboration, was met with varied reactions and some skepticism.

Publishers and media owners expressed hope that this is an opportunity to wrestle back control from the large tech companies and walled gardens. Meanwhile, other entities, with business models heavily reliant on access to client-side data, shared concerns about the current capabilities of the proof of concept.

What is the future of Trusted Server? Can we expect that this initiative will really help restore publishers’ ownership of monetization?

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1. It’s just a proof of concept

Anthony Katsur and the team at IAB Tech Lab haven’t released a finished specification or product. This initiative is in its infancy.

The proof of concept demonstrates potential and provides a road map for coexisting with browser functionality through phases of development. But for Trusted Server to become an adopted standard, there is a ton of work needed to support all essential pieces of web advertising.

Rich media executions, identity signals and verification solutions (ad fraud, brand safety, measurement) are among some of the key considerations that would take significant effort to shift away from client-side dependencies. The Tech Lab is also hopeful about receiving support from the dominant publisher ad server, Google Ad Manager, which is crucial for adoption.

The Tech Lab invited industry participation in a new task force for this initiative to help define the standards and next steps for Trusted Server, as investment from key players in the ecosystem will be required to get it off the ground.

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2. New paths needed for trust and interoperability

Some reactions to the Trusted Server concept raised concerns that moving operations server-side could further erode trust in the OpenRTB ecosystem, pointing to ongoing issues with transparency around ID signals, video declarations, bid duplication and fraud. But these issues already exist today and are exacerbated by “rogue” vendors gaining access to the client or by intermediaries manipulating a publisher’s original configurations and signals upstream.

The current client-side model, with vendor code on publisher pages collecting user data, has contributed to data leakage, under-compensation for publishers and increased risk of privacy violations. The browser has become a chokepoint, with companies like Google and Apple limiting the broader market’s capabilities while reinforcing their own data advantages, all under the guise of privacy.

A shift to server-side processing offers a chance to reestablish trust and interoperability by reducing reliance on browser APIs and creating a cleaner, more controlled data environment for publishers. This initiative could drive real transparency, if it results in enforceable industry standards around accountability and signal verification throughout the supply chain, akin to IAB’s ‘schain’ or ‘ID provenance specs.’

While it may not yet be clear how auditing and verification will fit into the Trusted Server concept, one thing is certain: The current proliferation of tags, SDKs and pixels – paired with every vendor defining its version of “truth” – is not a sustainable foundation for the future of digital advertising.

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3. The open web must improve on user experience

For publishers today, maximizing monetization through programmatic advertising typically means a lot of tech on page. Obtaining consent to comply with privacy regulations, recovering revenue from ad block users, identifying audiences through cookie syncs, sending out bid requests to multiple SSPs – all of this adds weight and latency to the client.

Add in video players, analytics or verification tags, and the exponential effect of a publisher’s direct partners incorporating multiple upstream vendors … the sheer amount of code and network requests originating from the client becomes unsustainable and leads to a terrible experience for users.

The open web will not survive without a shift to solutions that minimize the impact on the client and speed up the delivery of engaging content and advertising experiences.

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Trusted Server or not, the direction is clear

The industry may continue to debate the finer points of Trusted Server and the future of publishers’ advertising operations, but the general concept of moving toward more server-side processing just makes sense.

Whether this IAB proposal evolves into something the industry adopts or not, giving publishers more control over how data is collected, shared and monetized on their properties is a step in the right direction.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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New Destinations to Maximize Monetization

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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:

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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.

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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.

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