Unified ID 2.0 becomes a collaborative & industry-driven open source project

On May 25, 2021 prebid, project rearc, uid2

Today it’s been announced that IAB Tech Lab will now formally oversee the source code of UID 2.0 which has now been fully donated to the industry by The Trade Desk. This will now enable a very wide range of industry participants globally to collaboratively improve the core code by proposing updates and incremental improvements so as to evolve its functionalities for the benefit of everyone.

This approach is a key part of the proposed standard for ‘Best Practices for User-Enabled Identity Tokens Guidelines‘ which was one of the four standards recently released within the draft technical standards and guidelines for addressability, privacy and accountability. This is the option of having 1:1 linked audiences (see the third category on the far right in the image below) between publishers and advertisers, using either an explicitly opted-in device-based ID or a secure user-enabled ID. This has to be secured, have transparent uses, and offer consumer privacy-focused controls.

This is one of a portfolio of options that are emerging and being supported, once third-party cookies are no longer a viable solution for digital marketing, from sometime (yet to be confirmed) next year.

However, through this approach the ability to manage frequency caps and control recency across digital properties, estimate cross-site/app reach, create targetable audience segments, attribute conversions and measure return on ad spend and connect and analyse ad campaign details to user lifetime value will be fully retained.

We felt compelled to include some key updates and take-aways from this news to help the Australian industry locally to get involved and keep across this key collaborative project as it evolves.

  • This is not the only secure user-enabled ID available and IAB Tech Lab welcomes other source code contributions from the industry as potential industry-owned addressability solutions, and any such proposal will also undergo a parallel review process.
  • IAB Tech Lab will benevolently oversee the source code via the Technical Working Group established as a part of the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media (PRAM) setup in the US.
  • Here in Australia we are officially forming a working group, under our Data Council, which will contribute into this process and also the progress of Project Rearc generally.
  • Operators of these collaborative user-enabled IDs will be both vetted by, and enabled by, the Technical Working Group – the first of which is Prebid.org, which is an open-source header bidding wrapper and also a benevolent open-source collaborative industry initiative.

We would advise that everyone actively gets involved in reviewing and testing all of the options moving forwards by working closely with us and all the industry bodies on these developments, working closely with your tech vendors and partners – and ultimately collaboratively planning for the future with the rest of our industry.

Look out for more information from us, through our blogs, webinars and events. Also always feel free to contact us if you require further information.

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