At this point we need to start understanding why does user identity even matter so much. It might not be obvious to average people, but the vast majority of media budgets, across all channels, are planned based on two main variables – how many unique consumers will my campaign touch (aka – Reach), and how many times will each of them see my ad (aka – Frequency).
Neither reach nor frequency can be measured without some concept of identity. For TV advertising, Nielsen solved this by separately measuring the audience of a given TV show, and normalizing it into GRP – gross rating points. Everyone allegedly hates them, and expected digital to deliver more accurate measuring and delivery.
To be honest, this created a very problematic digital ecosystem that nobody likes either. We even saw a publisher selling a website takeover by the hour, something very similar to GRP.
For our story, it is important to understand that the requirement to stop tracking users stabbed right into the very heart of the advertising industry. Media budgets CAN NOT be planned the old way anymore.
That is why the industry is so shocked, and that is why the first instinct was to find a replacement identifier. And this is also why the alternative identifier will be used, however flawed or limited in scale it might be initially.
Leave a Reply