Unified ID 2.0 quietly amasses more support from the agency world, but publishers aren’t as convinced

Part of the growing appeal of UID 2.0 is the universality of participation in its development and management but its ability to get used within the privacy-compliant walls of each company using it. In some ways, UID’s rollout isn’t terribly unlike a car rental company.

Michels explained how its development involves three main participant groups: 

Administrator: the holder of the keys, which ensures users agree to abide by a set of rules. Currently, The Trade Desk is the sole administrator, but Michels said the company is looking to see who else will take on that role. 

Operator: there can be any number of them — IPG is currently its first closed operator. They have a distributed version of the API that allows a UID participant to generate the identifier info. This makes them like a combination of the rental customer and the car being rented.

Compliance management: essentially the police who make sure participants (operators) are abiding by this set of rules, such as not sharing IDs outside their data systems, or joining directly identifiable information with browser behavior. 

“It’s a fabric, everyone can stitch this into any other ID they’re using,” said Michels. “The success of UID 2.0 doesn’t come at the expense of any other third-party identifiers. They can all work together.”

Why then haven’t that many major publishers signed on to UID 2.0 yet? Kumar said he thinks they’ll show up once there’s more demand — and likened the situation to 10 years ago when programmatic was in its infancy and only had access to remnant inventory.

Michels noted that The Trade Desk is focused on signing up publishers in the connected TV space, with AMC Networks, Fubo and Tube already secured. “We think the value exchange between consumer and publisher there is great and explicit, which is why they need” UID, he added.