ID5, the independent identity solution for digital advertising, announced that its Universal ID is now available in Prebid.js to publishers and ad tech platforms globally. Publishers can retrieve the ID5 ID, store it on a first party cookie and pass it to their demand partners via a simple on-page configuration. Bid adapters in Prebid can listen to the ID5 ID and send it to their RTB demand partners on 100% of impressions.

The integration brings many benefits to both publishers and ad tech platforms. The ID5 Universal ID allows publishers to increase their monetisation capabilities by enabling buyers to identify 100% of users even in environments where 3rd party cookies are blocked. Publishers and ad tech platforms can also move to Prebid Server without worrying about revenue loss due to low match rates with demand partners. Finally, by using the ID5 Universal ID, the ecosystem will reduce reliance on cookie matching and therefore reduce page latency, data leakage and privacy compliance risks.

Since Prebid announced the availability of the ID5 adapter in its 2.21.0 release, ID5 has received more than 20 inbound registration requests. The ID5 Universal ID is particularly attractive for the market because, since the company is fully focused on providing identification capabilities for digital advertising, this solution is truly neutral which eliminates conflicts of interest and guarantees massive adoption of the service. Moreover, ID5 has a large footprint (over 2.5 billion ID5 IDs are active every month) and is already integrated with more than 45 ad tech platforms including Adform, AppNexus, Avocet, Beeswax, Eyeota, JustPremium, Mediamath, Platform161, Semasio and Smart, which will also facilitate the adoption of the ID5 Universal ID by the industry.

“The launch of Universal ID is a major step forward for ID5” says Mathieu Roche, ID5’s co-founder & CEO. “Universal ID has been on our roadmap since we started the company almost 2 years ago, but there is a lot of inertia around this topic so we wanted to have scale before launching the service. We can now leverage our relationships with some of the world’s largest ad tech platforms and premium publishers to propose a solution that is scalable from day one. This gives us a real shot at becoming the standard our industry so desperately needs to compete against Google and Facebook.”

Adform’s Chief Strategy Officer Jochen Schlosser commented "Adform supports the trend towards using shared, centralized ID management solutions. The concept of shared IDs provides the opportunity to stop ID proliferation and improve the quality of programmatic advertising. Focused services like ID5 and neutral industry initiatives like the IAB Tech Lab’s DigiTrust are important building blocks for programmatic advertising to secure its long-term future.”

“The integration with Prebid is a strong step forward for ID5 and a positive move for the adtech ecosystem. ID5 is an independent tech provider without conflict of interest, and a shared neutral identity solution is critical for our industry.” said Romain Job, Chief Strategy Officer at Smart.

According to Marco Kloots, CEO at Platform161 “The industry needs to converge towards a limited set of shared IDs to become more efficient and less dependent on 3rd party cookies. We believe ID5's approach makes sense and we think they can be the neutral identity provider that we need. This is why we are supporting their Universal ID solution and working to be able to bid from the ID5 ID."

Gael Demessant, Programmatic Director & Yield Management at Prisma Media also commented “Prisma is very proud to support ID5's initiative, which is an important step in the right direction. At a time when demand sources are multiplying thanks to header bidding, it is very important to have the best possible match rates with all of them in order to compete with Google's performance. User identification will be the key to growth in the coming years.”

"Improving user identification is key for publishers to increase monetization in programmatic. We are supportive of ID5's initiative to unify the industry around a common identifier and have begun rolling out the ID5 Universal ID across Gourmet Ads publishers" added Benjamin Christie, President, Gourmet Ads

On Thursday, 11 July, Scott Menzer, Co-founder & VP, Product & Operations at ID5, will be joining a panel discussion at the Prebid Leadership Summit in London alongside representatives from Rubicon Project and The Trade Desk. Menzer will elaborate more on ID5’s vision on shared IDs and will be discussing topics such as identity in the digital advertising industry, the moves toward universal identifiers as well as the recent changes with Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.