Today (June 13th, 2023) Novatiq, the telco-verified digital identity platform,  announced it has concluded a funding round of  £11m, including a £2.6m investment from Intent HQ, the privacy-first AI customer analytics and personalisation platform. The two companies are forming a strategic partnership to transform how brands, publishers, and ad tech intermediaries activate advertising campaigns, based on first-party customer intelligence from telco operators.

With growing public expectations regarding data privacy and Google recently confirming its approach to deprecating third-party cookies in 2024, it is no surprise that “the [ad] market has lost 50-60% of the signal fidelity from third-party identifiers, affecting measurement, addressability, and performance,” according to the IAB, State of Data 2022. 

The new partnership addresses this challenge: Intent HQ has expertise in extracting privacy-safe enriched insights from complex behavioural streams. The Novatiq Fusion platform provides a new generation of privacy-first telco-verified IDs. Together, they enable brands and agencies to create more impactful marketing messages without any personal data entering the digital advertising ecosystem. 

This approach to audience creation provides a far greater experience for consumers. None of their personal data is shared and yet the brand messages they receive become more personalised and contextually relevant.

“Pairing what Intent HQ does best – i.e. driving privacy-safe client intimacy, retention, cross-sell, and more – with Novatiq’s expertise in verifiable advertising activation for brands, can only be described as the perfect match,” says CEO & founder of Intent HQ, Jonathan Lakin. 

Advertisers will reap significant benefits from the combined offering as they will be able to leverage powerful customer demographic and behaviour data, delivering the right message, at the right time, at scale – across the open web, in-app, CTV, and within telco customer messaging – without the need for third-party cookies. This approach addresses brands’ desire for more sustainable marketing practices, by limiting marketing waste while also ensuring they remain compliant with increasing global privacy regulations.

Commenting on the size of the opportunity this strategic partnership creates, Jonathan Hulford-Funnell, CEO, Novatiq said “Instant ad relevance is the difference between commercial success and communications failure. However, the desire for greater consumer privacy must be respected. Telco operators' deep relationships with their customers and their position at the heart of every digital transaction provide a unique opportunity to solve this challenge.  Partnering with Intent HQ furthers our mission to consistently deliver a privacy-first personalised customer experience.”

Novatiq and Intent HQ have compatible and complementary solutions. This strategic partnership increases the power of both offerings, making them more relevant for a broader set of audiences, and creating new revenue opportunities. It also places telcos in a meaningful position with a new service offering to the digital marketing industry that future-proofs the open web.