Yahoo opens post-cookie ad ID to supply-side partners, including Amazon

Yahoo is making overtures to supply-side partners, including Amazon Publisher Services, by giving them access to its post-cookie advertising ID, which will potentially make more inventory available for targeting in digital ad markets. The move comes amid some tension in ad tech circles between the demand side, which is where Yahoo sits, and the supply platforms, which connect to multiple publishers. On Thursday, Yahoo announced the expansion of the platforms that can use what it calls ConnectID, which is an ad targeting tool built on Yahoo’s first-party data to identify lucrative audiences for advertising on the open web. The ID will now be open to supply-side partners on the other end of the advertising exchange, including Amazon, which will activate the ID through its Transparent Ad Marketplace. InMobi Advertising, Pubmatic and Magnite are other supply partners that will be able to turn on the ad ID, Yahoo announced. Recent news: Amazon’s demand-side platform redesign “We are building on our momentum to shape the future of identity in advertising, ensuring publishers can monetize their audiences more effectively in an identity-constrained world,” said Chandra Cirulnick, VP of global supply partnerships at Yahoo, in the announcement. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Yahoo’s ConnectID is one of multiple identity products developed over the past several years as the ad tech industry contends with data-sharing changes online. Apple, for instance, started phasing out cookies on Safari web browsers in 2017 and enacted restrictions on sharing data from iPhones through new App Tracking Transparency mechanisms in 2021. Google is trying to follow suit on Chrome and Android, and it plans to present users with a choice to accept third-party cookies on Chrome next year. Cookies have been one of the main ways advertisers target and measure ad campaigns on the open web, but now IDs are able to mimic some of that internet tracker functionality, helping the advertisers and publishers match the identity of the consumers. The Trade Desk, a rival demand-side platform to Yahoo, also is nurturing an identity product called Unified ID 2.0. Yahoo developed ConnectID when it still had a supply-side platform, but it closed the SSP last year. Around the same time, Yahoo launched Backstage, a way to go directly to publishers, which left some supply-side partners worried that DSPs, including Yahoo, could cut them out of the transaction. This new expansion, sharing ConnectID, may alleviate some of those worries. “We remain committed to our SSP partnerships, which complement our direct-to-publisher connections. This announcement reinforces that commitment,” a Yahoo spokesperson said in an email to Ad Age. Yahoo’s ID announcement comes as Amazon Ads hosted its annual unBoxed event this week. This year, Amazon unveiled an overhaul of its DSP. Amazon has also been working on advanced identity products. At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Amazon released an “ads relevance” product that promised to find consumers for effective ad targeting even for non-logged-in audiences, which are the hardest to reach because they don’t connect to a publisher through an email.

Yahoo opens post-cookie ad ID to supply-side partners, including Amazon

Featured Stories