Index Exchange has long endorsed the belief that the future of programmatic advertising will move away from relying on the cookie and instead leverage privacy-first, people-based advertising. In support of this future, we launched the IX Library in early 2019 to help bring real-time identity (RTI) and people-based addressability to media owners using any header bidding technology, and we continue to expand our suite of supporting technologies.
Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of IX Bridge, our newest identity feature that allows all of our media owner customers to benefit from a basic form of people-based enrichment, even those that only have cookie-based IDs. IX Bridge leverages existing cookie-syncing technology to bridge the world of people-based IDs and cookie-based IDs, unlocking more people-based addressability for media owners and buyers.
For media owners who can’t easily deploy more feature-rich identity solutions, such as the IX Wrapper Library or Identity Library, IX Bridge provides a solution to begin supporting people-based addressability immediately. Buyers also benefit by seeing a significant increase in people-based eligible advertising opportunities.
The evolution from advertising based on third-party cookies to first-party, people-based signals has many challenges, and we believe that IX Bridge will help ease the transition. While marketers learn how to rely on people-based audiences, media owners need to implement the right technology to enrich their media with identity signals. By providing a foundational level of addressability, IX Bridge makes it easier for any media owner to start participating in people-based advertising today.
Unlocking addressability with IX Bridge
IX Bridge will immediately allow marketers to spend more on people-based campaigns, such as IX Matched Audiences. The ability to leverage cookie-syncing technology also means that IX Bridge works with server-side implementations and supply channels, which typically pose additional challenges for people-based advertising enablement.
While IX Bridge provides a basic level of people-based advertising, media owners using the IX Identity Library will see additional benefit from our RTI capabilities. When managed via the IX Library Wrapper, media owners can maximize people-based addressability through our most advanced solution available and expect additional coverage of people-based addressability.
Media buyers will immediately see an increase in people-based buying opportunities with IX Bridge. For marketers already leveraging identity-based signals, this increase will allow for larger budgets and more optimization. For other buyers, IX Bridge provides an easy opportunity to begin using people-based audiences with any media owner they choose.
How IX Bridge works
IX Bridge works in bid requests using our standard cookie-sync technology:
- Index sees a variety of events, such as bid requests and user syncs, that contain both an Index cookie identifier and people-based identifier
- Index records the association between the Index cookie identifier and people-based identifier.
- When Index sees the original Index cookie identifier in future bid requests, Index can enrich them with people-based identifiers and products, such as IX Matched Audience campaigns.
IX Bridge is available and is enabled automatically now for North American and APAC media owners, and traffic is fully compatible with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
What’s next
Future improvements will enable IX Bridge globally with full support for all local regulations.
