Around the industry, the challenge of figuring out audience members’ identities has become a leading imperative.
But how effective are attempts at solving identity, really? Not effective enough, according to the co-founder of one mobile-specific ad-tech vendor.
“Identity is an interesting challenge because that fundamentally drives the entire fabric of digital advertising.” says Abhay Singhal, co-founder of InMobi.
Singhal says identity is about three dimensions:
- A deterministic identity so that platforms can understand who a person is.
- Recency to that determination.
- Density to the information, to provide certainty.
“The third party ecosystem definitely suffers from the dependence on the existing platforms and what they allow or don’t allow In terms of the identity graph to come about,” Singhal says.
“There have been many initiatives where different third parties have come together to make the identity graph a reality, but the fact of the matter is I don’t think anyone of those graphs have come even close to what the walled gardens have been able to provide and resolve just because of the volume of data that they hold for the consumers.
“I don’t think that the identity challenge is anywhere close to being solved in the manner where it becomes truthfully helpful for advertisers.”
This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019. This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week. The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company. Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here.