Basis’s findings make intuitive sense: brands can only measure conversions if they can track a user from ad to outcome, a process currently mediated by third-party cookies. If the sell side uses techniques to make a cookie only visible in the bid request but not in the rendered ad, the advertising tracking mechanisms break down.
“An inconsistency indicates spoofing of the cookie in the bid request,” Trider said. “We do not approve of any instance of manipulating the contents of a bid request in an unconventional way. It is certainly something that we need to discuss before it happens.”
Basis’s data finds a general positive trend between ID consistency and conversions: when consistency is higher, so are conversions. However, the correlation is not 100%, which Trider partly attributes to the data being aggregated at the campaign level, not by impression, which would be more precise. There are more campaigns with high levels of ID consistency than low levels of ID consistency, and the sometimes smaller sample sizes add noise to the data, Trider said.
Contractual agreements do exist
Of course, it’s possible that a brand is misled about the identity of the user it’s bidding on, and can’t measure outcomes associated with that ad, but that the ad is still driving conversions the buyer doesn’t know about.
“If there were zero improvements with bridging, no one would do it,” said Mike O’Sullivan, co-founder of metadata firm Sincera. “It doesn’t mean that all approaches to this are performing.”
There is an opportunity for adtech firms to offer solutions for brands to configure their websites to register conversions from ID bridging (as long as brands consent to buy ads via ID bridging), said O’Sullivan.
But for now, only what can be measured matters for campaign planning.
“We don’t bid on traffic where we don’t think we can measure conversions,” Trider said, adding “What can be measured is the only thing that effectively matters to people.”
More awareness to fix the problem
Within Basis’s sample, 7% of the approximately 408 million impressions studied had an inconsistency where the cookie in the bid request did not match what’s in the impression level data.
“It’s a minority of campaigns that see a huge impact,” Trider said.
Basis is working with relevant exchanges to stop the behavior, Trider said.
There’s also activity from the sell side. SSP Magnite published a blog post last week arguing for more transparency in how ID bridging practices are declared to buyers.
“If buyer and seller know what’s happening with any given ID creation, they can make their own determination,” Garret McGrath, svp of product management at Magnite, told ADWEEK. “Everybody agrees that there must be awareness of it.”
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