With their stock plummeting in the aftermath of Google’s announcement that it won’t develop or support any other user-level identity alternatives to third-party cookies, The Trade Desk is fighting back.
Not only is The Trade Desk Google’s biggest independent ad-buying platform rival, the company has been at the forefront of the push to replace third-party cookies with its Unified ID 2.0, which uses “encrypted and hashed email addresses,” not cookies, for cross-site web tracking and targeting.
In a new blog post by CEO and Founder Jeff Green, he explains the company’s position on Google’s announcement, casting doubt on the value of user-level identification while simultaneously promoting its own answer to the cookie-less user-level identification problem.
“Cookies are going away after all,” says Green. “Nothing new there. You already knew that. And, of course, cookies only impact the browsing internet. That’s about 20% of data-driven ads today.” He then goes on to say, “cookies don’t matter much to the fastest growing areas of the digital advertising ecosystem, such as CTV. With CTV, consumers log in with an email or phone number and that login helps create everything from customized viewing recommendations to a better ad experience that features fewer, more relevant ads.”
Green’s comment is meant to give The Trade Desk’s overall business some breathing room. Cookie-based tracking isn’t as meaningful for channels like CTV, that don’t rely on cookies, says Green. These channels are attracting more and more consumers and advertisers. So, regardless of what Google does or how individualized ad-targeting evolves, Green wants investors to know that The Trade Desk will be fine.
While downplaying the loss of cookies, Green also goes on to talk up the value of The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0.
“Unified ID 2.0 has the best opportunity to become a new common currency of the open internet,” says Green, adding that it “pays off the value exchange of the internet in a way that benefits publishers, advertisers and consumers.”
In Google’s blog post on Wednesday, David Temkin, Google’s Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, specifically called out email-based identifiers, like UID 2.0, as non-viable over the long-term.
“We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people’s email addresses,” he said. “We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment.”
Google’s replacement for open web cross-site tracking, FLoC, groups thousands of Chrome into “cohorts” based on each individual’s browsing behavior. This allows ad tech companies, advertisers and publishers to target based on the habits of large groups instead of the activity of individuals.
Just as Google’s Temkin didn’t hold back on criticizing email-based identifiers, The Trade Desk’s Green was similarly outspoken about FLoC.
“FLoC is an innovative idea and useful, but it won’t be able to pay off the value exchange of the internet in the same way that cookies did or that Unified ID 2.0 will.”
