• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 25, 2024

Dynamic ad-serving platform Clinch has integrated The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) into its platform, becoming the first client-side ad server to incorporate the privacy-focused identity solution built for the open internet.

“We know the access to legacy online identifiers are becoming limited,” said Charel MacIntosh, head of business development and strategic partnerships at Clinch. “Incorporating UID2 expands our identify framework to help clients.”

The identity solution allows users to create an identifier from emails or phone numbers. It supports sequel messaging across channels and devices, aids in measurement, simplifies identity resolution, and supports identity use cases on connected TV and mobile apps.

MacIntosh said the company uses other identity sources, but the integration with The Trade Desk is underway. The two companies are collaborating to build the solution.

Today, Clinch can receive the token in an ad request. It’s important to use as many as possible because the company receives multiple event types from multiple sources simultaneously.

Data is received from advertisers from websites or apps, from vendors such as product or location feeds in creative ad assets, and through ad serving. Each source can include or lack online identifiers.

The signal to serve the ad comes from an ad request, depending on how brands buy media, and can be a programmatic source or a publisher's ad server. The server reads all the signals and responds. 

Using this solution helps in the situations when Clinch needs to resolve an identity to keep it anonymous. 

Certain features and strategies require identify resolution, MacIntosh said, while others do not.

Sports and weather, for example, do not require identity resolution when serving an ad. Other scenarios that do require identity resolution -- such as retargeting and sequential messaging -- involve integration of the sources, and this is where the UID2 integration will come into play, MacIntosh explained.

MacIntosh said this is the first of many features on the path to building a complete software as a service (SaaS) platform focused on automation.