• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 14, 2017

The Advertising ID Consortium on Thursday announced that a slew of companies have agreed to join AppNexus, Index Exchange, and LiveRamp in supporting a standard identity framework and specifications for programmatic advertising channels.

The Trade Desk also agreed to support the consortium’s identity framework by making its ID solution compatible with the group's Open Ad ID, which will provide what the consortium calls "a major step toward consolidating an open and ubiquitous solution."

A Trade Desk executive will join the board.

The consortium’s framework, with no cost to members, includes an open and standardized cookie and accessible people-based identifiers, delivered in a secure, privacy-conscious omnichannel identity framework.

Among those joining the group are Adform, AerServ, Amobee, DataXu, DistrictM, IgnitionOne, Kargo, LiveIntent, Numberly, PulsePoint, Roq.Ad, Sizmek, Thunder, TradeLab, Unruly, and Videology.

Jakob Bak, chief technology officer and co-founder of Adform, believes the project resolves the problem of the industry's fragmented approach to identifying audiences.

The consortium’s two-part identity framework combines cookies with a people-based identifier to enable advertisers to target users, help publishers better monetize their inventory, and improve on the ads consumers see.

The technology includes an Open Ad ID, the standard for single­ device cookie identification, and an Open IdentityLink, a common people-based identifier for resolving identity across channels, devices, and platforms.

Adnxs.com is one of the largest cookie pools, and LiveRamp’s IdentityLink is the largest deterministic identity graph available for the open web.