• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 16, 2020

EASTON,CT -- The universal ID has emerged as the new Holy Grail for advertising, media and marketing, but achieving it will depend on a level of universal collaboration the industry has never seen before. That was the consensus of a panel of experts opening Day 8 of i-com’s global data summit.

One of the first and most fundamental challenges for achieving it, said Bruce Biegel - Senior Managing Director, Winterberry Group, is that there is no “consistency of how we define identity.”

He said the terms “data and identity are used interchangeably,” but nailing down a functional definition will be essential for achieving a universal ID based on an array of solutions and collaborations among marketers, retailers, publishers, platforms and technology firms.

Biegel said Winterberry is poised to publish a report on “Collaborative Data Solutions,” but he rattled off examples of first, second and third party data solutions that will be required to achieve it.

The other panelists agreed that the ultimate solution will depend on collaboration, but while they all cited examples of brands working with other brands, publishers and platforms, very little of the conversation addressed collaborating with the ultimate stakeholder: consumers.

Panelists addressed the consumer aspect in a detached way, focusing more on regulatory compliance and means of anonymizing the explicit identities of consumers whose data ends up in collaborative solutions. Only at the end of the panel discussion -- during a question asking participants to give predictions for the future -- was the consumer’s collaborative role addressed.

“Publishers, brands ad tech providers will have to take the consumer very seriously,” LiveRamp France Managing Director Vihan Sharma said, noting, “Consumers don’t really trust or know our ecosystem.”