• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 22, 2022

Adform released research at the Cannes Lions festival showing that first-party IDs deliver significant uplift and scale on programmatic ad campaigns running with its ID Fusion solution.

The company commissioned PwC to work with OMD Norway and Renault to develop and run a real-world campaign using Adform’s ID Fusion technology.

As part of the test that ran from February through May 2022, the goal was to evaluate the performance of first-party IDs and ID Fusion to help marketers prepare to navigate the post-cookie advertising world.

The results show that funneling ad traffic with identifiers through the ID Fusion solution drove a significant 669% increase in the addressable audience, as well as 161% increase in click through rates, resulting in higher viewability and superior eCPM, and ultimately lowering CPC by 65%.

By using first-party IDs and ID Fusion, the test campaign reached incremental users that could not be engaged using previous targeting methods, on non-cookie environments such as Safari and Firefox, as well as a growing number of Chrome users.

First-party IDs delivered higher ad viewability, with 80% versus 75% for third-party cookie traffic. Only ad traffic with first-party IDs was able to meet daily spend targets across the campaign period and deliver in full.

The test campaign also “delivered improved engagement and quality metrics and reduced media inefficiencies by 29%, which lowered frequency from 4.8 to 3.4,” the company reported. 

PwC also ran an analysis of Adform historical data, reviewing performance of campaigns running across environments supporting first-party IDs, but not third-party cookies on Safari and Firefox.

“This is particularly relevant because 50% of all users are on cookieless environments while the remaining 50% will become cookieless next year,” stated Jochen Schlosser, CTO at Adform.

Data analyzed by PwC shows third-party cookies accounted for 66% of users reached on Chrome inventory and only 4% of users on Safari and Firefox.

When using first-party IDs through ID Fusion, up to 85% of Safari and Firefox users from selected publishers, previously inaccessible, could be identified and turned into addressable users. It also shows that using first-party IDs achieved a higher CTR percentage than unaddressable inventory.