CIMM and OpenAP Launch Strategic Review of the Identity Resolution Ecosystem for Advanced TV Advertising

April 3, 2024

Study with ThinkMedium will assess opportunities for industry-wide improvements in identity resolution marketplace, with strategic recommendations for collaboration

Identity resolution (IDR) is a longstanding, proven capability in the TV media and advertising industries. As other facets of the landscape innovate in order to align with the changing ecosystem, IDR is experiencing a period of change and development, too – and its use has become far more important to support critical industry use cases including measurement, planning, targeting, addressability, and attribution. 

As such, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) and OpenAP, have launched of a joint study exploring the future of the identity resolution ecosystem in the advanced TV ecosystem. Working collaboratively with the wider industry, the new study – delivered by ThinkMedium – will include: 

  • A review of the current IDR marketplace, clearly mapping out the relationships between different first- and other party identity spines and providers.
  • A diagnostic assessment of what’s working well, what isn’t, and why, across different use cases.
  • An assessment of the opportunities for industry-wide improvements, with strategic recommendations for improvement, interoperability and innovation.

TV’s current identity ecosystem is complex and fragmented. Identity spines and solutions have proliferated, leveraging different audience relationships, identifiers, signals and attributes, resulting in a fast-developing marketplace with a wide range of solutions and applications. As a result, translating and transacting within these different structures across people, devices and households can be complex for buyers. 

“Many aspects of the fast-developing identity ecosystems are performing well, supporting a growing range of use cases and transactions across publishers, platforms, and agencies – and rapid development of clean room infrastructure is supporting this growth, along with important trends and initiatives across the market aiming to increase the importance of identity within the TV advertising landscape,” said Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM. “But in order to support the future of advanced TV advertising, the industry must recognize, understand, and address needed improvements to the current identity landscape.”

David Levy, CEO of OpenAP, added: “Solving for identity across increased viewership fragmentation is one of the biggest opportunities our collective ecosystem will have as we increase the data signals we receive across video and ad consumption. As measurement transformation takes hold and TV advertising continues its shift toward audiences, identity will be the most important part of the advertising workflow, defining everything from how we build audiences to how we understand which screens ads were delivered to and how various IDs are resolved. As with any challenge pressing our industry, this will require collaboration and interoperability across multiple parties so that the process is standardized, transparent and as trusted as possible for the brands we all serve. We are thrilled to partner with CIMM on this critical project to help architect a blueprint for the next stage of our industry’s evolution.”