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ID5, And How The Cookie Crumbles

Mike Shields

As cookies (very gradually) start to disappear, a crop of new startups is promising to provide new solutions for brands who want to keep doing the digital ad-targeting they’re doing (or as much as they can) while staying on the right side of privacy. Enter ID5, which just raised $20 million in new funding, including checks from heavy hitters like Sir Martin Sorrell and Transunion. ID5 joins the likes of the Trade Desk-backed UID 2.0 and Liveramp's similar attempt at a universal identifier/cookie alternative (among many others).

While the market waits to see which if any of these replacements gains any traction, here's how ID5's product was described by Business Insider:

"ID5 offers a solution that's similar to the marketing functions of a cookie. Its identifier attaches to a user's device when they visit a website or app. Publishers can enhance that with their own first-party data like hashed email addresses or phone numbers. The user is asked whether they would like to opt out, and the identifier carries strict permissions, so it can only be used by certain parties. ID5 allows a retailer, for example, to serve an ad to someone who had previously browsed its website and consented to their data being used for this purpose."

Wait, so to make consumers and regulators happy, we're going to ditch the cookie, and then attach something else to people's devices - and hope they understand this tactic well enough to approve it? And like the other identifiers, we're going to use people's personal emails and use them to help tons of other marketers target ads? How is this not another privacy mess waiting to happen? Won't the right (or more likely) wrong congressman or attorney general jump on these practices and make yet another cause out of this stuff? Best of luck to everyone involved.

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