IPG Debuts Kii, the Holdco's New Ad Targeting Tool

Industry giant IPG has unveiled the holding group's new identity solution, Kinesso Intelligent Identity, or Kii, an offering it hopes will alleviate clients' concerns over ad targeting capabilities in an increasingly privacy-compliant world. Pronounced "key," the offering uses proprietary technology from IPG's data services arm Kinesso to help soften the expected loss of customer insight brought upon by the internet's major platforms deprecating identifiers such as third-party cookies and Apple's IDFA. Kii's selling point is that its interoperable capabilities can help clients optimize campaign delivery on both the open web as well as walled gardens – cross-platform campaign measurement has historically proven difficult. Arun Kumar, CEO of Kinesso and global chief data and marketing technology officer at IPG, explained to Adweek that Kii uses machine learning to help clients better coordinate their media spend across different platforms. Such an approach is necessary as the online ad industry, which has historically used third-party cookies to improve campaign-reach, is increasingly fragmenting to become a series of walled gardens. Can Omnichannel Marketing Exist in a World of Walled Gardens? "There will be multiple identity solutions and one where regulation will continue to put on what [ad targeting solutions] are considered acceptable and what is not," added Kumar. "We call it 'intelligent identity' because ... there will be standards that emanate from the walled gardens and those that emanate from the open web. You need a technology solution that is able to integrate all of the approaches so that a client gets the benefit of all these different approaches." Kii's benefits include "Cascade Syndication," a process whereby it can enhance an ad campaign's reach by matching a brand's CRM data to a media outlet's audience segments by using one of the various internet identifiers on the market, such as Unified ID 2.0, in order to enhance reach and reduce cost, according to Kumar. Kii is currently live with a number of IPG clients in the retail, healthcare and financial services verticals, it declined to specify the exact brands, but the company claims it has helped improve match rates by up to 20% on average. A recent Kantar survey found that 80% of advertisers want to use their own segmentation for campaign planning and activation with a further 54% of respondents claiming that integration with additional data sources would become crucial for audience segmentation. Ana Milicevic, co-founder and principal at Sparrow Advisers, told Adweek brands are likely to welcome more entrants in the identity space although there would remain questions over whether or not agency-led solutions only operate within their own properties or whether or not they can truly scale. "There's been an uptick in companies solving for identity internally first, which then necessitates the need to connect these de-facto identities to walled gardens somehow," she said.

The Future of Identity

IPG Debuts Kii, a New Interoperable Ad Targeting Tool

Bridging the gap between walled gardens and the open web

Ronan Shields

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Ronan Shields