Kochava Rolls Out Identity Tool for Publishers Focused on CTV and Mobile
The ad industry's audience measurement challenges span multiple types of media
As the digital advertising industry hurtles toward a future without third-party identifiers, publishers will have to find new ways to manage an influx of first-party data signals, and ad-tech companies are trying to adapt their businesses to help.
Kochava, a mobile attribution company, wants to woo these media owners with an omnichannel measurement and attribution tool that would connect what happens on their properties with an advertiser’s first-party data.
The tool, Kochava for Publishers, is especially focused on connected TV and mobile advertising, two areas that don’t support the third-party cookies that Google is phasing out of its Chrome browser by 2022, but have shaky identity signals.
Kochava for Publishers is essentially an in-house tool that can attribute ad exposure to a certain action, while also integrating advertisers’ first-party data. Charles Manning, CEO of Kochava, said this helps with privacy concerns, since publishers have typically had to share such data in the bidstream, which any company involved in an online ad auction can view.
“Publishers want to get credit for the things that they’re doing, and they don’t want to be reliant on the lack of maturity of tools from their customers,” Manning said. “Increasingly, publishers are wanting to have their own attribution in-house as a first-party measurement mechanism, provided that it can work with the tools that the advertiser is using.”
Apple, the leading mobile device maker in the U.S., will make its IDFA opt-in by early next year, which is expected to greatly reduce the number of mobile identifiers. As a measurement alternative, Apple is pushing adoption of its SKAdNetwork, but this means publishers will start receiving an overwhelming amount of data that supply- and demand-side platforms have typically been processing.
“Publishers don’t have the tech to receive and synthesize that signal and syndicate it to their customers, and so that’s precisely what Kochava for Publishers is all about doing,” he said.
CTV lacks a consistent identity standard, but Manning called the space a “huge opportunity.” Tru Optik recently sold for over $100 million largely because of its identity offerings in CTV.
Manning said three major companies in CTV, including Roku, are signed on to use Kochava for Publishers. MobilityWare, a mobile gaming publisher, is also on board.
The tool is based on Kochava’s identity graph of over 90 million households and 220 million mobile devices. Having a view into mobile behavior when measuring the performance of CTV ads is important, Manning said, because viewers take an action on their phone since they can’t click the ad on their TV screens.
Kochava also has a partnership with LiveIntent to build out alternatives to third-party cookies and mobile identifiers, but they’re just two of a handful of companies building and selling identity products.
